He was in command of the Porte Montmartre, which goes to prove how highly he was esteemed, for, believe me, more treachery had been going on inside and out of the Porte Montmartre than in any other quarter of Paris.  The last commandant there, citizen Ferney, was guillotined for having allowed a whole batch of aristocrats—­traitors to the Republic, all of them—­to slip through the Porte Montmartre and to find safety outside the walls of Paris.  Ferney pleaded in his defence that these traitors had been spirited away from under his very nose by the devil’s agency, for surely that meddlesome Englishman who spent his time in rescuing aristocrats—­traitors, all of them—­from the clutches of Madame la Guillotine must be either the devil himself, or at any rate one of his most powerful agents.

“Nom de Dieu! just think of his name!  The Scarlet Pimpernel they call him!  No one knows him by any other name! and he is preternaturally tall and strong and superhumanly cunning!  And the power which he has of being transmuted into various personalities—­rendering himself quite unrecognisable to the eyes of the most sharp-seeing patriot of France, must of a surety be a gift of Satan!”

But the Committee of Public Safety refused to listen to Ferney’s explanations.  The Scarlet Pimpernel was only an ordinary mortal—­an exceedingly cunning and meddlesome personage it is true, and endowed with a superfluity of wealth which enabled him to break the thin crust of patriotism that overlay the natural cupidity of many Captains of the Town Guard—­but still an ordinary man for all that! and no true lover of the Republic should allow either superstitious terror or greed to interfere with the discharge of his duties which at the Porte Montmartre consisted in detaining any and every person—­aristocrat, foreigner, or otherwise traitor to the Republic—­who could not give a satisfactory reason for desiring to leave Paris.  Having detained such persons, the patriot’s next duty was to hand them over to the Committee of Public Safety, who would then decide whether Madame la Guillotine would have the last word over them or not.

And the guillotine did nearly always have the last word to say, unless the Scarlet Pimpernel interfered.

The trouble was, that that same accursed Englishman interfered at times in a manner which was positively terrifying.  His impudence, certes, passed all belief.  Stories of his daring and of his impudence were abroad which literally made the lank and greasy hair of every patriot curl with wonder.  ’Twas even whispered—­not too loudly, forsooth—­that certain members of the Committee of Public Safety had measured their skill and valour against that of the Englishman and emerged from the conflict beaten and humiliated, vowing vengeance which, of a truth, was still slow in coming.

Citizen Chauvelin, one of the most implacable and unyielding members of the Committee, was known to have suffered overwhelming shame at the hands of that daring gang, of whom the so-called Scarlet Pimpernel was the accredited chief.  Some there were who said that citizen Chauvelin had for ever forfeited his prestige, and even endangered his head by measuring his well-known astuteness against that mysterious League of spies.