The Triumph of the Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy (story reading .TXT) 📕

played you that trick, seeing that you all say it was citizen Rateau who⁠ ⁠… The devil take it all!” he added, and scratched his bald head with savage vigour, which he always did whene’er he felt sorely perplexed. “A man can’t be two at one and the same time; nor two men become one. Nor⁠ ⁠… Name of a name of a dog!” concluded the worthy citizen, puffing and blowing in the maze of his own puzzlement like an old walrus that is floundering in the water.

“It was the Englishman, I tell thee!” one of his customers asserted indignantly. “Ask anyone who saw him! Ask the tappe-durs! Ask Robespierre himself! He saw him, and turned as grey as⁠—as putty, I tell thee! he concluded, with more conviction than eloquence.

“And I tell thee,” broke in citizen Sical, the butcher⁠—he with the bullet-head and bull-neck and a fist that could in truth have felled an ox; “I tell thee that it was citizen Rateau. Don’t I know citizen Rateau?” he added, and brought that heavy fist of his down upon the upturned cask on which stood pewter mugs and bottles of eau-de-vie, and glared aggressively round upon the assembly. He had only one eye; the other presented a hideous appearance, scarred and blotched, the result of a terrible fatality in his early youth. The one eye leered with a glance of triumph as well as of a challenge, daring any less muscular person to impugn his veracity.

One man alone was bold enough to take up the challenge⁠—a wizened little fellow, a printer by trade, with skin of the texture of grained oak and a few unruly curls that tumbled over one another above a highly polished forehead.

“And I tell thee, citizen Sical,” he said with firm decision; “I tell thee and those who aver, as thou dost, that citizen Rateau had anything to do with those monkey-tricks, that ye lie. Yes!” he reiterated emphatically, and paying no heed to the glowering looks and blasphemies of Sical and his friends. “Yes, ye lie! Not consciously, I grant you; but you lie nevertheless. Because⁠—” He paused and glanced around him, like a clever actor conscious of the effect which he produced. His tiny beady eyes blinked in the glare of the lamp before him.

“Because what?” came in an eager chorus from every side.

“Because,” resumed the other sententiously, “all the while that ye were supping at the expense of the State in the open, and had your gizzards stirred by the juggling devices of some unknown mountebank, citizen Rateau was lying comfortably drunk and snoring lustily in the antechamber of Mother Théot, the soothsayer, right at the other end of Paris!”

“How do you know that, citizen Langlois?” queried the host with icy reproval, for butcher Sical was his best customer, and Sical did not like being contradicted. But little Langlois with the shiny forehead and tiny, beady, humorous eyes, continued unperturbed.

“Pardi!” he said gaily, “because I was at Mother Théot myself, and saw him there.”

That certainly was a statement to stagger even the great Sical. It was received in complete silence. Everyone promptly felt that the moment was propitious for another drink; nay! that the situation demanded it.

Sical, and those who had fought against the Scarlet Pimpernel theory, were too staggered to speak. They continued to imbibe citizen Hottot’s eau-de-vie in sullen brooding. The idea of the legendary Englishman, which has so unexpectedly been strengthened by citizen Langlois’ statement concerning Rateau, was repugnant to their common sense. Superstition was all very well for women and weaklings like Langlois; but for men to be asked to accept the theory that a kind of devil in human shape had so thrown dust in the eyes of a number of perfectly sober patriots that they literally could not believe what they saw, was nothing short of an insult.

And they had seen Rateau at the fraternal supper, had talking with him, until the moment when⁠ ⁠… Then who in Satan’s name had they been talking with?

“Here, Langlois! Tell us⁠—”

And Langlois, who had become the hero of the hour, told all he knew, and told it, we are told, a dozen times and more. How he had gone to Mother Théot’s at about four o’clock in the afternoon, and had sat patiently waiting beside his friend Rateau, who wheezed and snored alternately for a couple of hours. How, at six o’clock or a little after, Rateau went out because⁠—the aristo, forsooth!⁠—had found the atmosphere filthy in Mother Théot’s antechamber⁠—no doubt he went to get another drink.

“At about half-past seven,” the little printer went on glibly, “my turn came to speak with the old witch. When I came out it was long past eight o’clock and quite dark. I saw Rateau sprawling upon a bench, half asleep. I tried to speak with him, but he only grunted. However, I went out then to get a bit of supper at one of the open-air places, and at ten o’clock I was once more past Mother Théot’s place. One or two people were coming out of the house. They were all grumbling because they had been told to go. Rateau was one who was for making a disturbance, but I took him by the arm. We went down the street together, and parted company in the Rue de l’Anier, where he lodges. And here I am!” concluded Langlois, and turned triumphantly to challenge the gaze of every one of the sceptics around him.

There was not a single doubtful point in his narrative, and though he was questioned⁠—aye! and severely cross-questioned, too⁠—he never once swerved from his narrative or in any manner did he contradict himself. Later on it transpired that there were others who had been in Mother Théot’s antechamber that day. They too subsequently corroborated all that the little printer had said. One of them was the wife of Sical’s own brother; and there were others. So, what would you?

“Name of a name of a dog, then, who was it