Here is a brief summary of the story to get you interested: This story occurs during the French revolution, when the people rose up to throw off the restraint of the French Aristocracy. The British are sympathetic towards the French "arito's," and one Englishman in particular has sworn to save all that he can from the guillotine. He forms "the league of the scarlet pimpernel," the name of a common English flower. This book is about his daring adventures to save a family of French aristocrats while his enemies are plotting to discover his identity.
Here is a brief excerpt from the book, when Sir Percy (the Scarlet Pimpernel) and his wife just parted from each other.
"Had she but turned back then, and looked out once more
on to the rose-lit garden, she would have seen that which would have made her
own sufferings seem but light and easy to bear--a strong man, overwhelmed with
his own passion and despair. Pride had given way at last, obstinacy was gone:
the will was powerless. He was but a man madly, blindly, passionately in love
and as soon as her light footstep had died away within the house, he knelt down
upon the terrace steps, and in the very madness of his love he kissed one by
one the places where her small foot had trodden, and the stone balustrade,
where her tiny hand had rested last."
