Chauvelin has learned who the Scarlet Pimpernel is, and this time he does not want an arrest — he wants Sir Percy Blakeney to walk into Boulogne of his own accord and choose between his wife and his honor. Orczy arrived in London from Hungary at fifteen with no English; a dozen publishers rejected the first Pimpernel before the stage version made it a phenomenon. Fifty-nine plates drawn from Thomas Lawrence and Edvard Munch, among others, catch the restless faces and night-lit shores of a Europe caught between ballroom and Terror.
