That public crier is a long way off: the words have lingered on the evening breeze and have failed to reach your brain.

Do you suppose that I and my colleagues do not know that all the ingenuity of which the Scarlet Pimpernel is capable will now be directed in piloting Lady Blakeney, and incidentally the Abbe Foucquet with his nephew and niece, safely across the Channel! Four people!...

Bah! a bagatelle, for this mighty conspirator, who but lately snatched twenty aristocrats from the prisons of Lyons....

Nay! nay! two children and an old man were not enough to guard our precious hostage, and I was not thinking of either the Abbe Foucquet or of the two children, when I said that an English gentleman would not save himself at the expense of others." "Of whom then were you thinking, Monsieur Chauvelin?
Whom else have you set to guard the prize which you value so highly ?" "The whole city of Boulogne," he replied simply.
"I do not understand." "Let me make my point clear.

My colleague, Citizen Collot d'Herbois, rode over from Paris yesterday; like myself he is a member of the Committee of Public Safety whose duty it is to look after the welfare of France by punishing all those who conspire against her laws and the liberties of the people.