3.5
El Dorado, an Adventure of the Scarlet Pimpernel
And yet people found the opportunity to amuse themselves, to dance and to go to the theatre, to enjoy music and open-air cafes and promenades in the Palais Royal. New fashions in dress made their appearance, milliners produced fresh "creations," and jewellers were not idle. A grim sense of humour, born of the very intensity of ever-present danger, had dubbed the cut of certain tunics "tete tranche," or a favourite ragout was called "a la guillotine." On three evenings only during the past memorable four and a half years did the theatres close their doors, and these evenings were the ones immediately following that terrible 2nd of September the day of the butchery outside the Abbaye prison, when Paris herself was aghast with horror, and the cries of the massacred might have drowned the calls of the audience whose hands upraised for plaudits would still be dripping with blood. On all other evenings of these same four and a half years the theatres in the Rue de Richelieu, in the Palais Royal, the Luxembourg, and others, had raised their curtains and taken money at their doors. The same audience that earlier in the day had whiled away the time by witnessing the ever-recurrent dramas of the Place de la Revolution assembled here in the evenings and filled stalls, boxes, and tiers, laughing over the satires of Voltaire or weeping over the sentimental tragedies of persecuted Romeos and innocent Juliets. Death knocked at so many doors these days! He was so constant a guest in the houses of relatives and friends that those who had merely shaken him by the hand, those on whom he had smiled, and whom he, still smiling, had passed indulgently by, looked on him with that subtle contempt born of familiarity, shrugged their shoulders at his passage, and envisaged his probable visit on the morrow with lighthearted indifference. Paris-despite the horrors that had stained her walls had remained a city of pleasure, and the knife of the guillotine did scarce descend more often than did the drop-scenes on the stage.
Literary Collections
RELEASED2014
PUBLISHERCreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
LENGTH108
LANGUAGEEN
Baroness Emma Magdolna Rozália Mária Jozefa Borbála "Emmuska" Orczy de Orczi was born in Tarnaörs, Heves County, Hungary, the daughter of composer Baron Felix Orczy and Countess Emma Wass. In 1868, fearing a potential peasant revolution, her parents left Hungary. They lived in Budapest, Brussels, and Paris before settling in London in 1880. Orczy attended West London School of Art and then Heatherley's School of Fine Art. In 1894, she married illustrator Montague MacLean Barstow, whom she had met at art school. The couple had very little money, and Orczy started to work with her husband as a translator and an illustrator. In 1899, she had a child, and published her first novel, The Emperor's Candlesticks. In 1903, she and her husband coauthored her most famous work, The Scarlet Pimpernel. She went on to write over a dozen sequels to the novel. She also created a number of memorable detectives: Lady Molly Robertson-Kirk of Scotland Yard, who heads the "Female Department" (her cases are collected in *Lady Molly of Scotland Yard*, 1910); Monsieur Fernand, a Napoleonic-era secret agent (*The Man in Grey*, 1918); and Patrick Mulligan, a shady attorney (*Skin o' My Tooth*, 1928). Her greatest detective was the Old Man in the Corner, probably the first of the "armchair" detectives. He sits in a chair in a London tea shop, unraveling knots and intricate cases brought to him by Polly Burton, a young reporter. Many of these were later collected in *The Old Man in the Corner* (1909). [Leslie S. Klinger, *In the Shadow of Sherlock Holmes* (2011)]
3.5
El Dorado, an Adventure of the Scarlet Pimpernel
And yet people found the opportunity to amuse themselves, to dance and to go to the theatre, to enjoy music and open-air cafes and promenades in the Palais Royal. New fashions in dress made their appearance, milliners produced fresh "creations," and jewellers were not idle. A grim sense of humour, born of the very intensity of ever-present danger, had dubbed the cut of certain tunics "tete tranche," or a favourite ragout was called "a la guillotine." On three evenings only during the past memorable four and a half years did the theatres close their doors, and these evenings were the ones immediately following that terrible 2nd of September the day of the butchery outside the Abbaye prison, when Paris herself was aghast with horror, and the cries of the massacred might have drowned the calls of the audience whose hands upraised for plaudits would still be dripping with blood. On all other evenings of these same four and a half years the theatres in the Rue de Richelieu, in the Palais Royal, the Luxembourg, and others, had raised their curtains and taken money at their doors. The same audience that earlier in the day had whiled away the time by witnessing the ever-recurrent dramas of the Place de la Revolution assembled here in the evenings and filled stalls, boxes, and tiers, laughing over the satires of Voltaire or weeping over the sentimental tragedies of persecuted Romeos and innocent Juliets. Death knocked at so many doors these days! He was so constant a guest in the houses of relatives and friends that those who had merely shaken him by the hand, those on whom he had smiled, and whom he, still smiling, had passed indulgently by, looked on him with that subtle contempt born of familiarity, shrugged their shoulders at his passage, and envisaged his probable visit on the morrow with lighthearted indifference. Paris-despite the horrors that had stained her walls had remained a city of pleasure, and the knife of the guillotine did scarce descend more often than did the drop-scenes on the stage.
Literary Collections
RELEASED2014
PUBLISHERCreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
LENGTH108
LANGUAGEEN
Baroness Emma Magdolna Rozália Mária Jozefa Borbála "Emmuska" Orczy de Orczi was born in Tarnaörs, Heves County, Hungary, the daughter of composer Baron Felix Orczy and Countess Emma Wass. In 1868, fearing a potential peasant revolution, her parents left Hungary. They lived in Budapest, Brussels, and Paris before settling in London in 1880. Orczy attended West London School of Art and then Heatherley's School of Fine Art. In 1894, she married illustrator Montague MacLean Barstow, whom she had met at art school. The couple had very little money, and Orczy started to work with her husband as a translator and an illustrator. In 1899, she had a child, and published her first novel, The Emperor's Candlesticks. In 1903, she and her husband coauthored her most famous work, The Scarlet Pimpernel. She went on to write over a dozen sequels to the novel. She also created a number of memorable detectives: Lady Molly Robertson-Kirk of Scotland Yard, who heads the "Female Department" (her cases are collected in *Lady Molly of Scotland Yard*, 1910); Monsieur Fernand, a Napoleonic-era secret agent (*The Man in Grey*, 1918); and Patrick Mulligan, a shady attorney (*Skin o' My Tooth*, 1928). Her greatest detective was the Old Man in the Corner, probably the first of the "armchair" detectives. He sits in a chair in a London tea shop, unraveling knots and intricate cases brought to him by Polly Burton, a young reporter. Many of these were later collected in *The Old Man in the Corner* (1909). [Leslie S. Klinger, *In the Shadow of Sherlock Holmes* (2011)]
