The Scarlet Pimpernel

A surging, seething, murmuring crowd of beings that are human only in name, for to the eye and ear they seem naught but savage creatures, animated by vile passions and by the lust of vengeance and of hate. … During the greater part of the day the guillotine had been kept busy at its ghastly work.

The League smuggles aristocrats from the guillotine; Chauvelin blackmails Marguerite to unmask the Pimpernel → she realizes Percy is her husband → race to save him in France; a taut, elegantly reversed chase, hence plot 84.

in repose one might have admired so fine a specimen of English manhood, until the foppish ways, the affected movements, the perpetual inane laugh, brought one's admiration of Sir Percy Blakeney to an abrupt close.

Percy's double life (vapid dandy / daring hero) is a delicious construction; Marguerite is genuinely conflicted and Chauvelin a coldly capable antagonist, though secondary Leaguers stay flat, hence cast 83.

Find that man for me, citoyenne!” he urged, “find him for France!” Marguerite had listened to Chauvelin's impassioned speech without uttering a word, scarce daring to breathe.

Lean and propulsive after a stagey opening — the ball, the stolen scrap of paper, and the French coast pursuit build steadily to a tight climax; short enough to avoid feuilleton sag, hence pace 84.

the threshold of the most dilapidated, most squalid room she had ever seen in all her life. The paper, such as it was, was hanging from the walls in strips; there did not seem to be a single piece of furniture in the room that could, by the wildest stretch of imagination, be called “whole.”

Vivid melodramatic period prose with strong atmosphere (the barricade mob, the squalid inn), occasionally purple and telling-over-showing in emotional beats, hence prose 79.

the hour, some little time before sunset, and the place, the West Barricade, at the very spot where, a decade later, a proud tyrant raised an undying monument to the nation’s glory and his own vanity.

1792 France under the Terror contrasted with Georgian English society — Dover's Fisherman's Rest, Richmond, Calais — sketched atmospherically rather than deeply researched, hence world 82.

During the greater part of the day the guillotine had been kept busy at its ghastly work: all that France had boasted of in the past centuries, of ancient names, and blue blood, had paid toll to her desire for liberty and for fraternity.

The guillotine-and-mob opening at the West Barricade, with aristocrats smuggled out under the soldiers' noses, immediately establishes stakes and the elusive hero's legend, hence hook 83.

until the foppish ways, the affected movements, the perpetual inane laugh, brought one's admiration of Sir Percy Blakeney to an abrupt close.

Effectively invented the secret-identity masked hero (foppish public mask + heroic secret self) — a direct template for Zorro, pulp avengers, and superhero dual identities, hence innov 86.

the most beautiful woman there was unquestionably Lady Blakeney, whilst the clothes Sir Percy Blakeney wore were the talk of the jeunesse dorée of London for many days. It is also a fact that M. Chauvelin … was not present at that or any other social function in London, after that memorable evening at Lord Grenville’s ball.

Percy rescues the fugitives and escapes Chauvelin; reconciliation with Marguerite and the society-wedding coda resolve cleanly, if a touch neatly and sentimentally, hence ending 82.