But, above all, Chauvelin had a purpose at heart. He firmly
believed that the French aristocrat was the most bitter enemy of
France; he would have wished to see every one of them annihilated: he
was one of those who, during this awful Reign of Terror, had been the
first to utter the historic and ferocious desire "that aristocrats
might have but one head between them, so that it might be cut off with
a single stroke of the guillotine." And thus he looked upon every
French aristocrat, who had succeeded in escaping from France, as so
much prey of which the guillotine had been unwarrantably cheated.
There is no doubt that those royalist EMIGRES, once they had managed
to cross the frontier, did their very best to stir up foreign
indignation against France. Plots without end were hatched in
England, in Belgium, in Holland, to try and induce some great power to
send troops into revolutionary Paris, to free King Louis, and to
summarily hang the bloodthirsty leaders of that monster republic.
Small wonder, therefore, that the romantic and mysterious
personality of the Scarlet Pimpernel was a source of bitter hatred to
Chauvelin.
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