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Armand St. Just
Real Name : Gilles Larue
Room Number: M74
Age: 25
Hair Color: Brown
Eye Color: Blue-Gray
Height: 5'7"
Language: English (canon language)
2nd Language: native French, also German & Latin
Journal: secret_orchard
Mun: Dame Grise
Backstory
Armand was born in Paris, France, around 1770. His sister, Marguerite, was only a few
years older than he. Their parents died when they were young children. Marguerite
embarked to the provinces to begin pursuing a career on the stage, chaperoned by her
young brother. The year Marguerite turned eighteen, the St. Justs made a triumphant
return to Paris. Sponsored by their famous cousin, Louis Antoine Saint-Just (the
political crony of Robespierre), Marguerite embarked on a dazzling career at the
Comedie Française. Armand soon started at the University of Paris, studying law with
the intent of entering public service. He devoted his life to his sister and his studies.
During the first intoxicating months of Marguerite's career, Armand met by chance Angele, the Marquis de St. Cyr's daughter, and fell in love. He knew his cause was hopeless. The scion of French nobility wouldn't be allowed to unite with a lowly born plebeian such as Armand. However, Armand wrote Angele a poem. The next day a gang of St. Cyr's men waylaid Armand and beat him severely. He was long in recovering, and his outward calm about the injustice was more marked than Marguerite's. Armand never spoke of the incident except in veiled terms to his sister, who knew the details.
As conditions under the Ancien Régime worsened for the poor, the siblings took advantage of their newfound affluence to enter the world of political discussion. Marguerite, as the rising star of the theater, hostedsalons at their apartment on the Rue de Richelieu while Armand mixed with his fellow students and politicians all over Paris.
Her approach was more intellectual; his more enthusiastic. Both, having known the struggle to bring themselves up in the world, were staunch republicans and supported the early days of the revolution. He could not claim to be intimate with the brightest stars of the revolution, but Armand knew most of them in passing.Then Marguerite suddenly married a rich English baronet, Sir Percy Blakeney, and emigrated to England, leaving him behind in Paris to watch the horrors ripen alone.The summer of 1792, he foolishly let his altered opinion of the revolution become known to the more famous Saint-Just, who eagerly watched and taunted theearnest Armand. The politician didn't have concrete proof until Armand broke under the strain and wrote to his sister, begging her for help to get out of France. The intercepted letter was used to trap Armand. Only a heroic effort on Percy's part enabled Armand to escape to England before the autumn.
He stayed in England for several months, but eventually had to return to France to take care of some family business.
In the distance two figures were approaching "The Fisherman's Rest": one, an oldish man, with a curious fringe of grey hairs round a rotund and massive chin, and who walked with that peculiar rolling gait which invariably betrays the seafaring man: the other, a young, slight figure, neatly and becomingly dressed in a dark, many caped overcoat; he was clean-shaved, and his dark hair was taken well back over a clear and noble forehead.
"Armand!" said Marguerite Blakeney, as soon as she saw him approaching from the distance, and a happy smile shone on her sweet face, even through the tears.
A minute or two later brother and sister were locked in each other's arms, while the old skipper stood respectfully on one side.
Linking her arm in his, Marguerite led her brother towards the cliffs.
"Half an hour," she said, looking wistfully out to sea, "half an hour more and you'll be far from me, Armand! Oh! I can't believe that you are going, dear! These last few days-whilst Percy has been away, and I've had you all to myself, have slipped by like a dream."
"I am not going far, sweet one," said the young man gently, "a narrow channel to cross-a few miles of road-I can soon come back."
"Nay, 'tis not the distance, Armand-but that awful Paris . . . just now . . ."
"Our own beautiful country, Marguerite," said Armand, who seemed to have divined her thoughts.
"They are going too far, Armand," she said vehemently. "You are a republican, so am I . . . we have the same thoughts, the same enthusiasm for liberty and equality . . . but even YOU must think that they are going too far . . ."
"Hush!-" said Armand, instinctively, as he threw a quick, apprehensive glance around him.
"Ah! you see: you don't think yourself that it is safe even to speak of these things-here in England!" She clung to him suddenly with strong, almost motherly, passion: "Don't go, Armand!" she begged; "don't go back! What should I do if . . . if . . . if . . ."
Her voice was choked in sobs, her eyes, tender, blue and loving, gazed appealingly at the young man, who in his turn looked steadfastly into hers.
"You would in any case be my own brave sister," he said gently, "who would remember that, when France is in peril, it is not for her sons to turn their backs on her."
Even as he spoke, that sweet childlike smile crept back into her face, pathetic in the extreme, for it seemed drowned in tears.
"Oh! Armand!" she said quaintly, "I sometimes wish you had not so many lofty virtues. . . . I assure you little sins are far less dangerous and uncomfortable. But you WILL be prudent?" she added earnestly.
"As far as possible . . . I promise you."
"Remember, dear, I have only you . . . to . . . to care for me. . . ."
"Nay, sweet one, you have other interests now. Percy cares for you . . ."
A look of strange wistfulness crept into her eyes as she murmured,-
"He did . . . once . . ."
"But surely . . ."
"There, there, dear, don't distress yourself on my account. Percy is very good . . ."
"Nay!" he interrupted energetically, "I will distress myself on your account, my Margot. Listen, dear, I have not spoken of these things to you before; something always seemed to stop me when I wished to question you. But, somehow, I feel as if I could not go away and leave you now without asking you one question. . . . You need not answer it if you do not wish," he added, as he noted a sudden hard look, almost of apprehension, darting through her eyes.
"What is it?" she asked simply.
"Does Sir Percy Blakeney know that . . . I mean, does he know the part you played in the arrest of the Marquis de St. Cyr?"
She laughed-a mirthless, bitter, contemptuous laugh, which was like a jarring chord in the music of her voice.
"That I denounced the Marquis de St. Cyr, you mean, to the tribunal that ultimately sent him and all his family to the guillotine? Yes, he does know. . . . . I told him after I married him. . . ."
"You told him all the circumstances-which so completely exonerated you from any blame?"
"It was too late to talk of 'circumstances'; he heard the story from other sources; my confession came too tardily, it seems. I could no longer plead extenuating circumstances: I could not demean myself by trying to explain-"
"And?"
"And now I have the satisfaction, Armand, of knowing that the biggest fool in England has the most complete contempt for his wife."
She spoke with vehement bitterness this time, and Armand St. Just, who loved her so dearly, felt that he had placed a somewhat clumsy finger upon an aching wound.
"But Sir Percy loved you, Margot," he repeated gently.
She sighed-and there was a world of disillusionment in that sigh. Armand St. Just had allowed her to speak on without interruption: he listened to her, whilst allowing his own thoughts to run riot.
Yet perhaps-though he loved his sister dearly-perhaps he understood: he had studied men in many countries, men of all ages, men of every grade of social and intellectual status, and inwardly he understood what Marguerite had left unsaid. Granted that Percy Blakeney was dull-witted, but in his slow-going mind, there would still be room for that ineradicable pride of a descendant of a long line of English gentlemen... and that same pride-foolish and prejudiced as the republican Armand would call it-must have been stung to the quick on hearing of the sin which lay at Lady Blakeney's door. She had been young, misguided, ill-advised perhaps. Armand knew that: her impulses and imprudence, knew it still better; but Blakeney was slow-witted, he would not listen to "circumstances," he only clung to facts, and these had shown him Lady Blakeney denouncing a fellow man to a tribunal that knew no pardon: and the contempt he would feel for the deed she had done, however unwittingly, would kill that same love in him, in which sympathy and intellectuality could never had a part.
Yet even now, his own sister puzzled him. Marguerite was gazing out towards the sunset. Armand could not see her face, but presently it seemed to him that something which glittered for a moment in the golden evening light, fell from her eyes onto her dainty fichu of lace.
But he could not broach that subject with her. He knew her strange, passionate nature so well, and knew that reserve which lurked behind her frank, open ways. They had always been together, these two, for their parents had died when Armand was still a youth, and Marguerite but a child. He, some eight years her senior, had watched over her until her marriage; had chaperoned her during those brilliant years spent in the flat of the Rue de Richelieu, and had seen her enter upon this new life of hers, here in England, with much sorrow and some foreboding.
This was his first visit to England since her marriage, and the few months of separation had already seemed to have built up a slight, thin partition between brother and sister; the same deep, intense love was still there, on both sides, but each now seemed to have a secret orchard, into which the other dared not penetrate.
There was much Armand St. Just could not tell his sister; the political aspect of the revolution in France was changing almost every day; she might not understand how his own views and sympathies might become modified, even as the excesses, committed by those who had been his friends, grew in horror and in intensity. And Marguerite could not speak to her brother about the secrets of her heart; she hardly understood them herself, she only knew that, in the midst of luxury, she felt lonely and unhappy.
And now Armand was going away; she feared for his safety, she longed for his presence. She would not spoil these last few sadly-sweet moments by speaking about herself. She led him gently along the cliffs, then down to the beach; their arms linked in one another's, they had still so much to say that lay just outside that secret orchard of theirs.
By this time, Armand had learned of the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel but not that his brother-in-law was their chief. Just before his departure, he wrote Sir Andrew Ffoulkes a letter requesting his sponsorship to join the League. This letter was stolen by Armand Chauvelin, a special agent of the French government.
In the coffee-room the masked leader of this daring attempt was quickly glancing through the stolen papers.
"Not a bad day's work on the whole," he muttered, as he quietly took off his mask, and his pale, fox-like eyes glittered in the red glow of the fire. "Not a bad day's work."
He opened one or two letters from Sir Andrew Ffoulkes' pocket-book, noted the tiny scrap of paper which the two young men had only just had time to read; but one letter specially, signed Armand St. Just, seemed to give him strange satisfaction.
"Armand St. Just a traitor after all," he murmured. "Now, fair Marguerite Blakeney," he added viciously between his clenched teeth, "I think that you will help me to find the Scarlet Pimpernel."
Armed with Armand's letter, Chauvelin confronted Marguerite at the opera.
"The other day, citoyenne," he said, "I asked for your help. . . . France needed it, and I thought I could rely on you, but you gave me your answer. . . . Since then the exigencies of my own affairs and your own social duties have kept up apart . . . although many things have
happened. . . ."
"Bah! man. Have I not already told you that I care nought about your schemes or about the Scarlet Pimpernel. And had you not spoken about my brother . . ."
"A little patience, I entreat, citoyenne," he continued imperturbably. "Two gentlemen, Lord Antony Dewhurst and Sir Andrew Ffoulkes were at 'The Fisherman's Rest' at Dover that same night."
"I know. I saw them there."
"They were already known to my spies as members of that accursed league. It was Sir Andrew Ffoulkes who escorted the Comtesse de Tournay and her children across the Channel. When the two young men were alone, my spies forced their way into the coffee-room of the inn, gagged and pinioned the two gallants, seized their papers, and brought them to me."
In a moment she had guessed the danger. Papers? . . . Had Armand been imprudent? . . . The very thought struck her with nameless terror. Still she would not let this man see that she feared; she laughed gaily and lightly.
"La! my friend," she said, with the same assumed flippancy of manner, "then you are where you were before, aren't you? and you can let me enjoy the last strophe of the ARIA. Faith!" she added, ostentatiously smothering an imaginary yawn, "had you not spoken about my
brother . . ."
"I am coming to him now, citoyenne. Among the papers there was a letter to Sir Andrew Ffoulkes, written by your brother, St. Just."
"Well? And?"
"That letter shows him to be not only in sympathy with the enemies of France, but actually a helper, if not a member, of the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel."
The blow had been struck at last. All along, Marguerite had been expecting it; she would not show fear, she was determined to seem unconcerned, flippant even. She wished, when the shock came, to be prepared for it, to have all her wits about her-those wits which had been nicknamed the keenest in Europe. Even now she did not flinch. She knew that Chauvelin had spoken thetruth; the man was too earnest, too blindly devoted to the misguided cause he had at heart, too proud of his countrymen, of those makers of revolutions, to stoop to low, purposeless falsehoods.
That letter of Armand's-foolish, imprudent Armand-was in Chauvelin's hands. Marguerite knew that as if she had seen the letter with her own eyes; and Chauvelin would hold that letter for purposes of his own, until it suited him to destroy it or to make use of it against Armand. All that she knew, and yet she continued to laugh more gaily, more loudly than she had done before.
"La, man!" she said, speaking over her shoulder and looking him full and squarely in the face, "did I not say it was some imaginary plot. . . . Armand in league with that enigmatic Scarlet Pimpernel! . . . Armand busy helping those French aristocrats whom he despises! . . . Faith, the tale does infinite credit to your imagination!"
"Let me make my point clear, citoyenne," said Chauvelin, with the same unruffled calm, "I must assure you that St. Just is compromised beyond the slightest hope of pardon."
"Chauvelin," said Marguerite Blakeney at last, quietly, and without that touch of bravado which had characterised her attitude all along, "Chauvelin, my friend, shall we try to understand one another. It seems that my wits have become rusty by contact with this damp climate. Now, tell me, you are very anxious to discover the identity of the Scarlet Pimpernel, isn't that so?"
"My intention is, that you yourself win the free pardon for Armand St. Just by doing me a small service."
"What is it?"
"Only watch for me to-night, Citoyenne St. Just," he said eagerly.
At Lord Grenville's ball, Marguerite learned enough to successfully set Chauvelin on the trail of the Scarlet Pimpernel, not knowing that it was her husband. When she discovered her error, she followed Percy and Chauvelin to France, where Percy made a narrow escape from a personal encounter with Chauvelin. Then Percy contrived to get a message to Armand and the other men he was trying to help to England, so that they were able to escape. Percy then rescued Marguerite, and they all boarded Percy's yacht The Day Dream to cross the English Channel back to home.
This was Armand St. Just's first visit to Paris since that memorable day when first he decided to sever his connection from the Republican party, of which he and his beautiful sister Marguerite had at one time been amongst the most noble, most enthusiastic followers. Already a year and a half ago the excesses of the party had horrified him, and that was long before they had degenerated into the sickening orgies which were culminating to-day in wholesale massacres and bloody hecatombs of innocent victims.
With the death of Mirabeau the moderate Republicans, whose sole and entirely pure aim had been to free the people of France from the autocratic tyranny of the Bourbons, saw the power go from their clean hands to the grimy ones of lustful demagogues, who knew no law save their own passions of bitter hatred against all classes that were not as self-seeking, as ferocious as themselves.
Armand St. Just, one of the apostles of liberty, fraternity, and equality, soon found that the most savage excesses of tyranny were being perpetrated in the name of those same ideals which he had worshipped.
His sister Marguerite, happily married in England, was the final temptation which caused him to quit the country the destinies of which he no longer could help to control. The spark of enthusiasm which he and the followers of Mirabeau had tried to kindle in the hearts of an oppressed people had turned to raging tongues of unquenchable flames. The taking of the Bastille had been the prelude to the massacres of September, and even the horror of these had since paled beside the holocausts of to-day.
Armand, saved from the swift vengeance of the revolutionaries by the devotion of the Scarlet Pimpernel, crossed over to England and enrolled himself tinder the banner of the heroic chief. But he had been unable hitherto to be an active member of the League. The chief was loath to allow him to run foolhardy risks. The St. Justs--both Marguerite and Armand--were still very well-known in Paris. Marguerite was not a woman easily forgotten, and her marriage with an English "aristo" did not please those republican circles who had looked upon her as their queen. Armand's secession from his party into the ranks of the emigres had singled him out for special reprisals, if and whenever he could be got hold of, and both brother and sister had an unusually bitter enemy in their cousin [Louis] Antoine St. Just--once an aspirant to Marguerite's hand, and now a servile adherent and imitator of Robespierre, whose ferocious cruelty he tried to emulate with a view to ingratiating himself with the most powerful man of the day.
Nothing would have pleased Antoine St. Just more than the opportunity of showing his zeal and his patriotism by denouncing his own kith and kin to the Tribunal of the Terror, and the Scarlet Pimpernel, whose own slender fingers were held on the pulse of that reckless revolution, had no wish to sacrifice Armand's life deliberately, or even to expose it to unnecessary dangers.
Thus it was that more than a year had gone by before Armand St. Just–an enthusiastic member of the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel--was able to do aught for its service. He had chafed underthe enforced restraint placed upon him by the prudence of his chief, when, indeed, he waslonging to risk his life with the comrades whom he loved and beside the leader whom he revered.
At last, in the beginning of '94 he persuaded Blakeney to allow him to join the next expedition toFrance.
Immediately upon his return to Paris, Armand, through lonely nostalgia, agreed to a night at the theatre with an old acquaintance, the Baron de Batz.
In one of the tiny avant-scene boxes two men had taken their seats long before the bulk of the audience had begun to assemble in the house. The inside of the box was in complete darkness, and the narrow opening which allowed but a sorry view of one side of the stage helped to conceal rather than display the occupants.
The younger one of these two men appeared to be something of a stranger in Paris, for as the public men and the well-known members of the Government began to arrive he often turned to his companion for information regarding these notorious personalities.
"Then from this hell let loose upon earth," exclaimed St. Just hotly, "must we rescue those who refuse to ride upon this tide of blood."
His cheeks were glowing, his eyes sparkled with enthusiasm. He looked very young and very eager. Armand St. Just, the brother of Lady Blakeney, had something of the refined beauty of his lovely sister, but the features though manly--had not the latent strength expressed in them which characterised every line of Marguerite's exquisite face. The forehead suggested a dreamer rather than a thinker, the blue-grey eyes were those of an idealist rather than of a man of action.
Armand accidentally confirmed he had ties with the Pimpernel, and just as unwittingly, fell under the spell of an actress, Jeanne Lange.
"I have the honour of personal acquaintanceship with Mlle. Lange. An you care for an introduction to her, we can go round to the green room after the play."
Did prudence then whisper, "Desist"? Did loyalty to the leader murmur, "Obey"? It were indeed difficult to say. Armand St. Just was not five-and-twenty, and Mlle. Lange's melodious voice spoke louder than the whisperings of prudence or even than the call of duty.
He thanked de Batz warmly, and during the last half-hour, while the misanthropical lover spurned repentant Celimene, he was conscious of a curious sensation of impatience, a tingling of his nerves, a wild, mad longing to hear those full moist lips pronounce his name, and have those large brown eyes throw their half-veiled look into his own.
De Batz then reported Armand's presence in Paris to Heron, a government official, emphasizing his connection to the Scarlet Pimpernel. So when Armand met with Jeanne at her home the next day, they were interrupted by Heron come to arrest Armand.
The scent of the violets filled the room. It seemed to emanate from her,a fitting attribute of heryoung, wholly unsophisticated girlhood. The citizenwas goodly to look at; he was kneeling at her feet, and his lips were pressedagainst her hand.
Armand was young and he was an idealist. I do not for a moment imagine that just at this moment he was deeply in love. The stronger feeling had not yet risen up in him; it came later when tragedy encompassed him and brought passion to sudden maturity. Just now he was merely yielding himself up to the intoxicating moment, with all the abandonment, all the enthusiasm of the Latin race. There was no reason why he should not bend the knee before this exquisite little cameo, that by its very presence was giving him an hour of perfect pleasure and of aesthetic joy.
If Armand had been allowed to depart from here now, without having been the cause as well as the chief actor in the events that followed, no doubt that Mademoiselle Lange would always have remained a charming memory with him, an exquisite bouquet of violets pressed reverently between the leaves of a favourite book of poems, and the scent of spring flowers would in after years have ever brought her dainty picture to his mind.
He was murmuring pretty words of endearment; carried away by emotion, his arm stole round her waist; he felt that if another tear came like a dewdrop rolling down her cheek he must kiss it away at its very source. Passion was not sweeping them off their feet--not yet, for they were very young, and life had not as yet presented to them its most unsolvable problem.
But they yielded to one another, to the springtime of their life, calling for Love, which would come presently hand in hand with his grim attendant, Sorrow.
Even as Armand's glowing face was at last lifted up to hers asking with mute lips for that first kiss which she already was prepared to give, there came the loud noise of men's heavy footsteps tramping up the old oak stairs, then some shouting, a woman's cry, and the next moment Madame Belhomme, trembling, wide-eyed, and in obvious terror, came rushing into the room.
Neither Mademoiselle nor Armand had stirred. They remained like graven images, he on one knee, she with large eyes fixed upon his face. They had neither of them looked on the old woman; they seemed even now unconscious of her presence. But their ears had caught the sound of that measured tramp of feet up the stairs of the old house, and the halt upon the landing; they had heard the brief words of command:
"Open, in the name of the people!"
They knew quite well what it all meant; they had not wandered so far in the realms of romance that reality--the grim, horrible reality of the moment--had not the power to bring them back to earth.
That peremptory call to open in the name of the people was the prologue these days to a drama which had but two concluding acts: arrest, which was a certainty; the guillotine, which was more than probable. Jeanne and Armand, these two young people who but a moment ago had tentatively lifted the veil of life, looked straight into each other's eyes and saw the hand of death interposed between them: they looked straight into each other's eyes and knew that nothing but the hand of death would part them now. Love had come with its attendant, Sorrow; but he had come with no uncertain footsteps. Jeanne looked on the man before her, and he bent his head to imprint a glowing kiss upon her hand.
"Aunt Marie!"
It was Jeanne Lange who spoke, but her voice was no longer that of an irresponsible child; it was firm, steady and hard. Though she spoke to the old woman, she did not look at her; her luminous brown eyes rested on the bowed head of Armand St. Just.
Jeanne was able to ward the official off temporarily with the clever lie that Armand was a theatrical cousin of hers from out of town.
"I owe my life to you!" he murmured. "Oh, how beautiful you are--how brave! How I love you!"
It seemed that he had always loved her, from the moment that first in his boyish heart he had set up an ideal to worship, and then, last night, in the box of the theatre--he had his back turned toward the stage, and was ready to go--her voice had called him back; it had held him spellbound; her voice, and also her eyes.... He did not know then that it was Love which then and there had enchained him. Oh, how foolish he had been! for now he knew that he had loved her with all his might, with all his soul, from the very instant that his eyes had rested upon her.
He babbled along--incoherently--in the intervals of covering her hands and the hem of her gown with kisses. He stooped right down to the ground and kissed the arch of her instep; he had become a devotee worshipping at the shrine of his saint, who had performed a great and a wonderful miracle.
Armand the idealist had found his ideal in a woman. That was the great miracle which the woman herself had performed for him. He found in her all that he had admired most, all that he had admired in the leader who hitherto had been the only personification of his ideal. But Jeanne possessed all those qualities which had roused his enthusiasm in the noble hero whom he revered. Her pluck, her ingenuity, her calm devotion which had averted the threatened danger from him!
When Percy revealed to the League their mission to rescue the young Dauphin, Armand balked because Percy required him to leave Paris immediately so he could not keep his promise to Jeanne to see her the next day.
"Well, now, Armand, what is it?" asked Blakeney, the moment the footsteps of his friends had died away down the stone stairs, and their voices had ceased to echo in the distance.
"You guessed, then, that there was ... something?" said the younger man, after a slight hesitation.
"Of course."
"Who told you that I was in love?"
"You yourself, my good fellow. Had you not told me so at the outset," he continued, still speaking very quietly and deliberately and never raising his voice, "I would even now be standing over you, dog-whip in hand, to thrash you as a defaulting coward and a perjurer .... Bah!" he
added with a return to his habitual bonhomie, "I would no doubt even have lost my temper with you. Which would have been purposeless and excessively bad form. Eh?"
A violent retort had sprung to Armand's lips. But fortunately at that very moment his eyes, glowing with anger, caught those of Blakeney fixed with lazy good-nature upon his. Something of that irresistible dignity which pervaded the whole personality of the man checked Armand's hotheaded words on his lips."I cannot leave Paris to-morrow," he reiterated more calmly.
"Because you have arranged to see her again?"
"Because she saved my life to-day, and is herself in danger."
"She is in no danger," said Blakeney simply, "since she saved the life of my friend."
The next morning, Armand found out Jeanne had been arrested, and forgetting all caution, ran straight to Percy again, who already knew and again promised he'd take care of her. At nightfall Armand, anxious that Percy had not sent word, re-entered Paris. Unable to find Percy or news of his beloved, he consulted the prison rolls. He found Jeanne's name and her location in the Temple prison. To be near her, Armand tried to get himself arrested, and instead ran afoul of Chauvelin. Armand offered to exchange himself for Jeanne, but Chauvelin, out of favor, took Armand to Heron, who would have bargained had not the "escape" of the Dauphin been discovered. Armand was released with certain restrictions.
Despite being compromised, Armand contacted Percy, assuring him it was safe to meet, and asked him to come to his rooms. Chauvelin, Heron, and many soldiers ambushed Percy when he arrived. Before losing consciousness, Percy shouted to Armand that Jeanne was already free. Percy was sent to prison and tortured to get him to reveal the location of the Dauphin, and Armand was freed unconditionally in reward for his betrayal.When Marguerite, having heard of her husband's arrest from the papers, arrived in Paris, Chauvelin offered to let her see him. Percy sent her back out with letters. As far as the League was concerned, Armand had vanished, but Percy was certain that Jeanne would know where he was. Marguerite went to Jeanne's flat to ask about her brother. Armand arrived shortly thereafter.
Even though many things that Jeanne Lange had said had prepared her for a change in her brother, she was immeasurably shocked by his appearance. He had always been slim and rather below the average in height, but now his usually upright and trim figure seemed to have shrunken within itself; his clothes hung baggy on his shoulders, his hands appeared waxen and emaciated, but the greatest change was in his face, in the wide circles round the eyes, that spoke of wakeful nights, in the hollow cheeks, and the mouth that had wholly forgotten how to smile.
Percy after a week's misery immured in a dark and miserable prison, deprived of food and rest, did not look such a physical wreck as did Armand St. Just, who was free.
Marguerite's heart reproached her for what she felt had been neglect, callousness on her part. Mutely, within herself, she craved his forgiveness for the appearance of that phantom which should never have come forth from out that chaotic hell which had engendered it.
"Armand!" she cried.
And the loving arms that had guided his baby footsteps long ago, the tender hands that had wiped his boyish tears, were stretched out with unalterable love toward him.
Percy's letter comforted Armand and gave him a new purpose in waiting for orders on how he could help gain Percy's release. After nearly two more weeks, Percy apparently gave in and, by Chauvelin's dictation, wrote Armand that he required help to lead Chauvelin to the Dauphin. Chauvelin delivered this letter to Armand himself.
"You, of course, citizen St. Just, will act in accordance with Sir Percy Blakeney's wishes?"
"Of course," replied Armand.
"You will present yourself at the main entrance of the house of Justice at six o'clock this morning."
"I will not fail you."
"A coach will be provided for you. You will follow the expedition as hostage for the good faith of your chief."
"I quite understand."
"H'm! That's brave! You have no fear, citizen St. Just?"
"Fear of what, sir?
"You will be a hostage in our hands, citizen; your life a guarantee that your chief has no thought of playing us false. Now I was thinking of--of certain events--which led to the arrest of Sir Percy Blakeney."
"Of my treachery, you mean," rejoined the young man calmly, even though his face had suddenly become pale as death. "Of the damnable lie wherewith you cheated me into selling my honour, and made me what I am--a creature scarce fit to walk upon this earth."
"Oh!" protested Chauvelin blandly.
"The damnable lie," continued Armand more vehemently, "that hath made me one with Cain and the Iscariot. When you goaded me into the hellish act, Jeanne Lange was already free."
"Free--but not safe."
"A lie, man! A lie! For which you are thrice accursed. Great God, is it not you that should have cause for fear? Methinks were I to strangle you now I should suffer less of remorse."
"And would be rendering your ex-chief but a sorry service," interposed Chauvelin with quiet irony. "Sir Percy Blakeney is a dying man, citizen St. Just; he'll be a dead man at dawn if I do not put in an appearance by six o'clock this morning. This is a private understanding between citizen Heron and myself. We agreed to it before I came to see you."
"Oh, you take care of your own miserable skin well enough! But you need not be afraid of me--I take my orders from my chief, and he has not ordered me to kill you."
"That was kind of him. Then we may count on you? You are not afraid?"
"Afraid that the Scarlet Pimpernel would leave me in the lurch because of the immeasurable wrong I have done to him?" retorted Armand, proud and defiant in the name of his chief. "No, sir, I am not afraid of that; I have spent the last fortnight in praying to God that my life might yet be given for his."
Obeying Percy's first letter, Armand set into motion the plan that Percy had prepared by sending Marguerite and Ffoulkes, who was chaperoning her during her stay in Paris, a copy of Percy's new letter. They, in turn, followed their instructions from the first set of
letters. He also warned them that Chauvelin arranged for Marguerite to accompany them as a second hostage, but Ffoulkes was not able to get her to flee in time.
By necessity Marguerite and Armand were ignorant of any further details of Percy's plan to free himself, and the inclusion of Marguerite with Armand as hostage visibly upset Percy. Still, he came up with a plan that involved replacing Heron near the end of
the journey, so that he'd be free to rescue his wife and brother-in-law. In disguise, he ordered that "Percy," bound and gagged, be left in a church crypt while he drove the St. Justs away to execute them.
"Armand, Armand, go to him!" she cried; and all her self-control, all her enforced calm, vanished in an outburst of wild, agonising passion.
"Let me get to him, Armand! This is the end; get me to him, in the name of God!"
"Stop that woman screaming," came Heron's voice clearly through the night. "Put her and the other prisoner in irons--quick!"
But while Marguerite expended her feeble strength in a mad, pathetic effort to reach her husband, even now at this last hour, when all hope was dead and Death was so nigh, Armand had already wrenched the carriage door from the grasp of the soldierwho was guarding it. He was of the South, and knew the trick of charging an unsuspecting adversary with head thrust forward like a bull inside a ring. Thus he knocked one of the soldiers down and made a quick rush for the chapel gates.
The men, attacked so suddenly and in such complete darkness, did not wait for orders. They closed in round Armand; one mandrew his sabre and hacked away with it in aimless rage.
But for the moment he evaded them all, pushing his way through them, not heeding the blows that came on him from out the darkness. At last he reached the chapel. With one bound he was at the gate, his numb fingers fumbling for the lock, which he could not see.
It was a vigorous blow from Heron's fist that brought him at last to his knees, and even then his hands did not relax their hold; they gripped the ornamental scroll of the gate, shook the gate itself in its rusty hinges, pushed and pulled with the unreasoning strength of despair. He had a sabre cut across his brow, and the blood flowed in a warm, trickling stream down his face. But of this he was unconscious; all that he wanted, all that he was striving for with agonising heart-beats and cracking sinews, was to get to his friend, who was lying in there unconscious, abandoned--dead, perhaps.
"Curse you," struck Heron's voice close to his ear. "Cannot some of you stop this raving maniac?"
Then it was that the heavy blow on his head caused him a sensation of sickness, and he fell on his knees, still gripping the ironwork. Stronger hands than his were forcing him to loosen his hold; blows that hurt terribly rained on his numbed fingers; he felt himself dragged away, carried like an inert mass further and further from that gate which he would have given his lifeblood to force open.
After subduing Armand, the soldiers dumped him back into the carriage beside his sister. Both were put in irons, and the disguised Percy ordered the carriage away, riding with the driver himself. During the drive, Percy disposed of the remaining guards, then revealed himself to the dazed St. Just siblings. Marguerite was so depressed and physically worn by then that she thought they'd all died.
"Percy," whispered Armand, "Marguerite does not know?"
"Of course she does not, you young fool," retorted Percy lightly. "If you try and tell her I think I would smash your head."
"But you--" said the young man with sudden vehemence; "can you bear the sight of me? My God! when I think--"
"Don't think, my good Armand--not of that anyway. Only think of the woman for whose sake you committed a crime--if she is pure and good, woo her and win her--not just now, for it were foolish to go back to Paris after her, but anon, when she comes to England and all these past days are forgotten--then love her as much as you can, Armand. Learn your lesson of love better than I have learnt mine; do not cause Jeanne Lange those tears of anguish which my mad spirit brings to your sister's eyes. You were right, Armand, when you said that I do not know how to love!"
By May of that year, Armand and Jeanne were married. Armand never participated in League activities again.
[Text excerpts from The Scarlet Pimpernel and Eldorado An Adventure of the Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy (both without copyright in the United States), supplemented with additional information from The Triumph of the Scarlet Pimpernel by Orczy and The Life and Exploits of the Scarlet Pimpernel by John Blakeney (pseudonym for John Barstow, Orczy's son)]
[He was taken to Landel's from the June following his marriage. (June 1794)]
Personality
Armand is naturally passionate and chivalrous, often giving into the impulse to be generous to the point of foolishness. He will leap to the defense of those he sees as weaker than himself even when he's clearly outmatched, simply because it's the right thing to do. His idealism is firmly rooted in compassion, but he's too much in the clouds to base his dreams on the practical.
When his strong loyalties force him into conflict, he tears himself up no matter which he chooses, always doubting his own judgement. He grew up in the shadow of his sister's cleverness, trusting her to make the difficult decisions, so he has little confidence in his own abilities, leading to self- fulfillment of his own doubts by making numerous bad decisions over the course of his short adult life.He strives to overcome his tendency to let anger and pride get him into trouble, but he's not caught on that the heart is as treacherous a leader. His temper tends to crest in a heartbeat and dissipate just as quickly if he's not provoked further. He's not as stupid as some would have him but woefully ignorant in many regards, and often too hot-headed to use what intelligence he does have before he's already in the water with the sharks. He longs to do what is right, and when he falls short of his own standards, he pines, physically and spiritually, though his stubborn nature clings to the hope that his follies won't lead to permanent misery.
Also, he is extremely devoted to his small family of sister, brother-in-law, and new wife. He almost worships Percy and until her marriage, Marguerite was all to him, mother and sister together. And the dishonorable actions his love for Jeanne prompted him to do guaranteed that he put her on a pedestal as the angel for whom such drastic measures were worth.
Appearance
Armand is considered slight of build, even by the standards of his time period, though he only slightly below average height. He keeps his long, dark brown hair tied back with a hair ribbon. His eyes are a stormy blue-gray, more suggestive of a dreamer than a man inclined to take action. His structured cheekbones and long, straight nose recall his sister's famous beauty though there is nothing feminine about his features. A straight cut, made by a sabre, mars his forehead near the hairline. His back is crossed by scars from the beating he received from St. Cyr's men.
For Telepaths
Anything about Armand's past is fair game. And until he's up to things at Landel's his secrets are the kind best bandied about to make him uncomfortable or at least wake up and smell the coffee about some of his actual issues. If in doubt, feel free to ask me.
Typist's Note
Between The Scarlet Pimpernel and Eldorado: An Adventure of the Scarlet Pimpernel, Baroness Orczy changed Armand's age from about 8 years older than Marguerite (32 in 1792) to younger than her and "not yet five and twenty" in January 1794.
At Landel's
"Real Life"
Introduced on 7/25/2007.
Day 25, Day 26, Day 27, Day 28, Day 29, Day 30, Day 31, Day 32, Day 33, Day 34
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Armand St. Just
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