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Originally Posted by Bookpossum
The League and the Musketeers do make for an interesting comparison. The high-mindedness of the League's members was all very noble, but really they were a bunch of thrill-seeking young men who no doubt still thought they were immortal. As you do in your twenties.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Bookpossum
On the matter of leadership, the League clearly revolved around Percy. He was the head daredevil, and I thought it was more like a gang of schoolboys getting up to mischief and egging each other on. Writing notes to each other, secret signs, disguised handwriting ...
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This is not at all how I thought of them at all as I was reading--I thought they were heroic!--and I did a bit of a double take when Marguerite thinks something similar when she realizes Percy is the Scarlet Pimpernel:
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Percy . . . Percy . . . her husband . . . the Scarlet Pimpernel . . . Oh! how could she have been so blind? She understood it all now—all at once . . . that part he played—the mask he wore . . . in order to throw dust in everybody's eyes.
And all for the sheer sport and devilry of course!—saving men, women and children from death, as other men destroy and kill animals for the excitement, the love of the thing. The idle, rich man wanted some aim in life—he, and the few young bucks he enrolled under his banner, had amused themselves for months in risking their lives for the sake of an innocent few.
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How dismissive of their efforts can Marguerite be? Why is she belittling them at the exact moment she's realizing her husband is the dashing hero?