Eldorado by Baroness Orczy

Here's a swashbuckling novel without the swash or the buckle.

Eldorado is the fourth book in the Scarlet Pimpernel series.  Set in France during the Reign of Terror, it tells the tale of the attempt to kidnap and set free the imprisoned Dauphin, the heir to the throne.  We meet Armand St Just, brother-in-law of the "demmed" elusive Scarlet Pimpernel.  He falls in love with the beautiful actress Jeanne L'ange.  A series of denunciations leads to the capture of Percy Blakeney, the Scarlet Pimpernel, by the Republican villains Heron and de Chavelin.  How can The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel rescue both Blakeney and the Dauphin before they reach the guillotine?

For an adventure novel, Eldorado has very little action.  The narrative is driven by mostly by dialogue that takes place in confined spaces such as rooms, prison cells and stage coaches.  Plot development is advanced either by the dialogue or by the narrator's paraphrasing of the various characters' internal monologues.  There is a lot of description, too, mainly of interiors and streetscapes.  (In a way, I was reminded of Isaac Asimov's style of writing.)  Orczy most definitely conveyed a sense of the times and of the politics of the Reign of Terror without ever straying too far away from her brief of writing literature.

Baroness Orczy's (1864-1947) series of Scarlet Pimpernel novels were very popular in their day.  Since then they have spawned several movies, television series and even a musical.  It is almost a hundred years since Eldorado was first published.  I suspect that modern readers would be looking for something with a pace that is a little less glacial than that of this novel.  Even so, I did enjoy Eldorado for its own historic virtues and weaknesses.

Publishing details:  Eldorado was first published in 1913.  The e-book version I read contained no publishing details and was incorrectly entitled "The Scarlet Pimpernel".  The supplier has since removed it from their collection.  A sign of the times?