The Scarlet Pimpernel - Baroness Emma Orczy - Bog

And so the crowd rushed away from the Place de la Greve and made for the various barricades in order to watch this interesting and amusing sight. It was to be seen every day, for those aristos were such fools! They were traitors to the people of course, all of them, men, women, and children, who happened to be descendants of the great men who since the Crusades had made the glory of France: her old NOBLESSE. Their ancestors had oppressed the people, had crushed them under the scarlet heels of their dainty buckled shoes, and now the people had become the rulers of France and crushed their former masters-not beneath their heel, for they went shoeless mostly in these days-but a more effectual weight, the knife of the guillotine. And daily, hourly, the hideous instrument of torture claimed its many victims-old men, young women, tiny children until the day when it would finally demand the head of a King and of a beautiful young Queen;