Emma Orczy

The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel Emma Orczy

Madeleine Lannoy, whose husband was killed at Versailles defending the Queen from the mob, has become a street dancer in the worst parts of Paris. She has taken on this guise in the hope of finding her only son who has been stolen by Citizen Jean Paul Marat, annoyed by her spurning his advances. All she knows is that her child "is to be reared up in the company of all that is most vile and most degraded in the disease-haunted slums of indigent Paris" and that if she doesn't find him soon he risks becoming a criminal or a drink-sodden reprobate at best.