Oh, I'm going to. Welcome to S-Newscast, the podcast designed to help you fall asleep.

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Tonight we'll read the opening to the Scarlet Pimpernel, a historical fiction novel by Baroness Orsy, published in

1905.

The novel is set during the reign of terror following the start of the French Revolution.

The title is the Nome de Gere of its hero, a chivalrous Englishman who rescues aristocrats before they are sent to the guillotine.

Sir Percy Blakeney leads a double life.

Apparently, nothing more than a wealthy fop, but in reality a formidable swordsman and a quick-thinking escape artist. Let's get cozy. Close your eyes.

body into the softness of your bed.

Now. Now, take a few deep breaths.

Chapter 1, Paris, September 1792.

A surging, seething, murmuring crowd of beings that are human only in name, for to the

eye and ear they seem not but savage creatures animated by vile passions and by the

lust of vengeance and of hate the hour some little time before sunset, and the place the West Barricade, at the very

spot where a decade later a proud tyrant raised an undying monument to the nation's glory and his own vanity.

During the greater part of the day, the guillotine had been kept busy at its ghastly work. All that France had boasted of in the

past centuries of ancient names and blue blood had paid toll to her desire for liberty and for fraternity.

The carnage had only ceased at this late hour of the day because there were other more interesting sites for the people to witness, a little while before the final closing of the barricades for the night.

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 nobless. 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

...