The Scarlet Pimpernel

Can someone please help? It's not a lot.

What occupies the time and interest of the French crowd?

Who is the old hag driving the cart and who are her passengers?

Why is the Fisherman's Rest a significant place, appropriate for the continuation of the story?

What odd behavior, known to the reader but not the diners at the pub, do the two strangers engage in? What literary device is it when the reader knows something the characters do not?

How do Antony and Andrew's motives appear to differ from those of the Scarlet Pimpernel?

What do we learn about Marguerite St. Just, now Lady Blakeney? Why does teh Comtesse de Tourney detest her?

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1) Orczy plunges us into the throes of the French revolution, as "a surging, seething, murmuring crowd of beings that are human only in name," gathers at Paris' West Barricade. During the day, these masses watch hundreds of aristocrats lose their heads at the guillotine, condemned as 'traitors' to France. In the afternoon, they gather at the gates of the city to watch the daily attempts of the aristocrats to evade Sargent Bibot.

Source(s)

http://www.gradesaver.com/the-scarlet-pimpernel/study-guide/section1/

2)The old hag appears to help the Count de Tournay escape from the city.

Source(s)

The Scarlet Pimpernel

3)It's quiet, out of the way, everyone meets there, so no one would draw attention to themselves by haveing a meeting.

"The coffee-room of "The Fisherman's Rest" is a show place now at the beginning of the twentieth century. At the end of the eighteenth, in the year of grace 1792, it had not yet gained the notoriety and importance which a hundred additional years and the craze of the age have since bestowed upon it. Yet it was an old place, even then, for the oak rafters and beams were already black with age--as were the panelled seats, with their tall backs, and the long polished tables between, on which innumerable pewter tankards had left fantastic patterns of many-sized rings. In the leaded window, high up, a row of pots of scarlet geraniums and blue larkspur gave the bright note of colour against the dull background of the oak."

Source(s)

The Scarlet Pimpernel