Leslie Howard credited as playing...
Sir Percy Blakeney
- Percy Blakeney: They seek him here, they seek him there, / Those Frenchies seek him everywhere. / Is he in heaven? Or is he in hell? / That damned elusive Pimpernel!
- Percy Blakeney: [before reciting his poem to Winterbottom] Stab me, I'm bubbling over with good humor this morning. Would you believe me, I've just written a masterpiece.
- Col. Winterbottom: Who, sir? You, sir?
- Percy Blakeney: Me, sir
- Col. Winterbottom: No, sir.
- Percy Blakeney: Yes, sir. All about this mysterious Pimpernel fellow. How it came to me Heaven only knows, because it was the busiest moment of the day. Damn me, I was tying my cravat.
- Lady Marguerite Blakeney: Oh, but Percy, through me, a good, a generous man may lose his life. Oh, Percy, what can I do? How can I warn him?
- Percy Blakeney: Warn him? Against what?
- Lady Marguerite Blakeney: Against the danger if he goes back to France.
- Percy Blakeney: Well, if he's the kind of lunatic I take him to be, your warning's not going to stop him.
- Lady Marguerite Blakeney: But he might be going to his death.
- Percy Blakeney: That's all the fellow lives for. Besides, he doesn't know you're in love with him.
- Lady Marguerite Blakeney: I'm not in love with him! I admire his head of wisdom, but I'm not in love with him.
- Percy Blakeney: Oh, but you are. It's a dangerous game, my dear. Falling in love with a phantom. For all you know, he might be a married man who is deeply in love with his wife.
- Citizen Chauvelin: [after Percy recites his poem to Chauvelin] Delightful.
- Percy Blakeney: What?
- Citizen Chauvelin: Especially that line, "Those Frenchies seek him everywhere."
- Percy Blakeney: Yes, I like that, too, because you see, I hear that they do and that gives the line a sort of something... sort of gives it... uh... uh... something. Uh... u-uh... if I make myself clear.
- Citizen Chauvelin: Clear as crystal.
- Percy Blakeney: Open up your sleeves, man. Let your ruffles take the air. Let them flow! Let them ripple!
- Armand St. Just: Percy, may I ask you something? What's happened to you and Marguerite?
- Percy Blakeney: Marriage, I suppose. Why?
- Armand St. Just: You loved her once, I know.
- Percy Blakeney: Do you remember the first family to go to the guillotine? The St. Cyrs? They told me it was Marguerite who denounced them.
- Armand St. Just: It was a lie!
- Percy Blakeney: I wish I could believe that.
- Armand St. Just: Did you ask her?
- Percy Blakeney: I did. She flashed back a "yes" as sharp as the knife of the guillotine. I watched that execution. The Marquis, his wife, his son. And it was my wife who put them there.
- Armand St. Just: So that's why you ceased to love her. What a tragedy.
- Percy Blakeney: Ceased? I shall love her till I die. That's the tragedy.
- Lady Marguerite Blakeney: Can't you rise above trivialities for once?
- Percy Blakeney: Can't rise above anything more than three syllables, my dear - never could.
- Percy Blakeney: I'm in love.
- Elderly citizen of Boulogne: It's the wife of another man!
- Percy Blakeney: No it's my own.
- Percy Blakeney: Devilish clever race, the French. How they speak that unspeakable language of theirs defeats me.
- Citizen Chauvelin: You flatter us, Sir Percy.
- Percy Blakeney: No, no. You've got the cleverest heads in the world. The only trouble is, you all go to pieces around the neck.
- Percy Blakeney: Magnificent fight this afternoon, my dear. Gad! That Mendoza's got quick ears. In the 10th round, when Jackson had him down, I shouted, "Get up, Mendoza!" And damn me, he did and sink me, he won!
- Elderly citizen of Boulogne: We shall have to teach perfidious Albion a lesson!
- Percy Blakeney: [to fellow-members of League disguised as French soldiers] It won't take *us* long to cross the Channel, eh boys?
- Treadle: That, Sir Percy, is the last word in cuffs.
- Percy Blakeney: Oh, gad, I should hope so. For there should never be another like it.