Percy's meeting with Chauvelin in the Chat Gris. It takes a true badass to make a Pepper Sneeze prank look so... badass.
The Scarlet Pimpernel's climactic Batman Gambit. No movie swashbuckling necessary!
Marguerite's midnight journey to the coast, where she stalks Chauvelin with ninja-like stealth, remaining completely unnoticed by all his patrols, and her energy never fails despite her exhaustion and days of being unable to sleep or eat properly. The girl really has spunk.
This is followed by Marguerite completely surprising the Manipulative Bastard Chauvelin who thinks he "knows human — female — nature" perfectly enough to predict her every move. You can almost hear her telling him "I love my husband more than I fear you."
The Elusive Pimpernel
The Scarlet Pimpernel switching the damning letter he's been blackmailed into writing with his trademark poem and sign. This is not only awesome because he snatches Chauvelin's apparently guaranteed victory right from his grasp but because he pulls off the plan by dousing the lights at just the right moment. So that's who Batman learned the trick from!
Eldorado
Jeanne Lange's performance when Héron comes to her apartment to arrest Armand. She's able to get rid of the former and save the latter!
Chauvelin's successful manipulation of Héron in Part III to get him to go along with his plans to dishonor his Arch-Enemy.
Sir Percy's letter to the friend who betrayed him is one of the most awesome What the Hell, Hero? moments ever.
Shortly after showing the Scarlet Pimpernel that his wife is their latest hostage, the narrator casually comments that Héron had an unfortunate accident as his prisoner bumped into him while getting in their carriage, leading to a pretty bad fall and a pretty serious head wound...
At the end, the Scarlet Pimpernel attacking Héron, knocking him out, and successfully impersonating him, allowing him to dispose of all the guards in various ways and simply drive his wife and brother-in-law to safety.
Sir Percy and Lady Blakeney both get one when the latter visits him in prison. When her husband passes out in her arms, Marguerite shields and defends him from his latest round of interrogators. When Sir Percy hears his wife being threatened, he snaps back to consciousness and attacks every guard within reach as if he hasn't been starved and sleep-deprived for 10 days. The Power of Love is badass, baby!
Sir Percy Hits Back
Sir Percy's Cruel Mercy speech to Chauvelin at the very end of the book.
There are two, in rapid succession: first, when Percy recites John of Gaunt's speech from Shakespeare'sRichard II ("This blesséd plot, this earth, this realm — this England"), and second, when he comes back for his hat. "It's such a cursed good hat, you know."
Sir Percy and Sir Andrew talking their way in to see the woman who's the local leader of the Revolution, telling her that they're Chauvelin and his assistant, getting her to bring in the captured Marguerite (who instantly understands what's happening and plays along), denouncing the real Chauvelin and his assistant as Sir Percy and Sir Andrew, having them arrested, and while Sir Andrew takes Marguerite to safety, Percy seduces the woman...then gags her, ties her up, and walks straight out past the guards, who assume that the grunting and moaning they just heard means something very different! Refuge in Audacity at its finest.
Percy has just managed to talk a young woman who is convinced that her foppish lover is the Pimpernel and that Percy is a cowardly traitor who has just betrayed him to the French (when in fact the French have arrested her lover partly due to her conviction that he is the Pimpernel) out of shooting him. The woman calls Percy a coward. Percy points out that he unflinchingly talked her down with a loaded gun pointed at him, hardly a cowardly action. The woman sneers that she's knows that Percy would not have allowed a loaded gun to be pointed at him, and that she's aware that it's empty. Percy's response is to calmly pick up the gun, point it at a nearby candle and pull the trigger, which settles the matter; much to the woman's shock, it turns out the gun was loaded.
Despite being the villain of the piece, Chauvelin proves that he's got some courage even though he's apparently just spent the last few weeks as a drunk. After his patrol is massacred and himself captured by the very people he is hunting, his response to having a gun pointed at his head is to press his forehead against the barrel.
