have acted for an emigrant, and where is that
emigrant?

"Ah! most gracious Monsieur heretofore the
Marquis, where is that emigrant!  I cry in my
sleep where is he!  I demand of Heaven, will
he not come to deliver me!  No answer. Ah
Monsieur heretofore the Marquis, I send my
desolate cry across the sea, hoping it may
perhaps reach your ears through the great bank of
Tilson known at Paris!

"For the love of Heaven, of justice, of
generosity, of the honour of your noble name, I
supplicate you, Monsieur heretofore the Marquis,
to succour and release me.  My fault is,
that I have been true to you.  O Monsieur
heretofore the Marquis, I pray you be you true
to me!

"From this prison here of horror, whence I
every hour tend nearer and nearer to destruction,
I send you, Monsieur heretofore the
Marquis, the assurance of my dolorous and
unhappy service.

"Your afflicted,

"GABELLE."

The latent uneasiness in Darnay's mind was
roused to vigorous life by this letter. The peril
of an old servant and a good one, whose only
crime was fidelity to himself and his family,
stared him so reproachfully in the face, that, as
he walked to and fro in the Temple considering
what to do, he almost hid his face from the
passers-by.

He knew very well, that in his horror of the
deed which had culminated the bad deeds and
bad reputation of the old family house, in his
resentful suspicions of his uncle, and in the
aversion with which his conscience regarded the
crumbling fabric that he was supposed to
uphold, he had acted imperfectly. He knew very
well, that in his love for Lucie, his renunciation
of his social place, though by no means new to
his own mind, had been hurried and incomplete.
He knew that he ought to have systematically
worked it out and supervised it, and that he
had meant to do it, and that it had never been
done.

The happiness of his own chosen English home,
the necessity of being always actively employed,
the swift changes and troubles of the time which
had followed on one another so fast, that the
events of this week annihilated the immature plans
of last week, and the events of the week following
made all new again; he knew very well,
that to the force of these circumstances he had
yielded:—not without disquiet, but still without
continuous and accumulating resistance. That
he had watched the times for a time of action, and
that they had shifted and struggled until the time
had gone by, and the nobility were trooping
from France by every highway and by-way, and
their property was in course of confiscation and
destruction, and their very names were blotting
out, was as well known to himself as it could be
to any new authority in France that might
impeach him for it.

But, he had oppressed no man, he had
imprisoned no man; he was so far from having
harshly exacted payment of his dues, that he had
relinquished them of his own will, thrown himself
on a world with no favour in it, won his
own private place there, and earned his own
bread. Monsieur Gabelle had held the
impoverished and involved estate on written
instructions to spare the people, to give them what
little there was to give—such fuel as the heavy
creditors would let them have in the winter,
and such produce as could be saved from the
same grip in the summer—and no doubt he had
put the fact in plea and proof, for his own
safety, so that it could not but appear now.

This favoured the desperate resolution Charles
Darnay had begun to make, that he would go to
Paris.

Yes. Like the mariner in the old story, the winds
and streams had driven him within the influence
of the Loadstone Rock, and it was drawing him
to itself, and he must go. Everything that
arose before his mind drifted him on, faster and
faster, more and more steadily, to the terrible
attraction. His latent uneasiness had been, that
bad aims were being worked out in his own
unhappy land by bad instruments, and that he who
could not fail to know that he was better than
they, was not there, trying to do something to
stay bloodshed, and assert the claims of mercy
and humanity. With this uneasiness half stifled,
and half reproaching him, he had been brought to
the pointed comparison of himself with the brave old
gentleman in whom duty was so strong; upon that
comparison (injurious to himself), had instantly
followed the sneers of Monseigneur, which had
stung him bitterly, and those of Stryver, which
above all were coarse and galling, for old reasons.
Upon those, had followed Gabelle's letter: the
appeal of an innocent prisoner, in danger of
death, to his justice, honour, and good name.

His resolution was made. He must go to
Paris.

Yes. The Loadstone Rock was drawing him,
and he must sail on, until he struck. He knew of
no rock; he saw hardly any danger. The
intention with which he had done what he had
done, even although he had left it incomplete,
presented it before him in an aspect that would
be gratefully acknowledged in France on his
presenting himself to assert it. Then, that
glorious vision of doing good, which is so often
the sanguine mirage of so many good minds,
arose before him, and he even saw himself in
the illusion with some influence to guide this
raging Revolution that was running so fearfully
wild.

As he walked to and fro with his resolution
made, he considered that neither Lucie nor her
father must know of it until he was gone.
Lucie should be spared the pain of separation;
and her father, always reluctant to turn his
thoughts towards the dangerous ground of old,
should come to the knowledge of the step, as a
step taken, and not in the balance of suspense
and doubt. How much of the incompleteness
of his situation was referable to her father,
through the painful anxiety to avoid reviving
old associations of France in his mind, he did