turned their heads, and a few shook their fingers
at him as an aristocrat; otherwise, that a man
in good clothes should be going to prison, was
no more remarkable than that a labourer in
working clothes should be going to work. In
one narrow, dark, and dirty street through which
they passed, an excited orator, mounted on a
stool, was addressing an excited audience on the
crimes against the people, of the king and the
royal family. The few words that he caught
from this man's lips, first made it known to
Charles Darnay that the king was in prison, and
that the foreign ambassadors had one and all
left Paris. On the road (except at Beauvais) he
had heard absolutely nothing. The escort and
the universal watchfulness had completely
isolated him.

That he had fallen among far greater dangers
than those which had developed themselves
when he left England, he of course knew now.
That perils had thickened about him fast, and
might thicken faster and faster yet, he of course
knew now. He could not but admit to
himself that he might not have made this journey, if
he could have foreseen the events of a few days.
And yet his misgivings were not so dark as,
imagined by the light of this later time, they
would appear. Troubled as the future was,
it was the unknown future, and in its obscurity
there was ignorant hope. The horrible
massacre, days and nights long, which, within a
few rounds of the clock, was to set a great mark
of blood upon the blessed garnering time of
harvest, was as far out of his knowledge as
if it had been a hundred thousand years away.
The "sharp female newly-born, and called La
Guillotine," was hardly known to him, or
to the generality of people, by name. The
frightful deeds that were to be soon done,
were probably unimagined at that time in the
brains of the doers. How could they have a
place in the shadowy conceptions of a gentle
mind?

Of unjust treatment in detention and hardship,
and in cruel separation from his wife and
child, he foreshadowed the likelihood, or the
certainty; but, beyond this, he dreaded nothing
distinctly. With this on his mind, which was
enough to carry into a dreary prison court-yard,
he arrived at the prison of La Force.

A man with a bloated face opened the strong
wicket, to whom Defarge presented "The
Emigrant Evrémonde."

"What the Devil! How many more of
them!" exclaimed the man with the bloated
face.

Defarge took his receipt without noticing
the exclamation, and withdrew, with his two
fellow-patriots.

"What the Devil, I say again!" exclaimed
the gaoler, left with his wife. "How many
more!"

The gaoler's wife, being provided with no
answer to the question, merely replied, "One must
have patience, my dear!" Three turnkeys who
entered responsive to a bell she rang, echoed the
sentiment, and one added, "For the love of
Liberty;" which sounded in that place like an
inappropriate conclusion.

The prison of La Force was a gloomy prison,
dark and filthy, and with a horrible smell of foul
sleep in it. Extraordinary how soon the noisome
flavour of imprisoned sleep, becomes manifest in
all such places that are ill-cared for!

"In secret, too," grumbled the gaoler, looking
at the written paper. "As if I was not
already full to bursting!"

He stuck the paper on a file, in an ill-humour,
and Charles Darnay awaited his further pleasure
for half an hour: sometimes, pacing to and fro
in the strong arched room: sometimes, resting
on a stone seat: in either case detained to be
imprinted on the memory of the chief and his
subordinates.

"Come!" said the chief, at length taking up
his keys, "come with me, emigrant."

Through the dismal prison twilight, his new
charge accompanied him by corridor and staircase,
many doors clanging and locking behind
them, until they came into a large, low, vaulted
chamber, crowded with prisoners of both sexes.
The women were seated at a long table, reading
and writing, knitting, sewing, and embroidering;
the men were for the most part standing
behind their chairs, or lingering up and down
the room.

In the instinctive association of prisoners with
shameful crime and disgrace, the new comer
recoiled from this company. But, the crowning
unreality of his long unreal ride, was, there
all at once rising to receive him, with every
refinement of manner known to the time, and
with all the engaging graces and courtesies of
life.

So strangely clouded were these refinements by
the prison manners and gloom, so spectral did
they become in the inappropriate squalor and
misery through which they were seen, that Charles
Darnay seemed to stand in a company of the dead.
Ghosts all! The ghost of beauty, the ghost of
stateliness, the ghost of elegance, the ghost of
pride, the ghost of frivolity, the ghost of wit, the
ghost of youth, the ghost of age, all waiting their
dismissal from the desolate shore, all turning
on him eyes that were changed by the death
they had died in coming there.

It struck him motionless. The gaoler standing
at his side, and the other gaolers moving
about, who would have been well enough as
to appearance in the ordinary exercises of their
functions, looked so extravagantly coarse
contrasted with sorrowing mothers and blooming
daughters who were there—with the
apparitions of the coquette, the young beauty, and
the mature woman delicately bred—that the
inversion of all experience and likelihood which the
scene of shadows presented, was heightened to
its utmost. Surely, ghosts all. Surely, the long
unreal ride some progress of disease that had
brought him to these gloomy shades!

"In the name of the assembled companions
in misfortune," said a gentleman of courtly
appearance and address, coming forward, "I have
the honour of giving you welcome to La Force,