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Book the Third: The Track of a Storm
Chapter I.
In Secret
The traveller fared slowly on his way, who
fared towards Paris from England in the
autumn of the year one thousand seven
hundred and ninety-two.
More than enough of bad roads, bad
equipages, and bad horses, he would have
encountered to delay him, though the fallen
and unfortunate King of France had been
upon his throne in all his glory; but, the
changed times were fraught with other
obstacles than these.
Every town-gate and village taxing-house
had its band of citizen-patriots, with
their national muskets in a most explosive
state of readiness, who stopped all comers
and goers, cross-questioned them, inspected
their papers, looked for their names in
lists of their own, turned them back, or
sent them on, or stopped them and laid them
in hold, as their capricious judgment or
fancy deemed best for the dawning Republic
One and Indivisible, of Liberty, Equality,
Fraternity, or Death.
A very few French leagues of his journey
were accomplished, when Charles Darnay
began to perceive that for him along these
country roads there was no hope of return
until he should have been declared a good
citizen at Paris.
Whatever might befall now, he must on to
his journey's end.
Not a mean village closed upon him, not a
common barrier dropped across the road
behind him, but he knew it to be another
iron door in the series that was barred
between him and England.
The universal watchfulness so encompassed
him, that if he had been taken in a net, or
were being forwarded to his destination in
a cage, he could not have felt his freedom
more completely gone.
This universal watchfulness not only
stopped him on the highway twenty times in
a stage, but retarded his progress twenty
times in a day, by riding after him and
taking him back, riding before him and
stopping him by anticipation, riding with
him and keeping him in charge.
He had been days upon his journey in France
alone, when he went to bed tired out, in a
little town on the high road, still a long
way from Paris.
Nothing but the production of the afflicted
Gabelle's letter from his prison of the
Abbaye would have got him on so far.
His difficulty at the guard-house in this
small place had been such, that he felt his
journey to have come to a crisis.
And he was, therefore, as little surprised
as a man could be, to find himself awakened
at the small inn to which he had been
remitted until morning, in the middle of
the night.
Awakened by a timid local functionary and
three armed patriots in rough red caps and
with pipes in their mouths, who sat down on
the bed.
"Emigrant," said the functionary, "I am
going to send you on to Paris, under an
escort."
"Citizen, I desire nothing more than to get
to Paris, though I could dispense with the
escort."
"Silence!" growled a red-cap, striking at
the coverlet with the butt-end of his
musket.
"Peace, aristocrat!"
"It is as the good patriot says," observed
the timid functionary.
"You are an aristocrat, and must have an
escort--and must pay for it."
"I have no choice," said Charles Darnay.
"Choice!
Listen to him!" cried the same scowling
red-cap.
"As if it was not a favour to be protected
from the lamp-iron!"
"It is always as the good patriot says,"
observed the functionary.
"Rise and dress yourself, emigrant."
Darnay complied, and was taken back to the
guard-house, where other patriots in rough
red caps were smoking, drinking, and
sleeping, by a watch-fire.
Here he paid a heavy price for his escort,
and hence he started with it on the wet,
wet roads at three o'clock in the morning.
The escort were two mounted patriots in red
caps and tri-coloured cockades, armed with
national muskets and sabres, who rode one
on either side of him.
The escorted governed his own horse, but a
loose line was attached to his bridle, the
end of which one of the patriots kept
girded round his wrist.
In this state they set forth with the sharp
rain driving in their faces: clattering at
a heavy dragoon trot over the uneven town
pavement, and out upon the mire-deep roads.
In this state they traversed without
change, except of horses and pace, all the
mire-deep leagues that lay between them and
the capital.
They travelled in the night, halting an
hour or two after daybreak, and lying by
until the twilight fell.
The escort were so wretchedly clothed, that
they twisted straw round their bare legs,
and thatched their ragged shoulders to keep
the wet off.
Apart from the personal discomfort of being
so attended, and apart from such
considerations of present danger as arose
from one of the patriots being chronically
drunk, and carrying his musket very
recklessly, Charles Darnay did not allow
the restraint that was laid upon him to
awaken any serious fears in his breast;
for, he reasoned with himself that it could
have no reference to the merits of an
individual case that was not yet stated,
and of representations, confirmable by the
prisoner in the Abbaye, that were not yet
made.
But when they came to the town of Beauvais-
-which they did at eventide, when the
streets were filled with people--he could
not conceal from himself that the aspect of
affairs was very alarming.
An ominous crowd gathered to see him
dismount of the posting-yard, and many
voices called out loudly, "Down with the
emigrant!"
He stopped in the act of swinging himself
out of his saddle, and, resuming it as his
safest place, said:
"Emigrant, my friends!
Do you not see me here, in France, of my
own will?"
"You are a cursed emigrant," cried a
farrier, making at him in a furious manner
through the press, hammer in hand; "and you
are a cursed aristocrat!"
The postmaster interposed himself between
this man and the rider's bridle (at which
he was evidently making), and soothingly
said, "Let him be; let him be!
He will be judged at Paris."
"Judged!" repeated the farrier, swinging
his hammer.
"Ay! and condemned as a traitor."
At this the crowd roared approval.
Checking the postmaster, who was for
turning his horse's head to the yard (the
drunken patriot sat composedly in his
saddle looking on, with the line round his
wrist), Darnay said, as soon as he could
make his voice heard:
"Friends, you deceive yourselves, or you
are deceived.
I am not a traitor."
"He lies!" cried the smith.
"He is a traitor since the decree.
His life is forfeit to the people.
His cursed life is not his own!"
At the instant when Darnay saw a rush in
the eyes of the crowd, which another
instant would have brought upon him, the
postmaster turned his horse into the yard,
the escort rode in close upon his horse's
flanks, and the postmaster shut and barred
the crazy double gates.
The farrier struck a blow upon them with
his hammer, and the crowd groaned; but, no
more was done.
"What is this decree that the smith spoke
of?"
Darnay asked the postmaster, when he had
thanked him, and stood beside him in the
yard.
"Truly, a decree for selling the property
of emigrants."
"When passed?"
"On the fourteenth."
"The day I left England!"
"Everybody says it is but one of several,
and that there will be others--if there are
not already--banishing all emigrants, and
condemning all to death who return.
That is what he meant when he said your
life was not your own."
"But there are no such decrees yet?"
"What do I know!" said the postmaster,
shrugging his shoulders; "there may be, or
there will be.
It is all the same.
What would you have?"
They rested on some straw in a loft until
the middle of the night, and then rode
forward again when all the town was asleep.
Among the many wild changes observable on
familiar things which made this wild ride
unreal, not the least was the seeming
rarity of sleep.
After long and lonely spurring over dreary
roads, they would come to a cluster of poor
cottages, not steeped in darkness, but all
glittering with lights, and would find the
people, in a ghostly manner in the dead of
the night, circling hand in hand round a
shrivelled tree of Liberty, or all drawn up
together singing a Liberty song.
Happily, however, there was sleep in
Beauvais that night to help them out of it
and they passed on once more into solitude
and loneliness: jingling through the
untimely cold and wet, among impoverished
fields that had yielded no fruits of the
earth that year, diversified by the
blackened remains of burnt houses, and by
the sudden emergence from ambuscade, and
sharp reining up across their way, of
patriot patrols on the watch on all the
roads.
Daylight at last found them before the wall
of Paris.
The barrier was closed and strongly guarded
when they rode up to it.
"Where are the papers of this prisoner?"
demanded a resolute-looking man in
authority, who was summoned out by the
guard.
Naturally struck by the disagreeable word,
Charles Darnay requested the speaker to
take notice that he was a free traveller
and French citizen, in charge of an escort
which the disturbed state of the country
had imposed upon him, and which he had paid
for.
"Where," repeated the same personage,
without taking any heed of him whatever,
"are the papers of this prisoner?"
The drunken patriot had them in his cap,
and produced them.
Casting his eyes over Gabelle's letter, the
same personage in authority showed some
disorder and surprise, and looked at Darnay
with a close attention.
He left escort and escorted without saying
a word, however, and went into the guard-
room; meanwhile, they sat upon their horses
outside the gate.
Looking about him while in this state of
suspense, Charles Darnay observed that the
gate was held by a mixed guard of soldiers
and patriots, the latter far outnumbering
the former; and that while ingress into the
city for peasants' carts bringing in
supplies, and for similar traffic and
traffickers, was easy enough, egress, even
for the homeliest people, was very
difficult.
A numerous medley of men and women, not to
mention beasts and vehicles of various
sorts, was waiting to issue forth; but, the
previous identification was so strict, that
they filtered through the barrier very
slowly.
Some of these people knew their turn for
examination to be so far off, that they lay
down on the ground to sleep or smoke, while
others talked together, or loitered about.
The red cap and tri-colour cockade were
universal, both among men and women.
When he had sat in his saddle some half-
hour, taking note of these things, Darnay
found himself confronted by the same man in
authority, who directed the guard to open
the barrier.
Then he delivered to the escort, drunk and
sober, a receipt for the escorted, and
requested him to dismount.
He did so, and the two patriots, leading
his tired horse, turned and rode away
without entering the city.
He accompanied his conductor into a guard-
room, smelling of common wine and tobacco,
where certain soldiers and patriots, asleep
and awake, drunk and sober, and in various
neutral states between sleeping and waking,
drunkenness and sobriety, were standing and
lying about.
The light in the guard-house, half derived
from the waning oil-lamps of the night, and
half from the overcast day, was in a
correspondingly uncertain condition.
Some registers were lying open on a desk,
and an officer of a coarse, dark aspect,
presided over these.
"Citizen Defarge," said he to Darnay's
conductor, as he took a slip of paper to
write on.
"Is this the emigrant Evremonde?"
"This is the man."
"Your age, Evremonde?"
"Thirty-seven."
"Married, Evremonde?"
"Yes."
"Where married?"
"In England."
"Without doubt.
Where is your wife, Evremonde?"
"In England."
"Without doubt.
You are consigned, Evremonde, to the prison
of La Force."
"Just Heaven!" exclaimed Darnay.
"Under what law, and for what offence?"
The officer looked up from his slip of
paper for a moment.
"We have new laws, Evremonde, and new
offences, since you were here."
He said it with a hard smile, and went on
writing.
"I entreat you to observe that I have come
here voluntarily, in response to that
written appeal of a fellow-countryman which
lies before you.
I demand no more than the opportunity to do
so without delay.
Is not that my right?"
"Emigrants have no rights, Evremonde," was
the stolid reply.
The officer wrote until he had finished,
read over to himself what he had written,
sanded it, and handed it to Defarge, with
the words "In secret."
Defarge motioned with the paper to the
prisoner that he must accompany him.
The prisoner obeyed, and a guard of two
armed patriots attended them.
"Is it you," said Defarge, in a low voice,
as they went down the guardhouse steps and
turned into Paris, "who married the
daughter of Doctor Manette, once a prisoner
in the Bastille that is no more?"
"Yes," replied Darnay, looking at him with
surprise.
"My name is Defarge, and I keep a wine-shop
in the Quarter Saint Antoine.
Possibly you have heard of me."
"My wife came to your house to reclaim her
father?
Yes!"
The word "wife" seemed to serve as a gloomy
reminder to Defarge, to say with sudden
impatience, "In the name of that sharp
female newly-born, and called La
Guillotine, why did you come to France?"
"You heard me say why, a minute ago.
Do you not believe it is the truth?"
"A bad truth for you," said Defarge,
speaking with knitted brows, and looking
straight before him.
"Indeed I am lost here.
All here is so unprecedented, so changed,
so sudden and unfair, that I am absolutely
lost.
Will you render me a little help?"
"None."
Defarge spoke, always looking straight
before him.
"Will you answer me a single question?"
"Perhaps.
According to its nature.
You can say what it is."
"In this prison that I am going to so
unjustly, shall I have some free
communication with the world outside?"
"You will see."
"I am not to be buried there, prejudged,
and without any means of presenting my
case?"
"You will see.
But, what then?
Other people have been similarly buried in
worse prisons, before now."
"But never by me, Citizen Defarge."
Defarge glanced darkly at him for answer,
and walked on in a steady and set silence.
The deeper he sank into this silence, the
fainter hope there was--or so Darnay
thought--of his softening in any slight
degree.
He, therefore, made haste to say:
"It is of the utmost importance to me (you
know, Citizen, even better than I, of how
much importance), that I should be able to
communicate to Mr. Lorry of Tellson's Bank,
an English gentleman who is now in Paris,
the simple fact, without comment, that I
have been thrown into the prison of La
Force.
Will you cause that to be done for me?"
"I will do," Defarge doggedly rejoined,
"nothing for you.
My duty is to my country and the People.
I am the sworn servant of both, against
you.
I will do nothing for you."
Charles Darnay felt it hopeless to entreat
him further, and his pride was touched
besides.
As they walked on in silence, he could not
but see how used the people were to the
spectacle of prisoners passing along the
streets.
The very children scarcely noticed him.
A few passers 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 courtyard, he
arrived at the prison of La Force.
A man with a bloated face opened the strong
wicket, to whom Defarge presented "The
Emigrant Evremonde."
"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, their 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 exercise 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, and of condoling with you on the
calamity that has brought you among us.
May it soon terminate happily!
It would be an impertinence elsewhere, but
it is not so here, to ask your name and
condition?"
Charles Darnay roused himself, and gave the
required information, in words as suitable
as he could find.
"But I hope," said the gentleman, following
the chief gaoler with his eyes, who moved
across the room, "that you are not in
secret?"
"I do not understand the meaning of the
term, but I have heard them say so."
"Ah, what a pity!
We so much regret it!
But take courage; several members of our
society have been in secret, at first, and
it has lasted but a short time."
Then he added, raising his voice, "I grieve
to inform the society--in secret."
There was a murmur of commiseration as
Charles Darnay crossed the room to a grated
door where the gaoler awaited him, and many
voices--among which, the soft and
compassionate voices of women were
conspicuous--gave him good wishes and
encouragement.
He turned at the grated door, to render the
thanks of his heart; it closed under the
gaoler's hand; and the apparitions vanished
from his sight forever.
The wicket opened on a stone staircase,
leading upward.
When they had ascended forty steps (the
prisoner of half an hour already counted
them), the gaoler opened a low black door,
and they passed into a solitary cell.
It struck cold and damp, but was not dark.
"Yours," said the gaoler.
"Why am I confined alone?"
"How do I know!"
"I can buy pen, ink, and paper?"
"Such are not my orders.
You will be visited, and can ask then.
At present, you may buy your food, and
nothing more."
There were in the cell, a chair, a table,
and a straw mattress.
As the gaoler made a general inspection of
these objects, and of the four walls,
before going out, a wandering fancy
wandered through the mind of the prisoner
leaning against the wall opposite to him,
that this gaoler was so unwholesomely
bloated, both in face and person, as to
look like a man who had been drowned and
filled with water.
When the gaoler was gone, he thought in the
same wandering way, "Now am I left, as if I
were dead."
Stopping then, to look down at the
mattress, he turned from it with a sick
feeling, and thought, "And here in these
crawling creatures is the first condition
of the body after death."
"Five paces by four and a half, five paces
by four and a half, five paces by four and
a half."
The prisoner walked to and fro in his cell,
counting its measurement, and the roar of
the city arose like muffled drums with a
wild swell of voices added to them.
"He made shoes, he made shoes, he made
shoes."
The prisoner counted the measurement again,
and paced faster, to draw his mind with him
from that latter repetition.
"The ghosts that vanished when the wicket
closed.
There was one among them, the appearance of
a lady dressed in black, who was leaning in
the embrasure of a window, and she had a
light shining upon her golden hair, and she
looked like * * * * Let us ride on again,
for God's sake, through the illuminated
villages with the people all awake!
* * * * He made shoes, he made shoes, he
made shoes.
* * * * Five paces by four and a half."
With such scraps tossing and rolling upward
from the depths of his mind, the prisoner
walked faster and faster, obstinately
counting and counting; and the roar of the
city changed to this extent--that it still
rolled in like muffled drums, but with the
wail of voices that he knew, in the swell
that rose above them.