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 escortand must pay for

it.”

“I have no choice,” said Charles Darnay.

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“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 guardhouse,

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

tricoloured 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

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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 Beauvaiswhich they did

at eventide, when the streets were filled with peoplehe could not

conceal from himself that the aspect of affairs was very alarming.

An ominous crowd gathered to see him dismount at 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