“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, prejudiced, 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

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

steady and set silence. The deeper he sank into this silence, the

fainter hope there wasor so Darnay thoughtof 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 do, 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

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

had developed themselves when he left England, he of course

knew now. That perils had thickened about him fast, and might