His bloated gaoler, who wore spectacles to read with, glanced
over them to assure himself that he had taken his place, and went
through the list, making a similar short pause at each name. There
were twenty-three names, but only twenty were responded to; for
one of the prisoners so summoned had died in gaol and been for-
gotten, and two had already been guillotined and forgotten. The
list was read, in the vaulted chamber where Darnay had seen the
associated prisoners on the night of his arrival. Every one of those
had perished in the massacre; every human creature he had since
cared for and parted with, had died on the scaffold.

There were hurried words of farewell and kindness, but the part-
ing was soon over. It was the incident of every day, and the so-
ciety of La Force were engaged in the preparation of some games
of forfeits and a little concert, for that evening. They crowded to
the grates and shed tears there; but, twenty places in the projected
entertainments had to be refilled, and the time was, at best, short
to the lock-up hour, when the common rooms and corridors would
be delivered over to the great dogs who kept watch there through
the night. The prisoners were far from insensible or unfeeling;
their ways arose out of the condition of the time. Similarly, though
with a subtle difference, a species of fervour or intoxication,
known, without doubt, to have led some persons to brave the guil-
lotine unnecessarily, and to die by it, was not mere boastfulness,
but a wild infection of the wildly shaken public mind. In seasons
of pestilence, some of us will have a secret attraction to the disease
--a terrible passing inclination to die of it. And all of us have
like wonders hidden in our breasts, only needing circumstances to
evoke them.

The passage to the Conciergerie was short and dark; the night
in its vermin-haunted cells was long and cold. Next day, fifteen
prisoners were put to the bar before Charles Darnay's name was
called. All the fifteen were condemned, and the trials of the whole
occupied an hour and a half.

' Charles Evrémonde, called Darnay,' was at length arraigned.

His judges sat upon the Bench in feathered hats; but the rough
red cap and tricoloured cockade was the head-dress otherwise pre-
vailing. Looking at the Jury and the turbulent audience, he might

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