Chapter XXXI

IN SECRET

T

he 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