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
Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
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 guardhouse 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