thicken faster and faster yet, he of course knew now. He could not

but admit to himself that he might not have made this journey, if

he could have foreseen the events of a few days. And yet his

misgivings were not so dark as, imagined by the light of this later

time, they would appear. Troubled as the future was, it was the

unknown future, and in its obscurity there was ignorant hope. The

horrible massacre, days and nights long, which, within a few

rounds of the clock, was to set a great mark of blood upon the

blessed garnering time of harvest, was as far out of his knowledge

as if it had been a hundred thousand years away. The ‘sharp

female newly-born, and called La Guillotine,’ was hardly known to

him, or to the generality of people, by name. The frightful deeds

that were to be soon done, were probably unimagined at that time

in the brains of the doers. How could they have a place in the

shadowy conceptions of a gentle mind?

Of unjust treatment in detention and hardship, and in cruel

separation from his wife and child, he foreshadowed the

likelihood, or the certainty; but, beyond this, he dreaded nothing

distinctly. With this on his mind, which was enough to carry him

into a dreary prison courtyard, he arrived at the prison of La

Force.

A man with a bloated face opened the strong wicket, to whom

Defarge presented “The