and locking behind them, until they came into a large, low, vaulted

chamber, crowded with prisoners of both sexes. The women were

seated at a long table, reading and writing, knitting, sewing, and

embroidering; the men were for the most part standing behind

their chairs, or lingering up and down the room.

In the instinctive association of prisoners with shameful crime

and disgrace, the newcomer recoiled from this company. But the

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crowning unreality of his long unreal ride, was, their all at once

rising to receive him, with every refinement of manner known to

the time, and with all the engaging graces and courtesies of life.

So strangely clouded were these refinements by the prison

manners and gloom, so spectral did they become in the

inappropriate squalor and misery through which they were seen,

that Charles Darnay seemed to stand in company of the dead.

Ghosts all! The ghost of beauty, the ghost of stateliness, the ghost

of elegance, the ghost of pride, the ghost of frivolity, the ghost of

wit, the ghost of youth, the ghost of age, all waiting their dismissal

from the desolate shore, all turning on him eyes that were changed

by the death they had died in coming there.

It struck him motionless. The gaoler standing at his side, and

the other gaolers moving about, who would have been well enough