his long and unwholesome confinement he was in danger of
fainting from exhaustion; none the less because he knew very well,
that the very same people, carried by another current, would have
rushed at him with the very same intensity, to rend him to pieces
and strew him over the streets.
His removal, to make way for other accused persons who were
to be tried, rescued him from these caresses for the moment. Five
were to be tried together, next, as enemies of the Republic,
forasmuch as they had not assisted it by word or deed. So quick
was the Tribunal to compensate itself and the nation for a chance
lost, that these five came down to him before he left the place,
condemned to die within twenty-four hours. The first of them told
him so, with the customary prison sign of Deatha raised finger
and they all added in words, “Long live the Republic!”
The five had had, it is true, no audience to lengthen their
proceedings, for when he and Doctor Manette emerged from the
gate, there was a great crowd about it, in which there seemed to be
every face he had seen in Court, except two, for which he looked in
vain. On his coming out, the concourse made at him anew,
weeping, embracing, and shouting, all by turns and all together,
until the very tide of the river on the bank of which the mad scene
was acted, seemed to run mad, like the people on