The Track of a Storm
THE 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 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 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, hut 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 guard-house 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, under an escort.'
`Citizen, I desire nothing more than to get to Paris, though I could dispense with the escort.'
`Silence!' growled a red-cap, striking at the coverlet with the butt-end of his musket. `Peace, aristocrat!'
`It is as the good patriot says,' observed the timid functionary. `You are an aristocrat, and must have an escort-and must pay for it.'
`I have no choice,' said Charles Darnay.
`Choice, Listen to him!' cried the same scowling red-cap. `As if it was not a favour to be protected from the lamp-iron!'
`It is always as the good patriot says,' observed the functionary. `Rise and dress yourself, emigrant.'
Darnay complied, and was taken back to the guard-house, where other patriots in rough red caps were smoking, drinking, and sleeping, by a watch-fire. Here he paid a heavy price for his escort, and hence he started with it on the wet, wet roads at three o'clock in the morning.
The escort were two mounted patriots in red caps and tricoloured cockades, armed with national muskets and sabres, who rode one on either side of him. The escorted governed his own horse, but a loose line was attached to his bridle, the end of which one of the patriots kept girded round his wrist. In this state they set forth with the sharp rain driving in their faces: clattering at a heavy dragoon trot over the uneven
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