nd summoned for to-morrow?"

VI. Triumph

The dread tribunal of five Judges, Public Prosecutor, and determined
Jury, sat every day. Their lists went forth every evening, and were
read out by the gaolers of the various prisons to their prisoners. The
standard gaoler-joke was, "Come out and listen to the Evening Paper, you
inside there!"

"Charles Evremonde, called Darnay!"

So at last began the Evening Paper at La Force.

When a name was called, its owner stepped apart into a spot reserved
for those who were announced as being thus fatally recorded. Charles
Evremonde, called Darnay, had reason to know the usage; he had seen
hundreds pass away so.

His bloated gaoler, who wore spectacles to read with, glanced over them
to assure himself that he had taken his place, and went through the
list, making a similar short pause at each name. There were twenty-three
names, but only twenty were responded to; for one of the prisoners so
summoned had died in gaol and been forgotten, and two had already been
guillotined and forgotten. The list was read, in the vaulted chamber
where Darnay had seen the associated prisoners on the night of his
arrival. Every one of those had perished in the massacre; every human
creature he had since cared for and parted with, had died on the
scaffold.

There were hurried words of farewell and kindness, but the parting was
soon over. It was the incident of every day, and the society of La Force
were engaged in the preparation of some games of forfeits and a little
concert, for that evening. They crowded to the grates and shed tears
there; but, twenty places in the projected entertainments had to be
refilled, and the time was, at best, short to the lock-up hour, when the
common rooms and corridors would be delivered over to the great dogs
who kept watch there through the night. The prisoners were far from
insensible or unfeeling; their ways arose out of the condition of the
time. Similarly, though with a subtle difference, a species of fervour
or intoxication, known, without doubt, to have led some persons to
brave the guillotine unnecessarily, and to die by it, was not mere
boastfulness, but a wild infection of the wildly shaken public mind. In
seasons of pestilence, some of us will have a secret attraction to the
disease--a terrible passing inclination to die of it. And all of us have
like wonders hidden in our breasts, only needing circumstances to evoke
them.

The passage to the Co