When he had sat in his saddle some half-hour, taking note of these things, Darnay found himself confronted by the same man in authority, who directed the guard to open the barrier. Then he delivered to the escort, drunk and sober, a receipt for the escorted, and requested him to dismount. He did so, and the two patriots, leading his tired horse, turned and rode away without entering the city.
He accompanied his conductor into a guard-room, smelling of common wine and tobacco, where certain soldiers and patriots, asleep and awake, drunk and sober, and in various neutral states between sleeping and waking, drunkenness and sobriety, were standing and lying about. The light in the guard-house, half derived from the waning oil-lamps of the night, and half from the overcast day, was in a correspondingly uncertain condition. Some registers were lying open on a desk, and an officer of a coarse, dark aspect presided over these.
“Citizen Defarge,” said he to Darnay’s conductor, as he took a slip of paper to write on. “Is this the emigrant Evrémonde?”
“This is the man.”
“Your age, Evrémonde?”
“Thirty-seven.”
“Married, Evrémonde?”
“Yes.”
“Where married?”
“In England.”
“Without doubt. Where is your wife, Evrémonde?”
“In England.”
“Without doubt. You are consigned, Evrémonde, to the prison of La Force.”
“Just Heaven!” exclaimed Darnay. “Under what law, and for what offence?”
The officer looked up from his slip of paper for a moment.
“We have new laws, Evrémonde, and new offences, since you were here.” He said it with a hard smile, and went on writing.
“I entreat you to observe that I have come here voluntarily, in response to that written appeal of a fellow-countryman which lies before you. I demand no more than the opportunity to do so without delay. Is not that my right?”
“Emigrants have no rights, Evrémonde,” was the stolid reply. The officer wrote until he had finished, read over to himself what he had written, sanded it, and handed it to Defarge, with the words “In secret.”
Defarge motioned with the paper to the prisoner that he must accompany him. The prisoner obeyed, and a guard of two armed patriots attended them.
“Is it you,” said Defarge, in a low voice, as they went down the guard-house steps and turned into Paris, “who married the daughter of Doctor Manette, once a prisoner in the Bastille that is no more?”
“Yes,” replied Darnay, looking at him with surprise.
“My name is Defarge, and I keep a wine-shop in the Quarter Saint Antoine. Possibly you have heard of me.”
“My wife came to your house to reclaim her father? Yes!”
The word “wife” seemed to serve as a gloomy reminder to Defarge, to say with sudden impatience, “In the name of that sharp female newly born, and called La Guillotine, why did you come to France?”
“You heard me say why, a minute ago. Do you not believe it is the truth?”
“A bad truth for you,” said Defarge, speaking with knitted brows, and looking straight before him.
“Indeed I am lost here. All here is so unprecedented, so changed, so sudden and unfair, that I am absolutely lost. Will you render me a little help?”
“None.” Defarge spoke, always looking straight before him.
“Will you answer me a single question?”
“Perhaps. According to its nature. You can say what it is.”
“In this prison that I am going to so unjustly, shall I have some free communication with the world outside?”
“You will see.”
“I am not to be buried there, prejudged, and without any means of presenting my case?”
“You will see. But, what then? Other people have been similarly buried in worse prisons, before now.”
“But never by me, Citizen Defarge.”
Defarge glanced darkly at him for answer, and walked on in a steady and set silence. The deeper he sank into this silence, the fainter hope there was—or so Darnay thought—of his softening in any slight degree. He, therefore, made haste to say:
“It is of the utmost importance to me (you know, Citizen, even better than I, of how much importance) that I should be able to communicate to Mr. Lorry of Tellson’s Bank, an English gentleman who is now in Paris, the simple fact, without comment, that I have been thrown into the prison of La Force. Will you cause that to be done for me?”