A few passers turned their heads, and a few shook their fingers at him as an aristocrat; otherwise, that a man in good clothes should be going to prison, was no more remarkable than that a labourer in working clothes should be going to work.
In one narrow, dark, and dirty street through which they passed, an excited orator, mounted on a stool, was addressing an excited audience on the crimes against the people, of the king and the royal family.
The few words that he caught from this man's lips, first made it known to Charles Darnay that the king was in prison, and that the foreign ambassadors had one and all left Paris.
On the road (except at Beauvais) he had heard absolutely nothing.
The escort and the universal watchfulness had completely isolated him.
That he had fallen among far greater dangers than those which had developed themselves when he left England, he of course knew now.
That perils had thickened about him fast, and might thicken faster and faster yet, he of course knew now.
He could not but admit to himself that he might not have made this journey, if he could have foreseen the events of a few days.
And yet his misgivings were not so dark as, imagined by the light of this later time, they would appear.
Troubled as the future was, it was the unknown future, and in its obscurity there was ignorant hope.