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.