A Tale of Two Cities-BOOK THE THIRD THE TRACK OF A STORM

IN SECRET,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 ¹ with other obstacles than these. Every town-gate and village taxing-house had its band of citizen- patriots ², with their national muskets ⁵ 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 ⁶ 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 ⁷, 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 ⁸ so encompassed ⁹ 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, but retarded ¹⁰ his progress twenty times in a day, by riding after him and taking him back, riding before him and stopping him by anticipation ¹¹, 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 ¹² Gabelle’s letter from his prison of the Abbaye would have got him on so far. His difficulty at the guardhouse 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 ¹⁴ at the small inn to which he had been remitted ¹⁵ until morning, in the middle of the night.,Awakened by a timid local functionary ¹⁶ and three armed patriots in rough red caps and with pipes in their mouths, who sat down on the bed.,“Citizen, I desire nothing more than to get to Paris, though I could dispense ¹⁸ with the escort. ”,“Silence!” growled ¹⁹ a red-cap, striking at the coverlet with the butt-end of his musket ⁴. “Peace, aristocrat ²⁰!
”,“It is as the good patriot ³ 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 ²¹ red-cap. “As if it was not a favour to be protected from the lamp-iron! ”,There's no need to look so fraught!用不着那么愁眉苦脸的！,Abraham Lincoln was a fine type of the American patriots. 亚伯拉罕・林肯是美国爱国者的优秀典型。