Page 746 of 896

With a solemn interest in the lighted windows where the people

were going to rest, forgetful through a few calm hours of the

horrors surrounding them; in the towers of the churches, where no

prayers were said, for the popular revulsion had even travelled

that length of self-destruction from years of priestly impostors,

plunderers, and profligates; in the distant burial-places,

reserved, as they wrote upon the gates, for Eternal Sleep; in the

abounding gaols; and in the streets along which the sixties

rolled to a death which had become so common and material, that

no sorrowful story of a haunting Spirit ever arose among the

people out of all the working of the Guillotine; with a solemn

interest in the whole life and death of the city settling down to

its short nightly pause in fury; Sydney Carton crossed the Seine

again for the lighter streets.