gin, and tea, and coffee, and what not, that
flowed at him, and already broke upon the
great windows behind him in an impure mist
and rain.

The object of all this staring and blaring, was
a young man of about five-and-twenty, well-
grown and well-looking, with a sunburnt cheek
and a dark eye. His condition was that of a
young gentleman. He was plainly dressed in
black, or very dark grey, and his hair, which was
long and dark, was gathered in a ribbon at the
back of his neck: more to be out of his way than
for ornament. As an emotion of the mind will
express itself through any covering of the body,
so the paleness which his situation engendered
came through the brown upon his cheek, showing
the soul to be stronger than the sun. He
was otherwise quite self-possessed, bowed to the
Judge, and stood quiet.

The sort of interest with which this man was
stared and breathed at, was not a sort that
elevated humanity. Had he stood in peril of a less
horrible sentence—had there been a chance of
any one of its savage details being spared—by
just so much would he have lost in his fascination.
The form that was to be doomed to be so
shamefully mangled, was the sight; the immortal
creature that was to be so butchered and torn
asunder, yielded the sensation. Whatever gloss
the various spectators put upon the interest,
according to their several arts and powers of
self-deceit, the interest was, at the root of it,
Ogreish.

Silence in the court! Charles Darnay had
yesterday pleaded Not Guilty to an indictment
denouncing him (with infinite jingle and jangle)
for that he was a false traitor to our serene,
illustrious, excellent, and so forth, prince, our
Lord the King, by reason of his having, on
divers occasions, and by divers means and ways,
assisted Lewis, the French King, in his wars
against our said serene, illustrious, excellent,
and so forth; that was to say, by coming and
going between the dominions of our said serene,
illustrious, excellent, and so forth, and those
of the said French Lewis, and wickedly, falsely,
traitorously, and otherwise evil-adverbiously,
revealing to the said French Lewis what force
our said serene, illustrious, excellent, and so
forth, had in preparation to send to Canada and
North America. This much, Jerry, with his
head becoming more and more spiky as the law
terms bristled it, made out with huge satisfaction,
and so arrived circuitously at the understanding
that the aforesaid, and over and over
again aforesaid, Charles Darnay, stood there
before him upon his trial; that the jury were
swearing in; and that Mr. Attorney-General
was making ready to speak.

The accused, who was (and who knew he was)
being mentally hanged, beheaded, and quartered
by everybody there, neither flinched from the
situation, nor assumed any theatrical air in it.
He was quiet and attentive; watched the opening
proceedings with a grave interest; and stood
with his hands resting on the slab of wood before
him, so composedly, that they had not displaced a
leaf of the herbs with which it was strewn. The
court was all bestrewn with herbs and sprinkled
with vinegar, as a precaution against gaol air
and gaol fever.

Over the prisoner's head, there was a mirror, to
throw the light down upon him. Crowds of the
wicked and the wretched had been reflected in
it, and had passed from its surface and this
earth's together. Haunted in a most ghastly
manner that abominable place would have been,
if the glass could ever have rendered back its
reflexions, as the ocean is one day to give up its
dead. Some passing thought of the infamy
and disgrace for which it had been reserved, may
have struck the prisoner's mind. Be that as
it may, a change in his position making him
conscious of a bar of light across his face, he
looked up; and when he saw the glass his face
flushed, and his right hand pushed the herbs
away.

It happened, that the action turned his face to
that side of the court which was on his left.
About on a level with his eyes, there sat, in that
corner of the Judge's bench, two persons upon
whom his look immediately rested; so
immediately, and so much to the changing of his
aspect, that all the eyes that were turned upon
him, turned to them.

The spectators saw in the two figures, a young
lady of little more than twenty, and a gentleman
who was evidently her father; a man of a very
remarkable appearance in respect of the absolute
whiteness of his hair, and a certain indescribable
intensity of face: not of an active kind, but
pondering and self-communing. When this
expression was upon him, he looked as if he were
old; but, when it was stirred and broken up as
it was now, in a moment, on his speaking to his
daughter—he became a handsome man, not past
the prime of life.

His daughter had one of her hands drawn
through his arm, as she sat by him, and the other
pressed upon it. She had drawn close to him,
in her dread of the scene, and in her pity for the
prisoner. Her forehead had been strikingly
expressive of an engrossing terror and compassion
that saw nothing but the peril of the accused.
This had been so very noticeable, so very
powerfully and naturally shown, that starers
who had had no pity for him were touched by
her; and the whisper went about, "Who are
they?"

Jerry the messenger, who had made his own
observations in his own manner, and who had
been sucking the rust off his fingers in his
absorption, stretched his neck to hear who
they were. The crowd about him had pressed
and passed the inquiry on to the nearest
attendant, and from him it had been more
slowly pressed and passed back; at last it got
to Jerry:

''Witnesses."

"For which side?"

"Against."

"Against what side?"

"The prisoner's."

The Judge, whose eyes had gone in the general