The more he thought of it, the more impossible did it seem that Blakeney could find anything out.
Sir Andrew Ffoulkes was nowhere to be seen.

St.Just wandered about in the dark, lonely streets of this outlying quarter vainly trying to find the friend in whom he could confide, who, no doubt, would reassure him as to Blakeney's probable movements in Paris.

Then as the hour approached for the closing of the city gates Armand took up his stand at an angle of the street from whence he could see both the gate on one side of him and the thin line of the canal intersecting the street at its further end.
Unless Percy came within the next five minutes the gates would be closed and the difficulties of crossing the barrier would be increased a hundredfold.

The market gardeners with their covered carts filed out of the gate one by one; the labourers on foot were returning to their homes; there was a group of stonemasons, a few road-makers, also a number of beggars, ragged and filthy, who herded somewhere in the neighbourhood of the canal.
In every form, under every disguise, Armand hoped to discover Percy.
He could not stand still for very long, but strode up and down the road that skirts the fortifications at this point.
There were a good many idlers about at this hour; some men who had finished their work, and meant to spend an hour or so in one of the drinking shops that abounded in the neighbourhood of the wharf; others who liked to gather a small knot of listeners around them, whilst they discoursed on the politics of the day, or rather raged against the Convention, which was all made up of traitors to the people's welfare.
Armand, trying manfully to play his part, joined one of the groups that stood gaping round a street orator.

He shouted with the best of them, waved his cap in the air, and applauded or hissed in unison with the majority.