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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens

+

+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or

+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

+

+

+Title: A Tale of Two Cities

+       A Story of the French Revolution

+

+Author: Charles Dickens

+

+Release Date: January, 1994 [EBook #98]

+Posting Date: November 28, 2009

+[This file last updated: January 23, 2011]

+[Last updated: November 27, 2013]

+

+Language: English

+

+Character set encoding: ASCII

+

+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A TALE OF TWO CITIES ***

+

+

+

+

+Produced by Judith Boss

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

+A TALE OF TWO CITIES

+

+A STORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

+

+By Charles Dickens

+

+

+CONTENTS

+

+

+     Book the First--Recalled to Life

+

+     Chapter I      The Period

+     Chapter II     The Mail

+     Chapter III    The Night Shadows

+     Chapter IV     The Preparation

+     Chapter V      The Wine-shop

+     Chapter VI     The Shoemaker

+

+

+     Book the Second--the Golden Thread

+

+     Chapter I      Five Years Later

+     Chapter II     A Sight

+     Chapter III    A Disappointment

+     Chapter IV     Congratulatory

+     Chapter V      The Jackal

+     Chapter VI     Hundreds of People

+     Chapter VII    Monseigneur in Town

+     Chapter VIII   Monseigneur in the Country

+     Chapter IX     The Gorgon's Head

+     Chapter X      Two Promises

+     Chapter XI     A Companion Picture

+     Chapter XII    The Fellow of Delicacy

+     Chapter XIII   The Fellow of no Delicacy

+     Chapter XIV    The Honest Tradesman

+     Chapter XV     Knitting

+     Chapter XVI    Still Knitting

+     Chapter XVII   One Night

+     Chapter XVIII  Nine Days

+     Chapter XIX    An Opinion

+     Chapter XX     A Plea

+     Chapter XXI    Echoing Footsteps

+     Chapter XXII   The Sea Still Rises

+     Chapter XXIII  Fire Rises

+     Chapter XXIV   Drawn to the Loadstone Rock

+

+

+     Book the Third--the Track of a Storm

+

+     Chapter I      In Secret

+     Chapter II     The Grindstone

+     Chapter III    The Shadow

+     Chapter IV     Calm in Storm

+     Chapter V      The Wood-sawyer

+     Chapter VI     Triumph

+     Chapter VII    A Knock at the Door

+     Chapter VIII   A Hand at Cards

+     Chapter IX     The Game Made

+     Chapter X      The Substance of the Shadow

+     Chapter XI     Dusk

+     Chapter XII    Darkness

+     Chapter XIII   Fifty-two

+     Chapter XIV    The Knitting Done

+     Chapter XV     The Footsteps Die Out For Ever

+

+

+

+

+

+Book the First--Recalled to Life

+

+

+

+

+I. The Period

+

+

+It was the best of times,

+it was the worst of times,

+it was the age of wisdom,

+it was the age of foolishness,

+it was the epoch of belief,

+it was the epoch of incredulity,

+it was the season of Light,

+it was the season of Darkness,

+it was the spring of hope,

+it was the winter of despair,

+we had everything before us,

+we had nothing before us,

+we were all going direct to Heaven,

+we were all going direct the other way--

+in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of

+its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for

+evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

+

+There were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a plain face, on the

+throne of England; there were a king with a large jaw and a queen with

+a fair face, on the throne of France. In both countries it was clearer

+than crystal to the lords of the State preserves of loaves and fishes,

+that things in general were settled for ever.

+

+It was the year of Our Lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five.

+Spiritual revelations were conceded to England at that favoured period,

+as at this. Mrs. Southcott had recently attained her five-and-twentieth

+blessed birthday, of whom a prophetic private in the Life Guards had

+heralded the sublime appearance by announcing that arrangements were

+made for the swallowing up of London and Westminster. Even the Cock-lane

+ghost had been laid only a round dozen of years, after rapping out its

+messages, as the spirits of this very year last past (supernaturally

+deficient in originality) rapped out theirs. Mere messages in the

+earthly order of events had lately come to the English Crown and People,

+from a congress of British subjects in America: which, strange

+to relate, have proved more important to the human race than any

+communications yet received through any of the chickens of the Cock-lane

+brood.

+

+France, less favoured on the whole as to matters spiritual than her

+sister of the shield and trident, rolled with exceeding smoothness down

+hill, making paper money and spending it. Under the guidance of her

+Christian pastors, she entertained herself, besides, with such humane

+achievements as sentencing a youth to have his hands cut off, his tongue

+torn out with pincers, and his body burned alive, because he had not

+kneeled down in the rain to do honour to a dirty procession of monks

+which passed within his view, at a distance of some fifty or sixty

+yards. It is likely enough that, rooted in the woods of France and

+Norway, there were growing trees, when that sufferer was put to death,

+already marked by the Woodman, Fate, to come down and be sawn into

+boards, to make a certain movable framework with a sack and a knife in

+it, terrible in history. It is likely enough that in the rough outhouses

+of some tillers of the heavy lands adjacent to Paris, there were

+sheltered from the weather that very day, rude carts, bespattered with

+rustic mire, snuffed about by pigs, and roosted in by poultry, which

+the Farmer, Death, had already set apart to be his tumbrils of

+the Revolution. But that Woodman and that Farmer, though they work

+unceasingly, work silently, and no one heard them as they went about

+with muffled tread: the rather, forasmuch as to entertain any suspicion

+that they were awake, was to be atheistical and traitorous.

+

+In England, there was scarcely an amount of order and protection to

+justify much national boasting. Daring burglaries by armed men, and

+highway robberies, took place in the capital itself every night;

+families were publicly cautioned not to go out of town without removing

+their furniture to upholsterers' warehouses for security; the highwayman

+in the dark was a City tradesman in the light, and, being recognised and

+challenged by his fellow-tradesman whom he stopped in his character of

+"the Captain," gallantly shot him through the head and rode away; the

+mail was waylaid by seven robbers, and the guard shot three dead, and

+then got shot dead himself by the other four, "in consequence of the

+failure of his ammunition:" after which the mail was robbed in peace;

+that magnificent potentate, the Lord Mayor of London, was made to stand

+and deliver on Turnham Green, by one highwayman, who despoiled the

+illustrious creature in sight of all his retinue; prisoners in London

+gaols fought battles with their turnkeys, and the majesty of the law

+fired blunderbusses in among them, loaded with rounds of shot and ball;

+thieves snipped off diamond crosses from the necks of noble lords at

+Court drawing-rooms; musketeers went into St. Giles's, to search

+for contraband goods, and the mob fired on the musketeers, and the

+musketeers fired on the mob, and nobody thought any of these occurrences

+much out of the common way. In the midst of them, the hangman, ever busy

+and ever worse than useless, was in constant requisition; now, stringing

+up long rows of miscellaneous criminals; now, hanging a housebreaker on

+Saturday who had been taken on Tuesday; now, burning people in the

+hand at Newgate by the dozen, and now burning pamphlets at the door of

+Westminster Hall; to-day, taking the life of an atrocious murderer,

+and to-morrow of a wretched pilferer who had robbed a farmer's boy of

+sixpence.

+

+All these things, and a thousand like them, came to pass in and close

+upon the dear old year one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five.

+Environed by them, while the Woodman and the Farmer worked unheeded,

+those two of the large jaws, and those other two of the plain and the

+fair faces, trod with stir enough, and carried their divine rights

+with a high hand. Thus did the year one thousand seven hundred

+and seventy-five conduct their Greatnesses, and myriads of small

+creatures--the creatures of this chronicle among the rest--along the

+roads that lay before them.

+

+

+

+

+II. The Mail

+

+

+It was the Dover road that lay, on a Friday night late in November,

+before the first of the persons with whom this history has business.

+The Dover road lay, as to him, beyond the Dover mail, as it lumbered up

+Shooter's Hill. He walked up hill in the mire by the side of the mail,

+as the rest of the passengers did; not because they had the least relish

+for walking exercise, under the circumstances, but because the hill,

+and the harness, and the mud, and the mail, were all so heavy, that the

+horses had three times already come to a stop, besides once drawing the

+coach across the road, with the mutinous intent of taking it back

+to Blackheath. Reins and whip and coachman and guard, however, in

+combination, had read that article of war which forbade a purpose

+otherwise strongly in favour of the argument, that some brute animals

+are endued with Reason; and the team had capitulated and returned to

+their duty.

+

+With drooping heads and tremulous tails, they mashed their way through

+the thick mud, floundering and stumbling between whiles, as if they were

+falling to pieces at the larger joints. As often as the driver rested

+them and brought them to a stand, with a wary "Wo-ho! so-ho-then!" the

+near leader violently shook his head and everything upon it--like an

+unusually emphatic horse, denying that the coach could be got up the

+hill. Whenever the leader made this rattle, the passenger started, as a

+nervous passenger might, and was disturbed in mind.

+

+There was a steaming mist in all the hollows, and it had roamed in its

+forlornness up the hill, like an evil spirit, seeking rest and finding

+none. A clammy and intensely cold mist, it made its slow way through the

+air in ripples that visibly followed and overspread one another, as the

+waves of an unwholesome sea might do. It was dense enough to shut out

+everything from the light of the coach-lamps but these its own workings,

+and a few yards of road; and the reek of the labouring horses steamed

+into it, as if they had made it all.

+

+Two other passengers, besides the one, were plodding up the hill by the

+side of the mail. All three were wrapped to the cheekbones and over the

+ears, and wore jack-boots. Not one of the three could have said, from

+anything he saw, what either of the other two was like; and each was

+hidden under almost as many wrappers from the eyes of the mind, as from

+the eyes of the body, of his two companions. In those days, travellers

+were very shy of being confidential on a short notice, for anybody on

+the road might be a robber or in league with robbers. As to the latter,

+when every posting-house and ale-house could produce somebody in

+"the Captain's" pay, ranging from the landlord to the lowest stable

+non-descript, it was the likeliest thing upon the cards. So the guard

+of the Dover mail thought to himself, that Friday night in November, one

+thousand seven hundred and seventy-five, lumbering up Shooter's Hill, as

+he stood on his own particular perch behind the mail, beating his feet,

+and keeping an eye and a hand on the arm-chest before him, where a

+loaded blunderbuss lay at the top of six or eight loaded horse-pistols,

+deposited on a substratum of cutlass.

+

+The Dover mail was in its usual genial position that the guard suspected

+the passengers, the passengers suspected one another and the guard, they

+all suspected everybody else, and the coachman was sure of nothing but

+the horses; as to which cattle he could with a clear conscience have

+taken his oath on the two Testaments that they were not fit for the

+journey.

+

+"Wo-ho!" said the coachman. "So, then! One more pull and you're at the

+top and be damned to you, for I have had trouble enough to get you to

+it!--Joe!"

+

+"Halloa!" the guard replied.

+

+"What o'clock do you make it, Joe?"

+

+"Ten minutes, good, past eleven."

+

+"My blood!" ejaculated the vexed coachman, "and not atop of Shooter's

+yet! Tst! Yah! Get on with you!"

+

+The emphatic horse, cut short by the whip in a most decided negative,

+made a decided scramble for it, and the three other horses followed

+suit. Once more, the Dover mail struggled on, with the jack-boots of its

+passengers squashing along by its side. They had stopped when the coach

+stopped, and they kept close company with it. If any one of the three

+had had the hardihood to propose to another to walk on a little ahead

+into the mist and darkness, he would have put himself in a fair way of

+getting shot instantly as a highwayman.

+

+The last burst carried the mail to the summit of the hill. The horses

+stopped to breathe again, and the guard got down to skid the wheel for

+the descent, and open the coach-door to let the passengers in.

+

+"Tst! Joe!" cried the coachman in a warning voice, looking down from his

+box.

+

+"What do you say, Tom?"

+

+They both listened.

+

+"I say a horse at a canter coming up, Joe."

+

+"_I_ say a horse at a gallop, Tom," returned the guard, leaving his hold

+of the door, and mounting nimbly to his place. "Gentlemen! In the king's

+name, all of you!"

+

+With this hurried adjuration, he cocked his blunderbuss, and stood on

+the offensive.

+

+The passenger booked by this history, was on the coach-step, getting in;

+the two other passengers were close behind him, and about to follow. He

+remained on the step, half in the coach and half out of; they remained

+in the road below him. They all looked from the coachman to the guard,

+and from the guard to the coachman, and listened. The coachman looked

+back and the guard looked back, and even the emphatic leader pricked up

+his ears and looked back, without contradicting.

+

+The stillness consequent on the cessation of the rumbling and labouring

+of the coach, added to the stillness of the night, made it very quiet

+indeed. The panting of the horses communicated a tremulous motion to

+the coach, as if it were in a state of agitation. The hearts of the

+passengers beat loud enough perhaps to be heard; but at any rate, the

+quiet pause was audibly expressive of people out of breath, and holding

+the breath, and having the pulses quickened by expectation.

+

+The sound of a horse at a gallop came fast and furiously up the hill.

+

+"So-ho!" the guard sang out, as loud as he could roar. "Yo there! Stand!

+I shall fire!"

+

+The pace was suddenly checked, and, with much splashing and floundering,

+a man's voice called from the mist, "Is that the Dover mail?"

+

+"Never you mind what it is!" the guard retorted. "What are you?"

+

+"_Is_ that the Dover mail?"

+

+"Why do you want to know?"

+

+"I want a passenger, if it is."

+

+"What passenger?"

+

+"Mr. Jarvis Lorry."

+

+Our booked passenger showed in a moment that it was his name. The guard,

+the coachman, and the two other passengers eyed him distrustfully.

+

+"Keep where you are," the guard called to the voice in the mist,

+"because, if I should make a mistake, it could never be set right in

+your lifetime. Gentleman of the name of Lorry answer straight."

+

+"What is the matter?" asked the passenger, then, with mildly quavering

+speech. "Who wants me? Is it Jerry?"

+

+("I don't like Jerry's voice, if it is Jerry," growled the guard to

+himself. "He's hoarser than suits me, is Jerry.")

+

+"Yes, Mr. Lorry."

+

+"What is the matter?"

+

+"A despatch sent after you from over yonder. T. and Co."

+

+"I know this messenger, guard," said Mr. Lorry, getting down into the

+road--assisted from behind more swiftly than politely by the other two

+passengers, who immediately scrambled into the coach, shut the door, and

+pulled up the window. "He may come close; there's nothing wrong."

+

+"I hope there ain't, but I can't make so 'Nation sure of that," said the

+guard, in gruff soliloquy. "Hallo you!"

+

+"Well! And hallo you!" said Jerry, more hoarsely than before.

+

+"Come on at a footpace! d'ye mind me? And if you've got holsters to that

+saddle o' yourn, don't let me see your hand go nigh 'em. For I'm a devil

+at a quick mistake, and when I make one it takes the form of Lead. So

+now let's look at you."

+

+The figures of a horse and rider came slowly through the eddying mist,

+and came to the side of the mail, where the passenger stood. The rider

+stooped, and, casting up his eyes at the guard, handed the passenger

+a small folded paper. The rider's horse was blown, and both horse and

+rider were covered with mud, from the hoofs of the horse to the hat of

+the man.

+

+"Guard!" said the passenger, in a tone of quiet business confidence.

+

+The watchful guard, with his right hand at the stock of his raised

+blunderbuss, his left at the barrel, and his eye on the horseman,

+answered curtly, "Sir."

+

+"There is nothing to apprehend. I belong to Tellson's Bank. You must

+know Tellson's Bank in London. I am going to Paris on business. A crown

+to drink. I may read this?"

+

+"If so be as you're quick, sir."

+

+He opened it in the light of the coach-lamp on that side, and

+read--first to himself and then aloud: "'Wait at Dover for Mam'selle.'

+It's not long, you see, guard. Jerry, say that my answer was, RECALLED

+TO LIFE."

+

+Jerry started in his saddle. "That's a Blazing strange answer, too,"

+said he, at his hoarsest.

+

+"Take that message back, and they will know that I received this, as

+well as if I wrote. Make the best of your way. Good night."

+

+With those words the passenger opened the coach-door and got in; not at

+all assisted by his fellow-passengers, who had expeditiously secreted

+their watches and purses in their boots, and were now making a general

+pretence of being asleep. With no more definite purpose than to escape

+the hazard of originating any other kind of action.

+

+The coach lumbered on again, with heavier wreaths of mist closing round

+it as it began the descent. The guard soon replaced his blunderbuss

+in his arm-chest, and, having looked to the rest of its contents, and

+having looked to the supplementary pistols that he wore in his belt,

+looked to a smaller chest beneath his seat, in which there were a

+few smith's tools, a couple of torches, and a tinder-box. For he was

+furnished with that completeness that if the coach-lamps had been blown

+and stormed out, which did occasionally happen, he had only to shut

+himself up inside, keep the flint and steel sparks well off the straw,

+and get a light with tolerable safety and ease (if he were lucky) in

+five minutes.

+

+"Tom!" softly over the coach roof.

+

+"Hallo, Joe."

+

+"Did you hear the message?"

+

+"I did, Joe."

+

+"What did you make of it, Tom?"

+

+"Nothing at all, Joe."

+

+"That's a coincidence, too," the guard mused, "for I made the same of it

+myself."

+

+Jerry, left alone in the mist and darkness, dismounted meanwhile, not

+only to ease his spent horse, but to wipe the mud from his face, and

+shake the wet out of his hat-brim, which might be capable of

+holding about half a gallon. After standing with the bridle over his

+heavily-splashed arm, until the wheels of the mail were no longer within

+hearing and the night was quite still again, he turned to walk down the

+hill.

+

+"After that there gallop from Temple Bar, old lady, I won't trust your

+fore-legs till I get you on the level," said this hoarse messenger,

+glancing at his mare. "'Recalled to life.' That's a Blazing strange

+message. Much of that wouldn't do for you, Jerry! I say, Jerry! You'd

+be in a Blazing bad way, if recalling to life was to come into fashion,

+Jerry!"

+

+

+

+

+III. The Night Shadows

+

+

+A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is

+constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A

+solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every

+one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every

+room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating

+heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of

+its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it! Something of the

+awfulness, even of Death itself, is referable to this. No more can I

+turn the leaves of this dear book that I loved, and vainly hope in time

+to read it all. No more can I look into the depths of this unfathomable

+water, wherein, as momentary lights glanced into it, I have had glimpses

+of buried treasure and other things submerged. It was appointed that the

+book should shut with a spring, for ever and for ever, when I had read

+but a page. It was appointed that the water should be locked in an

+eternal frost, when the light was playing on its surface, and I stood

+in ignorance on the shore. My friend is dead, my neighbour is dead,

+my love, the darling of my soul, is dead; it is the inexorable

+consolidation and perpetuation of the secret that was always in that

+individuality, and which I shall carry in mine to my life's end. In

+any of the burial-places of this city through which I pass, is there

+a sleeper more inscrutable than its busy inhabitants are, in their

+innermost personality, to me, or than I am to them?

+

+As to this, his natural and not to be alienated inheritance, the

+messenger on horseback had exactly the same possessions as the King, the

+first Minister of State, or the richest merchant in London. So with the

+three passengers shut up in the narrow compass of one lumbering old mail

+coach; they were mysteries to one another, as complete as if each had

+been in his own coach and six, or his own coach and sixty, with the

+breadth of a county between him and the next.

+

+The messenger rode back at an easy trot, stopping pretty often at

+ale-houses by the way to drink, but evincing a tendency to keep his

+own counsel, and to keep his hat cocked over his eyes. He had eyes that

+assorted very well with that decoration, being of a surface black, with

+no depth in the colour or form, and much too near together--as if they

+were afraid of being found out in something, singly, if they kept too

+far apart. They had a sinister expression, under an old cocked-hat like

+a three-cornered spittoon, and over a great muffler for the chin and

+throat, which descended nearly to the wearer's knees. When he stopped

+for drink, he moved this muffler with his left hand, only while he

+poured his liquor in with his right; as soon as that was done, he

+muffled again.

+

+"No, Jerry, no!" said the messenger, harping on one theme as he rode.

+"It wouldn't do for you, Jerry. Jerry, you honest tradesman, it wouldn't

+suit _your_ line of business! Recalled--! Bust me if I don't think he'd

+been a drinking!"

+

+His message perplexed his mind to that degree that he was fain, several

+times, to take off his hat to scratch his head. Except on the crown,

+which was raggedly bald, he had stiff, black hair, standing jaggedly all

+over it, and growing down hill almost to his broad, blunt nose. It was

+so like Smith's work, so much more like the top of a strongly spiked

+wall than a head of hair, that the best of players at leap-frog might

+have declined him, as the most dangerous man in the world to go over.

+

+While he trotted back with the message he was to deliver to the night

+watchman in his box at the door of Tellson's Bank, by Temple Bar, who

+was to deliver it to greater authorities within, the shadows of the

+night took such shapes to him as arose out of the message, and took such

+shapes to the mare as arose out of _her_ private topics of uneasiness.

+They seemed to be numerous, for she shied at every shadow on the road.

+

+What time, the mail-coach lumbered, jolted, rattled, and bumped upon

+its tedious way, with its three fellow-inscrutables inside. To whom,

+likewise, the shadows of the night revealed themselves, in the forms

+their dozing eyes and wandering thoughts suggested.

+

+Tellson's Bank had a run upon it in the mail. As the bank

+passenger--with an arm drawn through the leathern strap, which did what

+lay in it to keep him from pounding against the next passenger,

+and driving him into his corner, whenever the coach got a special

+jolt--nodded in his place, with half-shut eyes, the little

+coach-windows, and the coach-lamp dimly gleaming through them, and the

+bulky bundle of opposite passenger, became the bank, and did a great

+stroke of business. The rattle of the harness was the chink of money,

+and more drafts were honoured in five minutes than even Tellson's, with

+all its foreign and home connection, ever paid in thrice the time. Then

+the strong-rooms underground, at Tellson's, with such of their valuable

+stores and secrets as were known to the passenger (and it was not a

+little that he knew about them), opened before him, and he went in among

+them with the great keys and the feebly-burning candle, and found them

+safe, and strong, and sound, and still, just as he had last seen them.

+

+But, though the bank was almost always with him, and though the coach

+(in a confused way, like the presence of pain under an opiate) was

+always with him, there was another current of impression that never

+ceased to run, all through the night. He was on his way to dig some one

+out of a grave.

+

+Now, which of the multitude of faces that showed themselves before him

+was the true face of the buried person, the shadows of the night did

+not indicate; but they were all the faces of a man of five-and-forty by

+years, and they differed principally in the passions they expressed,

+and in the ghastliness of their worn and wasted state. Pride, contempt,

+defiance, stubbornness, submission, lamentation, succeeded one another;

+so did varieties of sunken cheek, cadaverous colour, emaciated hands

+and figures. But the face was in the main one face, and every head was

+prematurely white. A hundred times the dozing passenger inquired of this

+spectre:

+

+"Buried how long?"

+

+The answer was always the same: "Almost eighteen years."

+

+"You had abandoned all hope of being dug out?"

+

+"Long ago."

+

+"You know that you are recalled to life?"

+

+"They tell me so."

+

+"I hope you care to live?"

+

+"I can't say."

+

+"Shall I show her to you? Will you come and see her?"

+

+The answers to this question were various and contradictory. Sometimes

+the broken reply was, "Wait! It would kill me if I saw her too soon."

+Sometimes, it was given in a tender rain of tears, and then it was,

+"Take me to her." Sometimes it was staring and bewildered, and then it

+was, "I don't know her. I don't understand."

+

+After such imaginary discourse, the passenger in his fancy would dig,

+and dig, dig--now with a spade, now with a great key, now with his

+hands--to dig this wretched creature out. Got out at last, with earth

+hanging about his face and hair, he would suddenly fan away to dust. The

+passenger would then start to himself, and lower the window, to get the

+reality of mist and rain on his cheek.

+

+Yet even when his eyes were opened on the mist and rain, on the moving

+patch of light from the lamps, and the hedge at the roadside retreating

+by jerks, the night shadows outside the coach would fall into the train

+of the night shadows within. The real Banking-house by Temple Bar, the

+real business of the past day, the real strong rooms, the real express

+sent after him, and the real message returned, would all be there. Out

+of the midst of them, the ghostly face would rise, and he would accost

+it again.

+

+"Buried how long?"

+

+"Almost eighteen years."

+

+"I hope you care to live?"

+

+"I can't say."

+

+Dig--dig--dig--until an impatient movement from one of the two

+passengers would admonish him to pull up the window, draw his arm

+securely through the leathern strap, and speculate upon the two

+slumbering forms, until his mind lost its hold of them, and they again

+slid away into the bank and the grave.

+

+"Buried how long?"

+

+"Almost eighteen years."

+

+"You had abandoned all hope of being dug out?"

+

+"Long ago."

+

+The words were still in his hearing as just spoken--distinctly in

+his hearing as ever spoken words had been in his life--when the weary

+passenger started to the consciousness of daylight, and found that the

+shadows of the night were gone.

+

+He lowered the window, and looked out at the rising sun. There was a

+ridge of ploughed land, with a plough upon it where it had been left

+last night when the horses were unyoked; beyond, a quiet coppice-wood,

+in which many leaves of burning red and golden yellow still remained

+upon the trees. Though the earth was cold and wet, the sky was clear,

+and the sun rose bright, placid, and beautiful.

+

+"Eighteen years!" said the passenger, looking at the sun. "Gracious

+Creator of day! To be buried alive for eighteen years!"

+

+

+

+

+IV. The Preparation

+

+

+When the mail got successfully to Dover, in the course of the forenoon,

+the head drawer at the Royal George Hotel opened the coach-door as his

+custom was. He did it with some flourish of ceremony, for a mail journey

+from London in winter was an achievement to congratulate an adventurous

+traveller upon.

+

+By that time, there was only one adventurous traveller left be

+congratulated: for the two others had been set down at their respective

+roadside destinations. The mildewy inside of the coach, with its damp

+and dirty straw, its disagreeable smell, and its obscurity, was rather

+like a larger dog-kennel. Mr. Lorry, the passenger, shaking himself out

+of it in chains of straw, a tangle of shaggy wrapper, flapping hat, and

+muddy legs, was rather like a larger sort of dog.

+

+"There will be a packet to Calais, tomorrow, drawer?"

+

+"Yes, sir, if the weather holds and the wind sets tolerable fair. The

+tide will serve pretty nicely at about two in the afternoon, sir. Bed,

+sir?"

+

+"I shall not go to bed till night; but I want a bedroom, and a barber."

+

+"And then breakfast, sir? Yes, sir. That way, sir, if you please.

+Show Concord! Gentleman's valise and hot water to Concord. Pull off

+gentleman's boots in Concord. (You will find a fine sea-coal fire, sir.)

+Fetch barber to Concord. Stir about there, now, for Concord!"

+

+The Concord bed-chamber being always assigned to a passenger by the

+mail, and passengers by the mail being always heavily wrapped up from

+head to foot, the room had the odd interest for the establishment of the

+Royal George, that although but one kind of man was seen to go into it,

+all kinds and varieties of men came out of it. Consequently, another

+drawer, and two porters, and several maids and the landlady, were all

+loitering by accident at various points of the road between the Concord

+and the coffee-room, when a gentleman of sixty, formally dressed in a

+brown suit of clothes, pretty well worn, but very well kept, with large

+square cuffs and large flaps to the pockets, passed along on his way to

+his breakfast.

+

+The coffee-room had no other occupant, that forenoon, than the gentleman

+in brown. His breakfast-table was drawn before the fire, and as he sat,

+with its light shining on him, waiting for the meal, he sat so still,

+that he might have been sitting for his portrait.

+

+Very orderly and methodical he looked, with a hand on each knee, and a

+loud watch ticking a sonorous sermon under his flapped waist-coat,

+as though it pitted its gravity and longevity against the levity and

+evanescence of the brisk fire. He had a good leg, and was a little vain

+of it, for his brown stockings fitted sleek and close, and were of a

+fine texture; his shoes and buckles, too, though plain, were trim. He

+wore an odd little sleek crisp flaxen wig, setting very close to his

+head: which wig, it is to be presumed, was made of hair, but which

+looked far more as though it were spun from filaments of silk or glass.

+His linen, though not of a fineness in accordance with his stockings,

+was as white as the tops of the waves that broke upon the neighbouring

+beach, or the specks of sail that glinted in the sunlight far at sea. A

+face habitually suppressed and quieted, was still lighted up under the

+quaint wig by a pair of moist bright eyes that it must have cost

+their owner, in years gone by, some pains to drill to the composed and

+reserved expression of Tellson's Bank. He had a healthy colour in his

+cheeks, and his face, though lined, bore few traces of anxiety.

+But, perhaps the confidential bachelor clerks in Tellson's Bank were

+principally occupied with the cares of other people; and perhaps

+second-hand cares, like second-hand clothes, come easily off and on.

+

+Completing his resemblance to a man who was sitting for his portrait,

+Mr. Lorry dropped off to sleep. The arrival of his breakfast roused him,

+and he said to the drawer, as he moved his chair to it:

+

+"I wish accommodation prepared for a young lady who may come here at any

+time to-day. She may ask for Mr. Jarvis Lorry, or she may only ask for a

+gentleman from Tellson's Bank. Please to let me know."

+

+"Yes, sir. Tellson's Bank in London, sir?"

+

+"Yes."

+

+"Yes, sir. We have oftentimes the honour to entertain your gentlemen in

+their travelling backwards and forwards betwixt London and Paris, sir. A

+vast deal of travelling, sir, in Tellson and Company's House."

+

+"Yes. We are quite a French House, as well as an English one."

+

+"Yes, sir. Not much in the habit of such travelling yourself, I think,

+sir?"

+

+"Not of late years. It is fifteen years since we--since I--came last

+from France."

+

+"Indeed, sir? That was before my time here, sir. Before our people's

+time here, sir. The George was in other hands at that time, sir."

+

+"I believe so."

+

+"But I would hold a pretty wager, sir, that a House like Tellson and

+Company was flourishing, a matter of fifty, not to speak of fifteen

+years ago?"

+

+"You might treble that, and say a hundred and fifty, yet not be far from

+the truth."

+

+"Indeed, sir!"

+

+Rounding his mouth and both his eyes, as he stepped backward from the

+table, the waiter shifted his napkin from his right arm to his left,

+dropped into a comfortable attitude, and stood surveying the guest while

+he ate and drank, as from an observatory or watchtower. According to the

+immemorial usage of waiters in all ages.

+

+When Mr. Lorry had finished his breakfast, he went out for a stroll on

+the beach. The little narrow, crooked town of Dover hid itself away

+from the beach, and ran its head into the chalk cliffs, like a marine

+ostrich. The beach was a desert of heaps of sea and stones tumbling

+wildly about, and the sea did what it liked, and what it liked was

+destruction. It thundered at the town, and thundered at the cliffs, and

+brought the coast down, madly. The air among the houses was of so strong

+a piscatory flavour that one might have supposed sick fish went up to be

+dipped in it, as sick people went down to be dipped in the sea. A little

+fishing was done in the port, and a quantity of strolling about by

+night, and looking seaward: particularly at those times when the tide

+made, and was near flood. Small tradesmen, who did no business whatever,

+sometimes unaccountably realised large fortunes, and it was remarkable

+that nobody in the neighbourhood could endure a lamplighter.

+

+As the day declined into the afternoon, and the air, which had been

+at intervals clear enough to allow the French coast to be seen, became

+again charged with mist and vapour, Mr. Lorry's thoughts seemed to cloud

+too. When it was dark, and he sat before the coffee-room fire, awaiting

+his dinner as he had awaited his breakfast, his mind was busily digging,

+digging, digging, in the live red coals.

+

+A bottle of good claret after dinner does a digger in the red coals no

+harm, otherwise than as it has a tendency to throw him out of work.

+Mr. Lorry had been idle a long time, and had just poured out his last

+glassful of wine with as complete an appearance of satisfaction as is

+ever to be found in an elderly gentleman of a fresh complexion who has

+got to the end of a bottle, when a rattling of wheels came up the narrow

+street, and rumbled into the inn-yard.

+

+He set down his glass untouched. "This is Mam'selle!" said he.

+

+In a very few minutes the waiter came in to announce that Miss Manette

+had arrived from London, and would be happy to see the gentleman from

+Tellson's.

+

+"So soon?"

+

+Miss Manette had taken some refreshment on the road, and required none

+then, and was extremely anxious to see the gentleman from Tellson's

+immediately, if it suited his pleasure and convenience.

+

+The gentleman from Tellson's had nothing left for it but to empty his

+glass with an air of stolid desperation, settle his odd little flaxen

+wig at the ears, and follow the waiter to Miss Manette's apartment.

+It was a large, dark room, furnished in a funereal manner with black

+horsehair, and loaded with heavy dark tables. These had been oiled and

+oiled, until the two tall candles on the table in the middle of the room

+were gloomily reflected on every leaf; as if _they_ were buried, in deep

+graves of black mahogany, and no light to speak of could be expected

+from them until they were dug out.

+

+The obscurity was so difficult to penetrate that Mr. Lorry, picking his

+way over the well-worn Turkey carpet, supposed Miss Manette to be, for

+the moment, in some adjacent room, until, having got past the two tall

+candles, he saw standing to receive him by the table between them and

+the fire, a young lady of not more than seventeen, in a riding-cloak,

+and still holding her straw travelling-hat by its ribbon in her hand. As

+his eyes rested on a short, slight, pretty figure, a quantity of golden

+hair, a pair of blue eyes that met his own with an inquiring look, and

+a forehead with a singular capacity (remembering how young and smooth

+it was), of rifting and knitting itself into an expression that was

+not quite one of perplexity, or wonder, or alarm, or merely of a bright

+fixed attention, though it included all the four expressions--as his

+eyes rested on these things, a sudden vivid likeness passed before him,

+of a child whom he had held in his arms on the passage across that very

+Channel, one cold time, when the hail drifted heavily and the sea ran

+high. The likeness passed away, like a breath along the surface of

+the gaunt pier-glass behind her, on the frame of which, a hospital

+procession of negro cupids, several headless and all cripples, were

+offering black baskets of Dead Sea fruit to black divinities of the

+feminine gender--and he made his formal bow to Miss Manette.

+

+"Pray take a seat, sir." In a very clear and pleasant young voice; a

+little foreign in its accent, but a very little indeed.

+

+"I kiss your hand, miss," said Mr. Lorry, with the manners of an earlier

+date, as he made his formal bow again, and took his seat.

+

+"I received a letter from the Bank, sir, yesterday, informing me that

+some intelligence--or discovery--"

+

+"The word is not material, miss; either word will do."

+

+"--respecting the small property of my poor father, whom I never saw--so

+long dead--"

+

+Mr. Lorry moved in his chair, and cast a troubled look towards the

+hospital procession of negro cupids. As if _they_ had any help for

+anybody in their absurd baskets!

+

+"--rendered it necessary that I should go to Paris, there to communicate

+with a gentleman of the Bank, so good as to be despatched to Paris for

+the purpose."

+

+"Myself."

+

+"As I was prepared to hear, sir."

+

+She curtseyed to him (young ladies made curtseys in those days), with a

+pretty desire to convey to him that she felt how much older and wiser he

+was than she. He made her another bow.

+

+"I replied to the Bank, sir, that as it was considered necessary, by

+those who know, and who are so kind as to advise me, that I should go to

+France, and that as I am an orphan and have no friend who could go with

+me, I should esteem it highly if I might be permitted to place myself,

+during the journey, under that worthy gentleman's protection. The

+gentleman had left London, but I think a messenger was sent after him to

+beg the favour of his waiting for me here."

+

+"I was happy," said Mr. Lorry, "to be entrusted with the charge. I shall

+be more happy to execute it."

+

+"Sir, I thank you indeed. I thank you very gratefully. It was told me

+by the Bank that the gentleman would explain to me the details of the

+business, and that I must prepare myself to find them of a surprising

+nature. I have done my best to prepare myself, and I naturally have a

+strong and eager interest to know what they are."

+

+"Naturally," said Mr. Lorry. "Yes--I--"

+

+After a pause, he added, again settling the crisp flaxen wig at the

+ears, "It is very difficult to begin."

+

+He did not begin, but, in his indecision, met her glance. The young

+forehead lifted itself into that singular expression--but it was pretty

+and characteristic, besides being singular--and she raised her hand,

+as if with an involuntary action she caught at, or stayed some passing

+shadow.

+

+"Are you quite a stranger to me, sir?"

+

+"Am I not?" Mr. Lorry opened his hands, and extended them outwards with

+an argumentative smile.

+

+Between the eyebrows and just over the little feminine nose, the line of

+which was as delicate and fine as it was possible to be, the expression

+deepened itself as she took her seat thoughtfully in the chair by which

+she had hitherto remained standing. He watched her as she mused, and the

+moment she raised her eyes again, went on:

+

+"In your adopted country, I presume, I cannot do better than address you

+as a young English lady, Miss Manette?"

+

+"If you please, sir."

+

+"Miss Manette, I am a man of business. I have a business charge to

+acquit myself of. In your reception of it, don't heed me any more than

+if I was a speaking machine--truly, I am not much else. I will, with

+your leave, relate to you, miss, the story of one of our customers."

+

+"Story!"

+

+He seemed wilfully to mistake the word she had repeated, when he added,

+in a hurry, "Yes, customers; in the banking business we usually call

+our connection our customers. He was a French gentleman; a scientific

+gentleman; a man of great acquirements--a Doctor."

+

+"Not of Beauvais?"

+

+"Why, yes, of Beauvais. Like Monsieur Manette, your father, the

+gentleman was of Beauvais. Like Monsieur Manette, your father, the

+gentleman was of repute in Paris. I had the honour of knowing him there.

+Our relations were business relations, but confidential. I was at that

+time in our French House, and had been--oh! twenty years."

+

+"At that time--I may ask, at what time, sir?"

+

+"I speak, miss, of twenty years ago. He married--an English lady--and

+I was one of the trustees. His affairs, like the affairs of many other

+French gentlemen and French families, were entirely in Tellson's hands.

+In a similar way I am, or I have been, trustee of one kind or other for

+scores of our customers. These are mere business relations, miss;

+there is no friendship in them, no particular interest, nothing like

+sentiment. I have passed from one to another, in the course of my

+business life, just as I pass from one of our customers to another in

+the course of my business day; in short, I have no feelings; I am a mere

+machine. To go on--"

+

+"But this is my father's story, sir; and I begin to think"--the

+curiously roughened forehead was very intent upon him--"that when I was

+left an orphan through my mother's surviving my father only two years,

+it was you who brought me to England. I am almost sure it was you."

+

+Mr. Lorry took the hesitating little hand that confidingly advanced

+to take his, and he put it with some ceremony to his lips. He then

+conducted the young lady straightway to her chair again, and, holding

+the chair-back with his left hand, and using his right by turns to rub

+his chin, pull his wig at the ears, or point what he said, stood looking

+down into her face while she sat looking up into his.

+

+"Miss Manette, it _was_ I. And you will see how truly I spoke of myself

+just now, in saying I had no feelings, and that all the relations I hold

+with my fellow-creatures are mere business relations, when you reflect

+that I have never seen you since. No; you have been the ward of

+Tellson's House since, and I have been busy with the other business of

+Tellson's House since. Feelings! I have no time for them, no chance

+of them. I pass my whole life, miss, in turning an immense pecuniary

+Mangle."

+

+After this odd description of his daily routine of employment, Mr. Lorry

+flattened his flaxen wig upon his head with both hands (which was most

+unnecessary, for nothing could be flatter than its shining surface was

+before), and resumed his former attitude.

+

+"So far, miss (as you have remarked), this is the story of your

+regretted father. Now comes the difference. If your father had not died

+when he did--Don't be frightened! How you start!"

+

+She did, indeed, start. And she caught his wrist with both her hands.

+

+"Pray," said Mr. Lorry, in a soothing tone, bringing his left hand from

+the back of the chair to lay it on the supplicatory fingers that clasped

+him in so violent a tremble: "pray control your agitation--a matter of

+business. As I was saying--"

+

+Her look so discomposed him that he stopped, wandered, and began anew:

+

+"As I was saying; if Monsieur Manette had not died; if he had suddenly

+and silently disappeared; if he had been spirited away; if it had not

+been difficult to guess to what dreadful place, though no art could

+trace him; if he had an enemy in some compatriot who could exercise a

+privilege that I in my own time have known the boldest people afraid

+to speak of in a whisper, across the water there; for instance, the

+privilege of filling up blank forms for the consignment of any one

+to the oblivion of a prison for any length of time; if his wife had

+implored the king, the queen, the court, the clergy, for any tidings of

+him, and all quite in vain;--then the history of your father would have

+been the history of this unfortunate gentleman, the Doctor of Beauvais."

+

+"I entreat you to tell me more, sir."

+

+"I will. I am going to. You can bear it?"

+

+"I can bear anything but the uncertainty you leave me in at this

+moment."

+

+"You speak collectedly, and you--_are_ collected. That's good!" (Though

+his manner was less satisfied than his words.) "A matter of business.

+Regard it as a matter of business--business that must be done. Now

+if this doctor's wife, though a lady of great courage and spirit,

+had suffered so intensely from this cause before her little child was

+born--"

+

+"The little child was a daughter, sir."

+

+"A daughter. A-a-matter of business--don't be distressed. Miss, if the

+poor lady had suffered so intensely before her little child was born,

+that she came to the determination of sparing the poor child the

+inheritance of any part of the agony she had known the pains of, by

+rearing her in the belief that her father was dead--No, don't kneel! In

+Heaven's name why should you kneel to me!"

+

+"For the truth. O dear, good, compassionate sir, for the truth!"

+

+"A--a matter of business. You confuse me, and how can I transact

+business if I am confused? Let us be clear-headed. If you could kindly

+mention now, for instance, what nine times ninepence are, or how many

+shillings in twenty guineas, it would be so encouraging. I should be so

+much more at my ease about your state of mind."

+

+Without directly answering to this appeal, she sat so still when he had

+very gently raised her, and the hands that had not ceased to clasp

+his wrists were so much more steady than they had been, that she

+communicated some reassurance to Mr. Jarvis Lorry.

+

+"That's right, that's right. Courage! Business! You have business before

+you; useful business. Miss Manette, your mother took this course with

+you. And when she died--I believe broken-hearted--having never slackened

+her unavailing search for your father, she left you, at two years old,

+to grow to be blooming, beautiful, and happy, without the dark cloud

+upon you of living in uncertainty whether your father soon wore his

+heart out in prison, or wasted there through many lingering years."

+

+As he said the words he looked down, with an admiring pity, on the

+flowing golden hair; as if he pictured to himself that it might have

+been already tinged with grey.

+

+"You know that your parents had no great possession, and that what

+they had was secured to your mother and to you. There has been no new

+discovery, of money, or of any other property; but--"

+

+He felt his wrist held closer, and he stopped. The expression in the

+forehead, which had so particularly attracted his notice, and which was

+now immovable, had deepened into one of pain and horror.

+

+"But he has been--been found. He is alive. Greatly changed, it is too

+probable; almost a wreck, it is possible; though we will hope the best.

+Still, alive. Your father has been taken to the house of an old servant

+in Paris, and we are going there: I, to identify him if I can: you, to

+restore him to life, love, duty, rest, comfort."

+

+A shiver ran through her frame, and from it through his. She said, in a

+low, distinct, awe-stricken voice, as if she were saying it in a dream,

+

+"I am going to see his Ghost! It will be his Ghost--not him!"

+

+Mr. Lorry quietly chafed the hands that held his arm. "There, there,

+there! See now, see now! The best and the worst are known to you, now.

+You are well on your way to the poor wronged gentleman, and, with a fair

+sea voyage, and a fair land journey, you will be soon at his dear side."

+

+She repeated in the same tone, sunk to a whisper, "I have been free, I

+have been happy, yet his Ghost has never haunted me!"

+

+"Only one thing more," said Mr. Lorry, laying stress upon it as a

+wholesome means of enforcing her attention: "he has been found under

+another name; his own, long forgotten or long concealed. It would be

+worse than useless now to inquire which; worse than useless to seek to

+know whether he has been for years overlooked, or always designedly

+held prisoner. It would be worse than useless now to make any inquiries,

+because it would be dangerous. Better not to mention the subject,

+anywhere or in any way, and to remove him--for a while at all

+events--out of France. Even I, safe as an Englishman, and even

+Tellson's, important as they are to French credit, avoid all naming of

+the matter. I carry about me, not a scrap of writing openly referring

+to it. This is a secret service altogether. My credentials, entries,

+and memoranda, are all comprehended in the one line, 'Recalled to Life;'

+which may mean anything. But what is the matter! She doesn't notice a

+word! Miss Manette!"

+

+Perfectly still and silent, and not even fallen back in her chair, she

+sat under his hand, utterly insensible; with her eyes open and fixed

+upon him, and with that last expression looking as if it were carved or

+branded into her forehead. So close was her hold upon his arm, that he

+feared to detach himself lest he should hurt her; therefore he called

+out loudly for assistance without moving.

+

+A wild-looking woman, whom even in his agitation, Mr. Lorry observed to

+be all of a red colour, and to have red hair, and to be dressed in some

+extraordinary tight-fitting fashion, and to have on her head a most

+wonderful bonnet like a Grenadier wooden measure, and good measure too,

+or a great Stilton cheese, came running into the room in advance of the

+inn servants, and soon settled the question of his detachment from the

+poor young lady, by laying a brawny hand upon his chest, and sending him

+flying back against the nearest wall.

+

+("I really think this must be a man!" was Mr. Lorry's breathless

+reflection, simultaneously with his coming against the wall.)

+

+"Why, look at you all!" bawled this figure, addressing the inn servants.

+"Why don't you go and fetch things, instead of standing there staring

+at me? I am not so much to look at, am I? Why don't you go and fetch

+things? I'll let you know, if you don't bring smelling-salts, cold

+water, and vinegar, quick, I will."

+

+There was an immediate dispersal for these restoratives, and she

+softly laid the patient on a sofa, and tended her with great skill and

+gentleness: calling her "my precious!" and "my bird!" and spreading her

+golden hair aside over her shoulders with great pride and care.

+

+"And you in brown!" she said, indignantly turning to Mr. Lorry;

+"couldn't you tell her what you had to tell her, without frightening her

+to death? Look at her, with her pretty pale face and her cold hands. Do

+you call _that_ being a Banker?"

+

+Mr. Lorry was so exceedingly disconcerted by a question so hard to

+answer, that he could only look on, at a distance, with much feebler

+sympathy and humility, while the strong woman, having banished the inn

+servants under the mysterious penalty of "letting them know" something

+not mentioned if they stayed there, staring, recovered her charge by a

+regular series of gradations, and coaxed her to lay her drooping head

+upon her shoulder.

+

+"I hope she will do well now," said Mr. Lorry.

+

+"No thanks to you in brown, if she does. My darling pretty!"

+

+"I hope," said Mr. Lorry, after another pause of feeble sympathy and

+humility, "that you accompany Miss Manette to France?"

+

+"A likely thing, too!" replied the strong woman. "If it was ever

+intended that I should go across salt water, do you suppose Providence

+would have cast my lot in an island?"

+

+This being another question hard to answer, Mr. Jarvis Lorry withdrew to

+consider it.

+

+

+

+

+V. The Wine-shop

+

+

+A large cask of wine had been dropped and broken, in the street. The

+accident had happened in getting it out of a cart; the cask had tumbled

+out with a run, the hoops had burst, and it lay on the stones just

+outside the door of the wine-shop, shattered like a walnut-shell.

+

+All the people within reach had suspended their business, or their

+idleness, to run to the spot and drink the wine. The rough, irregular

+stones of the street, pointing every way, and designed, one might have

+thought, expressly to lame all living creatures that approached them,

+had dammed it into little pools; these were surrounded, each by its own

+jostling group or crowd, according to its size. Some men kneeled down,

+made scoops of their two hands joined, and sipped, or tried to help

+women, who bent over their shoulders, to sip, before the wine had all

+run out between their fingers. Others, men and women, dipped in

+the puddles with little mugs of mutilated earthenware, or even with

+handkerchiefs from women's heads, which were squeezed dry into infants'

+mouths; others made small mud-embankments, to stem the wine as it ran;

+others, directed by lookers-on up at high windows, darted here and

+there, to cut off little streams of wine that started away in new

+directions; others devoted themselves to the sodden and lee-dyed

+pieces of the cask, licking, and even champing the moister wine-rotted

+fragments with eager relish. There was no drainage to carry off the

+wine, and not only did it all get taken up, but so much mud got taken up

+along with it, that there might have been a scavenger in the street,

+if anybody acquainted with it could have believed in such a miraculous

+presence.

+

+A shrill sound of laughter and of amused voices--voices of men, women,

+and children--resounded in the street while this wine game lasted. There

+was little roughness in the sport, and much playfulness. There was a

+special companionship in it, an observable inclination on the part

+of every one to join some other one, which led, especially among the

+luckier or lighter-hearted, to frolicsome embraces, drinking of healths,

+shaking of hands, and even joining of hands and dancing, a dozen

+together. When the wine was gone, and the places where it had been

+most abundant were raked into a gridiron-pattern by fingers, these

+demonstrations ceased, as suddenly as they had broken out. The man who

+had left his saw sticking in the firewood he was cutting, set it in

+motion again; the women who had left on a door-step the little pot of

+hot ashes, at which she had been trying to soften the pain in her own

+starved fingers and toes, or in those of her child, returned to it; men

+with bare arms, matted locks, and cadaverous faces, who had emerged into

+the winter light from cellars, moved away, to descend again; and a gloom

+gathered on the scene that appeared more natural to it than sunshine.

+

+The wine was red wine, and had stained the ground of the narrow street

+in the suburb of Saint Antoine, in Paris, where it was spilled. It had

+stained many hands, too, and many faces, and many naked feet, and many

+wooden shoes. The hands of the man who sawed the wood, left red marks

+on the billets; and the forehead of the woman who nursed her baby, was

+stained with the stain of the old rag she wound about her head again.

+Those who had been greedy with the staves of the cask, had acquired a

+tigerish smear about the mouth; and one tall joker so besmirched, his

+head more out of a long squalid bag of a nightcap than in it, scrawled

+upon a wall with his finger dipped in muddy wine-lees--BLOOD.

+

+The time was to come, when that wine too would be spilled on the

+street-stones, and when the stain of it would be red upon many there.

+

+And now that the cloud settled on Saint Antoine, which a momentary

+gleam had driven from his sacred countenance, the darkness of it was

+heavy--cold, dirt, sickness, ignorance, and want, were the lords in

+waiting on the saintly presence--nobles of great power all of them;

+but, most especially the last. Samples of a people that had undergone a

+terrible grinding and regrinding in the mill, and certainly not in the

+fabulous mill which ground old people young, shivered at every corner,

+passed in and out at every doorway, looked from every window, fluttered

+in every vestige of a garment that the wind shook. The mill which

+had worked them down, was the mill that grinds young people old; the

+children had ancient faces and grave voices; and upon them, and upon the

+grown faces, and ploughed into every furrow of age and coming up afresh,

+was the sigh, Hunger. It was prevalent everywhere. Hunger was pushed out

+of the tall houses, in the wretched clothing that hung upon poles and

+lines; Hunger was patched into them with straw and rag and wood and

+paper; Hunger was repeated in every fragment of the small modicum of

+firewood that the man sawed off; Hunger stared down from the smokeless

+chimneys, and started up from the filthy street that had no offal,

+among its refuse, of anything to eat. Hunger was the inscription on the

+baker's shelves, written in every small loaf of his scanty stock of

+bad bread; at the sausage-shop, in every dead-dog preparation that

+was offered for sale. Hunger rattled its dry bones among the roasting

+chestnuts in the turned cylinder; Hunger was shred into atomics in every

+farthing porringer of husky chips of potato, fried with some reluctant

+drops of oil.

+

+Its abiding place was in all things fitted to it. A narrow winding

+street, full of offence and stench, with other narrow winding streets

+diverging, all peopled by rags and nightcaps, and all smelling of rags

+and nightcaps, and all visible things with a brooding look upon them

+that looked ill. In the hunted air of the people there was yet some

+wild-beast thought of the possibility of turning at bay. Depressed and

+slinking though they were, eyes of fire were not wanting among them; nor

+compressed lips, white with what they suppressed; nor foreheads knitted

+into the likeness of the gallows-rope they mused about enduring, or

+inflicting. The trade signs (and they were almost as many as the shops)

+were, all, grim illustrations of Want. The butcher and the porkman

+painted up, only the leanest scrags of meat; the baker, the coarsest of

+meagre loaves. The people rudely pictured as drinking in the wine-shops,

+croaked over their scanty measures of thin wine and beer, and were

+gloweringly confidential together. Nothing was represented in a

+flourishing condition, save tools and weapons; but, the cutler's knives

+and axes were sharp and bright, the smith's hammers were heavy, and the

+gunmaker's stock was murderous. The crippling stones of the pavement,

+with their many little reservoirs of mud and water, had no footways, but

+broke off abruptly at the doors. The kennel, to make amends, ran down

+the middle of the street--when it ran at all: which was only after heavy

+rains, and then it ran, by many eccentric fits, into the houses. Across

+the streets, at wide intervals, one clumsy lamp was slung by a rope and

+pulley; at night, when the lamplighter had let these down, and lighted,

+and hoisted them again, a feeble grove of dim wicks swung in a sickly

+manner overhead, as if they were at sea. Indeed they were at sea, and

+the ship and crew were in peril of tempest.

+

+For, the time was to come, when the gaunt scarecrows of that region

+should have watched the lamplighter, in their idleness and hunger, so

+long, as to conceive the idea of improving on his method, and hauling

+up men by those ropes and pulleys, to flare upon the darkness of their

+condition. But, the time was not come yet; and every wind that blew over

+France shook the rags of the scarecrows in vain, for the birds, fine of

+song and feather, took no warning.

+

+The wine-shop was a corner shop, better than most others in its

+appearance and degree, and the master of the wine-shop had stood outside

+it, in a yellow waistcoat and green breeches, looking on at the struggle

+for the lost wine. "It's not my affair," said he, with a final shrug

+of the shoulders. "The people from the market did it. Let them bring

+another."

+

+There, his eyes happening to catch the tall joker writing up his joke,

+he called to him across the way:

+

+"Say, then, my Gaspard, what do you do there?"

+

+The fellow pointed to his joke with immense significance, as is often

+the way with his tribe. It missed its mark, and completely failed, as is

+often the way with his tribe too.

+

+"What now? Are you a subject for the mad hospital?" said the wine-shop

+keeper, crossing the road, and obliterating the jest with a handful of

+mud, picked up for the purpose, and smeared over it. "Why do you write

+in the public streets? Is there--tell me thou--is there no other place

+to write such words in?"

+

+In his expostulation he dropped his cleaner hand (perhaps accidentally,

+perhaps not) upon the joker's heart. The joker rapped it with his

+own, took a nimble spring upward, and came down in a fantastic dancing

+attitude, with one of his stained shoes jerked off his foot into his

+hand, and held out. A joker of an extremely, not to say wolfishly

+practical character, he looked, under those circumstances.

+

+"Put it on, put it on," said the other. "Call wine, wine; and finish

+there." With that advice, he wiped his soiled hand upon the joker's

+dress, such as it was--quite deliberately, as having dirtied the hand on

+his account; and then recrossed the road and entered the wine-shop.

+

+This wine-shop keeper was a bull-necked, martial-looking man of thirty,

+and he should have been of a hot temperament, for, although it was a

+bitter day, he wore no coat, but carried one slung over his shoulder.

+His shirt-sleeves were rolled up, too, and his brown arms were bare to

+the elbows. Neither did he wear anything more on his head than his own

+crisply-curling short dark hair. He was a dark man altogether, with good

+eyes and a good bold breadth between them. Good-humoured looking on

+the whole, but implacable-looking, too; evidently a man of a strong

+resolution and a set purpose; a man not desirable to be met, rushing

+down a narrow pass with a gulf on either side, for nothing would turn

+the man.

+

+Madame Defarge, his wife, sat in the shop behind the counter as he

+came in. Madame Defarge was a stout woman of about his own age, with

+a watchful eye that seldom seemed to look at anything, a large hand

+heavily ringed, a steady face, strong features, and great composure of

+manner. There was a character about Madame Defarge, from which one might

+have predicated that she did not often make mistakes against herself

+in any of the reckonings over which she presided. Madame Defarge being

+sensitive to cold, was wrapped in fur, and had a quantity of bright

+shawl twined about her head, though not to the concealment of her large

+earrings. Her knitting was before her, but she had laid it down to pick

+her teeth with a toothpick. Thus engaged, with her right elbow supported

+by her left hand, Madame Defarge said nothing when her lord came in, but

+coughed just one grain of cough. This, in combination with the lifting

+of her darkly defined eyebrows over her toothpick by the breadth of a

+line, suggested to her husband that he would do well to look round the

+shop among the customers, for any new customer who had dropped in while

+he stepped over the way.

+

+The wine-shop keeper accordingly rolled his eyes about, until they

+rested upon an elderly gentleman and a young lady, who were seated in

+a corner. Other company were there: two playing cards, two playing

+dominoes, three standing by the counter lengthening out a short supply

+of wine. As he passed behind the counter, he took notice that the

+elderly gentleman said in a look to the young lady, "This is our man."

+

+"What the devil do _you_ do in that galley there?" said Monsieur Defarge

+to himself; "I don't know you."

+

+But, he feigned not to notice the two strangers, and fell into discourse

+with the triumvirate of customers who were drinking at the counter.

+

+"How goes it, Jacques?" said one of these three to Monsieur Defarge. "Is

+all the spilt wine swallowed?"

+

+"Every drop, Jacques," answered Monsieur Defarge.

+

+When this interchange of Christian name was effected, Madame Defarge,

+picking her teeth with her toothpick, coughed another grain of cough,

+and raised her eyebrows by the breadth of another line.

+

+"It is not often," said the second of the three, addressing Monsieur

+Defarge, "that many of these miserable beasts know the taste of wine, or

+of anything but black bread and death. Is it not so, Jacques?"

+

+"It is so, Jacques," Monsieur Defarge returned.

+

+At this second interchange of the Christian name, Madame Defarge, still

+using her toothpick with profound composure, coughed another grain of

+cough, and raised her eyebrows by the breadth of another line.

+

+The last of the three now said his say, as he put down his empty

+drinking vessel and smacked his lips.

+

+"Ah! So much the worse! A bitter taste it is that such poor cattle

+always have in their mouths, and hard lives they live, Jacques. Am I

+right, Jacques?"

+

+"You are right, Jacques," was the response of Monsieur Defarge.

+

+This third interchange of the Christian name was completed at the moment

+when Madame Defarge put her toothpick by, kept her eyebrows up, and

+slightly rustled in her seat.

+

+"Hold then! True!" muttered her husband. "Gentlemen--my wife!"

+

+The three customers pulled off their hats to Madame Defarge, with three

+flourishes. She acknowledged their homage by bending her head, and

+giving them a quick look. Then she glanced in a casual manner round the

+wine-shop, took up her knitting with great apparent calmness and repose

+of spirit, and became absorbed in it.

+

+"Gentlemen," said her husband, who had kept his bright eye observantly

+upon her, "good day. The chamber, furnished bachelor-fashion, that you

+wished to see, and were inquiring for when I stepped out, is on the

+fifth floor. The doorway of the staircase gives on the little courtyard

+close to the left here," pointing with his hand, "near to the window of

+my establishment. But, now that I remember, one of you has already been

+there, and can show the way. Gentlemen, adieu!"

+

+They paid for their wine, and left the place. The eyes of Monsieur

+Defarge were studying his wife at her knitting when the elderly

+gentleman advanced from his corner, and begged the favour of a word.

+

+"Willingly, sir," said Monsieur Defarge, and quietly stepped with him to

+the door.

+

+Their conference was very short, but very decided. Almost at the first

+word, Monsieur Defarge started and became deeply attentive. It had

+not lasted a minute, when he nodded and went out. The gentleman then

+beckoned to the young lady, and they, too, went out. Madame Defarge

+knitted with nimble fingers and steady eyebrows, and saw nothing.

+

+Mr. Jarvis Lorry and Miss Manette, emerging from the wine-shop thus,

+joined Monsieur Defarge in the doorway to which he had directed his own

+company just before. It opened from a stinking little black courtyard,

+and was the general public entrance to a great pile of houses, inhabited

+by a great number of people. In the gloomy tile-paved entry to the

+gloomy tile-paved staircase, Monsieur Defarge bent down on one knee

+to the child of his old master, and put her hand to his lips. It was

+a gentle action, but not at all gently done; a very remarkable

+transformation had come over him in a few seconds. He had no good-humour

+in his face, nor any openness of aspect left, but had become a secret,

+angry, dangerous man.

+

+"It is very high; it is a little difficult. Better to begin slowly."

+Thus, Monsieur Defarge, in a stern voice, to Mr. Lorry, as they began

+ascending the stairs.

+

+"Is he alone?" the latter whispered.

+

+"Alone! God help him, who should be with him!" said the other, in the

+same low voice.

+

+"Is he always alone, then?"

+

+"Yes."

+

+"Of his own desire?"

+

+"Of his own necessity. As he was, when I first saw him after they

+found me and demanded to know if I would take him, and, at my peril be

+discreet--as he was then, so he is now."

+

+"He is greatly changed?"

+

+"Changed!"

+

+The keeper of the wine-shop stopped to strike the wall with his hand,

+and mutter a tremendous curse. No direct answer could have been half so

+forcible. Mr. Lorry's spirits grew heavier and heavier, as he and his

+two companions ascended higher and higher.

+

+Such a staircase, with its accessories, in the older and more crowded

+parts of Paris, would be bad enough now; but, at that time, it was vile

+indeed to unaccustomed and unhardened senses. Every little habitation

+within the great foul nest of one high building--that is to say,

+the room or rooms within every door that opened on the general

+staircase--left its own heap of refuse on its own landing, besides

+flinging other refuse from its own windows. The uncontrollable and

+hopeless mass of decomposition so engendered, would have polluted

+the air, even if poverty and deprivation had not loaded it with their

+intangible impurities; the two bad sources combined made it almost

+insupportable. Through such an atmosphere, by a steep dark shaft of dirt

+and poison, the way lay. Yielding to his own disturbance of mind, and to

+his young companion's agitation, which became greater every instant, Mr.

+Jarvis Lorry twice stopped to rest. Each of these stoppages was made

+at a doleful grating, by which any languishing good airs that were left

+uncorrupted, seemed to escape, and all spoilt and sickly vapours seemed

+to crawl in. Through the rusted bars, tastes, rather than glimpses, were

+caught of the jumbled neighbourhood; and nothing within range, nearer

+or lower than the summits of the two great towers of Notre-Dame, had any

+promise on it of healthy life or wholesome aspirations.

+

+At last, the top of the staircase was gained, and they stopped for the

+third time. There was yet an upper staircase, of a steeper inclination

+and of contracted dimensions, to be ascended, before the garret story

+was reached. The keeper of the wine-shop, always going a little in

+advance, and always going on the side which Mr. Lorry took, as though he

+dreaded to be asked any question by the young lady, turned himself about

+here, and, carefully feeling in the pockets of the coat he carried over

+his shoulder, took out a key.

+

+"The door is locked then, my friend?" said Mr. Lorry, surprised.

+

+"Ay. Yes," was the grim reply of Monsieur Defarge.

+

+"You think it necessary to keep the unfortunate gentleman so retired?"

+

+"I think it necessary to turn the key." Monsieur Defarge whispered it

+closer in his ear, and frowned heavily.

+

+"Why?"

+

+"Why! Because he has lived so long, locked up, that he would be

+frightened--rave--tear himself to pieces--die--come to I know not what

+harm--if his door was left open."

+

+"Is it possible!" exclaimed Mr. Lorry.

+

+"Is it possible!" repeated Defarge, bitterly. "Yes. And a beautiful

+world we live in, when it _is_ possible, and when many other such things

+are possible, and not only possible, but done--done, see you!--under

+that sky there, every day. Long live the Devil. Let us go on."

+

+This dialogue had been held in so very low a whisper, that not a word

+of it had reached the young lady's ears. But, by this time she trembled

+under such strong emotion, and her face expressed such deep anxiety,

+and, above all, such dread and terror, that Mr. Lorry felt it incumbent

+on him to speak a word or two of reassurance.

+

+"Courage, dear miss! Courage! Business! The worst will be over in a

+moment; it is but passing the room-door, and the worst is over. Then,

+all the good you bring to him, all the relief, all the happiness you

+bring to him, begin. Let our good friend here, assist you on that side.

+That's well, friend Defarge. Come, now. Business, business!"

+

+They went up slowly and softly. The staircase was short, and they were

+soon at the top. There, as it had an abrupt turn in it, they came all at

+once in sight of three men, whose heads were bent down close together at

+the side of a door, and who were intently looking into the room to which

+the door belonged, through some chinks or holes in the wall. On hearing

+footsteps close at hand, these three turned, and rose, and showed

+themselves to be the three of one name who had been drinking in the

+wine-shop.

+

+"I forgot them in the surprise of your visit," explained Monsieur

+Defarge. "Leave us, good boys; we have business here."

+

+The three glided by, and went silently down.

+

+There appearing to be no other door on that floor, and the keeper of

+the wine-shop going straight to this one when they were left alone, Mr.

+Lorry asked him in a whisper, with a little anger:

+

+"Do you make a show of Monsieur Manette?"

+

+"I show him, in the way you have seen, to a chosen few."

+

+"Is that well?"

+

+"_I_ think it is well."

+

+"Who are the few? How do you choose them?"

+

+"I choose them as real men, of my name--Jacques is my name--to whom the

+sight is likely to do good. Enough; you are English; that is another

+thing. Stay there, if you please, a little moment."

+

+With an admonitory gesture to keep them back, he stooped, and looked in

+through the crevice in the wall. Soon raising his head again, he struck

+twice or thrice upon the door--evidently with no other object than to

+make a noise there. With the same intention, he drew the key across it,

+three or four times, before he put it clumsily into the lock, and turned

+it as heavily as he could.

+

+The door slowly opened inward under his hand, and he looked into the

+room and said something. A faint voice answered something. Little more

+than a single syllable could have been spoken on either side.

+

+He looked back over his shoulder, and beckoned them to enter. Mr. Lorry

+got his arm securely round the daughter's waist, and held her; for he

+felt that she was sinking.

+

+"A-a-a-business, business!" he urged, with a moisture that was not of

+business shining on his cheek. "Come in, come in!"

+

+"I am afraid of it," she answered, shuddering.

+

+"Of it? What?"

+

+"I mean of him. Of my father."

+

+Rendered in a manner desperate, by her state and by the beckoning of

+their conductor, he drew over his neck the arm that shook upon his

+shoulder, lifted her a little, and hurried her into the room. He sat her

+down just within the door, and held her, clinging to him.

+

+Defarge drew out the key, closed the door, locked it on the inside,

+took out the key again, and held it in his hand. All this he did,

+methodically, and with as loud and harsh an accompaniment of noise as he

+could make. Finally, he walked across the room with a measured tread to

+where the window was. He stopped there, and faced round.

+

+The garret, built to be a depository for firewood and the like, was dim

+and dark: for, the window of dormer shape, was in truth a door in the

+roof, with a little crane over it for the hoisting up of stores from

+the street: unglazed, and closing up the middle in two pieces, like any

+other door of French construction. To exclude the cold, one half of this

+door was fast closed, and the other was opened but a very little way.

+Such a scanty portion of light was admitted through these means, that it

+was difficult, on first coming in, to see anything; and long habit

+alone could have slowly formed in any one, the ability to do any work

+requiring nicety in such obscurity. Yet, work of that kind was being

+done in the garret; for, with his back towards the door, and his face

+towards the window where the keeper of the wine-shop stood looking at

+him, a white-haired man sat on a low bench, stooping forward and very

+busy, making shoes.

+

+

+

+

+VI. The Shoemaker

+

+

+"Good day!" said Monsieur Defarge, looking down at the white head that

+bent low over the shoemaking.

+

+It was raised for a moment, and a very faint voice responded to the

+salutation, as if it were at a distance:

+

+"Good day!"

+

+"You are still hard at work, I see?"

+

+After a long silence, the head was lifted for another moment, and the

+voice replied, "Yes--I am working." This time, a pair of haggard eyes

+had looked at the questioner, before the face had dropped again.

+

+The faintness of the voice was pitiable and dreadful. It was not the

+faintness of physical weakness, though confinement and hard fare no

+doubt had their part in it. Its deplorable peculiarity was, that it was

+the faintness of solitude and disuse. It was like the last feeble echo

+of a sound made long and long ago. So entirely had it lost the life and

+resonance of the human voice, that it affected the senses like a once

+beautiful colour faded away into a poor weak stain. So sunken and

+suppressed it was, that it was like a voice underground. So expressive

+it was, of a hopeless and lost creature, that a famished traveller,

+wearied out by lonely wandering in a wilderness, would have remembered

+home and friends in such a tone before lying down to die.

+

+Some minutes of silent work had passed: and the haggard eyes had looked

+up again: not with any interest or curiosity, but with a dull mechanical

+perception, beforehand, that the spot where the only visitor they were

+aware of had stood, was not yet empty.

+

+"I want," said Defarge, who had not removed his gaze from the shoemaker,

+"to let in a little more light here. You can bear a little more?"

+

+The shoemaker stopped his work; looked with a vacant air of listening,

+at the floor on one side of him; then similarly, at the floor on the

+other side of him; then, upward at the speaker.

+

+"What did you say?"

+

+"You can bear a little more light?"

+

+"I must bear it, if you let it in." (Laying the palest shadow of a

+stress upon the second word.)

+

+The opened half-door was opened a little further, and secured at that

+angle for the time. A broad ray of light fell into the garret, and

+showed the workman with an unfinished shoe upon his lap, pausing in his

+labour. His few common tools and various scraps of leather were at his

+feet and on his bench. He had a white beard, raggedly cut, but not very

+long, a hollow face, and exceedingly bright eyes. The hollowness and

+thinness of his face would have caused them to look large, under his yet

+dark eyebrows and his confused white hair, though they had been really

+otherwise; but, they were naturally large, and looked unnaturally so.

+His yellow rags of shirt lay open at the throat, and showed his body

+to be withered and worn. He, and his old canvas frock, and his loose

+stockings, and all his poor tatters of clothes, had, in a long seclusion

+from direct light and air, faded down to such a dull uniformity of

+parchment-yellow, that it would have been hard to say which was which.

+

+He had put up a hand between his eyes and the light, and the very bones

+of it seemed transparent. So he sat, with a steadfastly vacant gaze,

+pausing in his work. He never looked at the figure before him, without

+first looking down on this side of himself, then on that, as if he had

+lost the habit of associating place with sound; he never spoke, without

+first wandering in this manner, and forgetting to speak.

+

+"Are you going to finish that pair of shoes to-day?" asked Defarge,

+motioning to Mr. Lorry to come forward.

+

+"What did you say?"

+

+"Do you mean to finish that pair of shoes to-day?"

+

+"I can't say that I mean to. I suppose so. I don't know."

+

+But, the question reminded him of his work, and he bent over it again.

+

+Mr. Lorry came silently forward, leaving the daughter by the door. When

+he had stood, for a minute or two, by the side of Defarge, the shoemaker

+looked up. He showed no surprise at seeing another figure, but the

+unsteady fingers of one of his hands strayed to his lips as he looked at

+it (his lips and his nails were of the same pale lead-colour), and then

+the hand dropped to his work, and he once more bent over the shoe. The

+look and the action had occupied but an instant.

+

+"You have a visitor, you see," said Monsieur Defarge.

+

+"What did you say?"

+

+"Here is a visitor."

+

+The shoemaker looked up as before, but without removing a hand from his

+work.

+

+"Come!" said Defarge. "Here is monsieur, who knows a well-made shoe when

+he sees one. Show him that shoe you are working at. Take it, monsieur."

+

+Mr. Lorry took it in his hand.

+

+"Tell monsieur what kind of shoe it is, and the maker's name."

+

+There was a longer pause than usual, before the shoemaker replied:

+

+"I forget what it was you asked me. What did you say?"

+

+"I said, couldn't you describe the kind of shoe, for monsieur's

+information?"

+

+"It is a lady's shoe. It is a young lady's walking-shoe. It is in the

+present mode. I never saw the mode. I have had a pattern in my hand." He

+glanced at the shoe with some little passing touch of pride.

+

+"And the maker's name?" said Defarge.

+

+Now that he had no work to hold, he laid the knuckles of the right hand

+in the hollow of the left, and then the knuckles of the left hand in the

+hollow of the right, and then passed a hand across his bearded chin, and

+so on in regular changes, without a moment's intermission. The task of

+recalling him from the vagrancy into which he always sank when he

+had spoken, was like recalling some very weak person from a swoon, or

+endeavouring, in the hope of some disclosure, to stay the spirit of a

+fast-dying man.

+

+"Did you ask me for my name?"

+

+"Assuredly I did."

+

+"One Hundred and Five, North Tower."

+

+"Is that all?"

+

+"One Hundred and Five, North Tower."

+

+With a weary sound that was not a sigh, nor a groan, he bent to work

+again, until the silence was again broken.

+

+"You are not a shoemaker by trade?" said Mr. Lorry, looking steadfastly

+at him.

+

+His haggard eyes turned to Defarge as if he would have transferred the

+question to him: but as no help came from that quarter, they turned back

+on the questioner when they had sought the ground.

+

+"I am not a shoemaker by trade? No, I was not a shoemaker by trade. I-I

+learnt it here. I taught myself. I asked leave to--"

+

+He lapsed away, even for minutes, ringing those measured changes on his

+hands the whole time. His eyes came slowly back, at last, to the face

+from which they had wandered; when they rested on it, he started, and

+resumed, in the manner of a sleeper that moment awake, reverting to a

+subject of last night.

+

+"I asked leave to teach myself, and I got it with much difficulty after

+a long while, and I have made shoes ever since."

+

+As he held out his hand for the shoe that had been taken from him, Mr.

+Lorry said, still looking steadfastly in his face:

+

+"Monsieur Manette, do you remember nothing of me?"

+

+The shoe dropped to the ground, and he sat looking fixedly at the

+questioner.

+

+"Monsieur Manette"; Mr. Lorry laid his hand upon Defarge's arm; "do you

+remember nothing of this man? Look at him. Look at me. Is there no old

+banker, no old business, no old servant, no old time, rising in your

+mind, Monsieur Manette?"

+

+As the captive of many years sat looking fixedly, by turns, at Mr.

+Lorry and at Defarge, some long obliterated marks of an actively intent

+intelligence in the middle of the forehead, gradually forced themselves

+through the black mist that had fallen on him. They were overclouded

+again, they were fainter, they were gone; but they had been there. And

+so exactly was the expression repeated on the fair young face of her who

+had crept along the wall to a point where she could see him, and where

+she now stood looking at him, with hands which at first had been only

+raised in frightened compassion, if not even to keep him off and

+shut out the sight of him, but which were now extending towards him,

+trembling with eagerness to lay the spectral face upon her warm young

+breast, and love it back to life and hope--so exactly was the expression

+repeated (though in stronger characters) on her fair young face, that it

+looked as though it had passed like a moving light, from him to her.

+

+Darkness had fallen on him in its place. He looked at the two, less and

+less attentively, and his eyes in gloomy abstraction sought the ground

+and looked about him in the old way. Finally, with a deep long sigh, he

+took the shoe up, and resumed his work.

+

+"Have you recognised him, monsieur?" asked Defarge in a whisper.

+

+"Yes; for a moment. At first I thought it quite hopeless, but I have

+unquestionably seen, for a single moment, the face that I once knew so

+well. Hush! Let us draw further back. Hush!"

+

+She had moved from the wall of the garret, very near to the bench on

+which he sat. There was something awful in his unconsciousness of the

+figure that could have put out its hand and touched him as he stooped

+over his labour.

+

+Not a word was spoken, not a sound was made. She stood, like a spirit,

+beside him, and he bent over his work.

+

+It happened, at length, that he had occasion to change the instrument

+in his hand, for his shoemaker's knife. It lay on that side of him

+which was not the side on which she stood. He had taken it up, and was

+stooping to work again, when his eyes caught the skirt of her dress. He

+raised them, and saw her face. The two spectators started forward,

+but she stayed them with a motion of her hand. She had no fear of his

+striking at her with the knife, though they had.

+

+He stared at her with a fearful look, and after a while his lips began

+to form some words, though no sound proceeded from them. By degrees, in

+the pauses of his quick and laboured breathing, he was heard to say:

+

+"What is this?"

+

+With the tears streaming down her face, she put her two hands to her

+lips, and kissed them to him; then clasped them on her breast, as if she

+laid his ruined head there.

+

+"You are not the gaoler's daughter?"

+

+She sighed "No."

+

+"Who are you?"

+

+Not yet trusting the tones of her voice, she sat down on the bench

+beside him. He recoiled, but she laid her hand upon his arm. A strange

+thrill struck him when she did so, and visibly passed over his frame; he

+laid the knife down softly, as he sat staring at her.

+

+Her golden hair, which she wore in long curls, had been hurriedly pushed

+aside, and fell down over her neck. Advancing his hand by little and

+little, he took it up and looked at it. In the midst of the action

+he went astray, and, with another deep sigh, fell to work at his

+shoemaking.

+

+But not for long. Releasing his arm, she laid her hand upon his

+shoulder. After looking doubtfully at it, two or three times, as if to

+be sure that it was really there, he laid down his work, put his hand

+to his neck, and took off a blackened string with a scrap of folded rag

+attached to it. He opened this, carefully, on his knee, and it contained

+a very little quantity of hair: not more than one or two long golden

+hairs, which he had, in some old day, wound off upon his finger.

+

+He took her hair into his hand again, and looked closely at it. "It is

+the same. How can it be! When was it! How was it!"

+

+As the concentrated expression returned to his forehead, he seemed to

+become conscious that it was in hers too. He turned her full to the

+light, and looked at her.

+

+"She had laid her head upon my shoulder, that night when I was summoned

+out--she had a fear of my going, though I had none--and when I was

+brought to the North Tower they found these upon my sleeve. 'You will

+leave me them? They can never help me to escape in the body, though they

+may in the spirit.' Those were the words I said. I remember them very

+well."

+

+He formed this speech with his lips many times before he could utter it.

+But when he did find spoken words for it, they came to him coherently,

+though slowly.

+

+"How was this?--_Was it you_?"

+

+Once more, the two spectators started, as he turned upon her with a

+frightful suddenness. But she sat perfectly still in his grasp, and only

+said, in a low voice, "I entreat you, good gentlemen, do not come near

+us, do not speak, do not move!"

+

+"Hark!" he exclaimed. "Whose voice was that?"

+

+His hands released her as he uttered this cry, and went up to his white

+hair, which they tore in a frenzy. It died out, as everything but his

+shoemaking did die out of him, and he refolded his little packet and

+tried to secure it in his breast; but he still looked at her, and

+gloomily shook his head.

+

+"No, no, no; you are too young, too blooming. It can't be. See what the

+prisoner is. These are not the hands she knew, this is not the face

+she knew, this is not a voice she ever heard. No, no. She was--and He

+was--before the slow years of the North Tower--ages ago. What is your

+name, my gentle angel?"

+

+Hailing his softened tone and manner, his daughter fell upon her knees

+before him, with her appealing hands upon his breast.

+

+"O, sir, at another time you shall know my name, and who my mother was,

+and who my father, and how I never knew their hard, hard history. But I

+cannot tell you at this time, and I cannot tell you here. All that I may

+tell you, here and now, is, that I pray to you to touch me and to bless

+me. Kiss me, kiss me! O my dear, my dear!"

+

+His cold white head mingled with her radiant hair, which warmed and

+lighted it as though it were the light of Freedom shining on him.

+

+"If you hear in my voice--I don't know that it is so, but I hope it

+is--if you hear in my voice any resemblance to a voice that once was

+sweet music in your ears, weep for it, weep for it! If you touch, in

+touching my hair, anything that recalls a beloved head that lay on your

+breast when you were young and free, weep for it, weep for it! If, when

+I hint to you of a Home that is before us, where I will be true to you

+with all my duty and with all my faithful service, I bring back the

+remembrance of a Home long desolate, while your poor heart pined away,

+weep for it, weep for it!"

+

+She held him closer round the neck, and rocked him on her breast like a

+child.

+

+"If, when I tell you, dearest dear, that your agony is over, and that I

+have come here to take you from it, and that we go to England to be at

+peace and at rest, I cause you to think of your useful life laid waste,

+and of our native France so wicked to you, weep for it, weep for it! And

+if, when I shall tell you of my name, and of my father who is living,

+and of my mother who is dead, you learn that I have to kneel to my

+honoured father, and implore his pardon for having never for his sake

+striven all day and lain awake and wept all night, because the love of

+my poor mother hid his torture from me, weep for it, weep for it! Weep

+for her, then, and for me! Good gentlemen, thank God! I feel his sacred

+tears upon my face, and his sobs strike against my heart. O, see! Thank

+God for us, thank God!"

+

+He had sunk in her arms, and his face dropped on her breast: a sight so

+touching, yet so terrible in the tremendous wrong and suffering which

+had gone before it, that the two beholders covered their faces.

+

+When the quiet of the garret had been long undisturbed, and his heaving

+breast and shaken form had long yielded to the calm that must follow all

+storms--emblem to humanity, of the rest and silence into which the storm

+called Life must hush at last--they came forward to raise the father and

+daughter from the ground. He had gradually dropped to the floor, and lay

+there in a lethargy, worn out. She had nestled down with him, that his

+head might lie upon her arm; and her hair drooping over him curtained

+him from the light.

+

+"If, without disturbing him," she said, raising her hand to Mr. Lorry as

+he stooped over them, after repeated blowings of his nose, "all could be

+arranged for our leaving Paris at once, so that, from the very door, he

+could be taken away--"

+

+"But, consider. Is he fit for the journey?" asked Mr. Lorry.

+

+"More fit for that, I think, than to remain in this city, so dreadful to

+him."

+

+"It is true," said Defarge, who was kneeling to look on and hear. "More

+than that; Monsieur Manette is, for all reasons, best out of France.

+Say, shall I hire a carriage and post-horses?"

+

+"That's business," said Mr. Lorry, resuming on the shortest notice his

+methodical manners; "and if business is to be done, I had better do it."

+

+"Then be so kind," urged Miss Manette, "as to leave us here. You see how

+composed he has become, and you cannot be afraid to leave him with me

+now. Why should you be? If you will lock the door to secure us from

+interruption, I do not doubt that you will find him, when you come back,

+as quiet as you leave him. In any case, I will take care of him until

+you return, and then we will remove him straight."

+

+Both Mr. Lorry and Defarge were rather disinclined to this course, and

+in favour of one of them remaining. But, as there were not only carriage

+and horses to be seen to, but travelling papers; and as time pressed,

+for the day was drawing to an end, it came at last to their hastily

+dividing the business that was necessary to be done, and hurrying away

+to do it.

+

+Then, as the darkness closed in, the daughter laid her head down on the

+hard ground close at the father's side, and watched him. The darkness

+deepened and deepened, and they both lay quiet, until a light gleamed

+through the chinks in the wall.

+

+Mr. Lorry and Monsieur Defarge had made all ready for the journey, and

+had brought with them, besides travelling cloaks and wrappers, bread and

+meat, wine, and hot coffee. Monsieur Defarge put this provender, and the

+lamp he carried, on the shoemaker's bench (there was nothing else in the

+garret but a pallet bed), and he and Mr. Lorry roused the captive, and

+assisted him to his feet.

+

+No human intelligence could have read the mysteries of his mind, in

+the scared blank wonder of his face. Whether he knew what had happened,

+whether he recollected what they had said to him, whether he knew that

+he was free, were questions which no sagacity could have solved. They

+tried speaking to him; but, he was so confused, and so very slow to

+answer, that they took fright at his bewilderment, and agreed for

+the time to tamper with him no more. He had a wild, lost manner of

+occasionally clasping his head in his hands, that had not been seen

+in him before; yet, he had some pleasure in the mere sound of his

+daughter's voice, and invariably turned to it when she spoke.

+

+In the submissive way of one long accustomed to obey under coercion, he

+ate and drank what they gave him to eat and drink, and put on the cloak

+and other wrappings, that they gave him to wear. He readily responded to

+his daughter's drawing her arm through his, and took--and kept--her hand

+in both his own.

+

+They began to descend; Monsieur Defarge going first with the lamp, Mr.

+Lorry closing the little procession. They had not traversed many steps

+of the long main staircase when he stopped, and stared at the roof and

+round at the walls.

+

+"You remember the place, my father? You remember coming up here?"

+

+"What did you say?"

+

+But, before she could repeat the question, he murmured an answer as if

+she had repeated it.

+

+"Remember? No, I don't remember. It was so very long ago."

+

+That he had no recollection whatever of his having been brought from his

+prison to that house, was apparent to them. They heard him mutter,

+"One Hundred and Five, North Tower;" and when he looked about him, it

+evidently was for the strong fortress-walls which had long encompassed

+him. On their reaching the courtyard he instinctively altered his

+tread, as being in expectation of a drawbridge; and when there was

+no drawbridge, and he saw the carriage waiting in the open street, he

+dropped his daughter's hand and clasped his head again.

+

+No crowd was about the door; no people were discernible at any of the

+many windows; not even a chance passerby was in the street. An unnatural

+silence and desertion reigned there. Only one soul was to be seen, and

+that was Madame Defarge--who leaned against the door-post, knitting, and

+saw nothing.

+

+The prisoner had got into a coach, and his daughter had followed

+him, when Mr. Lorry's feet were arrested on the step by his asking,

+miserably, for his shoemaking tools and the unfinished shoes. Madame

+Defarge immediately called to her husband that she would get them, and

+went, knitting, out of the lamplight, through the courtyard. She quickly

+brought them down and handed them in;--and immediately afterwards leaned

+against the door-post, knitting, and saw nothing.

+

+Defarge got upon the box, and gave the word "To the Barrier!" The

+postilion cracked his whip, and they clattered away under the feeble

+over-swinging lamps.

+

+Under the over-swinging lamps--swinging ever brighter in the better

+streets, and ever dimmer in the worse--and by lighted shops, gay crowds,

+illuminated coffee-houses, and theatre-doors, to one of the city

+gates. Soldiers with lanterns, at the guard-house there. "Your papers,

+travellers!" "See here then, Monsieur the Officer," said Defarge,

+getting down, and taking him gravely apart, "these are the papers of

+monsieur inside, with the white head. They were consigned to me, with

+him, at the--" He dropped his voice, there was a flutter among the

+military lanterns, and one of them being handed into the coach by an arm

+in uniform, the eyes connected with the arm looked, not an every day

+or an every night look, at monsieur with the white head. "It is well.

+Forward!" from the uniform. "Adieu!" from Defarge. And so, under a short

+grove of feebler and feebler over-swinging lamps, out under the great

+grove of stars.

+

+Beneath that arch of unmoved and eternal lights; some, so remote from

+this little earth that the learned tell us it is doubtful whether their

+rays have even yet discovered it, as a point in space where anything

+is suffered or done: the shadows of the night were broad and black.

+All through the cold and restless interval, until dawn, they once more

+whispered in the ears of Mr. Jarvis Lorry--sitting opposite the buried

+man who had been dug out, and wondering what subtle powers were for ever

+lost to him, and what were capable of restoration--the old inquiry:

+

+"I hope you care to be recalled to life?"

+

+And the old answer:

+

+"I can't say."

+

+

+The end of the first book.

+

+

+

+

+

+Book the Second--the Golden Thread

+

+

+

+

+I. Five Years Later

+

+

+Tellson's Bank by Temple Bar was an old-fashioned place, even in the

+year one thousand seven hundred and eighty. It was very small, very

+dark, very ugly, very incommodious. It was an old-fashioned place,

+moreover, in the moral attribute that the partners in the House were

+proud of its smallness, proud of its darkness, proud of its ugliness,

+proud of its incommodiousness. They were even boastful of its eminence

+in those particulars, and were fired by an express conviction that, if

+it were less objectionable, it would be less respectable. This was

+no passive belief, but an active weapon which they flashed at more

+convenient places of business. Tellson's (they said) wanted

+no elbow-room, Tellson's wanted no light, Tellson's wanted no

+embellishment. Noakes and Co.'s might, or Snooks Brothers' might; but

+Tellson's, thank Heaven--!

+

+Any one of these partners would have disinherited his son on the

+question of rebuilding Tellson's. In this respect the House was much

+on a par with the Country; which did very often disinherit its sons for

+suggesting improvements in laws and customs that had long been highly

+objectionable, but were only the more respectable.

+

+Thus it had come to pass, that Tellson's was the triumphant perfection

+of inconvenience. After bursting open a door of idiotic obstinacy with

+a weak rattle in its throat, you fell into Tellson's down two steps,

+and came to your senses in a miserable little shop, with two little

+counters, where the oldest of men made your cheque shake as if the

+wind rustled it, while they examined the signature by the dingiest of

+windows, which were always under a shower-bath of mud from Fleet-street,

+and which were made the dingier by their own iron bars proper, and the

+heavy shadow of Temple Bar. If your business necessitated your seeing

+"the House," you were put into a species of Condemned Hold at the back,

+where you meditated on a misspent life, until the House came with its

+hands in its pockets, and you could hardly blink at it in the dismal

+twilight. Your money came out of, or went into, wormy old wooden

+drawers, particles of which flew up your nose and down your throat when

+they were opened and shut. Your bank-notes had a musty odour, as if they

+were fast decomposing into rags again. Your plate was stowed away among

+the neighbouring cesspools, and evil communications corrupted its good

+polish in a day or two. Your deeds got into extemporised strong-rooms

+made of kitchens and sculleries, and fretted all the fat out of their

+parchments into the banking-house air. Your lighter boxes of family

+papers went up-stairs into a Barmecide room, that always had a great

+dining-table in it and never had a dinner, and where, even in the year

+one thousand seven hundred and eighty, the first letters written to you

+by your old love, or by your little children, were but newly released

+from the horror of being ogled through the windows, by the heads

+exposed on Temple Bar with an insensate brutality and ferocity worthy of

+Abyssinia or Ashantee.

+

+But indeed, at that time, putting to death was a recipe much in vogue

+with all trades and professions, and not least of all with Tellson's.

+Death is Nature's remedy for all things, and why not Legislation's?

+Accordingly, the forger was put to Death; the utterer of a bad note

+was put to Death; the unlawful opener of a letter was put to Death; the

+purloiner of forty shillings and sixpence was put to Death; the holder

+of a horse at Tellson's door, who made off with it, was put to

+Death; the coiner of a bad shilling was put to Death; the sounders of

+three-fourths of the notes in the whole gamut of Crime, were put to

+Death. Not that it did the least good in the way of prevention--it

+might almost have been worth remarking that the fact was exactly the

+reverse--but, it cleared off (as to this world) the trouble of each

+particular case, and left nothing else connected with it to be looked

+after. Thus, Tellson's, in its day, like greater places of business,

+its contemporaries, had taken so many lives, that, if the heads laid

+low before it had been ranged on Temple Bar instead of being privately

+disposed of, they would probably have excluded what little light the

+ground floor had, in a rather significant manner.

+

+Cramped in all kinds of dim cupboards and hutches at Tellson's, the

+oldest of men carried on the business gravely. When they took a young

+man into Tellson's London house, they hid him somewhere till he was

+old. They kept him in a dark place, like a cheese, until he had the full

+Tellson flavour and blue-mould upon him. Then only was he permitted to

+be seen, spectacularly poring over large books, and casting his breeches

+and gaiters into the general weight of the establishment.

+

+Outside Tellson's--never by any means in it, unless called in--was an

+odd-job-man, an occasional porter and messenger, who served as the live

+sign of the house. He was never absent during business hours, unless

+upon an errand, and then he was represented by his son: a grisly urchin

+of twelve, who was his express image. People understood that Tellson's,

+in a stately way, tolerated the odd-job-man. The house had always

+tolerated some person in that capacity, and time and tide had drifted

+this person to the post. His surname was Cruncher, and on the youthful

+occasion of his renouncing by proxy the works of darkness, in the

+easterly parish church of Hounsditch, he had received the added

+appellation of Jerry.

+

+The scene was Mr. Cruncher's private lodging in Hanging-sword-alley,

+Whitefriars: the time, half-past seven of the clock on a windy March

+morning, Anno Domini seventeen hundred and eighty. (Mr. Cruncher himself

+always spoke of the year of our Lord as Anna Dominoes: apparently under

+the impression that the Christian era dated from the invention of a

+popular game, by a lady who had bestowed her name upon it.)

+

+Mr. Cruncher's apartments were not in a savoury neighbourhood, and were

+but two in number, even if a closet with a single pane of glass in it

+might be counted as one. But they were very decently kept. Early as

+it was, on the windy March morning, the room in which he lay abed was

+already scrubbed throughout; and between the cups and saucers arranged

+for breakfast, and the lumbering deal table, a very clean white cloth

+was spread.

+

+Mr. Cruncher reposed under a patchwork counterpane, like a Harlequin

+at home. At first, he slept heavily, but, by degrees, began to roll

+and surge in bed, until he rose above the surface, with his spiky hair

+looking as if it must tear the sheets to ribbons. At which juncture, he

+exclaimed, in a voice of dire exasperation:

+

+"Bust me, if she ain't at it agin!"

+

+A woman of orderly and industrious appearance rose from her knees in a

+corner, with sufficient haste and trepidation to show that she was the

+person referred to.

+

+"What!" said Mr. Cruncher, looking out of bed for a boot. "You're at it

+agin, are you?"

+

+After hailing the morn with this second salutation, he threw a boot at

+the woman as a third. It was a very muddy boot, and may introduce the

+odd circumstance connected with Mr. Cruncher's domestic economy, that,

+whereas he often came home after banking hours with clean boots, he

+often got up next morning to find the same boots covered with clay.

+

+"What," said Mr. Cruncher, varying his apostrophe after missing his

+mark--"what are you up to, Aggerawayter?"

+

+"I was only saying my prayers."

+

+"Saying your prayers! You're a nice woman! What do you mean by flopping

+yourself down and praying agin me?"

+

+"I was not praying against you; I was praying for you."

+

+"You weren't. And if you were, I won't be took the liberty with. Here!

+your mother's a nice woman, young Jerry, going a praying agin your

+father's prosperity. You've got a dutiful mother, you have, my son.

+You've got a religious mother, you have, my boy: going and flopping

+herself down, and praying that the bread-and-butter may be snatched out

+of the mouth of her only child."

+

+Master Cruncher (who was in his shirt) took this very ill, and, turning

+to his mother, strongly deprecated any praying away of his personal

+board.

+

+"And what do you suppose, you conceited female," said Mr. Cruncher, with

+unconscious inconsistency, "that the worth of _your_ prayers may be?

+Name the price that you put _your_ prayers at!"

+

+"They only come from the heart, Jerry. They are worth no more than

+that."

+

+"Worth no more than that," repeated Mr. Cruncher. "They ain't worth

+much, then. Whether or no, I won't be prayed agin, I tell you. I can't

+afford it. I'm not a going to be made unlucky by _your_ sneaking. If

+you must go flopping yourself down, flop in favour of your husband and

+child, and not in opposition to 'em. If I had had any but a unnat'ral

+wife, and this poor boy had had any but a unnat'ral mother, I might

+have made some money last week instead of being counter-prayed and

+countermined and religiously circumwented into the worst of luck.

+B-u-u-ust me!" said Mr. Cruncher, who all this time had been putting

+on his clothes, "if I ain't, what with piety and one blowed thing and

+another, been choused this last week into as bad luck as ever a poor

+devil of a honest tradesman met with! Young Jerry, dress yourself, my

+boy, and while I clean my boots keep a eye upon your mother now and

+then, and if you see any signs of more flopping, give me a call. For, I

+tell you," here he addressed his wife once more, "I won't be gone agin,

+in this manner. I am as rickety as a hackney-coach, I'm as sleepy as

+laudanum, my lines is strained to that degree that I shouldn't know, if

+it wasn't for the pain in 'em, which was me and which somebody else, yet

+I'm none the better for it in pocket; and it's my suspicion that you've

+been at it from morning to night to prevent me from being the better for

+it in pocket, and I won't put up with it, Aggerawayter, and what do you

+say now!"

+

+Growling, in addition, such phrases as "Ah! yes! You're religious, too.

+You wouldn't put yourself in opposition to the interests of your husband

+and child, would you? Not you!" and throwing off other sarcastic sparks

+from the whirling grindstone of his indignation, Mr. Cruncher betook

+himself to his boot-cleaning and his general preparation for business.

+In the meantime, his son, whose head was garnished with tenderer spikes,

+and whose young eyes stood close by one another, as his father's did,

+kept the required watch upon his mother. He greatly disturbed that poor

+woman at intervals, by darting out of his sleeping closet, where he made

+his toilet, with a suppressed cry of "You are going to flop, mother.

+--Halloa, father!" and, after raising this fictitious alarm, darting in

+again with an undutiful grin.

+

+Mr. Cruncher's temper was not at all improved when he came to his

+breakfast. He resented Mrs. Cruncher's saying grace with particular

+animosity.

+

+"Now, Aggerawayter! What are you up to? At it again?"

+

+His wife explained that she had merely "asked a blessing."

+

+"Don't do it!" said Mr. Crunches looking about, as if he rather expected

+to see the loaf disappear under the efficacy of his wife's petitions. "I

+ain't a going to be blest out of house and home. I won't have my wittles

+blest off my table. Keep still!"

+

+Exceedingly red-eyed and grim, as if he had been up all night at a party

+which had taken anything but a convivial turn, Jerry Cruncher worried

+his breakfast rather than ate it, growling over it like any four-footed

+inmate of a menagerie. Towards nine o'clock he smoothed his ruffled

+aspect, and, presenting as respectable and business-like an exterior as

+he could overlay his natural self with, issued forth to the occupation

+of the day.

+

+It could scarcely be called a trade, in spite of his favourite

+description of himself as "a honest tradesman." His stock consisted of

+a wooden stool, made out of a broken-backed chair cut down, which stool,

+young Jerry, walking at his father's side, carried every morning to

+beneath the banking-house window that was nearest Temple Bar: where,

+with the addition of the first handful of straw that could be gleaned

+from any passing vehicle to keep the cold and wet from the odd-job-man's

+feet, it formed the encampment for the day. On this post of his, Mr.

+Cruncher was as well known to Fleet-street and the Temple, as the Bar

+itself,--and was almost as in-looking.

+

+Encamped at a quarter before nine, in good time to touch his

+three-cornered hat to the oldest of men as they passed in to Tellson's,

+Jerry took up his station on this windy March morning, with young Jerry

+standing by him, when not engaged in making forays through the Bar, to

+inflict bodily and mental injuries of an acute description on passing

+boys who were small enough for his amiable purpose. Father and son,

+extremely like each other, looking silently on at the morning traffic

+in Fleet-street, with their two heads as near to one another as the two

+eyes of each were, bore a considerable resemblance to a pair of monkeys.

+The resemblance was not lessened by the accidental circumstance, that

+the mature Jerry bit and spat out straw, while the twinkling eyes of the

+youthful Jerry were as restlessly watchful of him as of everything else

+in Fleet-street.

+

+The head of one of the regular indoor messengers attached to Tellson's

+establishment was put through the door, and the word was given:

+

+"Porter wanted!"

+

+"Hooray, father! Here's an early job to begin with!"

+

+Having thus given his parent God speed, young Jerry seated himself on

+the stool, entered on his reversionary interest in the straw his father

+had been chewing, and cogitated.

+

+"Al-ways rusty! His fingers is al-ways rusty!" muttered young Jerry.

+"Where does my father get all that iron rust from? He don't get no iron

+rust here!"

+

+

+

+

+II. A Sight

+

+

+"You know the Old Bailey well, no doubt?" said one of the oldest of

+clerks to Jerry the messenger.

+

+"Ye-es, sir," returned Jerry, in something of a dogged manner. "I _do_

+know the Bailey."

+

+"Just so. And you know Mr. Lorry."

+

+"I know Mr. Lorry, sir, much better than I know the Bailey. Much

+better," said Jerry, not unlike a reluctant witness at the establishment

+in question, "than I, as a honest tradesman, wish to know the Bailey."

+

+"Very well. Find the door where the witnesses go in, and show the

+door-keeper this note for Mr. Lorry. He will then let you in."

+

+"Into the court, sir?"

+

+"Into the court."

+

+Mr. Cruncher's eyes seemed to get a little closer to one another, and to

+interchange the inquiry, "What do you think of this?"

+

+"Am I to wait in the court, sir?" he asked, as the result of that

+conference.

+

+"I am going to tell you. The door-keeper will pass the note to Mr.

+Lorry, and do you make any gesture that will attract Mr. Lorry's

+attention, and show him where you stand. Then what you have to do, is,

+to remain there until he wants you."

+

+"Is that all, sir?"

+

+"That's all. He wishes to have a messenger at hand. This is to tell him

+you are there."

+

+As the ancient clerk deliberately folded and superscribed the note,

+Mr. Cruncher, after surveying him in silence until he came to the

+blotting-paper stage, remarked:

+

+"I suppose they'll be trying Forgeries this morning?"

+

+"Treason!"

+

+"That's quartering," said Jerry. "Barbarous!"

+

+"It is the law," remarked the ancient clerk, turning his surprised

+spectacles upon him. "It is the law."

+

+"It's hard in the law to spile a man, I think. It's hard enough to kill

+him, but it's wery hard to spile him, sir."

+

+"Not at all," retained the ancient clerk. "Speak well of the law. Take

+care of your chest and voice, my good friend, and leave the law to take

+care of itself. I give you that advice."

+

+"It's the damp, sir, what settles on my chest and voice," said Jerry. "I

+leave you to judge what a damp way of earning a living mine is."

+

+"Well, well," said the old clerk; "we all have our various ways of

+gaining a livelihood. Some of us have damp ways, and some of us have dry

+ways. Here is the letter. Go along."

+

+Jerry took the letter, and, remarking to himself with less internal

+deference than he made an outward show of, "You are a lean old one,

+too," made his bow, informed his son, in passing, of his destination,

+and went his way.

+

+They hanged at Tyburn, in those days, so the street outside Newgate had

+not obtained one infamous notoriety that has since attached to it.

+But, the gaol was a vile place, in which most kinds of debauchery and

+villainy were practised, and where dire diseases were bred, that came

+into court with the prisoners, and sometimes rushed straight from the

+dock at my Lord Chief Justice himself, and pulled him off the bench. It

+had more than once happened, that the Judge in the black cap pronounced

+his own doom as certainly as the prisoner's, and even died before him.

+For the rest, the Old Bailey was famous as a kind of deadly inn-yard,

+from which pale travellers set out continually, in carts and coaches, on

+a violent passage into the other world: traversing some two miles and a

+half of public street and road, and shaming few good citizens, if any.

+So powerful is use, and so desirable to be good use in the beginning. It

+was famous, too, for the pillory, a wise old institution, that inflicted

+a punishment of which no one could foresee the extent; also, for

+the whipping-post, another dear old institution, very humanising and

+softening to behold in action; also, for extensive transactions in

+blood-money, another fragment of ancestral wisdom, systematically

+leading to the most frightful mercenary crimes that could be committed

+under Heaven. Altogether, the Old Bailey, at that date, was a choice

+illustration of the precept, that "Whatever is is right;" an aphorism

+that would be as final as it is lazy, did it not include the troublesome

+consequence, that nothing that ever was, was wrong.

+

+Making his way through the tainted crowd, dispersed up and down this

+hideous scene of action, with the skill of a man accustomed to make his

+way quietly, the messenger found out the door he sought, and handed in

+his letter through a trap in it. For, people then paid to see the play

+at the Old Bailey, just as they paid to see the play in Bedlam--only the

+former entertainment was much the dearer. Therefore, all the Old Bailey

+doors were well guarded--except, indeed, the social doors by which the

+criminals got there, and those were always left wide open.

+

+After some delay and demur, the door grudgingly turned on its hinges a

+very little way, and allowed Mr. Jerry Cruncher to squeeze himself into

+court.

+

+"What's on?" he asked, in a whisper, of the man he found himself next

+to.

+

+"Nothing yet."

+

+"What's coming on?"

+

+"The Treason case."

+

+"The quartering one, eh?"

+

+"Ah!" returned the man, with a relish; "he'll be drawn on a hurdle to

+be half hanged, and then he'll be taken down and sliced before his own

+face, and then his inside will be taken out and burnt while he looks on,

+and then his head will be chopped off, and he'll be cut into quarters.

+That's the sentence."

+

+"If he's found Guilty, you mean to say?" Jerry added, by way of proviso.

+

+"Oh! they'll find him guilty," said the other. "Don't you be afraid of

+that."

+

+Mr. Cruncher's attention was here diverted to the door-keeper, whom he

+saw making his way to Mr. Lorry, with the note in his hand. Mr. Lorry

+sat at a table, among the gentlemen in wigs: not far from a wigged

+gentleman, the prisoner's counsel, who had a great bundle of papers

+before him: and nearly opposite another wigged gentleman with his hands

+in his pockets, whose whole attention, when Mr. Cruncher looked at him

+then or afterwards, seemed to be concentrated on the ceiling of the

+court. After some gruff coughing and rubbing of his chin and signing

+with his hand, Jerry attracted the notice of Mr. Lorry, who had stood up

+to look for him, and who quietly nodded and sat down again.

+

+"What's _he_ got to do with the case?" asked the man he had spoken with.

+

+"Blest if I know," said Jerry.

+

+"What have _you_ got to do with it, then, if a person may inquire?"

+

+"Blest if I know that either," said Jerry.

+

+The entrance of the Judge, and a consequent great stir and settling

+down in the court, stopped the dialogue. Presently, the dock became the

+central point of interest. Two gaolers, who had been standing there,

+went out, and the prisoner was brought in, and put to the bar.

+

+Everybody present, except the one wigged gentleman who looked at the

+ceiling, stared at him. All the human breath in the place, rolled

+at him, like a sea, or a wind, or a fire. Eager faces strained round

+pillars and corners, to get a sight of him; spectators in back rows

+stood up, not to miss a hair of him; people on the floor of the court,

+laid their hands on the shoulders of the people before them, to help

+themselves, at anybody's cost, to a view of him--stood a-tiptoe, got

+upon ledges, stood upon next to nothing, to see every inch of him.

+Conspicuous among these latter, like an animated bit of the spiked wall

+of Newgate, Jerry stood: aiming at the prisoner the beery breath of a

+whet he had taken as he came along, and discharging it to mingle with

+the waves of other beer, and 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 forces 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 reflections, 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 direction, recalled them,

+leaned back in his seat, and looked steadily at the man whose life was

+in his hand, as Mr. Attorney-General rose to spin the rope, grind the

+axe, and hammer the nails into the scaffold.

+

+

+

+

+III. A Disappointment

+

+

+Mr. Attorney-General had to inform the jury, that the prisoner before

+them, though young in years, was old in the treasonable practices which

+claimed the forfeit of his life. That this correspondence with the

+public enemy was not a correspondence of to-day, or of yesterday, or

+even of last year, or of the year before. That, it was certain the

+prisoner had, for longer than that, been in the habit of passing and

+repassing between France and England, on secret business of which

+he could give no honest account. That, if it were in the nature of

+traitorous ways to thrive (which happily it never was), the real

+wickedness and guilt of his business might have remained undiscovered.

+That Providence, however, had put it into the heart of a person who

+was beyond fear and beyond reproach, to ferret out the nature of the

+prisoner's schemes, and, struck with horror, to disclose them to his

+Majesty's Chief Secretary of State and most honourable Privy Council.

+That, this patriot would be produced before them. That, his position and

+attitude were, on the whole, sublime. That, he had been the prisoner's

+friend, but, at once in an auspicious and an evil hour detecting his

+infamy, had resolved to immolate the traitor he could no longer cherish

+in his bosom, on the sacred altar of his country. That, if statues

+were decreed in Britain, as in ancient Greece and Rome, to public

+benefactors, this shining citizen would assuredly have had one. That, as

+they were not so decreed, he probably would not have one. That, Virtue,

+as had been observed by the poets (in many passages which he well

+knew the jury would have, word for word, at the tips of their tongues;

+whereat the jury's countenances displayed a guilty consciousness that

+they knew nothing about the passages), was in a manner contagious; more

+especially the bright virtue known as patriotism, or love of country.

+That, the lofty example of this immaculate and unimpeachable witness

+for the Crown, to refer to whom however unworthily was an honour, had

+communicated itself to the prisoner's servant, and had engendered in him

+a holy determination to examine his master's table-drawers and pockets,

+and secrete his papers. That, he (Mr. Attorney-General) was prepared to

+hear some disparagement attempted of this admirable servant; but that,

+in a general way, he preferred him to his (Mr. Attorney-General's)

+brothers and sisters, and honoured him more than his (Mr.

+Attorney-General's) father and mother. That, he called with confidence

+on the jury to come and do likewise. That, the evidence of these two

+witnesses, coupled with the documents of their discovering that would be

+produced, would show the prisoner to have been furnished with lists of

+his Majesty's forces, and of their disposition and preparation, both by

+sea and land, and would leave no doubt that he had habitually conveyed

+such information to a hostile power. That, these lists could not be

+proved to be in the prisoner's handwriting; but that it was all the

+same; that, indeed, it was rather the better for the prosecution, as

+showing the prisoner to be artful in his precautions. That, the proof

+would go back five years, and would show the prisoner already engaged

+in these pernicious missions, within a few weeks before the date of the

+very first action fought between the British troops and the Americans.

+That, for these reasons, the jury, being a loyal jury (as he knew they

+were), and being a responsible jury (as _they_ knew they were), must

+positively find the prisoner Guilty, and make an end of him, whether

+they liked it or not. That, they never could lay their heads upon their

+pillows; that, they never could tolerate the idea of their wives laying

+their heads upon their pillows; that, they never could endure the notion

+of their children laying their heads upon their pillows; in short, that

+there never more could be, for them or theirs, any laying of heads upon

+pillows at all, unless the prisoner's head was taken off. That head

+Mr. Attorney-General concluded by demanding of them, in the name of

+everything he could think of with a round turn in it, and on the faith

+of his solemn asseveration that he already considered the prisoner as

+good as dead and gone.

+

+When the Attorney-General ceased, a buzz arose in the court as if

+a cloud of great blue-flies were swarming about the prisoner, in

+anticipation of what he was soon to become. When toned down again, the

+unimpeachable patriot appeared in the witness-box.

+

+Mr. Solicitor-General then, following his leader's lead, examined the

+patriot: John Barsad, gentleman, by name. The story of his pure soul was

+exactly what Mr. Attorney-General had described it to be--perhaps, if

+it had a fault, a little too exactly. Having released his noble bosom

+of its burden, he would have modestly withdrawn himself, but that the

+wigged gentleman with the papers before him, sitting not far from Mr.

+Lorry, begged to ask him a few questions. The wigged gentleman sitting

+opposite, still looking at the ceiling of the court.

+

+Had he ever been a spy himself? No, he scorned the base insinuation.

+What did he live upon? His property. Where was his property? He didn't

+precisely remember where it was. What was it? No business of anybody's.

+Had he inherited it? Yes, he had. From whom? Distant relation. Very

+distant? Rather. Ever been in prison? Certainly not. Never in a debtors'

+prison? Didn't see what that had to do with it. Never in a debtors'

+prison?--Come, once again. Never? Yes. How many times? Two or three

+times. Not five or six? Perhaps. Of what profession? Gentleman. Ever

+been kicked? Might have been. Frequently? No. Ever kicked downstairs?

+Decidedly not; once received a kick on the top of a staircase, and fell

+downstairs of his own accord. Kicked on that occasion for cheating at

+dice? Something to that effect was said by the intoxicated liar who

+committed the assault, but it was not true. Swear it was not true?

+Positively. Ever live by cheating at play? Never. Ever live by play? Not

+more than other gentlemen do. Ever borrow money of the prisoner? Yes.

+Ever pay him? No. Was not this intimacy with the prisoner, in reality a

+very slight one, forced upon the prisoner in coaches, inns, and packets?

+No. Sure he saw the prisoner with these lists? Certain. Knew no more

+about the lists? No. Had not procured them himself, for instance? No.

+Expect to get anything by this evidence? No. Not in regular government

+pay and employment, to lay traps? Oh dear no. Or to do anything? Oh dear

+no. Swear that? Over and over again. No motives but motives of sheer

+patriotism? None whatever.

+

+The virtuous servant, Roger Cly, swore his way through the case at a

+great rate. He had taken service with the prisoner, in good faith and

+simplicity, four years ago. He had asked the prisoner, aboard the Calais

+packet, if he wanted a handy fellow, and the prisoner had engaged him.

+He had not asked the prisoner to take the handy fellow as an act of

+charity--never thought of such a thing. He began to have suspicions of

+the prisoner, and to keep an eye upon him, soon afterwards. In arranging

+his clothes, while travelling, he had seen similar lists to these in the

+prisoner's pockets, over and over again. He had taken these lists from

+the drawer of the prisoner's desk. He had not put them there first. He

+had seen the prisoner show these identical lists to French gentlemen

+at Calais, and similar lists to French gentlemen, both at Calais and

+Boulogne. He loved his country, and couldn't bear it, and had given

+information. He had never been suspected of stealing a silver tea-pot;

+he had been maligned respecting a mustard-pot, but it turned out to be

+only a plated one. He had known the last witness seven or eight years;

+that was merely a coincidence. He didn't call it a particularly curious

+coincidence; most coincidences were curious. Neither did he call it a

+curious coincidence that true patriotism was _his_ only motive too. He

+was a true Briton, and hoped there were many like him.

+

+The blue-flies buzzed again, and Mr. Attorney-General called Mr. Jarvis

+Lorry.

+

+"Mr. Jarvis Lorry, are you a clerk in Tellson's bank?"

+

+"I am."

+

+"On a certain Friday night in November one thousand seven hundred and

+seventy-five, did business occasion you to travel between London and

+Dover by the mail?"

+

+"It did."

+

+"Were there any other passengers in the mail?"

+

+"Two."

+

+"Did they alight on the road in the course of the night?"

+

+"They did."

+

+"Mr. Lorry, look upon the prisoner. Was he one of those two passengers?"

+

+"I cannot undertake to say that he was."

+

+"Does he resemble either of these two passengers?"

+

+"Both were so wrapped up, and the night was so dark, and we were all so

+reserved, that I cannot undertake to say even that."

+

+"Mr. Lorry, look again upon the prisoner. Supposing him wrapped up as

+those two passengers were, is there anything in his bulk and stature to

+render it unlikely that he was one of them?"

+

+"No."

+

+"You will not swear, Mr. Lorry, that he was not one of them?"

+

+"No."

+

+"So at least you say he may have been one of them?"

+

+"Yes. Except that I remember them both to have been--like

+myself--timorous of highwaymen, and the prisoner has not a timorous

+air."

+

+"Did you ever see a counterfeit of timidity, Mr. Lorry?"

+

+"I certainly have seen that."

+

+"Mr. Lorry, look once more upon the prisoner. Have you seen him, to your

+certain knowledge, before?"

+

+"I have."

+

+"When?"

+

+"I was returning from France a few days afterwards, and, at Calais, the

+prisoner came on board the packet-ship in which I returned, and made the

+voyage with me."

+

+"At what hour did he come on board?"

+

+"At a little after midnight."

+

+"In the dead of the night. Was he the only passenger who came on board

+at that untimely hour?"

+

+"He happened to be the only one."

+

+"Never mind about 'happening,' Mr. Lorry. He was the only passenger who

+came on board in the dead of the night?"

+

+"He was."

+

+"Were you travelling alone, Mr. Lorry, or with any companion?"

+

+"With two companions. A gentleman and lady. They are here."

+

+"They are here. Had you any conversation with the prisoner?"

+

+"Hardly any. The weather was stormy, and the passage long and rough, and

+I lay on a sofa, almost from shore to shore."

+

+"Miss Manette!"

+

+The young lady, to whom all eyes had been turned before, and were now

+turned again, stood up where she had sat. Her father rose with her, and

+kept her hand drawn through his arm.

+

+"Miss Manette, look upon the prisoner."

+

+To be confronted with such pity, and such earnest youth and beauty, was

+far more trying to the accused than to be confronted with all the crowd.

+Standing, as it were, apart with her on the edge of his grave, not all

+the staring curiosity that looked on, could, for the moment, nerve him

+to remain quite still. His hurried right hand parcelled out the herbs

+before him into imaginary beds of flowers in a garden; and his efforts

+to control and steady his breathing shook the lips from which the colour

+rushed to his heart. The buzz of the great flies was loud again.

+

+"Miss Manette, have you seen the prisoner before?"

+

+"Yes, sir."

+

+"Where?"

+

+"On board of the packet-ship just now referred to, sir, and on the same

+occasion."

+

+"You are the young lady just now referred to?"

+

+"O! most unhappily, I am!"

+

+The plaintive tone of her compassion merged into the less musical voice

+of the Judge, as he said something fiercely: "Answer the questions put

+to you, and make no remark upon them."

+

+"Miss Manette, had you any conversation with the prisoner on that

+passage across the Channel?"

+

+"Yes, sir."

+

+"Recall it."

+

+In the midst of a profound stillness, she faintly began: "When the

+gentleman came on board--"

+

+"Do you mean the prisoner?" inquired the Judge, knitting his brows.

+

+"Yes, my Lord."

+

+"Then say the prisoner."

+

+"When the prisoner came on board, he noticed that my father," turning

+her eyes lovingly to him as he stood beside her, "was much fatigued

+and in a very weak state of health. My father was so reduced that I was

+afraid to take him out of the air, and I had made a bed for him on the

+deck near the cabin steps, and I sat on the deck at his side to take

+care of him. There were no other passengers that night, but we four.

+The prisoner was so good as to beg permission to advise me how I could

+shelter my father from the wind and weather, better than I had done. I

+had not known how to do it well, not understanding how the wind would

+set when we were out of the harbour. He did it for me. He expressed

+great gentleness and kindness for my father's state, and I am sure he

+felt it. That was the manner of our beginning to speak together."

+

+"Let me interrupt you for a moment. Had he come on board alone?"

+

+"No."

+

+"How many were with him?"

+

+"Two French gentlemen."

+

+"Had they conferred together?"

+

+"They had conferred together until the last moment, when it was

+necessary for the French gentlemen to be landed in their boat."

+

+"Had any papers been handed about among them, similar to these lists?"

+

+"Some papers had been handed about among them, but I don't know what

+papers."

+

+"Like these in shape and size?"

+

+"Possibly, but indeed I don't know, although they stood whispering very

+near to me: because they stood at the top of the cabin steps to have the

+light of the lamp that was hanging there; it was a dull lamp, and they

+spoke very low, and I did not hear what they said, and saw only that

+they looked at papers."

+

+"Now, to the prisoner's conversation, Miss Manette."

+

+"The prisoner was as open in his confidence with me--which arose out

+of my helpless situation--as he was kind, and good, and useful to my

+father. I hope," bursting into tears, "I may not repay him by doing him

+harm to-day."

+

+Buzzing from the blue-flies.

+

+"Miss Manette, if the prisoner does not perfectly understand that

+you give the evidence which it is your duty to give--which you must

+give--and which you cannot escape from giving--with great unwillingness,

+he is the only person present in that condition. Please to go on."

+

+"He told me that he was travelling on business of a delicate and

+difficult nature, which might get people into trouble, and that he was

+therefore travelling under an assumed name. He said that this business

+had, within a few days, taken him to France, and might, at intervals,

+take him backwards and forwards between France and England for a long

+time to come."

+

+"Did he say anything about America, Miss Manette? Be particular."

+

+"He tried to explain to me how that quarrel had arisen, and he said

+that, so far as he could judge, it was a wrong and foolish one on

+England's part. He added, in a jesting way, that perhaps George

+Washington might gain almost as great a name in history as George the

+Third. But there was no harm in his way of saying this: it was said

+laughingly, and to beguile the time."

+

+Any strongly marked expression of face on the part of a chief actor in

+a scene of great interest to whom many eyes are directed, will be

+unconsciously imitated by the spectators. Her forehead was painfully

+anxious and intent as she gave this evidence, and, in the pauses when

+she stopped for the Judge to write it down, watched its effect upon

+the counsel for and against. Among the lookers-on there was the same

+expression in all quarters of the court; insomuch, that a great majority

+of the foreheads there, might have been mirrors reflecting the witness,

+when the Judge looked up from his notes to glare at that tremendous

+heresy about George Washington.

+

+Mr. Attorney-General now signified to my Lord, that he deemed it

+necessary, as a matter of precaution and form, to call the young lady's

+father, Doctor Manette. Who was called accordingly.

+

+"Doctor Manette, look upon the prisoner. Have you ever seen him before?"

+

+"Once. When he called at my lodgings in London. Some three years, or

+three years and a half ago."

+

+"Can you identify him as your fellow-passenger on board the packet, or

+speak to his conversation with your daughter?"

+

+"Sir, I can do neither."

+

+"Is there any particular and special reason for your being unable to do

+either?"

+

+He answered, in a low voice, "There is."

+

+"Has it been your misfortune to undergo a long imprisonment, without

+trial, or even accusation, in your native country, Doctor Manette?"

+

+He answered, in a tone that went to every heart, "A long imprisonment."

+

+"Were you newly released on the occasion in question?"

+

+"They tell me so."

+

+"Have you no remembrance of the occasion?"

+

+"None. My mind is a blank, from some time--I cannot even say what

+time--when I employed myself, in my captivity, in making shoes, to the

+time when I found myself living in London with my dear daughter

+here. She had become familiar to me, when a gracious God restored

+my faculties; but, I am quite unable even to say how she had become

+familiar. I have no remembrance of the process."

+

+Mr. Attorney-General sat down, and the father and daughter sat down

+together.

+

+A singular circumstance then arose in the case. The object in hand being

+to show that the prisoner went down, with some fellow-plotter untracked,

+in the Dover mail on that Friday night in November five years ago, and

+got out of the mail in the night, as a blind, at a place where he did

+not remain, but from which he travelled back some dozen miles or more,

+to a garrison and dockyard, and there collected information; a witness

+was called to identify him as having been at the precise time required,

+in the coffee-room of an hotel in that garrison-and-dockyard town,

+waiting for another person. The prisoner's counsel was cross-examining

+this witness with no result, except that he had never seen the prisoner

+on any other occasion, when the wigged gentleman who had all this time

+been looking at the ceiling of the court, wrote a word or two on a

+little piece of paper, screwed it up, and tossed it to him. Opening

+this piece of paper in the next pause, the counsel looked with great

+attention and curiosity at the prisoner.

+

+"You say again you are quite sure that it was the prisoner?"

+

+The witness was quite sure.

+

+"Did you ever see anybody very like the prisoner?"

+

+Not so like (the witness said) as that he could be mistaken.

+

+"Look well upon that gentleman, my learned friend there," pointing

+to him who had tossed the paper over, "and then look well upon the

+prisoner. How say you? Are they very like each other?"

+

+Allowing for my learned friend's appearance being careless and slovenly

+if not debauched, they were sufficiently like each other to surprise,

+not only the witness, but everybody present, when they were thus brought

+into comparison. My Lord being prayed to bid my learned friend lay aside

+his wig, and giving no very gracious consent, the likeness became

+much more remarkable. My Lord inquired of Mr. Stryver (the prisoner's

+counsel), whether they were next to try Mr. Carton (name of my learned

+friend) for treason? But, Mr. Stryver replied to my Lord, no; but he

+would ask the witness to tell him whether what happened once, might

+happen twice; whether he would have been so confident if he had seen

+this illustration of his rashness sooner, whether he would be so

+confident, having seen it; and more. The upshot of which, was, to smash

+this witness like a crockery vessel, and shiver his part of the case to

+useless lumber.

+

+Mr. Cruncher had by this time taken quite a lunch of rust off his

+fingers in his following of the evidence. He had now to attend while Mr.

+Stryver fitted the prisoner's case on the jury, like a compact suit

+of clothes; showing them how the patriot, Barsad, was a hired spy and

+traitor, an unblushing trafficker in blood, and one of the greatest

+scoundrels upon earth since accursed Judas--which he certainly did look

+rather like. How the virtuous servant, Cly, was his friend and partner,

+and was worthy to be; how the watchful eyes of those forgers and false

+swearers had rested on the prisoner as a victim, because some family

+affairs in France, he being of French extraction, did require his making

+those passages across the Channel--though what those affairs were, a

+consideration for others who were near and dear to him, forbade him,

+even for his life, to disclose. How the evidence that had been warped

+and wrested from the young lady, whose anguish in giving it they

+had witnessed, came to nothing, involving the mere little innocent

+gallantries and politenesses likely to pass between any young gentleman

+and young lady so thrown together;--with the exception of that

+reference to George Washington, which was altogether too extravagant and

+impossible to be regarded in any other light than as a monstrous joke.

+How it would be a weakness in the government to break down in this

+attempt to practise for popularity on the lowest national antipathies

+and fears, and therefore Mr. Attorney-General had made the most of it;

+how, nevertheless, it rested upon nothing, save that vile and infamous

+character of evidence too often disfiguring such cases, and of which the

+State Trials of this country were full. But, there my Lord interposed

+(with as grave a face as if it had not been true), saying that he could

+not sit upon that Bench and suffer those allusions.

+

+Mr. Stryver then called his few witnesses, and Mr. Cruncher had next to

+attend while Mr. Attorney-General turned the whole suit of clothes Mr.

+Stryver had fitted on the jury, inside out; showing how Barsad and

+Cly were even a hundred times better than he had thought them, and the

+prisoner a hundred times worse. Lastly, came my Lord himself, turning

+the suit of clothes, now inside out, now outside in, but on the whole

+decidedly trimming and shaping them into grave-clothes for the prisoner.

+

+And now, the jury turned to consider, and the great flies swarmed again.

+

+Mr. Carton, who had so long sat looking at the ceiling of the court,

+changed neither his place nor his attitude, even in this excitement.

+While his teamed friend, Mr. Stryver, massing his papers before him,

+whispered with those who sat near, and from time to time glanced

+anxiously at the jury; while all the spectators moved more or less, and

+grouped themselves anew; while even my Lord himself arose from his seat,

+and slowly paced up and down his platform, not unattended by a suspicion

+in the minds of the audience that his state was feverish; this one man

+sat leaning back, with his torn gown half off him, his untidy wig put

+on just as it had happened to light on his head after its removal, his

+hands in his pockets, and his eyes on the ceiling as they had been all

+day. Something especially reckless in his demeanour, not only gave him

+a disreputable look, but so diminished the strong resemblance he

+undoubtedly bore to the prisoner (which his momentary earnestness,

+when they were compared together, had strengthened), that many of the

+lookers-on, taking note of him now, said to one another they would

+hardly have thought the two were so alike. Mr. Cruncher made the

+observation to his next neighbour, and added, "I'd hold half a guinea

+that _he_ don't get no law-work to do. Don't look like the sort of one

+to get any, do he?"

+

+Yet, this Mr. Carton took in more of the details of the scene than he

+appeared to take in; for now, when Miss Manette's head dropped upon

+her father's breast, he was the first to see it, and to say audibly:

+"Officer! look to that young lady. Help the gentleman to take her out.

+Don't you see she will fall!"

+

+There was much commiseration for her as she was removed, and much

+sympathy with her father. It had evidently been a great distress to

+him, to have the days of his imprisonment recalled. He had shown

+strong internal agitation when he was questioned, and that pondering or

+brooding look which made him old, had been upon him, like a heavy cloud,

+ever since. As he passed out, the jury, who had turned back and paused a

+moment, spoke, through their foreman.

+

+They were not agreed, and wished to retire. My Lord (perhaps with George

+Washington on his mind) showed some surprise that they were not agreed,

+but signified his pleasure that they should retire under watch and ward,

+and retired himself. The trial had lasted all day, and the lamps in

+the court were now being lighted. It began to be rumoured that the

+jury would be out a long while. The spectators dropped off to get

+refreshment, and the prisoner withdrew to the back of the dock, and sat

+down.

+

+Mr. Lorry, who had gone out when the young lady and her father went out,

+now reappeared, and beckoned to Jerry: who, in the slackened interest,

+could easily get near him.

+

+"Jerry, if you wish to take something to eat, you can. But, keep in the

+way. You will be sure to hear when the jury come in. Don't be a moment

+behind them, for I want you to take the verdict back to the bank. You

+are the quickest messenger I know, and will get to Temple Bar long

+before I can."

+

+Jerry had just enough forehead to knuckle, and he knuckled it in

+acknowledgment of this communication and a shilling. Mr. Carton came up

+at the moment, and touched Mr. Lorry on the arm.

+

+"How is the young lady?"

+

+"She is greatly distressed; but her father is comforting her, and she

+feels the better for being out of court."

+

+"I'll tell the prisoner so. It won't do for a respectable bank gentleman

+like you, to be seen speaking to him publicly, you know."

+

+Mr. Lorry reddened as if he were conscious of having debated the point

+in his mind, and Mr. Carton made his way to the outside of the bar.

+The way out of court lay in that direction, and Jerry followed him, all

+eyes, ears, and spikes.

+

+"Mr. Darnay!"

+

+The prisoner came forward directly.

+

+"You will naturally be anxious to hear of the witness, Miss Manette. She

+will do very well. You have seen the worst of her agitation."

+

+"I am deeply sorry to have been the cause of it. Could you tell her so

+for me, with my fervent acknowledgments?"

+

+"Yes, I could. I will, if you ask it."

+

+Mr. Carton's manner was so careless as to be almost insolent. He stood,

+half turned from the prisoner, lounging with his elbow against the bar.

+

+"I do ask it. Accept my cordial thanks."

+

+"What," said Carton, still only half turned towards him, "do you expect,

+Mr. Darnay?"

+

+"The worst."

+

+"It's the wisest thing to expect, and the likeliest. But I think their

+withdrawing is in your favour."

+

+Loitering on the way out of court not being allowed, Jerry heard no

+more: but left them--so like each other in feature, so unlike each other

+in manner--standing side by side, both reflected in the glass above

+them.

+

+An hour and a half limped heavily away in the thief-and-rascal crowded

+passages below, even though assisted off with mutton pies and ale.

+The hoarse messenger, uncomfortably seated on a form after taking that

+refection, had dropped into a doze, when a loud murmur and a rapid tide

+of people setting up the stairs that led to the court, carried him along

+with them.

+

+"Jerry! Jerry!" Mr. Lorry was already calling at the door when he got

+there.

+

+"Here, sir! It's a fight to get back again. Here I am, sir!"

+

+Mr. Lorry handed him a paper through the throng. "Quick! Have you got

+it?"

+

+"Yes, sir."

+

+Hastily written on the paper was the word "ACQUITTED."

+

+"If you had sent the message, 'Recalled to Life,' again," muttered

+Jerry, as he turned, "I should have known what you meant, this time."

+

+He had no opportunity of saying, or so much as thinking, anything else,

+until he was clear of the Old Bailey; for, the crowd came pouring out

+with a vehemence that nearly took him off his legs, and a loud buzz

+swept into the street as if the baffled blue-flies were dispersing in

+search of other carrion.

+

+

+

+

+IV. Congratulatory

+

+

+From the dimly-lighted passages of the court, the last sediment of the

+human stew that had been boiling there all day, was straining off, when

+Doctor Manette, Lucie Manette, his daughter, Mr. Lorry, the solicitor

+for the defence, and its counsel, Mr. Stryver, stood gathered round Mr.

+Charles Darnay--just released--congratulating him on his escape from

+death.

+

+It would have been difficult by a far brighter light, to recognise

+in Doctor Manette, intellectual of face and upright of bearing, the

+shoemaker of the garret in Paris. Yet, no one could have looked at him

+twice, without looking again: even though the opportunity of observation

+had not extended to the mournful cadence of his low grave voice, and

+to the abstraction that overclouded him fitfully, without any apparent

+reason. While one external cause, and that a reference to his long

+lingering agony, would always--as on the trial--evoke this condition

+from the depths of his soul, it was also in its nature to arise of

+itself, and to draw a gloom over him, as incomprehensible to those

+unacquainted with his story as if they had seen the shadow of the actual

+Bastille thrown upon him by a summer sun, when the substance was three

+hundred miles away.

+

+Only his daughter had the power of charming this black brooding from

+his mind. She was the golden thread that united him to a Past beyond his

+misery, and to a Present beyond his misery: and the sound of her voice,

+the light of her face, the touch of her hand, had a strong beneficial

+influence with him almost always. Not absolutely always, for she could

+recall some occasions on which her power had failed; but they were few

+and slight, and she believed them over.

+

+Mr. Darnay had kissed her hand fervently and gratefully, and had turned

+to Mr. Stryver, whom he warmly thanked. Mr. Stryver, a man of little

+more than thirty, but looking twenty years older than he was, stout,

+loud, red, bluff, and free from any drawback of delicacy, had a pushing

+way of shouldering himself (morally and physically) into companies and

+conversations, that argued well for his shouldering his way up in life.

+

+He still had his wig and gown on, and he said, squaring himself at his

+late client to that degree that he squeezed the innocent Mr. Lorry clean

+out of the group: "I am glad to have brought you off with honour, Mr.

+Darnay. It was an infamous prosecution, grossly infamous; but not the

+less likely to succeed on that account."

+

+"You have laid me under an obligation to you for life--in two senses,"

+said his late client, taking his hand.

+

+"I have done my best for you, Mr. Darnay; and my best is as good as

+another man's, I believe."

+

+It clearly being incumbent on some one to say, "Much better," Mr. Lorry

+said it; perhaps not quite disinterestedly, but with the interested

+object of squeezing himself back again.

+

+"You think so?" said Mr. Stryver. "Well! you have been present all day,

+and you ought to know. You are a man of business, too."

+

+"And as such," quoth Mr. Lorry, whom the counsel learned in the law had

+now shouldered back into the group, just as he had previously shouldered

+him out of it--"as such I will appeal to Doctor Manette, to break up

+this conference and order us all to our homes. Miss Lucie looks ill, Mr.

+Darnay has had a terrible day, we are worn out."

+

+"Speak for yourself, Mr. Lorry," said Stryver; "I have a night's work to

+do yet. Speak for yourself."

+

+"I speak for myself," answered Mr. Lorry, "and for Mr. Darnay, and for

+Miss Lucie, and--Miss Lucie, do you not think I may speak for us all?"

+He asked her the question pointedly, and with a glance at her father.

+

+His face had become frozen, as it were, in a very curious look at

+Darnay: an intent look, deepening into a frown of dislike and distrust,

+not even unmixed with fear. With this strange expression on him his

+thoughts had wandered away.

+

+"My father," said Lucie, softly laying her hand on his.

+

+He slowly shook the shadow off, and turned to her.

+

+"Shall we go home, my father?"

+

+With a long breath, he answered "Yes."

+

+The friends of the acquitted prisoner had dispersed, under the

+impression--which he himself had originated--that he would not be

+released that night. The lights were nearly all extinguished in the

+passages, the iron gates were being closed with a jar and a rattle,

+and the dismal place was deserted until to-morrow morning's interest of

+gallows, pillory, whipping-post, and branding-iron, should repeople it.

+Walking between her father and Mr. Darnay, Lucie Manette passed into

+the open air. A hackney-coach was called, and the father and daughter

+departed in it.

+

+Mr. Stryver had left them in the passages, to shoulder his way back

+to the robing-room. Another person, who had not joined the group, or

+interchanged a word with any one of them, but who had been leaning

+against the wall where its shadow was darkest, had silently strolled

+out after the rest, and had looked on until the coach drove away. He now

+stepped up to where Mr. Lorry and Mr. Darnay stood upon the pavement.

+

+"So, Mr. Lorry! Men of business may speak to Mr. Darnay now?"

+

+Nobody had made any acknowledgment of Mr. Carton's part in the day's

+proceedings; nobody had known of it. He was unrobed, and was none the

+better for it in appearance.

+

+"If you knew what a conflict goes on in the business mind, when the

+business mind is divided between good-natured impulse and business

+appearances, you would be amused, Mr. Darnay."

+

+Mr. Lorry reddened, and said, warmly, "You have mentioned that before,

+sir. We men of business, who serve a House, are not our own masters. We

+have to think of the House more than ourselves."

+

+"_I_ know, _I_ know," rejoined Mr. Carton, carelessly. "Don't be

+nettled, Mr. Lorry. You are as good as another, I have no doubt: better,

+I dare say."

+

+"And indeed, sir," pursued Mr. Lorry, not minding him, "I really don't

+know what you have to do with the matter. If you'll excuse me, as very

+much your elder, for saying so, I really don't know that it is your

+business."

+

+"Business! Bless you, _I_ have no business," said Mr. Carton.

+

+"It is a pity you have not, sir."

+

+"I think so, too."

+

+"If you had," pursued Mr. Lorry, "perhaps you would attend to it."

+

+"Lord love you, no!--I shouldn't," said Mr. Carton.

+

+"Well, sir!" cried Mr. Lorry, thoroughly heated by his indifference,

+"business is a very good thing, and a very respectable thing. And, sir,

+if business imposes its restraints and its silences and impediments, Mr.

+Darnay as a young gentleman of generosity knows how to make allowance

+for that circumstance. Mr. Darnay, good night, God bless you, sir!

+I hope you have been this day preserved for a prosperous and happy

+life.--Chair there!"

+

+Perhaps a little angry with himself, as well as with the barrister, Mr.

+Lorry bustled into the chair, and was carried off to Tellson's. Carton,

+who smelt of port wine, and did not appear to be quite sober, laughed

+then, and turned to Darnay:

+

+"This is a strange chance that throws you and me together. This must

+be a strange night to you, standing alone here with your counterpart on

+these street stones?"

+

+"I hardly seem yet," returned Charles Darnay, "to belong to this world

+again."

+

+"I don't wonder at it; it's not so long since you were pretty far

+advanced on your way to another. You speak faintly."

+

+"I begin to think I _am_ faint."

+

+"Then why the devil don't you dine? I dined, myself, while those

+numskulls were deliberating which world you should belong to--this, or

+some other. Let me show you the nearest tavern to dine well at."

+

+Drawing his arm through his own, he took him down Ludgate-hill to

+Fleet-street, and so, up a covered way, into a tavern. Here, they were

+shown into a little room, where Charles Darnay was soon recruiting

+his strength with a good plain dinner and good wine: while Carton sat

+opposite to him at the same table, with his separate bottle of port

+before him, and his fully half-insolent manner upon him.

+

+"Do you feel, yet, that you belong to this terrestrial scheme again, Mr.

+Darnay?"

+

+"I am frightfully confused regarding time and place; but I am so far

+mended as to feel that."

+

+"It must be an immense satisfaction!"

+

+He said it bitterly, and filled up his glass again: which was a large

+one.

+

+"As to me, the greatest desire I have, is to forget that I belong to it.

+It has no good in it for me--except wine like this--nor I for it. So we

+are not much alike in that particular. Indeed, I begin to think we are

+not much alike in any particular, you and I."

+

+Confused by the emotion of the day, and feeling his being there with

+this Double of coarse deportment, to be like a dream, Charles Darnay was

+at a loss how to answer; finally, answered not at all.

+

+"Now your dinner is done," Carton presently said, "why don't you call a

+health, Mr. Darnay; why don't you give your toast?"

+

+"What health? What toast?"

+

+"Why, it's on the tip of your tongue. It ought to be, it must be, I'll

+swear it's there."

+

+"Miss Manette, then!"

+

+"Miss Manette, then!"

+

+Looking his companion full in the face while he drank the toast, Carton

+flung his glass over his shoulder against the wall, where it shivered to

+pieces; then, rang the bell, and ordered in another.

+

+"That's a fair young lady to hand to a coach in the dark, Mr. Darnay!"

+he said, filling his new goblet.

+

+A slight frown and a laconic "Yes," were the answer.

+

+"That's a fair young lady to be pitied by and wept for by! How does it

+feel? Is it worth being tried for one's life, to be the object of such

+sympathy and compassion, Mr. Darnay?"

+

+Again Darnay answered not a word.

+

+"She was mightily pleased to have your message, when I gave it her. Not

+that she showed she was pleased, but I suppose she was."

+

+The allusion served as a timely reminder to Darnay that this

+disagreeable companion had, of his own free will, assisted him in the

+strait of the day. He turned the dialogue to that point, and thanked him

+for it.

+

+"I neither want any thanks, nor merit any," was the careless rejoinder.

+"It was nothing to do, in the first place; and I don't know why I did

+it, in the second. Mr. Darnay, let me ask you a question."

+

+"Willingly, and a small return for your good offices."

+

+"Do you think I particularly like you?"

+

+"Really, Mr. Carton," returned the other, oddly disconcerted, "I have

+not asked myself the question."

+

+"But ask yourself the question now."

+

+"You have acted as if you do; but I don't think you do."

+

+"_I_ don't think I do," said Carton. "I begin to have a very good

+opinion of your understanding."

+

+"Nevertheless," pursued Darnay, rising to ring the bell, "there is

+nothing in that, I hope, to prevent my calling the reckoning, and our

+parting without ill-blood on either side."

+

+Carton rejoining, "Nothing in life!" Darnay rang. "Do you call the whole

+reckoning?" said Carton. On his answering in the affirmative, "Then

+bring me another pint of this same wine, drawer, and come and wake me at

+ten."

+

+The bill being paid, Charles Darnay rose and wished him good night.

+Without returning the wish, Carton rose too, with something of a threat

+of defiance in his manner, and said, "A last word, Mr. Darnay: you think

+I am drunk?"

+

+"I think you have been drinking, Mr. Carton."

+

+"Think? You know I have been drinking."

+

+"Since I must say so, I know it."

+

+"Then you shall likewise know why. I am a disappointed drudge, sir. I

+care for no man on earth, and no man on earth cares for me."

+

+"Much to be regretted. You might have used your talents better."

+

+"May be so, Mr. Darnay; may be not. Don't let your sober face elate you,

+however; you don't know what it may come to. Good night!"

+

+When he was left alone, this strange being took up a candle, went to a

+glass that hung against the wall, and surveyed himself minutely in it.

+

+"Do you particularly like the man?" he muttered, at his own image; "why

+should you particularly like a man who resembles you? There is nothing

+in you to like; you know that. Ah, confound you! What a change you have

+made in yourself! A good reason for taking to a man, that he shows you

+what you have fallen away from, and what you might have been! Change

+places with him, and would you have been looked at by those blue eyes as

+he was, and commiserated by that agitated face as he was? Come on, and

+have it out in plain words! You hate the fellow."

+

+He resorted to his pint of wine for consolation, drank it all in a few

+minutes, and fell asleep on his arms, with his hair straggling over the

+table, and a long winding-sheet in the candle dripping down upon him.

+

+

+

+

+V. The Jackal

+

+

+Those were drinking days, and most men drank hard. So very great is

+the improvement Time has brought about in such habits, that a moderate

+statement of the quantity of wine and punch which one man would swallow

+in the course of a night, without any detriment to his reputation as a

+perfect gentleman, would seem, in these days, a ridiculous exaggeration.

+The learned profession of the law was certainly not behind any other

+learned profession in its Bacchanalian propensities; neither was Mr.

+Stryver, already fast shouldering his way to a large and lucrative

+practice, behind his compeers in this particular, any more than in the

+drier parts of the legal race.

+

+A favourite at the Old Bailey, and eke at the Sessions, Mr. Stryver had

+begun cautiously to hew away the lower staves of the ladder on which

+he mounted. Sessions and Old Bailey had now to summon their favourite,

+specially, to their longing arms; and shouldering itself towards the

+visage of the Lord Chief Justice in the Court of King's Bench, the

+florid countenance of Mr. Stryver might be daily seen, bursting out of

+the bed of wigs, like a great sunflower pushing its way at the sun from

+among a rank garden-full of flaring companions.

+

+It had once been noted at the Bar, that while Mr. Stryver was a glib

+man, and an unscrupulous, and a ready, and a bold, he had not that

+faculty of extracting the essence from a heap of statements, which is

+among the most striking and necessary of the advocate's accomplishments.

+But, a remarkable improvement came upon him as to this. The more

+business he got, the greater his power seemed to grow of getting at its

+pith and marrow; and however late at night he sat carousing with Sydney

+Carton, he always had his points at his fingers' ends in the morning.

+

+Sydney Carton, idlest and most unpromising of men, was Stryver's great

+ally. What the two drank together, between Hilary Term and Michaelmas,

+might have floated a king's ship. Stryver never had a case in hand,

+anywhere, but Carton was there, with his hands in his pockets, staring

+at the ceiling of the court; they went the same Circuit, and even there

+they prolonged their usual orgies late into the night, and Carton was

+rumoured to be seen at broad day, going home stealthily and unsteadily

+to his lodgings, like a dissipated cat. At last, it began to get about,

+among such as were interested in the matter, that although Sydney Carton

+would never be a lion, he was an amazingly good jackal, and that he

+rendered suit and service to Stryver in that humble capacity.

+

+"Ten o'clock, sir," said the man at the tavern, whom he had charged to

+wake him--"ten o'clock, sir."

+

+"_What's_ the matter?"

+

+"Ten o'clock, sir."

+

+"What do you mean? Ten o'clock at night?"

+

+"Yes, sir. Your honour told me to call you."

+

+"Oh! I remember. Very well, very well."

+

+After a few dull efforts to get to sleep again, which the man

+dexterously combated by stirring the fire continuously for five minutes,

+he got up, tossed his hat on, and walked out. He turned into the Temple,

+and, having revived himself by twice pacing the pavements of King's

+Bench-walk and Paper-buildings, turned into the Stryver chambers.

+

+The Stryver clerk, who never assisted at these conferences, had gone

+home, and the Stryver principal opened the door. He had his slippers on,

+and a loose bed-gown, and his throat was bare for his greater ease. He

+had that rather wild, strained, seared marking about the eyes, which

+may be observed in all free livers of his class, from the portrait of

+Jeffries downward, and which can be traced, under various disguises of

+Art, through the portraits of every Drinking Age.

+

+"You are a little late, Memory," said Stryver.

+

+"About the usual time; it may be a quarter of an hour later."

+

+They went into a dingy room lined with books and littered with papers,

+where there was a blazing fire. A kettle steamed upon the hob, and in

+the midst of the wreck of papers a table shone, with plenty of wine upon

+it, and brandy, and rum, and sugar, and lemons.

+

+"You have had your bottle, I perceive, Sydney."

+

+"Two to-night, I think. I have been dining with the day's client; or

+seeing him dine--it's all one!"

+

+"That was a rare point, Sydney, that you brought to bear upon the

+identification. How did you come by it? When did it strike you?"

+

+"I thought he was rather a handsome fellow, and I thought I should have

+been much the same sort of fellow, if I had had any luck."

+

+Mr. Stryver laughed till he shook his precocious paunch.

+

+"You and your luck, Sydney! Get to work, get to work."

+

+Sullenly enough, the jackal loosened his dress, went into an adjoining

+room, and came back with a large jug of cold water, a basin, and a towel

+or two. Steeping the towels in the water, and partially wringing them

+out, he folded them on his head in a manner hideous to behold, sat down

+at the table, and said, "Now I am ready!"

+

+"Not much boiling down to be done to-night, Memory," said Mr. Stryver,

+gaily, as he looked among his papers.

+

+"How much?"

+

+"Only two sets of them."

+

+"Give me the worst first."

+

+"There they are, Sydney. Fire away!"

+

+The lion then composed himself on his back on a sofa on one side of the

+drinking-table, while the jackal sat at his own paper-bestrewn table

+proper, on the other side of it, with the bottles and glasses ready to

+his hand. Both resorted to the drinking-table without stint, but each in

+a different way; the lion for the most part reclining with his hands in

+his waistband, looking at the fire, or occasionally flirting with some

+lighter document; the jackal, with knitted brows and intent face,

+so deep in his task, that his eyes did not even follow the hand he

+stretched out for his glass--which often groped about, for a minute or

+more, before it found the glass for his lips. Two or three times, the

+matter in hand became so knotty, that the jackal found it imperative on

+him to get up, and steep his towels anew. From these pilgrimages to the

+jug and basin, he returned with such eccentricities of damp headgear as

+no words can describe; which were made the more ludicrous by his anxious

+gravity.

+

+At length the jackal had got together a compact repast for the lion, and

+proceeded to offer it to him. The lion took it with care and caution,

+made his selections from it, and his remarks upon it, and the jackal

+assisted both. When the repast was fully discussed, the lion put his

+hands in his waistband again, and lay down to meditate. The jackal then

+invigorated himself with a bumper for his throttle, and a fresh application

+to his head, and applied himself to the collection of a second meal;

+this was administered to the lion in the same manner, and was not

+disposed of until the clocks struck three in the morning.

+

+"And now we have done, Sydney, fill a bumper of punch," said Mr.

+Stryver.

+

+The jackal removed the towels from his head, which had been steaming

+again, shook himself, yawned, shivered, and complied.

+

+"You were very sound, Sydney, in the matter of those crown witnesses

+to-day. Every question told."

+

+"I always am sound; am I not?"

+

+"I don't gainsay it. What has roughened your temper? Put some punch to

+it and smooth it again."

+

+With a deprecatory grunt, the jackal again complied.

+

+"The old Sydney Carton of old Shrewsbury School," said Stryver, nodding

+his head over him as he reviewed him in the present and the past, "the

+old seesaw Sydney. Up one minute and down the next; now in spirits and

+now in despondency!"

+

+"Ah!" returned the other, sighing: "yes! The same Sydney, with the same

+luck. Even then, I did exercises for other boys, and seldom did my own."

+

+"And why not?"

+

+"God knows. It was my way, I suppose."

+

+He sat, with his hands in his pockets and his legs stretched out before

+him, looking at the fire.

+

+"Carton," said his friend, squaring himself at him with a bullying air,

+as if the fire-grate had been the furnace in which sustained endeavour

+was forged, and the one delicate thing to be done for the old Sydney

+Carton of old Shrewsbury School was to shoulder him into it, "your way

+is, and always was, a lame way. You summon no energy and purpose. Look

+at me."

+

+"Oh, botheration!" returned Sydney, with a lighter and more

+good-humoured laugh, "don't _you_ be moral!"

+

+"How have I done what I have done?" said Stryver; "how do I do what I

+do?"

+

+"Partly through paying me to help you, I suppose. But it's not worth

+your while to apostrophise me, or the air, about it; what you want to

+do, you do. You were always in the front rank, and I was always behind."

+

+"I had to get into the front rank; I was not born there, was I?"

+

+"I was not present at the ceremony; but my opinion is you were," said

+Carton. At this, he laughed again, and they both laughed.

+

+"Before Shrewsbury, and at Shrewsbury, and ever since Shrewsbury,"

+pursued Carton, "you have fallen into your rank, and I have fallen into

+mine. Even when we were fellow-students in the Student-Quarter of Paris,

+picking up French, and French law, and other French crumbs that we

+didn't get much good of, you were always somewhere, and I was always

+nowhere."

+

+"And whose fault was that?"

+

+"Upon my soul, I am not sure that it was not yours. You were always

+driving and riving and shouldering and passing, to that restless degree

+that I had no chance for my life but in rust and repose. It's a gloomy

+thing, however, to talk about one's own past, with the day breaking.

+Turn me in some other direction before I go."

+

+"Well then! Pledge me to the pretty witness," said Stryver, holding up

+his glass. "Are you turned in a pleasant direction?"

+

+Apparently not, for he became gloomy again.

+

+"Pretty witness," he muttered, looking down into his glass. "I have had

+enough of witnesses to-day and to-night; who's your pretty witness?"

+

+"The picturesque doctor's daughter, Miss Manette."

+

+"_She_ pretty?"

+

+"Is she not?"

+

+"No."

+

+"Why, man alive, she was the admiration of the whole Court!"

+

+"Rot the admiration of the whole Court! Who made the Old Bailey a judge

+of beauty? She was a golden-haired doll!"

+

+"Do you know, Sydney," said Mr. Stryver, looking at him with sharp eyes,

+and slowly drawing a hand across his florid face: "do you know, I rather

+thought, at the time, that you sympathised with the golden-haired doll,

+and were quick to see what happened to the golden-haired doll?"

+

+"Quick to see what happened! If a girl, doll or no doll, swoons within a

+yard or two of a man's nose, he can see it without a perspective-glass.

+I pledge you, but I deny the beauty. And now I'll have no more drink;

+I'll get to bed."

+

+When his host followed him out on the staircase with a candle, to light

+him down the stairs, the day was coldly looking in through its grimy

+windows. When he got out of the house, the air was cold and sad, the

+dull sky overcast, the river dark and dim, the whole scene like a

+lifeless desert. And wreaths of dust were spinning round and round

+before the morning blast, as if the desert-sand had risen far away, and

+the first spray of it in its advance had begun to overwhelm the city.

+

+Waste forces within him, and a desert all around, this man stood still

+on his way across a silent terrace, and saw for a moment, lying in the

+wilderness before him, a mirage of honourable ambition, self-denial, and

+perseverance. In the fair city of this vision, there were airy galleries

+from which the loves and graces looked upon him, gardens in which the

+fruits of life hung ripening, waters of Hope that sparkled in his sight.

+A moment, and it was gone. Climbing to a high chamber in a well of

+houses, he threw himself down in his clothes on a neglected bed, and its

+pillow was wet with wasted tears.

+

+Sadly, sadly, the sun rose; it rose upon no sadder sight than the man of

+good abilities and good emotions, incapable of their directed exercise,

+incapable of his own help and his own happiness, sensible of the blight

+on him, and resigning himself to let it eat him away.

+

+

+

+

+VI. Hundreds of People

+

+

+The quiet lodgings of Doctor Manette were in a quiet street-corner not

+far from Soho-square. On the afternoon of a certain fine Sunday when the

+waves of four months had rolled over the trial for treason, and carried

+it, as to the public interest and memory, far out to sea, Mr. Jarvis

+Lorry walked along the sunny streets from Clerkenwell where he lived,

+on his way to dine with the Doctor. After several relapses into

+business-absorption, Mr. Lorry had become the Doctor's friend, and the

+quiet street-corner was the sunny part of his life.

+

+On this certain fine Sunday, Mr. Lorry walked towards Soho, early in

+the afternoon, for three reasons of habit. Firstly, because, on fine

+Sundays, he often walked out, before dinner, with the Doctor and Lucie;

+secondly, because, on unfavourable Sundays, he was accustomed to be with

+them as the family friend, talking, reading, looking out of window, and

+generally getting through the day; thirdly, because he happened to have

+his own little shrewd doubts to solve, and knew how the ways of the

+Doctor's household pointed to that time as a likely time for solving

+them.

+

+A quainter corner than the corner where the Doctor lived, was not to be

+found in London. There was no way through it, and the front windows of

+the Doctor's lodgings commanded a pleasant little vista of street that

+had a congenial air of retirement on it. There were few buildings then,

+north of the Oxford-road, and forest-trees flourished, and wild flowers

+grew, and the hawthorn blossomed, in the now vanished fields. As a

+consequence, country airs circulated in Soho with vigorous freedom,

+instead of languishing into the parish like stray paupers without a

+settlement; and there was many a good south wall, not far off, on which

+the peaches ripened in their season.

+

+The summer light struck into the corner brilliantly in the earlier part

+of the day; but, when the streets grew hot, the corner was in shadow,

+though not in shadow so remote but that you could see beyond it into a

+glare of brightness. It was a cool spot, staid but cheerful, a wonderful

+place for echoes, and a very harbour from the raging streets.

+

+There ought to have been a tranquil bark in such an anchorage, and

+there was. The Doctor occupied two floors of a large stiff house, where

+several callings purported to be pursued by day, but whereof little was

+audible any day, and which was shunned by all of them at night. In

+a building at the back, attainable by a courtyard where a plane-tree

+rustled its green leaves, church-organs claimed to be made, and silver

+to be chased, and likewise gold to be beaten by some mysterious giant

+who had a golden arm starting out of the wall of the front hall--as if

+he had beaten himself precious, and menaced a similar conversion of all

+visitors. Very little of these trades, or of a lonely lodger rumoured

+to live up-stairs, or of a dim coach-trimming maker asserted to have

+a counting-house below, was ever heard or seen. Occasionally, a stray

+workman putting his coat on, traversed the hall, or a stranger peered

+about there, or a distant clink was heard across the courtyard, or a

+thump from the golden giant. These, however, were only the exceptions

+required to prove the rule that the sparrows in the plane-tree behind

+the house, and the echoes in the corner before it, had their own way

+from Sunday morning unto Saturday night.

+

+Doctor Manette received such patients here as his old reputation, and

+its revival in the floating whispers of his story, brought him.

+His scientific knowledge, and his vigilance and skill in conducting

+ingenious experiments, brought him otherwise into moderate request, and

+he earned as much as he wanted.

+

+These things were within Mr. Jarvis Lorry's knowledge, thoughts, and

+notice, when he rang the door-bell of the tranquil house in the corner,

+on the fine Sunday afternoon.

+

+"Doctor Manette at home?"

+

+Expected home.

+

+"Miss Lucie at home?"

+

+Expected home.

+

+"Miss Pross at home?"

+

+Possibly at home, but of a certainty impossible for handmaid to

+anticipate intentions of Miss Pross, as to admission or denial of the

+fact.

+

+"As I am at home myself," said Mr. Lorry, "I'll go upstairs."

+

+Although the Doctor's daughter had known nothing of the country of her

+birth, she appeared to have innately derived from it that ability to

+make much of little means, which is one of its most useful and most

+agreeable characteristics. Simple as the furniture was, it was set off

+by so many little adornments, of no value but for their taste and fancy,

+that its effect was delightful. The disposition of everything in the

+rooms, from the largest object to the least; the arrangement of colours,

+the elegant variety and contrast obtained by thrift in trifles, by

+delicate hands, clear eyes, and good sense; were at once so pleasant in

+themselves, and so expressive of their originator, that, as Mr. Lorry

+stood looking about him, the very chairs and tables seemed to ask him,

+with something of that peculiar expression which he knew so well by this

+time, whether he approved?

+

+There were three rooms on a floor, and, the doors by which they

+communicated being put open that the air might pass freely through them

+all, Mr. Lorry, smilingly observant of that fanciful resemblance which

+he detected all around him, walked from one to another. The first was

+the best room, and in it were Lucie's birds, and flowers, and books,

+and desk, and work-table, and box of water-colours; the second was

+the Doctor's consulting-room, used also as the dining-room; the third,

+changingly speckled by the rustle of the plane-tree in the yard, was the

+Doctor's bedroom, and there, in a corner, stood the disused shoemaker's

+bench and tray of tools, much as it had stood on the fifth floor of the

+dismal house by the wine-shop, in the suburb of Saint Antoine in Paris.

+

+"I wonder," said Mr. Lorry, pausing in his looking about, "that he keeps

+that reminder of his sufferings about him!"

+

+"And why wonder at that?" was the abrupt inquiry that made him start.

+

+It proceeded from Miss Pross, the wild red woman, strong of hand, whose

+acquaintance he had first made at the Royal George Hotel at Dover, and

+had since improved.

+

+"I should have thought--" Mr. Lorry began.

+

+"Pooh! You'd have thought!" said Miss Pross; and Mr. Lorry left off.

+

+"How do you do?" inquired that lady then--sharply, and yet as if to

+express that she bore him no malice.

+

+"I am pretty well, I thank you," answered Mr. Lorry, with meekness; "how

+are you?"

+

+"Nothing to boast of," said Miss Pross.

+

+"Indeed?"

+

+"Ah! indeed!" said Miss Pross. "I am very much put out about my

+Ladybird."

+

+"Indeed?"

+

+"For gracious sake say something else besides 'indeed,' or you'll

+fidget me to death," said Miss Pross: whose character (dissociated from

+stature) was shortness.

+

+"Really, then?" said Mr. Lorry, as an amendment.

+

+"Really, is bad enough," returned Miss Pross, "but better. Yes, I am

+very much put out."

+

+"May I ask the cause?"

+

+"I don't want dozens of people who are not at all worthy of Ladybird, to

+come here looking after her," said Miss Pross.

+

+"_Do_ dozens come for that purpose?"

+

+"Hundreds," said Miss Pross.

+

+It was characteristic of this lady (as of some other people before her

+time and since) that whenever her original proposition was questioned,

+she exaggerated it.

+

+"Dear me!" said Mr. Lorry, as the safest remark he could think of.

+

+"I have lived with the darling--or the darling has lived with me, and

+paid me for it; which she certainly should never have done, you may take

+your affidavit, if I could have afforded to keep either myself or her

+for nothing--since she was ten years old. And it's really very hard,"

+said Miss Pross.

+

+Not seeing with precision what was very hard, Mr. Lorry shook his head;

+using that important part of himself as a sort of fairy cloak that would

+fit anything.

+

+"All sorts of people who are not in the least degree worthy of the pet,

+are always turning up," said Miss Pross. "When you began it--"

+

+"_I_ began it, Miss Pross?"

+

+"Didn't you? Who brought her father to life?"

+

+"Oh! If _that_ was beginning it--" said Mr. Lorry.

+

+"It wasn't ending it, I suppose? I say, when you began it, it was hard

+enough; not that I have any fault to find with Doctor Manette, except

+that he is not worthy of such a daughter, which is no imputation on

+him, for it was not to be expected that anybody should be, under any

+circumstances. But it really is doubly and trebly hard to have crowds

+and multitudes of people turning up after him (I could have forgiven

+him), to take Ladybird's affections away from me."

+

+Mr. Lorry knew Miss Pross to be very jealous, but he also knew her by

+this time to be, beneath the service of her eccentricity, one of those

+unselfish creatures--found only among women--who will, for pure love and

+admiration, bind themselves willing slaves, to youth when they have lost

+it, to beauty that they never had, to accomplishments that they were

+never fortunate enough to gain, to bright hopes that never shone upon

+their own sombre lives. He knew enough of the world to know that there

+is nothing in it better than the faithful service of the heart; so

+rendered and so free from any mercenary taint, he had such an exalted

+respect for it, that in the retributive arrangements made by his own

+mind--we all make such arrangements, more or less--he stationed Miss

+Pross much nearer to the lower Angels than many ladies immeasurably

+better got up both by Nature and Art, who had balances at Tellson's.

+

+"There never was, nor will be, but one man worthy of Ladybird," said

+Miss Pross; "and that was my brother Solomon, if he hadn't made a

+mistake in life."

+

+Here again: Mr. Lorry's inquiries into Miss Pross's personal history had

+established the fact that her brother Solomon was a heartless scoundrel

+who had stripped her of everything she possessed, as a stake to

+speculate with, and had abandoned her in her poverty for evermore, with

+no touch of compunction. Miss Pross's fidelity of belief in Solomon

+(deducting a mere trifle for this slight mistake) was quite a serious

+matter with Mr. Lorry, and had its weight in his good opinion of her.

+

+"As we happen to be alone for the moment, and are both people of

+business," he said, when they had got back to the drawing-room and had

+sat down there in friendly relations, "let me ask you--does the Doctor,

+in talking with Lucie, never refer to the shoemaking time, yet?"

+

+"Never."

+

+"And yet keeps that bench and those tools beside him?"

+

+"Ah!" returned Miss Pross, shaking her head. "But I don't say he don't

+refer to it within himself."

+

+"Do you believe that he thinks of it much?"

+

+"I do," said Miss Pross.

+

+"Do you imagine--" Mr. Lorry had begun, when Miss Pross took him up

+short with:

+

+"Never imagine anything. Have no imagination at all."

+

+"I stand corrected; do you suppose--you go so far as to suppose,

+sometimes?"

+

+"Now and then," said Miss Pross.

+

+"Do you suppose," Mr. Lorry went on, with a laughing twinkle in his

+bright eye, as it looked kindly at her, "that Doctor Manette has any

+theory of his own, preserved through all those years, relative to

+the cause of his being so oppressed; perhaps, even to the name of his

+oppressor?"

+

+"I don't suppose anything about it but what Ladybird tells me."

+

+"And that is--?"

+

+"That she thinks he has."

+

+"Now don't be angry at my asking all these questions; because I am a

+mere dull man of business, and you are a woman of business."

+

+"Dull?" Miss Pross inquired, with placidity.

+

+Rather wishing his modest adjective away, Mr. Lorry replied, "No, no,

+no. Surely not. To return to business:--Is it not remarkable that Doctor

+Manette, unquestionably innocent of any crime as we are all well assured

+he is, should never touch upon that question? I will not say with me,

+though he had business relations with me many years ago, and we are now

+intimate; I will say with the fair daughter to whom he is so devotedly

+attached, and who is so devotedly attached to him? Believe me, Miss

+Pross, I don't approach the topic with you, out of curiosity, but out of

+zealous interest."

+

+"Well! To the best of my understanding, and bad's the best, you'll tell

+me," said Miss Pross, softened by the tone of the apology, "he is afraid

+of the whole subject."

+

+"Afraid?"

+

+"It's plain enough, I should think, why he may be. It's a dreadful

+remembrance. Besides that, his loss of himself grew out of it. Not

+knowing how he lost himself, or how he recovered himself, he may never

+feel certain of not losing himself again. That alone wouldn't make the

+subject pleasant, I should think."

+

+It was a profounder remark than Mr. Lorry had looked for. "True," said

+he, "and fearful to reflect upon. Yet, a doubt lurks in my mind, Miss

+Pross, whether it is good for Doctor Manette to have that suppression

+always shut up within him. Indeed, it is this doubt and the uneasiness

+it sometimes causes me that has led me to our present confidence."

+

+"Can't be helped," said Miss Pross, shaking her head. "Touch that

+string, and he instantly changes for the worse. Better leave it alone.

+In short, must leave it alone, like or no like. Sometimes, he gets up in

+the dead of the night, and will be heard, by us overhead there, walking

+up and down, walking up and down, in his room. Ladybird has learnt to

+know then that his mind is walking up and down, walking up and down, in

+his old prison. She hurries to him, and they go on together, walking up

+and down, walking up and down, until he is composed. But he never says

+a word of the true reason of his restlessness, to her, and she finds it

+best not to hint at it to him. In silence they go walking up and down

+together, walking up and down together, till her love and company have

+brought him to himself."

+

+Notwithstanding Miss Pross's denial of her own imagination, there was a

+perception of the pain of being monotonously haunted by one sad idea,

+in her repetition of the phrase, walking up and down, which testified to

+her possessing such a thing.

+

+The corner has been mentioned as a wonderful corner for echoes; it

+had begun to echo so resoundingly to the tread of coming feet, that it

+seemed as though the very mention of that weary pacing to and fro had

+set it going.

+

+"Here they are!" said Miss Pross, rising to break up the conference;

+"and now we shall have hundreds of people pretty soon!"

+

+It was such a curious corner in its acoustical properties, such a

+peculiar Ear of a place, that as Mr. Lorry stood at the open window,

+looking for the father and daughter whose steps he heard, he fancied

+they would never approach. Not only would the echoes die away, as though

+the steps had gone; but, echoes of other steps that never came would be

+heard in their stead, and would die away for good when they seemed close

+at hand. However, father and daughter did at last appear, and Miss Pross

+was ready at the street door to receive them.

+

+Miss Pross was a pleasant sight, albeit wild, and red, and grim, taking

+off her darling's bonnet when she came up-stairs, and touching it up

+with the ends of her handkerchief, and blowing the dust off it, and

+folding her mantle ready for laying by, and smoothing her rich hair with

+as much pride as she could possibly have taken in her own hair if she

+had been the vainest and handsomest of women. Her darling was a pleasant

+sight too, embracing her and thanking her, and protesting against

+her taking so much trouble for her--which last she only dared to do

+playfully, or Miss Pross, sorely hurt, would have retired to her own

+chamber and cried. The Doctor was a pleasant sight too, looking on at

+them, and telling Miss Pross how she spoilt Lucie, in accents and with

+eyes that had as much spoiling in them as Miss Pross had, and would

+have had more if it were possible. Mr. Lorry was a pleasant sight too,

+beaming at all this in his little wig, and thanking his bachelor

+stars for having lighted him in his declining years to a Home. But, no

+Hundreds of people came to see the sights, and Mr. Lorry looked in vain

+for the fulfilment of Miss Pross's prediction.

+

+Dinner-time, and still no Hundreds of people. In the arrangements of

+the little household, Miss Pross took charge of the lower regions, and

+always acquitted herself marvellously. Her dinners, of a very modest

+quality, were so well cooked and so well served, and so neat in their

+contrivances, half English and half French, that nothing could be

+better. Miss Pross's friendship being of the thoroughly practical

+kind, she had ravaged Soho and the adjacent provinces, in search of

+impoverished French, who, tempted by shillings and half-crowns, would

+impart culinary mysteries to her. From these decayed sons and daughters

+of Gaul, she had acquired such wonderful arts, that the woman and girl

+who formed the staff of domestics regarded her as quite a Sorceress,

+or Cinderella's Godmother: who would send out for a fowl, a rabbit,

+a vegetable or two from the garden, and change them into anything she

+pleased.

+

+On Sundays, Miss Pross dined at the Doctor's table, but on other days

+persisted in taking her meals at unknown periods, either in the lower

+regions, or in her own room on the second floor--a blue chamber, to

+which no one but her Ladybird ever gained admittance. On this occasion,

+Miss Pross, responding to Ladybird's pleasant face and pleasant efforts

+to please her, unbent exceedingly; so the dinner was very pleasant, too.

+

+It was an oppressive day, and, after dinner, Lucie proposed that the

+wine should be carried out under the plane-tree, and they should sit

+there in the air. As everything turned upon her, and revolved about her,

+they went out under the plane-tree, and she carried the wine down for

+the special benefit of Mr. Lorry. She had installed herself, some

+time before, as Mr. Lorry's cup-bearer; and while they sat under the

+plane-tree, talking, she kept his glass replenished. Mysterious backs

+and ends of houses peeped at them as they talked, and the plane-tree

+whispered to them in its own way above their heads.

+

+Still, the Hundreds of people did not present themselves. Mr. Darnay

+presented himself while they were sitting under the plane-tree, but he

+was only One.

+

+Doctor Manette received him kindly, and so did Lucie. But, Miss Pross

+suddenly became afflicted with a twitching in the head and body, and

+retired into the house. She was not unfrequently the victim of this

+disorder, and she called it, in familiar conversation, "a fit of the

+jerks."

+

+The Doctor was in his best condition, and looked specially young. The

+resemblance between him and Lucie was very strong at such times, and as

+they sat side by side, she leaning on his shoulder, and he resting

+his arm on the back of her chair, it was very agreeable to trace the

+likeness.

+

+He had been talking all day, on many subjects, and with unusual

+vivacity. "Pray, Doctor Manette," said Mr. Darnay, as they sat under the

+plane-tree--and he said it in the natural pursuit of the topic in hand,

+which happened to be the old buildings of London--"have you seen much of

+the Tower?"

+

+"Lucie and I have been there; but only casually. We have seen enough of

+it, to know that it teems with interest; little more."

+

+"_I_ have been there, as you remember," said Darnay, with a smile,

+though reddening a little angrily, "in another character, and not in a

+character that gives facilities for seeing much of it. They told me a

+curious thing when I was there."

+

+"What was that?" Lucie asked.

+

+"In making some alterations, the workmen came upon an old dungeon, which

+had been, for many years, built up and forgotten. Every stone of

+its inner wall was covered by inscriptions which had been carved by

+prisoners--dates, names, complaints, and prayers. Upon a corner stone

+in an angle of the wall, one prisoner, who seemed to have gone to

+execution, had cut as his last work, three letters. They were done with

+some very poor instrument, and hurriedly, with an unsteady hand.

+At first, they were read as D. I. C.; but, on being more carefully

+examined, the last letter was found to be G. There was no record or

+legend of any prisoner with those initials, and many fruitless guesses

+were made what the name could have been. At length, it was suggested

+that the letters were not initials, but the complete word, DIG. The

+floor was examined very carefully under the inscription, and, in the

+earth beneath a stone, or tile, or some fragment of paving, were found

+the ashes of a paper, mingled with the ashes of a small leathern case

+or bag. What the unknown prisoner had written will never be read, but he

+had written something, and hidden it away to keep it from the gaoler."

+

+"My father," exclaimed Lucie, "you are ill!"

+

+He had suddenly started up, with his hand to his head. His manner and

+his look quite terrified them all.

+

+"No, my dear, not ill. There are large drops of rain falling, and they

+made me start. We had better go in."

+

+He recovered himself almost instantly. Rain was really falling in large

+drops, and he showed the back of his hand with rain-drops on it. But, he

+said not a single word in reference to the discovery that had been told

+of, and, as they went into the house, the business eye of Mr. Lorry

+either detected, or fancied it detected, on his face, as it turned

+towards Charles Darnay, the same singular look that had been upon it

+when it turned towards him in the passages of the Court House.

+

+He recovered himself so quickly, however, that Mr. Lorry had doubts of

+his business eye. The arm of the golden giant in the hall was not more

+steady than he was, when he stopped under it to remark to them that he

+was not yet proof against slight surprises (if he ever would be), and

+that the rain had startled him.

+

+Tea-time, and Miss Pross making tea, with another fit of the jerks upon

+her, and yet no Hundreds of people. Mr. Carton had lounged in, but he

+made only Two.

+

+The night was so very sultry, that although they sat with doors and

+windows open, they were overpowered by heat. When the tea-table was

+done with, they all moved to one of the windows, and looked out into the

+heavy twilight. Lucie sat by her father; Darnay sat beside her; Carton

+leaned against a window. The curtains were long and white, and some of

+the thunder-gusts that whirled into the corner, caught them up to the

+ceiling, and waved them like spectral wings.

+

+"The rain-drops are still falling, large, heavy, and few," said Doctor

+Manette. "It comes slowly."

+

+"It comes surely," said Carton.

+

+They spoke low, as people watching and waiting mostly do; as people in a

+dark room, watching and waiting for Lightning, always do.

+

+There was a great hurry in the streets of people speeding away to

+get shelter before the storm broke; the wonderful corner for echoes

+resounded with the echoes of footsteps coming and going, yet not a

+footstep was there.

+

+"A multitude of people, and yet a solitude!" said Darnay, when they had

+listened for a while.

+

+"Is it not impressive, Mr. Darnay?" asked Lucie. "Sometimes, I have

+sat here of an evening, until I have fancied--but even the shade of

+a foolish fancy makes me shudder to-night, when all is so black and

+solemn--"

+

+"Let us shudder too. We may know what it is."

+

+"It will seem nothing to you. Such whims are only impressive as we

+originate them, I think; they are not to be communicated. I have

+sometimes sat alone here of an evening, listening, until I have made

+the echoes out to be the echoes of all the footsteps that are coming

+by-and-bye into our lives."

+

+"There is a great crowd coming one day into our lives, if that be so,"

+Sydney Carton struck in, in his moody way.

+

+The footsteps were incessant, and the hurry of them became more and more

+rapid. The corner echoed and re-echoed with the tread of feet; some,

+as it seemed, under the windows; some, as it seemed, in the room; some

+coming, some going, some breaking off, some stopping altogether; all in

+the distant streets, and not one within sight.

+

+"Are all these footsteps destined to come to all of us, Miss Manette, or

+are we to divide them among us?"

+

+"I don't know, Mr. Darnay; I told you it was a foolish fancy, but you

+asked for it. When I have yielded myself to it, I have been alone, and

+then I have imagined them the footsteps of the people who are to come

+into my life, and my father's."

+

+"I take them into mine!" said Carton. "_I_ ask no questions and make no

+stipulations. There is a great crowd bearing down upon us, Miss Manette,

+and I see them--by the Lightning." He added the last words, after there

+had been a vivid flash which had shown him lounging in the window.

+

+"And I hear them!" he added again, after a peal of thunder. "Here they

+come, fast, fierce, and furious!"

+

+It was the rush and roar of rain that he typified, and it stopped him,

+for no voice could be heard in it. A memorable storm of thunder and

+lightning broke with that sweep of water, and there was not a moment's

+interval in crash, and fire, and rain, until after the moon rose at

+midnight.

+

+The great bell of Saint Paul's was striking one in the cleared air, when

+Mr. Lorry, escorted by Jerry, high-booted and bearing a lantern, set

+forth on his return-passage to Clerkenwell. There were solitary patches

+of road on the way between Soho and Clerkenwell, and Mr. Lorry, mindful

+of foot-pads, always retained Jerry for this service: though it was

+usually performed a good two hours earlier.

+

+"What a night it has been! Almost a night, Jerry," said Mr. Lorry, "to

+bring the dead out of their graves."

+

+"I never see the night myself, master--nor yet I don't expect to--what

+would do that," answered Jerry.

+

+"Good night, Mr. Carton," said the man of business. "Good night, Mr.

+Darnay. Shall we ever see such a night again, together!"

+

+Perhaps. Perhaps, see the great crowd of people with its rush and roar,

+bearing down upon them, too.

+

+

+

+

+VII. Monseigneur in Town

+

+

+Monseigneur, one of the great lords in power at the Court, held his

+fortnightly reception in his grand hotel in Paris. Monseigneur was in

+his inner room, his sanctuary of sanctuaries, the Holiest of Holiests to

+the crowd of worshippers in the suite of rooms without. Monseigneur

+was about to take his chocolate. Monseigneur could swallow a great many

+things with ease, and was by some few sullen minds supposed to be rather

+rapidly swallowing France; but, his morning's chocolate could not so

+much as get into the throat of Monseigneur, without the aid of four

+strong men besides the Cook.

+

+Yes. It took four men, all four ablaze with gorgeous decoration, and the

+Chief of them unable to exist with fewer than two gold watches in his

+pocket, emulative of the noble and chaste fashion set by Monseigneur, to

+conduct the happy chocolate to Monseigneur's lips. One lacquey carried

+the chocolate-pot into the sacred presence; a second, milled and frothed

+the chocolate with the little instrument he bore for that function;

+a third, presented the favoured napkin; a fourth (he of the two gold

+watches), poured the chocolate out. It was impossible for Monseigneur to

+dispense with one of these attendants on the chocolate and hold his high

+place under the admiring Heavens. Deep would have been the blot upon

+his escutcheon if his chocolate had been ignobly waited on by only three

+men; he must have died of two.

+

+Monseigneur had been out at a little supper last night, where the Comedy

+and the Grand Opera were charmingly represented. Monseigneur was out at

+a little supper most nights, with fascinating company. So polite and so

+impressible was Monseigneur, that the Comedy and the Grand Opera had far

+more influence with him in the tiresome articles of state affairs and

+state secrets, than the needs of all France. A happy circumstance

+for France, as the like always is for all countries similarly

+favoured!--always was for England (by way of example), in the regretted

+days of the merry Stuart who sold it.

+

+Monseigneur had one truly noble idea of general public business, which

+was, to let everything go on in its own way; of particular public

+business, Monseigneur had the other truly noble idea that it must all go

+his way--tend to his own power and pocket. Of his pleasures, general and

+particular, Monseigneur had the other truly noble idea, that the world

+was made for them. The text of his order (altered from the original

+by only a pronoun, which is not much) ran: "The earth and the fulness

+thereof are mine, saith Monseigneur."

+

+Yet, Monseigneur had slowly found that vulgar embarrassments crept into

+his affairs, both private and public; and he had, as to both classes of

+affairs, allied himself perforce with a Farmer-General. As to finances

+public, because Monseigneur could not make anything at all of them, and

+must consequently let them out to somebody who could; as to finances

+private, because Farmer-Generals were rich, and Monseigneur, after

+generations of great luxury and expense, was growing poor. Hence

+Monseigneur had taken his sister from a convent, while there was yet

+time to ward off the impending veil, the cheapest garment she could

+wear, and had bestowed her as a prize upon a very rich Farmer-General,

+poor in family. Which Farmer-General, carrying an appropriate cane with

+a golden apple on the top of it, was now among the company in the outer

+rooms, much prostrated before by mankind--always excepting superior

+mankind of the blood of Monseigneur, who, his own wife included, looked

+down upon him with the loftiest contempt.

+

+A sumptuous man was the Farmer-General. Thirty horses stood in his

+stables, twenty-four male domestics sat in his halls, six body-women

+waited on his wife. As one who pretended to do nothing but plunder and

+forage where he could, the Farmer-General--howsoever his matrimonial

+relations conduced to social morality--was at least the greatest reality

+among the personages who attended at the hotel of Monseigneur that day.

+

+For, the rooms, though a beautiful scene to look at, and adorned with

+every device of decoration that the taste and skill of the time could

+achieve, were, in truth, not a sound business; considered with any

+reference to the scarecrows in the rags and nightcaps elsewhere (and not

+so far off, either, but that the watching towers of Notre Dame, almost

+equidistant from the two extremes, could see them both), they would

+have been an exceedingly uncomfortable business--if that could have

+been anybody's business, at the house of Monseigneur. Military officers

+destitute of military knowledge; naval officers with no idea of a ship;

+civil officers without a notion of affairs; brazen ecclesiastics, of the

+worst world worldly, with sensual eyes, loose tongues, and looser lives;

+all totally unfit for their several callings, all lying horribly in

+pretending to belong to them, but all nearly or remotely of the order of

+Monseigneur, and therefore foisted on all public employments from which

+anything was to be got; these were to be told off by the score and the

+score. People not immediately connected with Monseigneur or the State,

+yet equally unconnected with anything that was real, or with lives

+passed in travelling by any straight road to any true earthly end, were

+no less abundant. Doctors who made great fortunes out of dainty remedies

+for imaginary disorders that never existed, smiled upon their courtly

+patients in the ante-chambers of Monseigneur. Projectors who had

+discovered every kind of remedy for the little evils with which the

+State was touched, except the remedy of setting to work in earnest to

+root out a single sin, poured their distracting babble into any ears

+they could lay hold of, at the reception of Monseigneur. Unbelieving

+Philosophers who were remodelling the world with words, and making

+card-towers of Babel to scale the skies with, talked with Unbelieving

+Chemists who had an eye on the transmutation of metals, at this

+wonderful gathering accumulated by Monseigneur. Exquisite gentlemen of

+the finest breeding, which was at that remarkable time--and has been

+since--to be known by its fruits of indifference to every natural

+subject of human interest, were in the most exemplary state of

+exhaustion, at the hotel of Monseigneur. Such homes had these various

+notabilities left behind them in the fine world of Paris, that the spies

+among the assembled devotees of Monseigneur--forming a goodly half

+of the polite company--would have found it hard to discover among

+the angels of that sphere one solitary wife, who, in her manners and

+appearance, owned to being a Mother. Indeed, except for the mere act of

+bringing a troublesome creature into this world--which does not go far

+towards the realisation of the name of mother--there was no such thing

+known to the fashion. Peasant women kept the unfashionable babies close,

+and brought them up, and charming grandmammas of sixty dressed and

+supped as at twenty.

+

+The leprosy of unreality disfigured every human creature in attendance

+upon Monseigneur. In the outermost room were half a dozen exceptional

+people who had had, for a few years, some vague misgiving in them that

+things in general were going rather wrong. As a promising way of setting

+them right, half of the half-dozen had become members of a fantastic

+sect of Convulsionists, and were even then considering within themselves

+whether they should foam, rage, roar, and turn cataleptic on the

+spot--thereby setting up a highly intelligible finger-post to the

+Future, for Monseigneur's guidance. Besides these Dervishes, were other

+three who had rushed into another sect, which mended matters with a

+jargon about "the Centre of Truth:" holding that Man had got out of the

+Centre of Truth--which did not need much demonstration--but had not got

+out of the Circumference, and that he was to be kept from flying out of

+the Circumference, and was even to be shoved back into the Centre,

+by fasting and seeing of spirits. Among these, accordingly, much

+discoursing with spirits went on--and it did a world of good which never

+became manifest.

+

+But, the comfort was, that all the company at the grand hotel of

+Monseigneur were perfectly dressed. If the Day of Judgment had only been

+ascertained to be a dress day, everybody there would have been eternally

+correct. Such frizzling and powdering and sticking up of hair, such

+delicate complexions artificially preserved and mended, such gallant

+swords to look at, and such delicate honour to the sense of smell, would

+surely keep anything going, for ever and ever. The exquisite gentlemen

+of the finest breeding wore little pendent trinkets that chinked as they

+languidly moved; these golden fetters rang like precious little bells;

+and what with that ringing, and with the rustle of silk and brocade and

+fine linen, there was a flutter in the air that fanned Saint Antoine and

+his devouring hunger far away.

+

+Dress was the one unfailing talisman and charm used for keeping all

+things in their places. Everybody was dressed for a Fancy Ball that

+was never to leave off. From the Palace of the Tuileries, through

+Monseigneur and the whole Court, through the Chambers, the Tribunals

+of Justice, and all society (except the scarecrows), the Fancy Ball

+descended to the Common Executioner: who, in pursuance of the charm, was

+required to officiate "frizzled, powdered, in a gold-laced coat, pumps,

+and white silk stockings." At the gallows and the wheel--the axe was a

+rarity--Monsieur Paris, as it was the episcopal mode among his brother

+Professors of the provinces, Monsieur Orleans, and the rest, to call

+him, presided in this dainty dress. And who among the company at

+Monseigneur's reception in that seventeen hundred and eightieth year

+of our Lord, could possibly doubt, that a system rooted in a frizzled

+hangman, powdered, gold-laced, pumped, and white-silk stockinged, would

+see the very stars out!

+

+Monseigneur having eased his four men of their burdens and taken his

+chocolate, caused the doors of the Holiest of Holiests to be thrown

+open, and issued forth. Then, what submission, what cringing and

+fawning, what servility, what abject humiliation! As to bowing down in

+body and spirit, nothing in that way was left for Heaven--which may have

+been one among other reasons why the worshippers of Monseigneur never

+troubled it.

+

+Bestowing a word of promise here and a smile there, a whisper on one

+happy slave and a wave of the hand on another, Monseigneur affably

+passed through his rooms to the remote region of the Circumference of

+Truth. There, Monseigneur turned, and came back again, and so in due

+course of time got himself shut up in his sanctuary by the chocolate

+sprites, and was seen no more.

+

+The show being over, the flutter in the air became quite a little storm,

+and the precious little bells went ringing downstairs. There was soon

+but one person left of all the crowd, and he, with his hat under his arm

+and his snuff-box in his hand, slowly passed among the mirrors on his

+way out.

+

+"I devote you," said this person, stopping at the last door on his way,

+and turning in the direction of the sanctuary, "to the Devil!"

+

+With that, he shook the snuff from his fingers as if he had shaken the

+dust from his feet, and quietly walked downstairs.

+

+He was a man of about sixty, handsomely dressed, haughty in manner, and

+with a face like a fine mask. A face of a transparent paleness; every

+feature in it clearly defined; one set expression on it. The nose,

+beautifully formed otherwise, was very slightly pinched at the top

+of each nostril. In those two compressions, or dints, the only little

+change that the face ever showed, resided. They persisted in changing

+colour sometimes, and they would be occasionally dilated and contracted

+by something like a faint pulsation; then, they gave a look of

+treachery, and cruelty, to the whole countenance. Examined with

+attention, its capacity of helping such a look was to be found in the

+line of the mouth, and the lines of the orbits of the eyes, being much

+too horizontal and thin; still, in the effect of the face made, it was a

+handsome face, and a remarkable one.

+

+Its owner went downstairs into the courtyard, got into his carriage, and

+drove away. Not many people had talked with him at the reception; he had

+stood in a little space apart, and Monseigneur might have been warmer

+in his manner. It appeared, under the circumstances, rather agreeable

+to him to see the common people dispersed before his horses, and

+often barely escaping from being run down. His man drove as if he were

+charging an enemy, and the furious recklessness of the man brought no

+check into the face, or to the lips, of the master. The complaint had

+sometimes made itself audible, even in that deaf city and dumb age,

+that, in the narrow streets without footways, the fierce patrician

+custom of hard driving endangered and maimed the mere vulgar in a

+barbarous manner. But, few cared enough for that to think of it a second

+time, and, in this matter, as in all others, the common wretches were

+left to get out of their difficulties as they could.

+

+With a wild rattle and clatter, and an inhuman abandonment of

+consideration not easy to be understood in these days, the carriage

+dashed through streets and swept round corners, with women screaming

+before it, and men clutching each other and clutching children out of

+its way. At last, swooping at a street corner by a fountain, one of its

+wheels came to a sickening little jolt, and there was a loud cry from a

+number of voices, and the horses reared and plunged.

+

+But for the latter inconvenience, the carriage probably would not have

+stopped; carriages were often known to drive on, and leave their wounded

+behind, and why not? But the frightened valet had got down in a hurry,

+and there were twenty hands at the horses' bridles.

+

+"What has gone wrong?" said Monsieur, calmly looking out.

+

+A tall man in a nightcap had caught up a bundle from among the feet of

+the horses, and had laid it on the basement of the fountain, and was

+down in the mud and wet, howling over it like a wild animal.

+

+"Pardon, Monsieur the Marquis!" said a ragged and submissive man, "it is

+a child."

+

+"Why does he make that abominable noise? Is it his child?"

+

+"Excuse me, Monsieur the Marquis--it is a pity--yes."

+

+The fountain was a little removed; for the street opened, where it was,

+into a space some ten or twelve yards square. As the tall man suddenly

+got up from the ground, and came running at the carriage, Monsieur the

+Marquis clapped his hand for an instant on his sword-hilt.

+

+"Killed!" shrieked the man, in wild desperation, extending both arms at

+their length above his head, and staring at him. "Dead!"

+

+The people closed round, and looked at Monsieur the Marquis. There was

+nothing revealed by the many eyes that looked at him but watchfulness

+and eagerness; there was no visible menacing or anger. Neither did the

+people say anything; after the first cry, they had been silent, and they

+remained so. The voice of the submissive man who had spoken, was flat

+and tame in its extreme submission. Monsieur the Marquis ran his eyes

+over them all, as if they had been mere rats come out of their holes.

+

+He took out his purse.

+

+"It is extraordinary to me," said he, "that you people cannot take care

+of yourselves and your children. One or the other of you is for ever in

+the way. How do I know what injury you have done my horses. See! Give

+him that."

+

+He threw out a gold coin for the valet to pick up, and all the heads

+craned forward that all the eyes might look down at it as it fell. The

+tall man called out again with a most unearthly cry, "Dead!"

+

+He was arrested by the quick arrival of another man, for whom the rest

+made way. On seeing him, the miserable creature fell upon his shoulder,

+sobbing and crying, and pointing to the fountain, where some women were

+stooping over the motionless bundle, and moving gently about it. They

+were as silent, however, as the men.

+

+"I know all, I know all," said the last comer. "Be a brave man, my

+Gaspard! It is better for the poor little plaything to die so, than to

+live. It has died in a moment without pain. Could it have lived an hour

+as happily?"

+

+"You are a philosopher, you there," said the Marquis, smiling. "How do

+they call you?"

+

+"They call me Defarge."

+

+"Of what trade?"

+

+"Monsieur the Marquis, vendor of wine."

+

+"Pick up that, philosopher and vendor of wine," said the Marquis,

+throwing him another gold coin, "and spend it as you will. The horses

+there; are they right?"

+

+Without deigning to look at the assemblage a second time, Monsieur the

+Marquis leaned back in his seat, and was just being driven away with the

+air of a gentleman who had accidentally broke some common thing, and had

+paid for it, and could afford to pay for it; when his ease was suddenly

+disturbed by a coin flying into his carriage, and ringing on its floor.

+

+"Hold!" said Monsieur the Marquis. "Hold the horses! Who threw that?"

+

+He looked to the spot where Defarge the vendor of wine had stood, a

+moment before; but the wretched father was grovelling on his face on

+the pavement in that spot, and the figure that stood beside him was the

+figure of a dark stout woman, knitting.

+

+"You dogs!" said the Marquis, but smoothly, and with an unchanged front,

+except as to the spots on his nose: "I would ride over any of you very

+willingly, and exterminate you from the earth. If I knew which rascal

+threw at the carriage, and if that brigand were sufficiently near it, he

+should be crushed under the wheels."

+

+So cowed was their condition, and so long and hard their experience of

+what such a man could do to them, within the law and beyond it, that not

+a voice, or a hand, or even an eye was raised. Among the men, not one.

+But the woman who stood knitting looked up steadily, and looked the

+Marquis in the face. It was not for his dignity to notice it; his

+contemptuous eyes passed over her, and over all the other rats; and he

+leaned back in his seat again, and gave the word "Go on!"

+

+He was driven on, and other carriages came whirling by in quick

+succession; the Minister, the State-Projector, the Farmer-General, the

+Doctor, the Lawyer, the Ecclesiastic, the Grand Opera, the Comedy, the

+whole Fancy Ball in a bright continuous flow, came whirling by. The rats

+had crept out of their holes to look on, and they remained looking

+on for hours; soldiers and police often passing between them and the

+spectacle, and making a barrier behind which they slunk, and through

+which they peeped. The father had long ago taken up his bundle and

+bidden himself away with it, when the women who had tended the bundle

+while it lay on the base of the fountain, sat there watching the running

+of the water and the rolling of the Fancy Ball--when the one woman who

+had stood conspicuous, knitting, still knitted on with the steadfastness

+of Fate. The water of the fountain ran, the swift river ran, the day ran

+into evening, so much life in the city ran into death according to rule,

+time and tide waited for no man, the rats were sleeping close together

+in their dark holes again, the Fancy Ball was lighted up at supper, all

+things ran their course.

+

+

+

+

+VIII. Monseigneur in the Country

+

+

+A beautiful landscape, with the corn bright in it, but not abundant.

+Patches of poor rye where corn should have been, patches of poor peas

+and beans, patches of most coarse vegetable substitutes for wheat. On

+inanimate nature, as on the men and women who cultivated it, a prevalent

+tendency towards an appearance of vegetating unwillingly--a dejected

+disposition to give up, and wither away.

+

+Monsieur the Marquis in his travelling carriage (which might have been

+lighter), conducted by four post-horses and two postilions, fagged up

+a steep hill. A blush on the countenance of Monsieur the Marquis was

+no impeachment of his high breeding; it was not from within; it was

+occasioned by an external circumstance beyond his control--the setting

+sun.

+

+The sunset struck so brilliantly into the travelling carriage when it

+gained the hill-top, that its occupant was steeped in crimson. "It will

+die out," said Monsieur the Marquis, glancing at his hands, "directly."

+

+In effect, the sun was so low that it dipped at the moment. When the

+heavy drag had been adjusted to the wheel, and the carriage slid down

+hill, with a cinderous smell, in a cloud of dust, the red glow departed

+quickly; the sun and the Marquis going down together, there was no glow

+left when the drag was taken off.

+

+But, there remained a broken country, bold and open, a little village

+at the bottom of the hill, a broad sweep and rise beyond it, a

+church-tower, a windmill, a forest for the chase, and a crag with a

+fortress on it used as a prison. Round upon all these darkening objects

+as the night drew on, the Marquis looked, with the air of one who was

+coming near home.

+

+The village had its one poor street, with its poor brewery, poor

+tannery, poor tavern, poor stable-yard for relays of post-horses, poor

+fountain, all usual poor appointments. It had its poor people too. All

+its people were poor, and many of them were sitting at their doors,

+shredding spare onions and the like for supper, while many were at the

+fountain, washing leaves, and grasses, and any such small yieldings of

+the earth that could be eaten. Expressive signs of what made them poor,

+were not wanting; the tax for the state, the tax for the church, the tax

+for the lord, tax local and tax general, were to be paid here and to be

+paid there, according to solemn inscription in the little village, until

+the wonder was, that there was any village left unswallowed.

+

+Few children were to be seen, and no dogs. As to the men and women,

+their choice on earth was stated in the prospect--Life on the lowest

+terms that could sustain it, down in the little village under the mill;

+or captivity and Death in the dominant prison on the crag.

+

+Heralded by a courier in advance, and by the cracking of his postilions'

+whips, which twined snake-like about their heads in the evening air, as

+if he came attended by the Furies, Monsieur the Marquis drew up in

+his travelling carriage at the posting-house gate. It was hard by the

+fountain, and the peasants suspended their operations to look at him.

+He looked at them, and saw in them, without knowing it, the slow

+sure filing down of misery-worn face and figure, that was to make the

+meagreness of Frenchmen an English superstition which should survive the

+truth through the best part of a hundred years.

+

+Monsieur the Marquis cast his eyes over the submissive faces that

+drooped before him, as the like of himself had drooped before

+Monseigneur of the Court--only the difference was, that these faces

+drooped merely to suffer and not to propitiate--when a grizzled mender

+of the roads joined the group.

+

+"Bring me hither that fellow!" said the Marquis to the courier.

+

+The fellow was brought, cap in hand, and the other fellows closed round

+to look and listen, in the manner of the people at the Paris fountain.

+

+"I passed you on the road?"

+

+"Monseigneur, it is true. I had the honour of being passed on the road."

+

+"Coming up the hill, and at the top of the hill, both?"

+

+"Monseigneur, it is true."

+

+"What did you look at, so fixedly?"

+

+"Monseigneur, I looked at the man."

+

+He stooped a little, and with his tattered blue cap pointed under the

+carriage. All his fellows stooped to look under the carriage.

+

+"What man, pig? And why look there?"

+

+"Pardon, Monseigneur; he swung by the chain of the shoe--the drag."

+

+"Who?" demanded the traveller.

+

+"Monseigneur, the man."

+

+"May the Devil carry away these idiots! How do you call the man? You

+know all the men of this part of the country. Who was he?"

+

+"Your clemency, Monseigneur! He was not of this part of the country. Of

+all the days of my life, I never saw him."

+

+"Swinging by the chain? To be suffocated?"

+

+"With your gracious permission, that was the wonder of it, Monseigneur.

+His head hanging over--like this!"

+

+He turned himself sideways to the carriage, and leaned back, with his

+face thrown up to the sky, and his head hanging down; then recovered

+himself, fumbled with his cap, and made a bow.

+

+"What was he like?"

+

+"Monseigneur, he was whiter than the miller. All covered with dust,

+white as a spectre, tall as a spectre!"

+

+The picture produced an immense sensation in the little crowd; but all

+eyes, without comparing notes with other eyes, looked at Monsieur

+the Marquis. Perhaps, to observe whether he had any spectre on his

+conscience.

+

+"Truly, you did well," said the Marquis, felicitously sensible that such

+vermin were not to ruffle him, "to see a thief accompanying my carriage,

+and not open that great mouth of yours. Bah! Put him aside, Monsieur

+Gabelle!"

+

+Monsieur Gabelle was the Postmaster, and some other taxing functionary

+united; he had come out with great obsequiousness to assist at this

+examination, and had held the examined by the drapery of his arm in an

+official manner.

+

+"Bah! Go aside!" said Monsieur Gabelle.

+

+"Lay hands on this stranger if he seeks to lodge in your village

+to-night, and be sure that his business is honest, Gabelle."

+

+"Monseigneur, I am flattered to devote myself to your orders."

+

+"Did he run away, fellow?--where is that Accursed?"

+

+The accursed was already under the carriage with some half-dozen

+particular friends, pointing out the chain with his blue cap. Some

+half-dozen other particular friends promptly hauled him out, and

+presented him breathless to Monsieur the Marquis.

+

+"Did the man run away, Dolt, when we stopped for the drag?"

+

+"Monseigneur, he precipitated himself over the hill-side, head first, as

+a person plunges into the river."

+

+"See to it, Gabelle. Go on!"

+

+The half-dozen who were peering at the chain were still among the

+wheels, like sheep; the wheels turned so suddenly that they were lucky

+to save their skins and bones; they had very little else to save, or

+they might not have been so fortunate.

+

+The burst with which the carriage started out of the village and up the

+rise beyond, was soon checked by the steepness of the hill. Gradually,

+it subsided to a foot pace, swinging and lumbering upward among the many

+sweet scents of a summer night. The postilions, with a thousand gossamer

+gnats circling about them in lieu of the Furies, quietly mended the

+points to the lashes of their whips; the valet walked by the horses; the

+courier was audible, trotting on ahead into the dull distance.

+

+At the steepest point of the hill there was a little burial-ground,

+with a Cross and a new large figure of Our Saviour on it; it was a poor

+figure in wood, done by some inexperienced rustic carver, but he had

+studied the figure from the life--his own life, maybe--for it was

+dreadfully spare and thin.

+

+To this distressful emblem of a great distress that had long been

+growing worse, and was not at its worst, a woman was kneeling. She

+turned her head as the carriage came up to her, rose quickly, and

+presented herself at the carriage-door.

+

+"It is you, Monseigneur! Monseigneur, a petition."

+

+With an exclamation of impatience, but with his unchangeable face,

+Monseigneur looked out.

+

+"How, then! What is it? Always petitions!"

+

+"Monseigneur. For the love of the great God! My husband, the forester."

+

+"What of your husband, the forester? Always the same with you people. He

+cannot pay something?"

+

+"He has paid all, Monseigneur. He is dead."

+

+"Well! He is quiet. Can I restore him to you?"

+

+"Alas, no, Monseigneur! But he lies yonder, under a little heap of poor

+grass."

+

+"Well?"

+

+"Monseigneur, there are so many little heaps of poor grass?"

+

+"Again, well?"

+

+She looked an old woman, but was young. Her manner was one of passionate

+grief; by turns she clasped her veinous and knotted hands together

+with wild energy, and laid one of them on the carriage-door--tenderly,

+caressingly, as if it had been a human breast, and could be expected to

+feel the appealing touch.

+

+"Monseigneur, hear me! Monseigneur, hear my petition! My husband died of

+want; so many die of want; so many more will die of want."

+

+"Again, well? Can I feed them?"

+

+"Monseigneur, the good God knows; but I don't ask it. My petition is,

+that a morsel of stone or wood, with my husband's name, may be placed

+over him to show where he lies. Otherwise, the place will be quickly

+forgotten, it will never be found when I am dead of the same malady, I

+shall be laid under some other heap of poor grass. Monseigneur, they

+are so many, they increase so fast, there is so much want. Monseigneur!

+Monseigneur!"

+

+The valet had put her away from the door, the carriage had broken into

+a brisk trot, the postilions had quickened the pace, she was left far

+behind, and Monseigneur, again escorted by the Furies, was rapidly

+diminishing the league or two of distance that remained between him and

+his chateau.

+

+The sweet scents of the summer night rose all around him, and rose, as

+the rain falls, impartially, on the dusty, ragged, and toil-worn group

+at the fountain not far away; to whom the mender of roads, with the aid

+of the blue cap without which he was nothing, still enlarged upon his

+man like a spectre, as long as they could bear it. By degrees, as they

+could bear no more, they dropped off one by one, and lights twinkled

+in little casements; which lights, as the casements darkened, and more

+stars came out, seemed to have shot up into the sky instead of having

+been extinguished.

+

+The shadow of a large high-roofed house, and of many over-hanging trees,

+was upon Monsieur the Marquis by that time; and the shadow was exchanged

+for the light of a flambeau, as his carriage stopped, and the great door

+of his chateau was opened to him.

+

+"Monsieur Charles, whom I expect; is he arrived from England?"

+

+"Monseigneur, not yet."

+

+

+

+

+IX. The Gorgon's Head

+

+

+It was a heavy mass of building, that chateau of Monsieur the Marquis,

+with a large stone courtyard before it, and two stone sweeps of

+staircase meeting in a stone terrace before the principal door. A stony

+business altogether, with heavy stone balustrades, and stone urns, and

+stone flowers, and stone faces of men, and stone heads of lions, in

+all directions. As if the Gorgon's head had surveyed it, when it was

+finished, two centuries ago.

+

+Up the broad flight of shallow steps, Monsieur the Marquis, flambeau

+preceded, went from his carriage, sufficiently disturbing the darkness

+to elicit loud remonstrance from an owl in the roof of the great pile

+of stable building away among the trees. All else was so quiet, that the

+flambeau carried up the steps, and the other flambeau held at the great

+door, burnt as if they were in a close room of state, instead of being

+in the open night-air. Other sound than the owl's voice there was none,

+save the falling of a fountain into its stone basin; for, it was one of

+those dark nights that hold their breath by the hour together, and then

+heave a long low sigh, and hold their breath again.

+

+The great door clanged behind him, and Monsieur the Marquis crossed a

+hall grim with certain old boar-spears, swords, and knives of the chase;

+grimmer with certain heavy riding-rods and riding-whips, of which many a

+peasant, gone to his benefactor Death, had felt the weight when his lord

+was angry.

+

+Avoiding the larger rooms, which were dark and made fast for the night,

+Monsieur the Marquis, with his flambeau-bearer going on before, went up

+the staircase to a door in a corridor. This thrown open, admitted him

+to his own private apartment of three rooms: his bed-chamber and two

+others. High vaulted rooms with cool uncarpeted floors, great dogs upon

+the hearths for the burning of wood in winter time, and all luxuries

+befitting the state of a marquis in a luxurious age and country.

+The fashion of the last Louis but one, of the line that was never to

+break--the fourteenth Louis--was conspicuous in their rich furniture;

+but, it was diversified by many objects that were illustrations of old

+pages in the history of France.

+

+A supper-table was laid for two, in the third of the rooms; a round

+room, in one of the chateau's four extinguisher-topped towers. A small

+lofty room, with its window wide open, and the wooden jalousie-blinds

+closed, so that the dark night only showed in slight horizontal lines of

+black, alternating with their broad lines of stone colour.

+

+"My nephew," said the Marquis, glancing at the supper preparation; "they

+said he was not arrived."

+

+Nor was he; but, he had been expected with Monseigneur.

+

+"Ah! It is not probable he will arrive to-night; nevertheless, leave the

+table as it is. I shall be ready in a quarter of an hour."

+

+In a quarter of an hour Monseigneur was ready, and sat down alone to his

+sumptuous and choice supper. His chair was opposite to the window, and

+he had taken his soup, and was raising his glass of Bordeaux to his

+lips, when he put it down.

+

+"What is that?" he calmly asked, looking with attention at the

+horizontal lines of black and stone colour.

+

+"Monseigneur? That?"

+

+"Outside the blinds. Open the blinds."

+

+It was done.

+

+"Well?"

+

+"Monseigneur, it is nothing. The trees and the night are all that are

+here."

+

+The servant who spoke, had thrown the blinds wide, had looked out into

+the vacant darkness, and stood with that blank behind him, looking round

+for instructions.

+

+"Good," said the imperturbable master. "Close them again."

+

+That was done too, and the Marquis went on with his supper. He was

+half way through it, when he again stopped with his glass in his hand,

+hearing the sound of wheels. It came on briskly, and came up to the

+front of the chateau.

+

+"Ask who is arrived."

+

+It was the nephew of Monseigneur. He had been some few leagues behind

+Monseigneur, early in the afternoon. He had diminished the distance

+rapidly, but not so rapidly as to come up with Monseigneur on the road.

+He had heard of Monseigneur, at the posting-houses, as being before him.

+

+He was to be told (said Monseigneur) that supper awaited him then and

+there, and that he was prayed to come to it. In a little while he came.

+He had been known in England as Charles Darnay.

+

+Monseigneur received him in a courtly manner, but they did not shake

+hands.

+

+"You left Paris yesterday, sir?" he said to Monseigneur, as he took his

+seat at table.

+

+"Yesterday. And you?"

+

+"I come direct."

+

+"From London?"

+

+"Yes."

+

+"You have been a long time coming," said the Marquis, with a smile.

+

+"On the contrary; I come direct."

+

+"Pardon me! I mean, not a long time on the journey; a long time

+intending the journey."

+

+"I have been detained by"--the nephew stopped a moment in his

+answer--"various business."

+

+"Without doubt," said the polished uncle.

+

+So long as a servant was present, no other words passed between them.

+When coffee had been served and they were alone together, the nephew,

+looking at the uncle and meeting the eyes of the face that was like a

+fine mask, opened a conversation.

+

+"I have come back, sir, as you anticipate, pursuing the object that

+took me away. It carried me into great and unexpected peril; but it is

+a sacred object, and if it had carried me to death I hope it would have

+sustained me."

+

+"Not to death," said the uncle; "it is not necessary to say, to death."

+

+"I doubt, sir," returned the nephew, "whether, if it had carried me to

+the utmost brink of death, you would have cared to stop me there."

+

+The deepened marks in the nose, and the lengthening of the fine straight

+lines in the cruel face, looked ominous as to that; the uncle made a

+graceful gesture of protest, which was so clearly a slight form of good

+breeding that it was not reassuring.

+

+"Indeed, sir," pursued the nephew, "for anything I know, you may have

+expressly worked to give a more suspicious appearance to the suspicious

+circumstances that surrounded me."

+

+"No, no, no," said the uncle, pleasantly.

+

+"But, however that may be," resumed the nephew, glancing at him with

+deep distrust, "I know that your diplomacy would stop me by any means,

+and would know no scruple as to means."

+

+"My friend, I told you so," said the uncle, with a fine pulsation in the

+two marks. "Do me the favour to recall that I told you so, long ago."

+

+"I recall it."

+

+"Thank you," said the Marquis--very sweetly indeed.

+

+His tone lingered in the air, almost like the tone of a musical

+instrument.

+

+"In effect, sir," pursued the nephew, "I believe it to be at once your

+bad fortune, and my good fortune, that has kept me out of a prison in

+France here."

+

+"I do not quite understand," returned the uncle, sipping his coffee.

+"Dare I ask you to explain?"

+

+"I believe that if you were not in disgrace with the Court, and had not

+been overshadowed by that cloud for years past, a letter de cachet would

+have sent me to some fortress indefinitely."

+

+"It is possible," said the uncle, with great calmness. "For the honour

+of the family, I could even resolve to incommode you to that extent.

+Pray excuse me!"

+

+"I perceive that, happily for me, the Reception of the day before

+yesterday was, as usual, a cold one," observed the nephew.

+

+"I would not say happily, my friend," returned the uncle, with refined

+politeness; "I would not be sure of that. A good opportunity for

+consideration, surrounded by the advantages of solitude, might influence

+your destiny to far greater advantage than you influence it for

+yourself. But it is useless to discuss the question. I am, as you say,

+at a disadvantage. These little instruments of correction, these gentle

+aids to the power and honour of families, these slight favours that

+might so incommode you, are only to be obtained now by interest

+and importunity. They are sought by so many, and they are granted

+(comparatively) to so few! It used not to be so, but France in all such

+things is changed for the worse. Our not remote ancestors held the right

+of life and death over the surrounding vulgar. From this room, many such

+dogs have been taken out to be hanged; in the next room (my bedroom),

+one fellow, to our knowledge, was poniarded on the spot for professing

+some insolent delicacy respecting his daughter--_his_ daughter? We have

+lost many privileges; a new philosophy has become the mode; and the

+assertion of our station, in these days, might (I do not go so far as

+to say would, but might) cause us real inconvenience. All very bad, very

+bad!"

+

+The Marquis took a gentle little pinch of snuff, and shook his head;

+as elegantly despondent as he could becomingly be of a country still

+containing himself, that great means of regeneration.

+

+"We have so asserted our station, both in the old time and in the modern

+time also," said the nephew, gloomily, "that I believe our name to be

+more detested than any name in France."

+

+"Let us hope so," said the uncle. "Detestation of the high is the

+involuntary homage of the low."

+

+"There is not," pursued the nephew, in his former tone, "a face I can

+look at, in all this country round about us, which looks at me with any

+deference on it but the dark deference of fear and slavery."

+

+"A compliment," said the Marquis, "to the grandeur of the family,

+merited by the manner in which the family has sustained its grandeur.

+Hah!" And he took another gentle little pinch of snuff, and lightly

+crossed his legs.

+

+But, when his nephew, leaning an elbow on the table, covered his eyes

+thoughtfully and dejectedly with his hand, the fine mask looked at

+him sideways with a stronger concentration of keenness, closeness,

+and dislike, than was comportable with its wearer's assumption of

+indifference.

+

+"Repression is the only lasting philosophy. The dark deference of fear

+and slavery, my friend," observed the Marquis, "will keep the dogs

+obedient to the whip, as long as this roof," looking up to it, "shuts

+out the sky."

+

+That might not be so long as the Marquis supposed. If a picture of the

+chateau as it was to be a very few years hence, and of fifty like it as

+they too were to be a very few years hence, could have been shown to

+him that night, he might have been at a loss to claim his own from

+the ghastly, fire-charred, plunder-wrecked rains. As for the roof

+he vaunted, he might have found _that_ shutting out the sky in a new

+way--to wit, for ever, from the eyes of the bodies into which its lead

+was fired, out of the barrels of a hundred thousand muskets.

+

+"Meanwhile," said the Marquis, "I will preserve the honour and repose

+of the family, if you will not. But you must be fatigued. Shall we

+terminate our conference for the night?"

+

+"A moment more."

+

+"An hour, if you please."

+

+"Sir," said the nephew, "we have done wrong, and are reaping the fruits

+of wrong."

+

+"_We_ have done wrong?" repeated the Marquis, with an inquiring smile,

+and delicately pointing, first to his nephew, then to himself.

+

+"Our family; our honourable family, whose honour is of so much account

+to both of us, in such different ways. Even in my father's time, we did

+a world of wrong, injuring every human creature who came between us and

+our pleasure, whatever it was. Why need I speak of my father's time,

+when it is equally yours? Can I separate my father's twin-brother, joint

+inheritor, and next successor, from himself?"

+

+"Death has done that!" said the Marquis.

+

+"And has left me," answered the nephew, "bound to a system that is

+frightful to me, responsible for it, but powerless in it; seeking to

+execute the last request of my dear mother's lips, and obey the last

+look of my dear mother's eyes, which implored me to have mercy and to

+redress; and tortured by seeking assistance and power in vain."

+

+"Seeking them from me, my nephew," said the Marquis, touching him on the

+breast with his forefinger--they were now standing by the hearth--"you

+will for ever seek them in vain, be assured."

+

+Every fine straight line in the clear whiteness of his face, was

+cruelly, craftily, and closely compressed, while he stood looking

+quietly at his nephew, with his snuff-box in his hand. Once again he

+touched him on the breast, as though his finger were the fine point of

+a small sword, with which, in delicate finesse, he ran him through the

+body, and said,

+

+"My friend, I will die, perpetuating the system under which I have

+lived."

+

+When he had said it, he took a culminating pinch of snuff, and put his

+box in his pocket.

+

+"Better to be a rational creature," he added then, after ringing a small

+bell on the table, "and accept your natural destiny. But you are lost,

+Monsieur Charles, I see."

+

+"This property and France are lost to me," said the nephew, sadly; "I

+renounce them."

+

+"Are they both yours to renounce? France may be, but is the property? It

+is scarcely worth mentioning; but, is it yet?"

+

+"I had no intention, in the words I used, to claim it yet. If it passed

+to me from you, to-morrow--"

+

+"Which I have the vanity to hope is not probable."

+

+"--or twenty years hence--"

+

+"You do me too much honour," said the Marquis; "still, I prefer that

+supposition."

+

+"--I would abandon it, and live otherwise and elsewhere. It is little to

+relinquish. What is it but a wilderness of misery and ruin!"

+

+"Hah!" said the Marquis, glancing round the luxurious room.

+

+"To the eye it is fair enough, here; but seen in its integrity,

+under the sky, and by the daylight, it is a crumbling tower of waste,

+mismanagement, extortion, debt, mortgage, oppression, hunger, nakedness,

+and suffering."

+

+"Hah!" said the Marquis again, in a well-satisfied manner.

+

+"If it ever becomes mine, it shall be put into some hands better

+qualified to free it slowly (if such a thing is possible) from the

+weight that drags it down, so that the miserable people who cannot leave

+it and who have been long wrung to the last point of endurance, may, in

+another generation, suffer less; but it is not for me. There is a curse

+on it, and on all this land."

+

+"And you?" said the uncle. "Forgive my curiosity; do you, under your new

+philosophy, graciously intend to live?"

+

+"I must do, to live, what others of my countrymen, even with nobility at

+their backs, may have to do some day--work."

+

+"In England, for example?"

+

+"Yes. The family honour, sir, is safe from me in this country. The

+family name can suffer from me in no other, for I bear it in no other."

+

+The ringing of the bell had caused the adjoining bed-chamber to be

+lighted. It now shone brightly, through the door of communication. The

+Marquis looked that way, and listened for the retreating step of his

+valet.

+

+"England is very attractive to you, seeing how indifferently you have

+prospered there," he observed then, turning his calm face to his nephew

+with a smile.

+

+"I have already said, that for my prospering there, I am sensible I may

+be indebted to you, sir. For the rest, it is my Refuge."

+

+"They say, those boastful English, that it is the Refuge of many. You

+know a compatriot who has found a Refuge there? A Doctor?"

+

+"Yes."

+

+"With a daughter?"

+

+"Yes."

+

+"Yes," said the Marquis. "You are fatigued. Good night!"

+

+As he bent his head in his most courtly manner, there was a secrecy

+in his smiling face, and he conveyed an air of mystery to those words,

+which struck the eyes and ears of his nephew forcibly. At the same

+time, the thin straight lines of the setting of the eyes, and the thin

+straight lips, and the markings in the nose, curved with a sarcasm that

+looked handsomely diabolic.

+

+"Yes," repeated the Marquis. "A Doctor with a daughter. Yes. So

+commences the new philosophy! You are fatigued. Good night!"

+

+It would have been of as much avail to interrogate any stone face

+outside the chateau as to interrogate that face of his. The nephew

+looked at him, in vain, in passing on to the door.

+

+"Good night!" said the uncle. "I look to the pleasure of seeing you

+again in the morning. Good repose! Light Monsieur my nephew to his

+chamber there!--And burn Monsieur my nephew in his bed, if you will," he

+added to himself, before he rang his little bell again, and summoned his

+valet to his own bedroom.

+

+The valet come and gone, Monsieur the Marquis walked to and fro in his

+loose chamber-robe, to prepare himself gently for sleep, that hot still

+night. Rustling about the room, his softly-slippered feet making no

+noise on the floor, he moved like a refined tiger:--looked like some

+enchanted marquis of the impenitently wicked sort, in story, whose

+periodical change into tiger form was either just going off, or just

+coming on.

+

+He moved from end to end of his voluptuous bedroom, looking again at the

+scraps of the day's journey that came unbidden into his mind; the slow

+toil up the hill at sunset, the setting sun, the descent, the mill, the

+prison on the crag, the little village in the hollow, the peasants at

+the fountain, and the mender of roads with his blue cap pointing out the

+chain under the carriage. That fountain suggested the Paris fountain,

+the little bundle lying on the step, the women bending over it, and the

+tall man with his arms up, crying, "Dead!"

+

+"I am cool now," said Monsieur the Marquis, "and may go to bed."

+

+So, leaving only one light burning on the large hearth, he let his thin

+gauze curtains fall around him, and heard the night break its silence

+with a long sigh as he composed himself to sleep.

+

+The stone faces on the outer walls stared blindly at the black night

+for three heavy hours; for three heavy hours, the horses in the stables

+rattled at their racks, the dogs barked, and the owl made a noise with

+very little resemblance in it to the noise conventionally assigned to

+the owl by men-poets. But it is the obstinate custom of such creatures

+hardly ever to say what is set down for them.

+

+For three heavy hours, the stone faces of the chateau, lion and human,

+stared blindly at the night. Dead darkness lay on all the landscape,

+dead darkness added its own hush to the hushing dust on all the roads.

+The burial-place had got to the pass that its little heaps of poor grass

+were undistinguishable from one another; the figure on the Cross might

+have come down, for anything that could be seen of it. In the village,

+taxers and taxed were fast asleep. Dreaming, perhaps, of banquets, as

+the starved usually do, and of ease and rest, as the driven slave and

+the yoked ox may, its lean inhabitants slept soundly, and were fed and

+freed.

+

+The fountain in the village flowed unseen and unheard, and the fountain

+at the chateau dropped unseen and unheard--both melting away, like the

+minutes that were falling from the spring of Time--through three dark

+hours. Then, the grey water of both began to be ghostly in the light,

+and the eyes of the stone faces of the chateau were opened.

+

+Lighter and lighter, until at last the sun touched the tops of the still

+trees, and poured its radiance over the hill. In the glow, the water

+of the chateau fountain seemed to turn to blood, and the stone faces

+crimsoned. The carol of the birds was loud and high, and, on the

+weather-beaten sill of the great window of the bed-chamber of Monsieur

+the Marquis, one little bird sang its sweetest song with all its might.

+At this, the nearest stone face seemed to stare amazed, and, with open

+mouth and dropped under-jaw, looked awe-stricken.

+

+Now, the sun was full up, and movement began in the village. Casement

+windows opened, crazy doors were unbarred, and people came forth

+shivering--chilled, as yet, by the new sweet air. Then began the rarely

+lightened toil of the day among the village population. Some, to the

+fountain; some, to the fields; men and women here, to dig and delve; men

+and women there, to see to the poor live stock, and lead the bony cows

+out, to such pasture as could be found by the roadside. In the church

+and at the Cross, a kneeling figure or two; attendant on the latter

+prayers, the led cow, trying for a breakfast among the weeds at its

+foot.

+

+The chateau awoke later, as became its quality, but awoke gradually and

+surely. First, the lonely boar-spears and knives of the chase had been

+reddened as of old; then, had gleamed trenchant in the morning sunshine;

+now, doors and windows were thrown open, horses in their stables looked

+round over their shoulders at the light and freshness pouring in at

+doorways, leaves sparkled and rustled at iron-grated windows, dogs

+pulled hard at their chains, and reared impatient to be loosed.

+

+All these trivial incidents belonged to the routine of life, and the

+return of morning. Surely, not so the ringing of the great bell of the

+chateau, nor the running up and down the stairs; nor the hurried

+figures on the terrace; nor the booting and tramping here and there and

+everywhere, nor the quick saddling of horses and riding away?

+

+What winds conveyed this hurry to the grizzled mender of roads, already

+at work on the hill-top beyond the village, with his day's dinner (not

+much to carry) lying in a bundle that it was worth no crow's while to

+peck at, on a heap of stones? Had the birds, carrying some grains of it

+to a distance, dropped one over him as they sow chance seeds? Whether or

+no, the mender of roads ran, on the sultry morning, as if for his life,

+down the hill, knee-high in dust, and never stopped till he got to the

+fountain.

+

+All the people of the village were at the fountain, standing about

+in their depressed manner, and whispering low, but showing no other

+emotions than grim curiosity and surprise. The led cows, hastily brought

+in and tethered to anything that would hold them, were looking stupidly

+on, or lying down chewing the cud of nothing particularly repaying their

+trouble, which they had picked up in their interrupted saunter. Some of

+the people of the chateau, and some of those of the posting-house, and

+all the taxing authorities, were armed more or less, and were crowded

+on the other side of the little street in a purposeless way, that was

+highly fraught with nothing. Already, the mender of roads had penetrated

+into the midst of a group of fifty particular friends, and was smiting

+himself in the breast with his blue cap. What did all this portend,

+and what portended the swift hoisting-up of Monsieur Gabelle behind

+a servant on horseback, and the conveying away of the said Gabelle

+(double-laden though the horse was), at a gallop, like a new version of

+the German ballad of Leonora?

+

+It portended that there was one stone face too many, up at the chateau.

+

+The Gorgon had surveyed the building again in the night, and had added

+the one stone face wanting; the stone face for which it had waited

+through about two hundred years.

+

+It lay back on the pillow of Monsieur the Marquis. It was like a fine

+mask, suddenly startled, made angry, and petrified. Driven home into the

+heart of the stone figure attached to it, was a knife. Round its hilt

+was a frill of paper, on which was scrawled:

+

+"Drive him fast to his tomb. This, from Jacques."

+

+

+

+

+X. Two Promises

+

+

+More months, to the number of twelve, had come and gone, and Mr. Charles

+Darnay was established in England as a higher teacher of the French

+language who was conversant with French literature. In this age, he

+would have been a Professor; in that age, he was a Tutor. He read with

+young men who could find any leisure and interest for the study of a

+living tongue spoken all over the world, and he cultivated a taste for

+its stores of knowledge and fancy. He could write of them, besides, in

+sound English, and render them into sound English. Such masters were not

+at that time easily found; Princes that had been, and Kings that were

+to be, were not yet of the Teacher class, and no ruined nobility had

+dropped out of Tellson's ledgers, to turn cooks and carpenters. As a

+tutor, whose attainments made the student's way unusually pleasant and

+profitable, and as an elegant translator who brought something to his

+work besides mere dictionary knowledge, young Mr. Darnay soon became

+known and encouraged. He was well acquainted, more-over, with the

+circumstances of his country, and those were of ever-growing interest.

+So, with great perseverance and untiring industry, he prospered.

+

+In London, he had expected neither to walk on pavements of gold, nor

+to lie on beds of roses; if he had had any such exalted expectation, he

+would not have prospered. He had expected labour, and he found it, and

+did it and made the best of it. In this, his prosperity consisted.

+

+A certain portion of his time was passed at Cambridge, where he

+read with undergraduates as a sort of tolerated smuggler who drove a

+contraband trade in European languages, instead of conveying Greek

+and Latin through the Custom-house. The rest of his time he passed in

+London.

+

+Now, from the days when it was always summer in Eden, to these days

+when it is mostly winter in fallen latitudes, the world of a man has

+invariably gone one way--Charles Darnay's way--the way of the love of a

+woman.

+

+He had loved Lucie Manette from the hour of his danger. He had never

+heard a sound so sweet and dear as the sound of her compassionate voice;

+he had never seen a face so tenderly beautiful, as hers when it was

+confronted with his own on the edge of the grave that had been dug for

+him. But, he had not yet spoken to her on the subject; the assassination

+at the deserted chateau far away beyond the heaving water and the long,

+long, dusty roads--the solid stone chateau which had itself become the

+mere mist of a dream--had been done a year, and he had never yet, by so

+much as a single spoken word, disclosed to her the state of his heart.

+

+That he had his reasons for this, he knew full well. It was again a

+summer day when, lately arrived in London from his college occupation,

+he turned into the quiet corner in Soho, bent on seeking an opportunity

+of opening his mind to Doctor Manette. It was the close of the summer

+day, and he knew Lucie to be out with Miss Pross.

+

+He found the Doctor reading in his arm-chair at a window. The energy

+which had at once supported him under his old sufferings and aggravated

+their sharpness, had been gradually restored to him. He was now a

+very energetic man indeed, with great firmness of purpose, strength

+of resolution, and vigour of action. In his recovered energy he was

+sometimes a little fitful and sudden, as he had at first been in the

+exercise of his other recovered faculties; but, this had never been

+frequently observable, and had grown more and more rare.

+

+He studied much, slept little, sustained a great deal of fatigue with

+ease, and was equably cheerful. To him, now entered Charles Darnay, at

+sight of whom he laid aside his book and held out his hand.

+

+"Charles Darnay! I rejoice to see you. We have been counting on your

+return these three or four days past. Mr. Stryver and Sydney Carton were

+both here yesterday, and both made you out to be more than due."

+

+"I am obliged to them for their interest in the matter," he answered,

+a little coldly as to them, though very warmly as to the Doctor. "Miss

+Manette--"

+

+"Is well," said the Doctor, as he stopped short, "and your return will

+delight us all. She has gone out on some household matters, but will

+soon be home."

+

+"Doctor Manette, I knew she was from home. I took the opportunity of her

+being from home, to beg to speak to you."

+

+There was a blank silence.

+

+"Yes?" said the Doctor, with evident constraint. "Bring your chair here,

+and speak on."

+

+He complied as to the chair, but appeared to find the speaking on less

+easy.

+

+"I have had the happiness, Doctor Manette, of being so intimate here,"

+so he at length began, "for some year and a half, that I hope the topic

+on which I am about to touch may not--"

+

+He was stayed by the Doctor's putting out his hand to stop him. When he

+had kept it so a little while, he said, drawing it back:

+

+"Is Lucie the topic?"

+

+"She is."

+

+"It is hard for me to speak of her at any time. It is very hard for me

+to hear her spoken of in that tone of yours, Charles Darnay."

+

+"It is a tone of fervent admiration, true homage, and deep love, Doctor

+Manette!" he said deferentially.

+

+There was another blank silence before her father rejoined:

+

+"I believe it. I do you justice; I believe it."

+

+His constraint was so manifest, and it was so manifest, too, that it

+originated in an unwillingness to approach the subject, that Charles

+Darnay hesitated.

+

+"Shall I go on, sir?"

+

+Another blank.

+

+"Yes, go on."

+

+"You anticipate what I would say, though you cannot know how earnestly

+I say it, how earnestly I feel it, without knowing my secret heart, and

+the hopes and fears and anxieties with which it has long been

+laden. Dear Doctor Manette, I love your daughter fondly, dearly,

+disinterestedly, devotedly. If ever there were love in the world, I love

+her. You have loved yourself; let your old love speak for me!"

+

+The Doctor sat with his face turned away, and his eyes bent on the

+ground. At the last words, he stretched out his hand again, hurriedly,

+and cried:

+

+"Not that, sir! Let that be! I adjure you, do not recall that!"

+

+His cry was so like a cry of actual pain, that it rang in Charles

+Darnay's ears long after he had ceased. He motioned with the hand he had

+extended, and it seemed to be an appeal to Darnay to pause. The latter

+so received it, and remained silent.

+

+"I ask your pardon," said the Doctor, in a subdued tone, after some

+moments. "I do not doubt your loving Lucie; you may be satisfied of it."

+

+He turned towards him in his chair, but did not look at him, or

+raise his eyes. His chin dropped upon his hand, and his white hair

+overshadowed his face:

+

+"Have you spoken to Lucie?"

+

+"No."

+

+"Nor written?"

+

+"Never."

+

+"It would be ungenerous to affect not to know that your self-denial is

+to be referred to your consideration for her father. Her father thanks

+you."

+

+He offered his hand; but his eyes did not go with it.

+

+"I know," said Darnay, respectfully, "how can I fail to know, Doctor

+Manette, I who have seen you together from day to day, that between

+you and Miss Manette there is an affection so unusual, so touching, so

+belonging to the circumstances in which it has been nurtured, that it

+can have few parallels, even in the tenderness between a father and

+child. I know, Doctor Manette--how can I fail to know--that, mingled

+with the affection and duty of a daughter who has become a woman, there

+is, in her heart, towards you, all the love and reliance of infancy

+itself. I know that, as in her childhood she had no parent, so she is

+now devoted to you with all the constancy and fervour of her present

+years and character, united to the trustfulness and attachment of the

+early days in which you were lost to her. I know perfectly well that if

+you had been restored to her from the world beyond this life, you could

+hardly be invested, in her sight, with a more sacred character than that

+in which you are always with her. I know that when she is clinging to

+you, the hands of baby, girl, and woman, all in one, are round your

+neck. I know that in loving you she sees and loves her mother at her

+own age, sees and loves you at my age, loves her mother broken-hearted,

+loves you through your dreadful trial and in your blessed restoration. I

+have known this, night and day, since I have known you in your home."

+

+Her father sat silent, with his face bent down. His breathing was a

+little quickened; but he repressed all other signs of agitation.

+

+"Dear Doctor Manette, always knowing this, always seeing her and you

+with this hallowed light about you, I have forborne, and forborne, as

+long as it was in the nature of man to do it. I have felt, and do even

+now feel, that to bring my love--even mine--between you, is to touch

+your history with something not quite so good as itself. But I love her.

+Heaven is my witness that I love her!"

+

+"I believe it," answered her father, mournfully. "I have thought so

+before now. I believe it."

+

+"But, do not believe," said Darnay, upon whose ear the mournful voice

+struck with a reproachful sound, "that if my fortune were so cast as

+that, being one day so happy as to make her my wife, I must at any time

+put any separation between her and you, I could or would breathe a

+word of what I now say. Besides that I should know it to be hopeless, I

+should know it to be a baseness. If I had any such possibility, even at

+a remote distance of years, harboured in my thoughts, and hidden in my

+heart--if it ever had been there--if it ever could be there--I could not

+now touch this honoured hand."

+

+He laid his own upon it as he spoke.

+

+"No, dear Doctor Manette. Like you, a voluntary exile from France; like

+you, driven from it by its distractions, oppressions, and miseries; like

+you, striving to live away from it by my own exertions, and trusting

+in a happier future; I look only to sharing your fortunes, sharing your

+life and home, and being faithful to you to the death. Not to divide

+with Lucie her privilege as your child, companion, and friend; but to

+come in aid of it, and bind her closer to you, if such a thing can be."

+

+His touch still lingered on her father's hand. Answering the touch for a

+moment, but not coldly, her father rested his hands upon the arms of

+his chair, and looked up for the first time since the beginning of the

+conference. A struggle was evidently in his face; a struggle with that

+occasional look which had a tendency in it to dark doubt and dread.

+

+"You speak so feelingly and so manfully, Charles Darnay, that I thank

+you with all my heart, and will open all my heart--or nearly so. Have

+you any reason to believe that Lucie loves you?"

+

+"None. As yet, none."

+

+"Is it the immediate object of this confidence, that you may at once

+ascertain that, with my knowledge?"

+

+"Not even so. I might not have the hopefulness to do it for weeks; I

+might (mistaken or not mistaken) have that hopefulness to-morrow."

+

+"Do you seek any guidance from me?"

+

+"I ask none, sir. But I have thought it possible that you might have it

+in your power, if you should deem it right, to give me some."

+

+"Do you seek any promise from me?"

+

+"I do seek that."

+

+"What is it?"

+

+"I well understand that, without you, I could have no hope. I well

+understand that, even if Miss Manette held me at this moment in her

+innocent heart--do not think I have the presumption to assume so much--I

+could retain no place in it against her love for her father."

+

+"If that be so, do you see what, on the other hand, is involved in it?"

+

+"I understand equally well, that a word from her father in any suitor's

+favour, would outweigh herself and all the world. For which reason,

+Doctor Manette," said Darnay, modestly but firmly, "I would not ask that

+word, to save my life."

+

+"I am sure of it. Charles Darnay, mysteries arise out of close love, as

+well as out of wide division; in the former case, they are subtle and

+delicate, and difficult to penetrate. My daughter Lucie is, in this one

+respect, such a mystery to me; I can make no guess at the state of her

+heart."

+

+"May I ask, sir, if you think she is--" As he hesitated, her father

+supplied the rest.

+

+"Is sought by any other suitor?"

+

+"It is what I meant to say."

+

+Her father considered a little before he answered:

+

+"You have seen Mr. Carton here, yourself. Mr. Stryver is here too,

+occasionally. If it be at all, it can only be by one of these."

+

+"Or both," said Darnay.

+

+"I had not thought of both; I should not think either, likely. You want

+a promise from me. Tell me what it is."

+

+"It is, that if Miss Manette should bring to you at any time, on her own

+part, such a confidence as I have ventured to lay before you, you will

+bear testimony to what I have said, and to your belief in it. I hope you

+may be able to think so well of me, as to urge no influence against

+me. I say nothing more of my stake in this; this is what I ask. The

+condition on which I ask it, and which you have an undoubted right to

+require, I will observe immediately."

+

+"I give the promise," said the Doctor, "without any condition. I believe

+your object to be, purely and truthfully, as you have stated it. I

+believe your intention is to perpetuate, and not to weaken, the ties

+between me and my other and far dearer self. If she should ever tell me

+that you are essential to her perfect happiness, I will give her to you.

+If there were--Charles Darnay, if there were--"

+

+The young man had taken his hand gratefully; their hands were joined as

+the Doctor spoke:

+

+"--any fancies, any reasons, any apprehensions, anything whatsoever,

+new or old, against the man she really loved--the direct responsibility

+thereof not lying on his head--they should all be obliterated for her

+sake. She is everything to me; more to me than suffering, more to me

+than wrong, more to me--Well! This is idle talk."

+

+So strange was the way in which he faded into silence, and so strange

+his fixed look when he had ceased to speak, that Darnay felt his own

+hand turn cold in the hand that slowly released and dropped it.

+

+"You said something to me," said Doctor Manette, breaking into a smile.

+"What was it you said to me?"

+

+He was at a loss how to answer, until he remembered having spoken of a

+condition. Relieved as his mind reverted to that, he answered:

+

+"Your confidence in me ought to be returned with full confidence on my

+part. My present name, though but slightly changed from my mother's, is

+not, as you will remember, my own. I wish to tell you what that is, and

+why I am in England."

+

+"Stop!" said the Doctor of Beauvais.

+

+"I wish it, that I may the better deserve your confidence, and have no

+secret from you."

+

+"Stop!"

+

+For an instant, the Doctor even had his two hands at his ears; for

+another instant, even had his two hands laid on Darnay's lips.

+

+"Tell me when I ask you, not now. If your suit should prosper, if Lucie

+should love you, you shall tell me on your marriage morning. Do you

+promise?"

+

+"Willingly.

+

+"Give me your hand. She will be home directly, and it is better she

+should not see us together to-night. Go! God bless you!"

+

+It was dark when Charles Darnay left him, and it was an hour later and

+darker when Lucie came home; she hurried into the room alone--for

+Miss Pross had gone straight up-stairs--and was surprised to find his

+reading-chair empty.

+

+"My father!" she called to him. "Father dear!"

+

+Nothing was said in answer, but she heard a low hammering sound in his

+bedroom. Passing lightly across the intermediate room, she looked in at

+his door and came running back frightened, crying to herself, with her

+blood all chilled, "What shall I do! What shall I do!"

+

+Her uncertainty lasted but a moment; she hurried back, and tapped at

+his door, and softly called to him. The noise ceased at the sound of

+her voice, and he presently came out to her, and they walked up and down

+together for a long time.

+

+She came down from her bed, to look at him in his sleep that night. He

+slept heavily, and his tray of shoemaking tools, and his old unfinished

+work, were all as usual.

+

+

+

+

+XI. A Companion Picture

+

+

+"Sydney," said Mr. Stryver, on that self-same night, or morning, to his

+jackal; "mix another bowl of punch; I have something to say to you."

+

+Sydney had been working double tides that night, and the night before,

+and the night before that, and a good many nights in succession, making

+a grand clearance among Mr. Stryver's papers before the setting in

+of the long vacation. The clearance was effected at last; the Stryver

+arrears were handsomely fetched up; everything was got rid of until

+November should come with its fogs atmospheric, and fogs legal, and

+bring grist to the mill again.

+

+Sydney was none the livelier and none the soberer for so much

+application. It had taken a deal of extra wet-towelling to pull him

+through the night; a correspondingly extra quantity of wine had preceded

+the towelling; and he was in a very damaged condition, as he now pulled

+his turban off and threw it into the basin in which he had steeped it at

+intervals for the last six hours.

+

+"Are you mixing that other bowl of punch?" said Stryver the portly, with

+his hands in his waistband, glancing round from the sofa where he lay on

+his back.

+

+"I am."

+

+"Now, look here! I am going to tell you something that will rather

+surprise you, and that perhaps will make you think me not quite as

+shrewd as you usually do think me. I intend to marry."

+

+"_Do_ you?"

+

+"Yes. And not for money. What do you say now?"

+

+"I don't feel disposed to say much. Who is she?"

+

+"Guess."

+

+"Do I know her?"

+

+"Guess."

+

+"I am not going to guess, at five o'clock in the morning, with my brains

+frying and sputtering in my head. If you want me to guess, you must ask

+me to dinner."

+

+"Well then, I'll tell you," said Stryver, coming slowly into a sitting

+posture. "Sydney, I rather despair of making myself intelligible to you,

+because you are such an insensible dog."

+

+"And you," returned Sydney, busy concocting the punch, "are such a

+sensitive and poetical spirit--"

+

+"Come!" rejoined Stryver, laughing boastfully, "though I don't prefer

+any claim to being the soul of Romance (for I hope I know better), still

+I am a tenderer sort of fellow than _you_."

+

+"You are a luckier, if you mean that."

+

+"I don't mean that. I mean I am a man of more--more--"

+

+"Say gallantry, while you are about it," suggested Carton.

+

+"Well! I'll say gallantry. My meaning is that I am a man," said Stryver,

+inflating himself at his friend as he made the punch, "who cares more to

+be agreeable, who takes more pains to be agreeable, who knows better how

+to be agreeable, in a woman's society, than you do."

+

+"Go on," said Sydney Carton.

+

+"No; but before I go on," said Stryver, shaking his head in his bullying

+way, "I'll have this out with you. You've been at Doctor Manette's house

+as much as I have, or more than I have. Why, I have been ashamed of your

+moroseness there! Your manners have been of that silent and sullen and

+hangdog kind, that, upon my life and soul, I have been ashamed of you,

+Sydney!"

+

+"It should be very beneficial to a man in your practice at the bar, to

+be ashamed of anything," returned Sydney; "you ought to be much obliged

+to me."

+

+"You shall not get off in that way," rejoined Stryver, shouldering the

+rejoinder at him; "no, Sydney, it's my duty to tell you--and I tell you

+to your face to do you good--that you are a devilish ill-conditioned

+fellow in that sort of society. You are a disagreeable fellow."

+

+Sydney drank a bumper of the punch he had made, and laughed.

+

+"Look at me!" said Stryver, squaring himself; "I have less need to make

+myself agreeable than you have, being more independent in circumstances.

+Why do I do it?"

+

+"I never saw you do it yet," muttered Carton.

+

+"I do it because it's politic; I do it on principle. And look at me! I

+get on."

+

+"You don't get on with your account of your matrimonial intentions,"

+answered Carton, with a careless air; "I wish you would keep to that. As

+to me--will you never understand that I am incorrigible?"

+

+He asked the question with some appearance of scorn.

+

+"You have no business to be incorrigible," was his friend's answer,

+delivered in no very soothing tone.

+

+"I have no business to be, at all, that I know of," said Sydney Carton.

+"Who is the lady?"

+

+"Now, don't let my announcement of the name make you uncomfortable,

+Sydney," said Mr. Stryver, preparing him with ostentatious friendliness

+for the disclosure he was about to make, "because I know you don't mean

+half you say; and if you meant it all, it would be of no importance. I

+make this little preface, because you once mentioned the young lady to

+me in slighting terms."

+

+"I did?"

+

+"Certainly; and in these chambers."

+

+Sydney Carton looked at his punch and looked at his complacent friend;

+drank his punch and looked at his complacent friend.

+

+"You made mention of the young lady as a golden-haired doll. The young

+lady is Miss Manette. If you had been a fellow of any sensitiveness or

+delicacy of feeling in that kind of way, Sydney, I might have been a

+little resentful of your employing such a designation; but you are not.

+You want that sense altogether; therefore I am no more annoyed when I

+think of the expression, than I should be annoyed by a man's opinion of

+a picture of mine, who had no eye for pictures: or of a piece of music

+of mine, who had no ear for music."

+

+Sydney Carton drank the punch at a great rate; drank it by bumpers,

+looking at his friend.

+

+"Now you know all about it, Syd," said Mr. Stryver. "I don't care about

+fortune: she is a charming creature, and I have made up my mind to

+please myself: on the whole, I think I can afford to please myself. She

+will have in me a man already pretty well off, and a rapidly rising man,

+and a man of some distinction: it is a piece of good fortune for her,

+but she is worthy of good fortune. Are you astonished?"

+

+Carton, still drinking the punch, rejoined, "Why should I be

+astonished?"

+

+"You approve?"

+

+Carton, still drinking the punch, rejoined, "Why should I not approve?"

+

+"Well!" said his friend Stryver, "you take it more easily than I fancied

+you would, and are less mercenary on my behalf than I thought you would

+be; though, to be sure, you know well enough by this time that your

+ancient chum is a man of a pretty strong will. Yes, Sydney, I have had

+enough of this style of life, with no other as a change from it; I

+feel that it is a pleasant thing for a man to have a home when he feels

+inclined to go to it (when he doesn't, he can stay away), and I feel

+that Miss Manette will tell well in any station, and will always do me

+credit. So I have made up my mind. And now, Sydney, old boy, I want to

+say a word to _you_ about _your_ prospects. You are in a bad way, you

+know; you really are in a bad way. You don't know the value of money,

+you live hard, you'll knock up one of these days, and be ill and poor;

+you really ought to think about a nurse."

+

+The prosperous patronage with which he said it, made him look twice as

+big as he was, and four times as offensive.

+

+"Now, let me recommend you," pursued Stryver, "to look it in the face.

+I have looked it in the face, in my different way; look it in the face,

+you, in your different way. Marry. Provide somebody to take care of

+you. Never mind your having no enjoyment of women's society, nor

+understanding of it, nor tact for it. Find out somebody. Find out some

+respectable woman with a little property--somebody in the landlady way,

+or lodging-letting way--and marry her, against a rainy day. That's the

+kind of thing for _you_. Now think of it, Sydney."

+

+"I'll think of it," said Sydney.

+

+

+

+

+XII. The Fellow of Delicacy

+

+

+Mr. Stryver having made up his mind to that magnanimous bestowal of good

+fortune on the Doctor's daughter, resolved to make her happiness known

+to her before he left town for the Long Vacation. After some mental

+debating of the point, he came to the conclusion that it would be as

+well to get all the preliminaries done with, and they could then arrange

+at their leisure whether he should give her his hand a week or two

+before Michaelmas Term, or in the little Christmas vacation between it

+and Hilary.

+

+As to the strength of his case, he had not a doubt about it, but clearly

+saw his way to the verdict. Argued with the jury on substantial worldly

+grounds--the only grounds ever worth taking into account--it was a

+plain case, and had not a weak spot in it. He called himself for the

+plaintiff, there was no getting over his evidence, the counsel for

+the defendant threw up his brief, and the jury did not even turn to

+consider. After trying it, Stryver, C. J., was satisfied that no plainer

+case could be.

+

+Accordingly, Mr. Stryver inaugurated the Long Vacation with a formal

+proposal to take Miss Manette to Vauxhall Gardens; that failing, to

+Ranelagh; that unaccountably failing too, it behoved him to present

+himself in Soho, and there declare his noble mind.

+

+Towards Soho, therefore, Mr. Stryver shouldered his way from the Temple,

+while the bloom of the Long Vacation's infancy was still upon it.

+Anybody who had seen him projecting himself into Soho while he was yet

+on Saint Dunstan's side of Temple Bar, bursting in his full-blown way

+along the pavement, to the jostlement of all weaker people, might have

+seen how safe and strong he was.

+

+His way taking him past Tellson's, and he both banking at Tellson's and

+knowing Mr. Lorry as the intimate friend of the Manettes, it entered Mr.

+Stryver's mind to enter the bank, and reveal to Mr. Lorry the brightness

+of the Soho horizon. So, he pushed open the door with the weak rattle

+in its throat, stumbled down the two steps, got past the two ancient

+cashiers, and shouldered himself into the musty back closet where Mr.

+Lorry sat at great books ruled for figures, with perpendicular iron

+bars to his window as if that were ruled for figures too, and everything

+under the clouds were a sum.

+

+"Halloa!" said Mr. Stryver. "How do you do? I hope you are well!"

+

+It was Stryver's grand peculiarity that he always seemed too big for any

+place, or space. He was so much too big for Tellson's, that old clerks

+in distant corners looked up with looks of remonstrance, as though he

+squeezed them against the wall. The House itself, magnificently reading

+the paper quite in the far-off perspective, lowered displeased, as if

+the Stryver head had been butted into its responsible waistcoat.

+

+The discreet Mr. Lorry said, in a sample tone of the voice he would

+recommend under the circumstances, "How do you do, Mr. Stryver? How do

+you do, sir?" and shook hands. There was a peculiarity in his manner

+of shaking hands, always to be seen in any clerk at Tellson's who shook

+hands with a customer when the House pervaded the air. He shook in a

+self-abnegating way, as one who shook for Tellson and Co.

+

+"Can I do anything for you, Mr. Stryver?" asked Mr. Lorry, in his

+business character.

+

+"Why, no, thank you; this is a private visit to yourself, Mr. Lorry; I

+have come for a private word."

+

+"Oh indeed!" said Mr. Lorry, bending down his ear, while his eye strayed

+to the House afar off.

+

+"I am going," said Mr. Stryver, leaning his arms confidentially on the

+desk: whereupon, although it was a large double one, there appeared to

+be not half desk enough for him: "I am going to make an offer of myself

+in marriage to your agreeable little friend, Miss Manette, Mr. Lorry."

+

+"Oh dear me!" cried Mr. Lorry, rubbing his chin, and looking at his

+visitor dubiously.

+

+"Oh dear me, sir?" repeated Stryver, drawing back. "Oh dear you, sir?

+What may your meaning be, Mr. Lorry?"

+

+"My meaning," answered the man of business, "is, of course, friendly and

+appreciative, and that it does you the greatest credit, and--in short,

+my meaning is everything you could desire. But--really, you know, Mr.

+Stryver--" Mr. Lorry paused, and shook his head at him in the oddest

+manner, as if he were compelled against his will to add, internally,

+"you know there really is so much too much of you!"

+

+"Well!" said Stryver, slapping the desk with his contentious hand,

+opening his eyes wider, and taking a long breath, "if I understand you,

+Mr. Lorry, I'll be hanged!"

+

+Mr. Lorry adjusted his little wig at both ears as a means towards that

+end, and bit the feather of a pen.

+

+"D--n it all, sir!" said Stryver, staring at him, "am I not eligible?"

+

+"Oh dear yes! Yes. Oh yes, you're eligible!" said Mr. Lorry. "If you say

+eligible, you are eligible."

+

+"Am I not prosperous?" asked Stryver.

+

+"Oh! if you come to prosperous, you are prosperous," said Mr. Lorry.

+

+"And advancing?"

+

+"If you come to advancing you know," said Mr. Lorry, delighted to be

+able to make another admission, "nobody can doubt that."

+

+"Then what on earth is your meaning, Mr. Lorry?" demanded Stryver,

+perceptibly crestfallen.

+

+"Well! I--Were you going there now?" asked Mr. Lorry.

+

+"Straight!" said Stryver, with a plump of his fist on the desk.

+

+"Then I think I wouldn't, if I was you."

+

+"Why?" said Stryver. "Now, I'll put you in a corner," forensically

+shaking a forefinger at him. "You are a man of business and bound to

+have a reason. State your reason. Why wouldn't you go?"

+

+"Because," said Mr. Lorry, "I wouldn't go on such an object without

+having some cause to believe that I should succeed."

+

+"D--n _me_!" cried Stryver, "but this beats everything."

+

+Mr. Lorry glanced at the distant House, and glanced at the angry

+Stryver.

+

+"Here's a man of business--a man of years--a man of experience--_in_

+a Bank," said Stryver; "and having summed up three leading reasons for

+complete success, he says there's no reason at all! Says it with his

+head on!" Mr. Stryver remarked upon the peculiarity as if it would have

+been infinitely less remarkable if he had said it with his head off.

+

+"When I speak of success, I speak of success with the young lady; and

+when I speak of causes and reasons to make success probable, I speak of

+causes and reasons that will tell as such with the young lady. The young

+lady, my good sir," said Mr. Lorry, mildly tapping the Stryver arm, "the

+young lady. The young lady goes before all."

+

+"Then you mean to tell me, Mr. Lorry," said Stryver, squaring his

+elbows, "that it is your deliberate opinion that the young lady at

+present in question is a mincing Fool?"

+

+"Not exactly so. I mean to tell you, Mr. Stryver," said Mr. Lorry,

+reddening, "that I will hear no disrespectful word of that young lady

+from any lips; and that if I knew any man--which I hope I do not--whose

+taste was so coarse, and whose temper was so overbearing, that he could

+not restrain himself from speaking disrespectfully of that young lady at

+this desk, not even Tellson's should prevent my giving him a piece of my

+mind."

+

+The necessity of being angry in a suppressed tone had put Mr. Stryver's

+blood-vessels into a dangerous state when it was his turn to be angry;

+Mr. Lorry's veins, methodical as their courses could usually be, were in

+no better state now it was his turn.

+

+"That is what I mean to tell you, sir," said Mr. Lorry. "Pray let there

+be no mistake about it."

+

+Mr. Stryver sucked the end of a ruler for a little while, and then stood

+hitting a tune out of his teeth with it, which probably gave him the

+toothache. He broke the awkward silence by saying:

+

+"This is something new to me, Mr. Lorry. You deliberately advise me not

+to go up to Soho and offer myself--_my_self, Stryver of the King's Bench

+bar?"

+

+"Do you ask me for my advice, Mr. Stryver?"

+

+"Yes, I do."

+

+"Very good. Then I give it, and you have repeated it correctly."

+

+"And all I can say of it is," laughed Stryver with a vexed laugh, "that

+this--ha, ha!--beats everything past, present, and to come."

+

+"Now understand me," pursued Mr. Lorry. "As a man of business, I am

+not justified in saying anything about this matter, for, as a man of

+business, I know nothing of it. But, as an old fellow, who has carried

+Miss Manette in his arms, who is the trusted friend of Miss Manette and

+of her father too, and who has a great affection for them both, I have

+spoken. The confidence is not of my seeking, recollect. Now, you think I

+may not be right?"

+

+"Not I!" said Stryver, whistling. "I can't undertake to find third

+parties in common sense; I can only find it for myself. I suppose sense

+in certain quarters; you suppose mincing bread-and-butter nonsense. It's

+new to me, but you are right, I dare say."

+

+"What I suppose, Mr. Stryver, I claim to characterise for myself--And

+understand me, sir," said Mr. Lorry, quickly flushing again, "I

+will not--not even at Tellson's--have it characterised for me by any

+gentleman breathing."

+

+"There! I beg your pardon!" said Stryver.

+

+"Granted. Thank you. Well, Mr. Stryver, I was about to say:--it might be

+painful to you to find yourself mistaken, it might be painful to Doctor

+Manette to have the task of being explicit with you, it might be very

+painful to Miss Manette to have the task of being explicit with you. You

+know the terms upon which I have the honour and happiness to stand with

+the family. If you please, committing you in no way, representing you

+in no way, I will undertake to correct my advice by the exercise of a

+little new observation and judgment expressly brought to bear upon

+it. If you should then be dissatisfied with it, you can but test its

+soundness for yourself; if, on the other hand, you should be satisfied

+with it, and it should be what it now is, it may spare all sides what is

+best spared. What do you say?"

+

+"How long would you keep me in town?"

+

+"Oh! It is only a question of a few hours. I could go to Soho in the

+evening, and come to your chambers afterwards."

+

+"Then I say yes," said Stryver: "I won't go up there now, I am not so

+hot upon it as that comes to; I say yes, and I shall expect you to look

+in to-night. Good morning."

+

+Then Mr. Stryver turned and burst out of the Bank, causing such a

+concussion of air on his passage through, that to stand up against it

+bowing behind the two counters, required the utmost remaining strength

+of the two ancient clerks. Those venerable and feeble persons were

+always seen by the public in the act of bowing, and were popularly

+believed, when they had bowed a customer out, still to keep on bowing in

+the empty office until they bowed another customer in.

+

+The barrister was keen enough to divine that the banker would not have

+gone so far in his expression of opinion on any less solid ground than

+moral certainty. Unprepared as he was for the large pill he had to

+swallow, he got it down. "And now," said Mr. Stryver, shaking his

+forensic forefinger at the Temple in general, when it was down, "my way

+out of this, is, to put you all in the wrong."

+

+It was a bit of the art of an Old Bailey tactician, in which he found

+great relief. "You shall not put me in the wrong, young lady," said Mr.

+Stryver; "I'll do that for you."

+

+Accordingly, when Mr. Lorry called that night as late as ten o'clock,

+Mr. Stryver, among a quantity of books and papers littered out for the

+purpose, seemed to have nothing less on his mind than the subject of

+the morning. He even showed surprise when he saw Mr. Lorry, and was

+altogether in an absent and preoccupied state.

+

+"Well!" said that good-natured emissary, after a full half-hour of

+bootless attempts to bring him round to the question. "I have been to

+Soho."

+

+"To Soho?" repeated Mr. Stryver, coldly. "Oh, to be sure! What am I

+thinking of!"

+

+"And I have no doubt," said Mr. Lorry, "that I was right in the

+conversation we had. My opinion is confirmed, and I reiterate my

+advice."

+

+"I assure you," returned Mr. Stryver, in the friendliest way, "that I

+am sorry for it on your account, and sorry for it on the poor father's

+account. I know this must always be a sore subject with the family; let

+us say no more about it."

+

+"I don't understand you," said Mr. Lorry.

+

+"I dare say not," rejoined Stryver, nodding his head in a smoothing and

+final way; "no matter, no matter."

+

+"But it does matter," Mr. Lorry urged.

+

+"No it doesn't; I assure you it doesn't. Having supposed that there was

+sense where there is no sense, and a laudable ambition where there is

+not a laudable ambition, I am well out of my mistake, and no harm is

+done. Young women have committed similar follies often before, and have

+repented them in poverty and obscurity often before. In an unselfish

+aspect, I am sorry that the thing is dropped, because it would have been

+a bad thing for me in a worldly point of view; in a selfish aspect, I am

+glad that the thing has dropped, because it would have been a bad thing

+for me in a worldly point of view--it is hardly necessary to say I could

+have gained nothing by it. There is no harm at all done. I have not

+proposed to the young lady, and, between ourselves, I am by no means

+certain, on reflection, that I ever should have committed myself to

+that extent. Mr. Lorry, you cannot control the mincing vanities and

+giddinesses of empty-headed girls; you must not expect to do it, or you

+will always be disappointed. Now, pray say no more about it. I tell you,

+I regret it on account of others, but I am satisfied on my own account.

+And I am really very much obliged to you for allowing me to sound you,

+and for giving me your advice; you know the young lady better than I do;

+you were right, it never would have done."

+

+Mr. Lorry was so taken aback, that he looked quite stupidly at Mr.

+Stryver shouldering him towards the door, with an appearance of

+showering generosity, forbearance, and goodwill, on his erring head.

+"Make the best of it, my dear sir," said Stryver; "say no more about it;

+thank you again for allowing me to sound you; good night!"

+

+Mr. Lorry was out in the night, before he knew where he was. Mr. Stryver

+was lying back on his sofa, winking at his ceiling.

+

+

+

+

+XIII. The Fellow of No Delicacy

+

+

+If Sydney Carton ever shone anywhere, he certainly never shone in the

+house of Doctor Manette. He had been there often, during a whole year,

+and had always been the same moody and morose lounger there. When he

+cared to talk, he talked well; but, the cloud of caring for nothing,

+which overshadowed him with such a fatal darkness, was very rarely

+pierced by the light within him.

+

+And yet he did care something for the streets that environed that house,

+and for the senseless stones that made their pavements. Many a night

+he vaguely and unhappily wandered there, when wine had brought no

+transitory gladness to him; many a dreary daybreak revealed his solitary

+figure lingering there, and still lingering there when the first beams

+of the sun brought into strong relief, removed beauties of architecture

+in spires of churches and lofty buildings, as perhaps the quiet time

+brought some sense of better things, else forgotten and unattainable,

+into his mind. Of late, the neglected bed in the Temple Court had known

+him more scantily than ever; and often when he had thrown himself upon

+it no longer than a few minutes, he had got up again, and haunted that

+neighbourhood.

+

+On a day in August, when Mr. Stryver (after notifying to his jackal

+that "he had thought better of that marrying matter") had carried his

+delicacy into Devonshire, and when the sight and scent of flowers in the

+City streets had some waifs of goodness in them for the worst, of health

+for the sickliest, and of youth for the oldest, Sydney's feet still trod

+those stones. From being irresolute and purposeless, his feet became

+animated by an intention, and, in the working out of that intention,

+they took him to the Doctor's door.

+

+He was shown up-stairs, and found Lucie at her work, alone. She had

+never been quite at her ease with him, and received him with some little

+embarrassment as he seated himself near her table. But, looking up at

+his face in the interchange of the first few common-places, she observed

+a change in it.

+

+"I fear you are not well, Mr. Carton!"

+

+"No. But the life I lead, Miss Manette, is not conducive to health. What

+is to be expected of, or by, such profligates?"

+

+"Is it not--forgive me; I have begun the question on my lips--a pity to

+live no better life?"

+

+"God knows it is a shame!"

+

+"Then why not change it?"

+

+Looking gently at him again, she was surprised and saddened to see that

+there were tears in his eyes. There were tears in his voice too, as he

+answered:

+

+"It is too late for that. I shall never be better than I am. I shall

+sink lower, and be worse."

+

+He leaned an elbow on her table, and covered his eyes with his hand. The

+table trembled in the silence that followed.

+

+She had never seen him softened, and was much distressed. He knew her to

+be so, without looking at her, and said:

+

+"Pray forgive me, Miss Manette. I break down before the knowledge of

+what I want to say to you. Will you hear me?"

+

+"If it will do you any good, Mr. Carton, if it would make you happier,

+it would make me very glad!"

+

+"God bless you for your sweet compassion!"

+

+He unshaded his face after a little while, and spoke steadily.

+

+"Don't be afraid to hear me. Don't shrink from anything I say. I am like

+one who died young. All my life might have been."

+

+"No, Mr. Carton. I am sure that the best part of it might still be; I am

+sure that you might be much, much worthier of yourself."

+

+"Say of you, Miss Manette, and although I know better--although in the

+mystery of my own wretched heart I know better--I shall never forget

+it!"

+

+She was pale and trembling. He came to her relief with a fixed despair

+of himself which made the interview unlike any other that could have

+been holden.

+

+"If it had been possible, Miss Manette, that you could have returned the

+love of the man you see before yourself--flung away, wasted, drunken,

+poor creature of misuse as you know him to be--he would have been

+conscious this day and hour, in spite of his happiness, that he would

+bring you to misery, bring you to sorrow and repentance, blight you,

+disgrace you, pull you down with him. I know very well that you can have

+no tenderness for me; I ask for none; I am even thankful that it cannot

+be."

+

+"Without it, can I not save you, Mr. Carton? Can I not recall

+you--forgive me again!--to a better course? Can I in no way repay your

+confidence? I know this is a confidence," she modestly said, after a

+little hesitation, and in earnest tears, "I know you would say this to

+no one else. Can I turn it to no good account for yourself, Mr. Carton?"

+

+He shook his head.

+

+"To none. No, Miss Manette, to none. If you will hear me through a very

+little more, all you can ever do for me is done. I wish you to know that

+you have been the last dream of my soul. In my degradation I have not

+been so degraded but that the sight of you with your father, and of this

+home made such a home by you, has stirred old shadows that I thought had

+died out of me. Since I knew you, I have been troubled by a remorse that

+I thought would never reproach me again, and have heard whispers from

+old voices impelling me upward, that I thought were silent for ever. I

+have had unformed ideas of striving afresh, beginning anew, shaking off

+sloth and sensuality, and fighting out the abandoned fight. A dream, all

+a dream, that ends in nothing, and leaves the sleeper where he lay down,

+but I wish you to know that you inspired it."

+

+"Will nothing of it remain? O Mr. Carton, think again! Try again!"

+

+"No, Miss Manette; all through it, I have known myself to be quite

+undeserving. And yet I have had the weakness, and have still the

+weakness, to wish you to know with what a sudden mastery you kindled me,

+heap of ashes that I am, into fire--a fire, however, inseparable in

+its nature from myself, quickening nothing, lighting nothing, doing no

+service, idly burning away."

+

+"Since it is my misfortune, Mr. Carton, to have made you more unhappy

+than you were before you knew me--"

+

+"Don't say that, Miss Manette, for you would have reclaimed me, if

+anything could. You will not be the cause of my becoming worse."

+

+"Since the state of your mind that you describe, is, at all events,

+attributable to some influence of mine--this is what I mean, if I can

+make it plain--can I use no influence to serve you? Have I no power for

+good, with you, at all?"

+

+"The utmost good that I am capable of now, Miss Manette, I have come

+here to realise. Let me carry through the rest of my misdirected life,

+the remembrance that I opened my heart to you, last of all the world;

+and that there was something left in me at this time which you could

+deplore and pity."

+

+"Which I entreated you to believe, again and again, most fervently, with

+all my heart, was capable of better things, Mr. Carton!"

+

+"Entreat me to believe it no more, Miss Manette. I have proved myself,

+and I know better. I distress you; I draw fast to an end. Will you let

+me believe, when I recall this day, that the last confidence of my life

+was reposed in your pure and innocent breast, and that it lies there

+alone, and will be shared by no one?"

+

+"If that will be a consolation to you, yes."

+

+"Not even by the dearest one ever to be known to you?"

+

+"Mr. Carton," she answered, after an agitated pause, "the secret is

+yours, not mine; and I promise to respect it."

+

+"Thank you. And again, God bless you."

+

+He put her hand to his lips, and moved towards the door.

+

+"Be under no apprehension, Miss Manette, of my ever resuming this

+conversation by so much as a passing word. I will never refer to it

+again. If I were dead, that could not be surer than it is henceforth. In

+the hour of my death, I shall hold sacred the one good remembrance--and

+shall thank and bless you for it--that my last avowal of myself was made

+to you, and that my name, and faults, and miseries were gently carried

+in your heart. May it otherwise be light and happy!"

+

+He was so unlike what he had ever shown himself to be, and it was so

+sad to think how much he had thrown away, and how much he every day kept

+down and perverted, that Lucie Manette wept mournfully for him as he

+stood looking back at her.

+

+"Be comforted!" he said, "I am not worth such feeling, Miss Manette. An

+hour or two hence, and the low companions and low habits that I scorn

+but yield to, will render me less worth such tears as those, than any

+wretch who creeps along the streets. Be comforted! But, within myself, I

+shall always be, towards you, what I am now, though outwardly I shall be

+what you have heretofore seen me. The last supplication but one I make

+to you, is, that you will believe this of me."

+

+"I will, Mr. Carton."

+

+"My last supplication of all, is this; and with it, I will relieve

+you of a visitor with whom I well know you have nothing in unison, and

+between whom and you there is an impassable space. It is useless to say

+it, I know, but it rises out of my soul. For you, and for any dear to

+you, I would do anything. If my career were of that better kind that

+there was any opportunity or capacity of sacrifice in it, I would

+embrace any sacrifice for you and for those dear to you. Try to hold

+me in your mind, at some quiet times, as ardent and sincere in this one

+thing. The time will come, the time will not be long in coming, when new

+ties will be formed about you--ties that will bind you yet more tenderly

+and strongly to the home you so adorn--the dearest ties that will ever

+grace and gladden you. O Miss Manette, when the little picture of a

+happy father's face looks up in yours, when you see your own bright

+beauty springing up anew at your feet, think now and then that there is

+a man who would give his life, to keep a life you love beside you!"

+

+He said, "Farewell!" said a last "God bless you!" and left her.

+

+

+

+

+XIV. The Honest Tradesman

+

+

+To the eyes of Mr. Jeremiah Cruncher, sitting on his stool in

+Fleet-street with his grisly urchin beside him, a vast number and

+variety of objects in movement were every day presented. Who could sit

+upon anything in Fleet-street during the busy hours of the day, and

+not be dazed and deafened by two immense processions, one ever tending

+westward with the sun, the other ever tending eastward from the sun,

+both ever tending to the plains beyond the range of red and purple where

+the sun goes down!

+

+With his straw in his mouth, Mr. Cruncher sat watching the two streams,

+like the heathen rustic who has for several centuries been on duty

+watching one stream--saving that Jerry had no expectation of their ever

+running dry. Nor would it have been an expectation of a hopeful kind,

+since a small part of his income was derived from the pilotage of timid

+women (mostly of a full habit and past the middle term of life) from

+Tellson's side of the tides to the opposite shore. Brief as such

+companionship was in every separate instance, Mr. Cruncher never failed

+to become so interested in the lady as to express a strong desire to

+have the honour of drinking her very good health. And it was from

+the gifts bestowed upon him towards the execution of this benevolent

+purpose, that he recruited his finances, as just now observed.

+

+Time was, when a poet sat upon a stool in a public place, and mused in

+the sight of men. Mr. Cruncher, sitting on a stool in a public place,

+but not being a poet, mused as little as possible, and looked about him.

+

+It fell out that he was thus engaged in a season when crowds were

+few, and belated women few, and when his affairs in general were so

+unprosperous as to awaken a strong suspicion in his breast that Mrs.

+Cruncher must have been "flopping" in some pointed manner, when an

+unusual concourse pouring down Fleet-street westward, attracted his

+attention. Looking that way, Mr. Cruncher made out that some kind of

+funeral was coming along, and that there was popular objection to this

+funeral, which engendered uproar.

+

+"Young Jerry," said Mr. Cruncher, turning to his offspring, "it's a

+buryin'."

+

+"Hooroar, father!" cried Young Jerry.

+

+The young gentleman uttered this exultant sound with mysterious

+significance. The elder gentleman took the cry so ill, that he watched

+his opportunity, and smote the young gentleman on the ear.

+

+"What d'ye mean? What are you hooroaring at? What do you want to conwey

+to your own father, you young Rip? This boy is a getting too many for

+_me_!" said Mr. Cruncher, surveying him. "Him and his hooroars! Don't

+let me hear no more of you, or you shall feel some more of me. D'ye

+hear?"

+

+"I warn't doing no harm," Young Jerry protested, rubbing his cheek.

+

+"Drop it then," said Mr. Cruncher; "I won't have none of _your_ no

+harms. Get a top of that there seat, and look at the crowd."

+

+His son obeyed, and the crowd approached; they were bawling and hissing

+round a dingy hearse and dingy mourning coach, in which mourning coach

+there was only one mourner, dressed in the dingy trappings that were

+considered essential to the dignity of the position. The position

+appeared by no means to please him, however, with an increasing rabble

+surrounding the coach, deriding him, making grimaces at him, and

+incessantly groaning and calling out: "Yah! Spies! Tst! Yaha! Spies!"

+with many compliments too numerous and forcible to repeat.

+

+Funerals had at all times a remarkable attraction for Mr. Cruncher; he

+always pricked up his senses, and became excited, when a funeral passed

+Tellson's. Naturally, therefore, a funeral with this uncommon attendance

+excited him greatly, and he asked of the first man who ran against him:

+

+"What is it, brother? What's it about?"

+

+"_I_ don't know," said the man. "Spies! Yaha! Tst! Spies!"

+

+He asked another man. "Who is it?"

+

+"_I_ don't know," returned the man, clapping his hands to his mouth

+nevertheless, and vociferating in a surprising heat and with the

+greatest ardour, "Spies! Yaha! Tst, tst! Spi--ies!"

+

+At length, a person better informed on the merits of the case, tumbled

+against him, and from this person he learned that the funeral was the

+funeral of one Roger Cly.

+

+"Was he a spy?" asked Mr. Cruncher.

+

+"Old Bailey spy," returned his informant. "Yaha! Tst! Yah! Old Bailey

+Spi--i--ies!"

+

+"Why, to be sure!" exclaimed Jerry, recalling the Trial at which he had

+assisted. "I've seen him. Dead, is he?"

+

+"Dead as mutton," returned the other, "and can't be too dead. Have 'em

+out, there! Spies! Pull 'em out, there! Spies!"

+

+The idea was so acceptable in the prevalent absence of any idea,

+that the crowd caught it up with eagerness, and loudly repeating the

+suggestion to have 'em out, and to pull 'em out, mobbed the two vehicles

+so closely that they came to a stop. On the crowd's opening the coach

+doors, the one mourner scuffled out by himself and was in their hands

+for a moment; but he was so alert, and made such good use of his time,

+that in another moment he was scouring away up a bye-street, after

+shedding his cloak, hat, long hatband, white pocket-handkerchief, and

+other symbolical tears.

+

+These, the people tore to pieces and scattered far and wide with great

+enjoyment, while the tradesmen hurriedly shut up their shops; for a

+crowd in those times stopped at nothing, and was a monster much dreaded.

+They had already got the length of opening the hearse to take the coffin

+out, when some brighter genius proposed instead, its being escorted to

+its destination amidst general rejoicing. Practical suggestions being

+much needed, this suggestion, too, was received with acclamation, and

+the coach was immediately filled with eight inside and a dozen out,

+while as many people got on the roof of the hearse as could by any

+exercise of ingenuity stick upon it. Among the first of these volunteers

+was Jerry Cruncher himself, who modestly concealed his spiky head from

+the observation of Tellson's, in the further corner of the mourning

+coach.

+

+The officiating undertakers made some protest against these changes in

+the ceremonies; but, the river being alarmingly near, and several voices

+remarking on the efficacy of cold immersion in bringing refractory

+members of the profession to reason, the protest was faint and brief.

+The remodelled procession started, with a chimney-sweep driving the

+hearse--advised by the regular driver, who was perched beside him, under

+close inspection, for the purpose--and with a pieman, also attended

+by his cabinet minister, driving the mourning coach. A bear-leader, a

+popular street character of the time, was impressed as an additional

+ornament, before the cavalcade had gone far down the Strand; and his

+bear, who was black and very mangy, gave quite an Undertaking air to

+that part of the procession in which he walked.

+

+Thus, with beer-drinking, pipe-smoking, song-roaring, and infinite

+caricaturing of woe, the disorderly procession went its way, recruiting

+at every step, and all the shops shutting up before it. Its destination

+was the old church of Saint Pancras, far off in the fields. It got there

+in course of time; insisted on pouring into the burial-ground; finally,

+accomplished the interment of the deceased Roger Cly in its own way, and

+highly to its own satisfaction.

+

+The dead man disposed of, and the crowd being under the necessity of

+providing some other entertainment for itself, another brighter

+genius (or perhaps the same) conceived the humour of impeaching casual

+passers-by, as Old Bailey spies, and wreaking vengeance on them. Chase

+was given to some scores of inoffensive persons who had never been near

+the Old Bailey in their lives, in the realisation of this fancy, and

+they were roughly hustled and maltreated. The transition to the sport of

+window-breaking, and thence to the plundering of public-houses, was easy

+and natural. At last, after several hours, when sundry summer-houses had

+been pulled down, and some area-railings had been torn up, to arm

+the more belligerent spirits, a rumour got about that the Guards were

+coming. Before this rumour, the crowd gradually melted away, and perhaps

+the Guards came, and perhaps they never came, and this was the usual

+progress of a mob.

+

+Mr. Cruncher did not assist at the closing sports, but had remained

+behind in the churchyard, to confer and condole with the undertakers.

+The place had a soothing influence on him. He procured a pipe from a

+neighbouring public-house, and smoked it, looking in at the railings and

+maturely considering the spot.

+

+"Jerry," said Mr. Cruncher, apostrophising himself in his usual way,

+"you see that there Cly that day, and you see with your own eyes that he

+was a young 'un and a straight made 'un."

+

+Having smoked his pipe out, and ruminated a little longer, he turned

+himself about, that he might appear, before the hour of closing, on his

+station at Tellson's. Whether his meditations on mortality had touched

+his liver, or whether his general health had been previously at all

+amiss, or whether he desired to show a little attention to an eminent

+man, is not so much to the purpose, as that he made a short call upon

+his medical adviser--a distinguished surgeon--on his way back.

+

+Young Jerry relieved his father with dutiful interest, and reported No

+job in his absence. The bank closed, the ancient clerks came out, the

+usual watch was set, and Mr. Cruncher and his son went home to tea.

+

+"Now, I tell you where it is!" said Mr. Cruncher to his wife, on

+entering. "If, as a honest tradesman, my wenturs goes wrong to-night, I

+shall make sure that you've been praying again me, and I shall work you

+for it just the same as if I seen you do it."

+

+The dejected Mrs. Cruncher shook her head.

+

+"Why, you're at it afore my face!" said Mr. Cruncher, with signs of

+angry apprehension.

+

+"I am saying nothing."

+

+"Well, then; don't meditate nothing. You might as well flop as meditate.

+You may as well go again me one way as another. Drop it altogether."

+

+"Yes, Jerry."

+

+"Yes, Jerry," repeated Mr. Cruncher sitting down to tea. "Ah! It _is_

+yes, Jerry. That's about it. You may say yes, Jerry."

+

+Mr. Cruncher had no particular meaning in these sulky corroborations,

+but made use of them, as people not unfrequently do, to express general

+ironical dissatisfaction.

+

+"You and your yes, Jerry," said Mr. Cruncher, taking a bite out of his

+bread-and-butter, and seeming to help it down with a large invisible

+oyster out of his saucer. "Ah! I think so. I believe you."

+

+"You are going out to-night?" asked his decent wife, when he took

+another bite.

+

+"Yes, I am."

+

+"May I go with you, father?" asked his son, briskly.

+

+"No, you mayn't. I'm a going--as your mother knows--a fishing. That's

+where I'm going to. Going a fishing."

+

+"Your fishing-rod gets rayther rusty; don't it, father?"

+

+"Never you mind."

+

+"Shall you bring any fish home, father?"

+

+"If I don't, you'll have short commons, to-morrow," returned that

+gentleman, shaking his head; "that's questions enough for you; I ain't a

+going out, till you've been long abed."

+

+He devoted himself during the remainder of the evening to keeping a

+most vigilant watch on Mrs. Cruncher, and sullenly holding her in

+conversation that she might be prevented from meditating any petitions

+to his disadvantage. With this view, he urged his son to hold her in

+conversation also, and led the unfortunate woman a hard life by dwelling

+on any causes of complaint he could bring against her, rather than

+he would leave her for a moment to her own reflections. The devoutest

+person could have rendered no greater homage to the efficacy of an

+honest prayer than he did in this distrust of his wife. It was as if a

+professed unbeliever in ghosts should be frightened by a ghost story.

+

+"And mind you!" said Mr. Cruncher. "No games to-morrow! If I, as a

+honest tradesman, succeed in providing a jinte of meat or two, none

+of your not touching of it, and sticking to bread. If I, as a honest

+tradesman, am able to provide a little beer, none of your declaring

+on water. When you go to Rome, do as Rome does. Rome will be a ugly

+customer to you, if you don't. _I_'m your Rome, you know."

+

+Then he began grumbling again:

+

+"With your flying into the face of your own wittles and drink! I don't

+know how scarce you mayn't make the wittles and drink here, by your

+flopping tricks and your unfeeling conduct. Look at your boy: he _is_

+your'n, ain't he? He's as thin as a lath. Do you call yourself a mother,

+and not know that a mother's first duty is to blow her boy out?"

+

+This touched Young Jerry on a tender place; who adjured his mother to

+perform her first duty, and, whatever else she did or neglected, above

+all things to lay especial stress on the discharge of that maternal

+function so affectingly and delicately indicated by his other parent.

+

+Thus the evening wore away with the Cruncher family, until Young Jerry

+was ordered to bed, and his mother, laid under similar injunctions,

+obeyed them. Mr. Cruncher beguiled the earlier watches of the night with

+solitary pipes, and did not start upon his excursion until nearly one

+o'clock. Towards that small and ghostly hour, he rose up from his chair,

+took a key out of his pocket, opened a locked cupboard, and brought

+forth a sack, a crowbar of convenient size, a rope and chain, and other

+fishing tackle of that nature. Disposing these articles about him

+in skilful manner, he bestowed a parting defiance on Mrs. Cruncher,

+extinguished the light, and went out.

+

+Young Jerry, who had only made a feint of undressing when he went to

+bed, was not long after his father. Under cover of the darkness he

+followed out of the room, followed down the stairs, followed down the

+court, followed out into the streets. He was in no uneasiness concerning

+his getting into the house again, for it was full of lodgers, and the

+door stood ajar all night.

+

+Impelled by a laudable ambition to study the art and mystery of his

+father's honest calling, Young Jerry, keeping as close to house fronts,

+walls, and doorways, as his eyes were close to one another, held his

+honoured parent in view. The honoured parent steering Northward, had not

+gone far, when he was joined by another disciple of Izaak Walton, and

+the two trudged on together.

+

+Within half an hour from the first starting, they were beyond the

+winking lamps, and the more than winking watchmen, and were out upon a

+lonely road. Another fisherman was picked up here--and that so silently,

+that if Young Jerry had been superstitious, he might have supposed the

+second follower of the gentle craft to have, all of a sudden, split

+himself into two.

+

+The three went on, and Young Jerry went on, until the three stopped

+under a bank overhanging the road. Upon the top of the bank was a low

+brick wall, surmounted by an iron railing. In the shadow of bank and

+wall the three turned out of the road, and up a blind lane, of which

+the wall--there, risen to some eight or ten feet high--formed one side.

+Crouching down in a corner, peeping up the lane, the next object that

+Young Jerry saw, was the form of his honoured parent, pretty well

+defined against a watery and clouded moon, nimbly scaling an iron gate.

+He was soon over, and then the second fisherman got over, and then the

+third. They all dropped softly on the ground within the gate, and lay

+there a little--listening perhaps. Then, they moved away on their hands

+and knees.

+

+It was now Young Jerry's turn to approach the gate: which he did,

+holding his breath. Crouching down again in a corner there, and looking

+in, he made out the three fishermen creeping through some rank grass!

+and all the gravestones in the churchyard--it was a large churchyard

+that they were in--looking on like ghosts in white, while the church

+tower itself looked on like the ghost of a monstrous giant. They did not

+creep far, before they stopped and stood upright. And then they began to

+fish.

+

+They fished with a spade, at first. Presently the honoured parent

+appeared to be adjusting some instrument like a great corkscrew.

+Whatever tools they worked with, they worked hard, until the awful

+striking of the church clock so terrified Young Jerry, that he made off,

+with his hair as stiff as his father's.

+

+But, his long-cherished desire to know more about these matters, not

+only stopped him in his running away, but lured him back again. They

+were still fishing perseveringly, when he peeped in at the gate for

+the second time; but, now they seemed to have got a bite. There was a

+screwing and complaining sound down below, and their bent figures were

+strained, as if by a weight. By slow degrees the weight broke away the

+earth upon it, and came to the surface. Young Jerry very well knew what

+it would be; but, when he saw it, and saw his honoured parent about to

+wrench it open, he was so frightened, being new to the sight, that he

+made off again, and never stopped until he had run a mile or more.

+

+He would not have stopped then, for anything less necessary than breath,

+it being a spectral sort of race that he ran, and one highly desirable

+to get to the end of. He had a strong idea that the coffin he had seen

+was running after him; and, pictured as hopping on behind him, bolt

+upright, upon its narrow end, always on the point of overtaking him

+and hopping on at his side--perhaps taking his arm--it was a pursuer to

+shun. It was an inconsistent and ubiquitous fiend too, for, while it

+was making the whole night behind him dreadful, he darted out into the

+roadway to avoid dark alleys, fearful of its coming hopping out of them

+like a dropsical boy's kite without tail and wings. It hid in doorways

+too, rubbing its horrible shoulders against doors, and drawing them up

+to its ears, as if it were laughing. It got into shadows on the road,

+and lay cunningly on its back to trip him up. All this time it was

+incessantly hopping on behind and gaining on him, so that when the boy

+got to his own door he had reason for being half dead. And even then

+it would not leave him, but followed him upstairs with a bump on every

+stair, scrambled into bed with him, and bumped down, dead and heavy, on

+his breast when he fell asleep.

+

+From his oppressed slumber, Young Jerry in his closet was awakened after

+daybreak and before sunrise, by the presence of his father in the

+family room. Something had gone wrong with him; at least, so Young Jerry

+inferred, from the circumstance of his holding Mrs. Cruncher by the

+ears, and knocking the back of her head against the head-board of the

+bed.

+

+"I told you I would," said Mr. Cruncher, "and I did."

+

+"Jerry, Jerry, Jerry!" his wife implored.

+

+"You oppose yourself to the profit of the business," said Jerry, "and me

+and my partners suffer. You was to honour and obey; why the devil don't

+you?"

+

+"I try to be a good wife, Jerry," the poor woman protested, with tears.

+

+"Is it being a good wife to oppose your husband's business? Is it

+honouring your husband to dishonour his business? Is it obeying your

+husband to disobey him on the wital subject of his business?"

+

+"You hadn't taken to the dreadful business then, Jerry."

+

+"It's enough for you," retorted Mr. Cruncher, "to be the wife of a

+honest tradesman, and not to occupy your female mind with calculations

+when he took to his trade or when he didn't. A honouring and obeying

+wife would let his trade alone altogether. Call yourself a religious

+woman? If you're a religious woman, give me a irreligious one! You have

+no more nat'ral sense of duty than the bed of this here Thames river has

+of a pile, and similarly it must be knocked into you."

+

+The altercation was conducted in a low tone of voice, and terminated in

+the honest tradesman's kicking off his clay-soiled boots, and lying down

+at his length on the floor. After taking a timid peep at him lying on

+his back, with his rusty hands under his head for a pillow, his son lay

+down too, and fell asleep again.

+

+There was no fish for breakfast, and not much of anything else. Mr.

+Cruncher was out of spirits, and out of temper, and kept an iron pot-lid

+by him as a projectile for the correction of Mrs. Cruncher, in case

+he should observe any symptoms of her saying Grace. He was brushed

+and washed at the usual hour, and set off with his son to pursue his

+ostensible calling.

+

+Young Jerry, walking with the stool under his arm at his father's side

+along sunny and crowded Fleet-street, was a very different Young Jerry

+from him of the previous night, running home through darkness and

+solitude from his grim pursuer. His cunning was fresh with the day,

+and his qualms were gone with the night--in which particulars it is not

+improbable that he had compeers in Fleet-street and the City of London,

+that fine morning.

+

+"Father," said Young Jerry, as they walked along: taking care to keep

+at arm's length and to have the stool well between them: "what's a

+Resurrection-Man?"

+

+Mr. Cruncher came to a stop on the pavement before he answered, "How

+should I know?"

+

+"I thought you knowed everything, father," said the artless boy.

+

+"Hem! Well," returned Mr. Cruncher, going on again, and lifting off his

+hat to give his spikes free play, "he's a tradesman."

+

+"What's his goods, father?" asked the brisk Young Jerry.

+

+"His goods," said Mr. Cruncher, after turning it over in his mind, "is a

+branch of Scientific goods."

+

+"Persons' bodies, ain't it, father?" asked the lively boy.

+

+"I believe it is something of that sort," said Mr. Cruncher.

+

+"Oh, father, I should so like to be a Resurrection-Man when I'm quite

+growed up!"

+

+Mr. Cruncher was soothed, but shook his head in a dubious and moral way.

+"It depends upon how you dewelop your talents. Be careful to dewelop

+your talents, and never to say no more than you can help to nobody, and

+there's no telling at the present time what you may not come to be fit

+for." As Young Jerry, thus encouraged, went on a few yards in advance,

+to plant the stool in the shadow of the Bar, Mr. Cruncher added to

+himself: "Jerry, you honest tradesman, there's hopes wot that boy will

+yet be a blessing to you, and a recompense to you for his mother!"

+

+

+

+

+XV. Knitting

+

+

+There had been earlier drinking than usual in the wine-shop of Monsieur

+Defarge. As early as six o'clock in the morning, sallow faces peeping

+through its barred windows had descried other faces within, bending over

+measures of wine. Monsieur Defarge sold a very thin wine at the best

+of times, but it would seem to have been an unusually thin wine that

+he sold at this time. A sour wine, moreover, or a souring, for its

+influence on the mood of those who drank it was to make them gloomy. No

+vivacious Bacchanalian flame leaped out of the pressed grape of Monsieur

+Defarge: but, a smouldering fire that burnt in the dark, lay hidden in

+the dregs of it.

+

+This had been the third morning in succession, on which there had been

+early drinking at the wine-shop of Monsieur Defarge. It had begun

+on Monday, and here was Wednesday come. There had been more of early

+brooding than drinking; for, many men had listened and whispered and

+slunk about there from the time of the opening of the door, who could

+not have laid a piece of money on the counter to save their souls. These

+were to the full as interested in the place, however, as if they could

+have commanded whole barrels of wine; and they glided from seat to seat,

+and from corner to corner, swallowing talk in lieu of drink, with greedy

+looks.

+

+Notwithstanding an unusual flow of company, the master of the wine-shop

+was not visible. He was not missed; for, nobody who crossed the

+threshold looked for him, nobody asked for him, nobody wondered to see

+only Madame Defarge in her seat, presiding over the distribution of

+wine, with a bowl of battered small coins before her, as much defaced

+and beaten out of their original impress as the small coinage of

+humanity from whose ragged pockets they had come.

+

+A suspended interest and a prevalent absence of mind, were perhaps

+observed by the spies who looked in at the wine-shop, as they looked in

+at every place, high and low, from the king's palace to the criminal's

+gaol. Games at cards languished, players at dominoes musingly built

+towers with them, drinkers drew figures on the tables with spilt drops

+of wine, Madame Defarge herself picked out the pattern on her sleeve

+with her toothpick, and saw and heard something inaudible and invisible

+a long way off.

+

+Thus, Saint Antoine in this vinous feature of his, until midday. It was

+high noontide, when two dusty men passed through his streets and under

+his swinging lamps: of whom, one was Monsieur Defarge: the other a

+mender of roads in a blue cap. All adust and athirst, the two entered

+the wine-shop. Their arrival had lighted a kind of fire in the breast

+of Saint Antoine, fast spreading as they came along, which stirred and

+flickered in flames of faces at most doors and windows. Yet, no one had

+followed them, and no man spoke when they entered the wine-shop, though

+the eyes of every man there were turned upon them.

+

+"Good day, gentlemen!" said Monsieur Defarge.

+

+It may have been a signal for loosening the general tongue. It elicited

+an answering chorus of "Good day!"

+

+"It is bad weather, gentlemen," said Defarge, shaking his head.

+

+Upon which, every man looked at his neighbour, and then all cast down

+their eyes and sat silent. Except one man, who got up and went out.

+

+"My wife," said Defarge aloud, addressing Madame Defarge: "I have

+travelled certain leagues with this good mender of roads, called

+Jacques. I met him--by accident--a day and half's journey out of Paris.

+He is a good child, this mender of roads, called Jacques. Give him to

+drink, my wife!"

+

+A second man got up and went out. Madame Defarge set wine before the

+mender of roads called Jacques, who doffed his blue cap to the company,

+and drank. In the breast of his blouse he carried some coarse dark

+bread; he ate of this between whiles, and sat munching and drinking near

+Madame Defarge's counter. A third man got up and went out.

+

+Defarge refreshed himself with a draught of wine--but, he took less

+than was given to the stranger, as being himself a man to whom it was no

+rarity--and stood waiting until the countryman had made his breakfast.

+He looked at no one present, and no one now looked at him; not even

+Madame Defarge, who had taken up her knitting, and was at work.

+

+"Have you finished your repast, friend?" he asked, in due season.

+

+"Yes, thank you."

+

+"Come, then! You shall see the apartment that I told you you could

+occupy. It will suit you to a marvel."

+

+Out of the wine-shop into the street, out of the street into a

+courtyard, out of the courtyard up a steep staircase, out of the

+staircase into a garret--formerly the garret where a white-haired man

+sat on a low bench, stooping forward and very busy, making shoes.

+

+No white-haired man was there now; but, the three men were there who had

+gone out of the wine-shop singly. And between them and the white-haired

+man afar off, was the one small link, that they had once looked in at

+him through the chinks in the wall.

+

+Defarge closed the door carefully, and spoke in a subdued voice:

+

+"Jacques One, Jacques Two, Jacques Three! This is the witness

+encountered by appointment, by me, Jacques Four. He will tell you all.

+Speak, Jacques Five!"

+

+The mender of roads, blue cap in hand, wiped his swarthy forehead with

+it, and said, "Where shall I commence, monsieur?"

+

+"Commence," was Monsieur Defarge's not unreasonable reply, "at the

+commencement."

+

+"I saw him then, messieurs," began the mender of roads, "a year ago this

+running summer, underneath the carriage of the Marquis, hanging by the

+chain. Behold the manner of it. I leaving my work on the road, the sun

+going to bed, the carriage of the Marquis slowly ascending the hill, he

+hanging by the chain--like this."

+

+Again the mender of roads went through the whole performance; in which

+he ought to have been perfect by that time, seeing that it had been

+the infallible resource and indispensable entertainment of his village

+during a whole year.

+

+Jacques One struck in, and asked if he had ever seen the man before?

+

+"Never," answered the mender of roads, recovering his perpendicular.

+

+Jacques Three demanded how he afterwards recognised him then?

+

+"By his tall figure," said the mender of roads, softly, and with his

+finger at his nose. "When Monsieur the Marquis demands that evening,

+'Say, what is he like?' I make response, 'Tall as a spectre.'"

+

+"You should have said, short as a dwarf," returned Jacques Two.

+

+"But what did I know? The deed was not then accomplished, neither did he

+confide in me. Observe! Under those circumstances even, I do not

+offer my testimony. Monsieur the Marquis indicates me with his finger,

+standing near our little fountain, and says, 'To me! Bring that rascal!'

+My faith, messieurs, I offer nothing."

+

+"He is right there, Jacques," murmured Defarge, to him who had

+interrupted. "Go on!"

+

+"Good!" said the mender of roads, with an air of mystery. "The tall man

+is lost, and he is sought--how many months? Nine, ten, eleven?"

+

+"No matter, the number," said Defarge. "He is well hidden, but at last

+he is unluckily found. Go on!"

+

+"I am again at work upon the hill-side, and the sun is again about to

+go to bed. I am collecting my tools to descend to my cottage down in the

+village below, where it is already dark, when I raise my eyes, and see

+coming over the hill six soldiers. In the midst of them is a tall man

+with his arms bound--tied to his sides--like this!"

+

+With the aid of his indispensable cap, he represented a man with his

+elbows bound fast at his hips, with cords that were knotted behind him.

+

+"I stand aside, messieurs, by my heap of stones, to see the soldiers

+and their prisoner pass (for it is a solitary road, that, where any

+spectacle is well worth looking at), and at first, as they approach, I

+see no more than that they are six soldiers with a tall man bound, and

+that they are almost black to my sight--except on the side of the sun

+going to bed, where they have a red edge, messieurs. Also, I see that

+their long shadows are on the hollow ridge on the opposite side of the

+road, and are on the hill above it, and are like the shadows of giants.

+Also, I see that they are covered with dust, and that the dust moves

+with them as they come, tramp, tramp! But when they advance quite near

+to me, I recognise the tall man, and he recognises me. Ah, but he would

+be well content to precipitate himself over the hill-side once again, as

+on the evening when he and I first encountered, close to the same spot!"

+

+He described it as if he were there, and it was evident that he saw it

+vividly; perhaps he had not seen much in his life.

+

+"I do not show the soldiers that I recognise the tall man; he does not

+show the soldiers that he recognises me; we do it, and we know it, with

+our eyes. 'Come on!' says the chief of that company, pointing to the

+village, 'bring him fast to his tomb!' and they bring him faster. I

+follow. His arms are swelled because of being bound so tight, his wooden

+shoes are large and clumsy, and he is lame. Because he is lame, and

+consequently slow, they drive him with their guns--like this!"

+

+He imitated the action of a man's being impelled forward by the

+butt-ends of muskets.

+

+"As they descend the hill like madmen running a race, he falls. They

+laugh and pick him up again. His face is bleeding and covered with dust,

+but he cannot touch it; thereupon they laugh again. They bring him into

+the village; all the village runs to look; they take him past the mill,

+and up to the prison; all the village sees the prison gate open in the

+darkness of the night, and swallow him--like this!"

+

+He opened his mouth as wide as he could, and shut it with a sounding

+snap of his teeth. Observant of his unwillingness to mar the effect by

+opening it again, Defarge said, "Go on, Jacques."

+

+"All the village," pursued the mender of roads, on tiptoe and in a low

+voice, "withdraws; all the village whispers by the fountain; all the

+village sleeps; all the village dreams of that unhappy one, within the

+locks and bars of the prison on the crag, and never to come out of it,

+except to perish. In the morning, with my tools upon my shoulder, eating

+my morsel of black bread as I go, I make a circuit by the prison, on

+my way to my work. There I see him, high up, behind the bars of a lofty

+iron cage, bloody and dusty as last night, looking through. He has no

+hand free, to wave to me; I dare not call to him; he regards me like a

+dead man."

+

+Defarge and the three glanced darkly at one another. The looks of all

+of them were dark, repressed, and revengeful, as they listened to the

+countryman's story; the manner of all of them, while it was secret, was

+authoritative too. They had the air of a rough tribunal; Jacques One

+and Two sitting on the old pallet-bed, each with his chin resting on

+his hand, and his eyes intent on the road-mender; Jacques Three, equally

+intent, on one knee behind them, with his agitated hand always gliding

+over the network of fine nerves about his mouth and nose; Defarge

+standing between them and the narrator, whom he had stationed in the

+light of the window, by turns looking from him to them, and from them to

+him.

+

+"Go on, Jacques," said Defarge.

+

+"He remains up there in his iron cage some days. The village looks

+at him by stealth, for it is afraid. But it always looks up, from a

+distance, at the prison on the crag; and in the evening, when the work

+of the day is achieved and it assembles to gossip at the fountain, all

+faces are turned towards the prison. Formerly, they were turned towards

+the posting-house; now, they are turned towards the prison. They

+whisper at the fountain, that although condemned to death he will not be

+executed; they say that petitions have been presented in Paris, showing

+that he was enraged and made mad by the death of his child; they say

+that a petition has been presented to the King himself. What do I know?

+It is possible. Perhaps yes, perhaps no."

+

+"Listen then, Jacques," Number One of that name sternly interposed.

+"Know that a petition was presented to the King and Queen. All here,

+yourself excepted, saw the King take it, in his carriage in the street,

+sitting beside the Queen. It is Defarge whom you see here, who, at the

+hazard of his life, darted out before the horses, with the petition in

+his hand."

+

+"And once again listen, Jacques!" said the kneeling Number Three:

+his fingers ever wandering over and over those fine nerves, with a

+strikingly greedy air, as if he hungered for something--that was neither

+food nor drink; "the guard, horse and foot, surrounded the petitioner,

+and struck him blows. You hear?"

+

+"I hear, messieurs."

+

+"Go on then," said Defarge.

+

+"Again; on the other hand, they whisper at the fountain," resumed the

+countryman, "that he is brought down into our country to be executed on

+the spot, and that he will very certainly be executed. They even whisper

+that because he has slain Monseigneur, and because Monseigneur was the

+father of his tenants--serfs--what you will--he will be executed as a

+parricide. One old man says at the fountain, that his right hand, armed

+with the knife, will be burnt off before his face; that, into wounds

+which will be made in his arms, his breast, and his legs, there will be

+poured boiling oil, melted lead, hot resin, wax, and sulphur; finally,

+that he will be torn limb from limb by four strong horses. That old man

+says, all this was actually done to a prisoner who made an attempt on

+the life of the late King, Louis Fifteen. But how do I know if he lies?

+I am not a scholar."

+

+"Listen once again then, Jacques!" said the man with the restless hand

+and the craving air. "The name of that prisoner was Damiens, and it was

+all done in open day, in the open streets of this city of Paris; and

+nothing was more noticed in the vast concourse that saw it done, than

+the crowd of ladies of quality and fashion, who were full of eager

+attention to the last--to the last, Jacques, prolonged until nightfall,

+when he had lost two legs and an arm, and still breathed! And it was

+done--why, how old are you?"

+

+"Thirty-five," said the mender of roads, who looked sixty.

+

+"It was done when you were more than ten years old; you might have seen

+it."

+

+"Enough!" said Defarge, with grim impatience. "Long live the Devil! Go

+on."

+

+"Well! Some whisper this, some whisper that; they speak of nothing else;

+even the fountain appears to fall to that tune. At length, on Sunday

+night when all the village is asleep, come soldiers, winding down from

+the prison, and their guns ring on the stones of the little street.

+Workmen dig, workmen hammer, soldiers laugh and sing; in the morning, by

+the fountain, there is raised a gallows forty feet high, poisoning the

+water."

+

+The mender of roads looked _through_ rather than _at_ the low ceiling,

+and pointed as if he saw the gallows somewhere in the sky.

+

+"All work is stopped, all assemble there, nobody leads the cows out,

+the cows are there with the rest. At midday, the roll of drums. Soldiers

+have marched into the prison in the night, and he is in the midst

+of many soldiers. He is bound as before, and in his mouth there is

+a gag--tied so, with a tight string, making him look almost as if he

+laughed." He suggested it, by creasing his face with his two thumbs,

+from the corners of his mouth to his ears. "On the top of the gallows is

+fixed the knife, blade upwards, with its point in the air. He is hanged

+there forty feet high--and is left hanging, poisoning the water."

+

+They looked at one another, as he used his blue cap to wipe his face,

+on which the perspiration had started afresh while he recalled the

+spectacle.

+

+"It is frightful, messieurs. How can the women and the children draw

+water! Who can gossip of an evening, under that shadow! Under it, have

+I said? When I left the village, Monday evening as the sun was going to

+bed, and looked back from the hill, the shadow struck across the church,

+across the mill, across the prison--seemed to strike across the earth,

+messieurs, to where the sky rests upon it!"

+

+The hungry man gnawed one of his fingers as he looked at the other

+three, and his finger quivered with the craving that was on him.

+

+"That's all, messieurs. I left at sunset (as I had been warned to do),

+and I walked on, that night and half next day, until I met (as I was

+warned I should) this comrade. With him, I came on, now riding and now

+walking, through the rest of yesterday and through last night. And here

+you see me!"

+

+After a gloomy silence, the first Jacques said, "Good! You have acted

+and recounted faithfully. Will you wait for us a little, outside the

+door?"

+

+"Very willingly," said the mender of roads. Whom Defarge escorted to the

+top of the stairs, and, leaving seated there, returned.

+

+The three had risen, and their heads were together when he came back to

+the garret.

+

+"How say you, Jacques?" demanded Number One. "To be registered?"

+

+"To be registered, as doomed to destruction," returned Defarge.

+

+"Magnificent!" croaked the man with the craving.

+

+"The chateau, and all the race?" inquired the first.

+

+"The chateau and all the race," returned Defarge. "Extermination."

+

+The hungry man repeated, in a rapturous croak, "Magnificent!" and began

+gnawing another finger.

+

+"Are you sure," asked Jacques Two, of Defarge, "that no embarrassment

+can arise from our manner of keeping the register? Without doubt it is

+safe, for no one beyond ourselves can decipher it; but shall we always

+be able to decipher it--or, I ought to say, will she?"

+

+"Jacques," returned Defarge, drawing himself up, "if madame my wife

+undertook to keep the register in her memory alone, she would not lose

+a word of it--not a syllable of it. Knitted, in her own stitches and her

+own symbols, it will always be as plain to her as the sun. Confide in

+Madame Defarge. It would be easier for the weakest poltroon that lives,

+to erase himself from existence, than to erase one letter of his name or

+crimes from the knitted register of Madame Defarge."

+

+There was a murmur of confidence and approval, and then the man who

+hungered, asked: "Is this rustic to be sent back soon? I hope so. He is

+very simple; is he not a little dangerous?"

+

+"He knows nothing," said Defarge; "at least nothing more than would

+easily elevate himself to a gallows of the same height. I charge myself

+with him; let him remain with me; I will take care of him, and set him

+on his road. He wishes to see the fine world--the King, the Queen, and

+Court; let him see them on Sunday."

+

+"What?" exclaimed the hungry man, staring. "Is it a good sign, that he

+wishes to see Royalty and Nobility?"

+

+"Jacques," said Defarge; "judiciously show a cat milk, if you wish her

+to thirst for it. Judiciously show a dog his natural prey, if you wish

+him to bring it down one day."

+

+Nothing more was said, and the mender of roads, being found already

+dozing on the topmost stair, was advised to lay himself down on the

+pallet-bed and take some rest. He needed no persuasion, and was soon

+asleep.

+

+Worse quarters than Defarge's wine-shop, could easily have been found

+in Paris for a provincial slave of that degree. Saving for a mysterious

+dread of madame by which he was constantly haunted, his life was very

+new and agreeable. But, madame sat all day at her counter, so expressly

+unconscious of him, and so particularly determined not to perceive that

+his being there had any connection with anything below the surface, that

+he shook in his wooden shoes whenever his eye lighted on her. For, he

+contended with himself that it was impossible to foresee what that lady

+might pretend next; and he felt assured that if she should take it

+into her brightly ornamented head to pretend that she had seen him do a

+murder and afterwards flay the victim, she would infallibly go through

+with it until the play was played out.

+

+Therefore, when Sunday came, the mender of roads was not enchanted

+(though he said he was) to find that madame was to accompany monsieur

+and himself to Versailles. It was additionally disconcerting to have

+madame knitting all the way there, in a public conveyance; it was

+additionally disconcerting yet, to have madame in the crowd in the

+afternoon, still with her knitting in her hands as the crowd waited to

+see the carriage of the King and Queen.

+

+"You work hard, madame," said a man near her.

+

+"Yes," answered Madame Defarge; "I have a good deal to do."

+

+"What do you make, madame?"

+

+"Many things."

+

+"For instance--"

+

+"For instance," returned Madame Defarge, composedly, "shrouds."

+

+The man moved a little further away, as soon as he could, and the mender

+of roads fanned himself with his blue cap: feeling it mightily close

+and oppressive. If he needed a King and Queen to restore him, he was

+fortunate in having his remedy at hand; for, soon the large-faced King

+and the fair-faced Queen came in their golden coach, attended by the

+shining Bull's Eye of their Court, a glittering multitude of laughing

+ladies and fine lords; and in jewels and silks and powder and splendour

+and elegantly spurning figures and handsomely disdainful faces of both

+sexes, the mender of roads bathed himself, so much to his temporary

+intoxication, that he cried Long live the King, Long live the Queen,

+Long live everybody and everything! as if he had never heard of

+ubiquitous Jacques in his time. Then, there were gardens, courtyards,

+terraces, fountains, green banks, more King and Queen, more Bull's Eye,

+more lords and ladies, more Long live they all! until he absolutely wept

+with sentiment. During the whole of this scene, which lasted some three

+hours, he had plenty of shouting and weeping and sentimental company,

+and throughout Defarge held him by the collar, as if to restrain him

+from flying at the objects of his brief devotion and tearing them to

+pieces.

+

+"Bravo!" said Defarge, clapping him on the back when it was over, like a

+patron; "you are a good boy!"

+

+The mender of roads was now coming to himself, and was mistrustful of

+having made a mistake in his late demonstrations; but no.

+

+"You are the fellow we want," said Defarge, in his ear; "you make

+these fools believe that it will last for ever. Then, they are the more

+insolent, and it is the nearer ended."

+

+"Hey!" cried the mender of roads, reflectively; "that's true."

+

+"These fools know nothing. While they despise your breath, and would

+stop it for ever and ever, in you or in a hundred like you rather than

+in one of their own horses or dogs, they only know what your breath

+tells them. Let it deceive them, then, a little longer; it cannot

+deceive them too much."

+

+Madame Defarge looked superciliously at the client, and nodded in

+confirmation.

+

+"As to you," said she, "you would shout and shed tears for anything, if

+it made a show and a noise. Say! Would you not?"

+

+"Truly, madame, I think so. For the moment."

+

+"If you were shown a great heap of dolls, and were set upon them to

+pluck them to pieces and despoil them for your own advantage, you would

+pick out the richest and gayest. Say! Would you not?"

+

+"Truly yes, madame."

+

+"Yes. And if you were shown a flock of birds, unable to fly, and were

+set upon them to strip them of their feathers for your own advantage,

+you would set upon the birds of the finest feathers; would you not?"

+

+"It is true, madame."

+

+"You have seen both dolls and birds to-day," said Madame Defarge, with

+a wave of her hand towards the place where they had last been apparent;

+"now, go home!"

+

+

+

+

+XVI. Still Knitting

+

+

+Madame Defarge and monsieur her husband returned amicably to the

+bosom of Saint Antoine, while a speck in a blue cap toiled through the

+darkness, and through the dust, and down the weary miles of avenue by

+the wayside, slowly tending towards that point of the compass where

+the chateau of Monsieur the Marquis, now in his grave, listened to

+the whispering trees. Such ample leisure had the stone faces, now,

+for listening to the trees and to the fountain, that the few village

+scarecrows who, in their quest for herbs to eat and fragments of dead

+stick to burn, strayed within sight of the great stone courtyard and

+terrace staircase, had it borne in upon their starved fancy that

+the expression of the faces was altered. A rumour just lived in the

+village--had a faint and bare existence there, as its people had--that

+when the knife struck home, the faces changed, from faces of pride to

+faces of anger and pain; also, that when that dangling figure was hauled

+up forty feet above the fountain, they changed again, and bore a cruel

+look of being avenged, which they would henceforth bear for ever. In the

+stone face over the great window of the bed-chamber where the murder

+was done, two fine dints were pointed out in the sculptured nose, which

+everybody recognised, and which nobody had seen of old; and on the

+scarce occasions when two or three ragged peasants emerged from the

+crowd to take a hurried peep at Monsieur the Marquis petrified, a

+skinny finger would not have pointed to it for a minute, before they all

+started away among the moss and leaves, like the more fortunate hares

+who could find a living there.

+

+Chateau and hut, stone face and dangling figure, the red stain on the

+stone floor, and the pure water in the village well--thousands of acres

+of land--a whole province of France--all France itself--lay under the

+night sky, concentrated into a faint hair-breadth line. So does a whole

+world, with all its greatnesses and littlenesses, lie in a twinkling

+star. And as mere human knowledge can split a ray of light and analyse

+the manner of its composition, so, sublimer intelligences may read in

+the feeble shining of this earth of ours, every thought and act, every

+vice and virtue, of every responsible creature on it.

+

+The Defarges, husband and wife, came lumbering under the starlight,

+in their public vehicle, to that gate of Paris whereunto their

+journey naturally tended. There was the usual stoppage at the barrier

+guardhouse, and the usual lanterns came glancing forth for the usual

+examination and inquiry. Monsieur Defarge alighted; knowing one or two

+of the soldiery there, and one of the police. The latter he was intimate

+with, and affectionately embraced.

+

+When Saint Antoine had again enfolded the Defarges in his dusky wings,

+and they, having finally alighted near the Saint's boundaries, were

+picking their way on foot through the black mud and offal of his

+streets, Madame Defarge spoke to her husband:

+

+"Say then, my friend; what did Jacques of the police tell thee?"

+

+"Very little to-night, but all he knows. There is another spy

+commissioned for our quarter. There may be many more, for all that he

+can say, but he knows of one."

+

+"Eh well!" said Madame Defarge, raising her eyebrows with a cool

+business air. "It is necessary to register him. How do they call that

+man?"

+

+"He is English."

+

+"So much the better. His name?"

+

+"Barsad," said Defarge, making it French by pronunciation. But, he had

+been so careful to get it accurately, that he then spelt it with perfect

+correctness.

+

+"Barsad," repeated madame. "Good. Christian name?"

+

+"John."

+

+"John Barsad," repeated madame, after murmuring it once to herself.

+"Good. His appearance; is it known?"

+

+"Age, about forty years; height, about five feet nine; black hair;

+complexion dark; generally, rather handsome visage; eyes dark, face

+thin, long, and sallow; nose aquiline, but not straight, having a

+peculiar inclination towards the left cheek; expression, therefore,

+sinister."

+

+"Eh my faith. It is a portrait!" said madame, laughing. "He shall be

+registered to-morrow."

+

+They turned into the wine-shop, which was closed (for it was midnight),

+and where Madame Defarge immediately took her post at her desk, counted

+the small moneys that had been taken during her absence, examined the

+stock, went through the entries in the book, made other entries of

+her own, checked the serving man in every possible way, and finally

+dismissed him to bed. Then she turned out the contents of the bowl

+of money for the second time, and began knotting them up in her

+handkerchief, in a chain of separate knots, for safe keeping through the

+night. All this while, Defarge, with his pipe in his mouth, walked

+up and down, complacently admiring, but never interfering; in which

+condition, indeed, as to the business and his domestic affairs, he

+walked up and down through life.

+

+The night was hot, and the shop, close shut and surrounded by so foul a

+neighbourhood, was ill-smelling. Monsieur Defarge's olfactory sense was

+by no means delicate, but the stock of wine smelt much stronger than

+it ever tasted, and so did the stock of rum and brandy and aniseed. He

+whiffed the compound of scents away, as he put down his smoked-out pipe.

+

+"You are fatigued," said madame, raising her glance as she knotted the

+money. "There are only the usual odours."

+

+"I am a little tired," her husband acknowledged.

+

+"You are a little depressed, too," said madame, whose quick eyes had

+never been so intent on the accounts, but they had had a ray or two for

+him. "Oh, the men, the men!"

+

+"But my dear!" began Defarge.

+

+"But my dear!" repeated madame, nodding firmly; "but my dear! You are

+faint of heart to-night, my dear!"

+

+"Well, then," said Defarge, as if a thought were wrung out of his

+breast, "it _is_ a long time."

+

+"It is a long time," repeated his wife; "and when is it not a long time?

+Vengeance and retribution require a long time; it is the rule."

+

+"It does not take a long time to strike a man with Lightning," said

+Defarge.

+

+"How long," demanded madame, composedly, "does it take to make and store

+the lightning? Tell me."

+

+Defarge raised his head thoughtfully, as if there were something in that

+too.

+

+"It does not take a long time," said madame, "for an earthquake to

+swallow a town. Eh well! Tell me how long it takes to prepare the

+earthquake?"

+

+"A long time, I suppose," said Defarge.

+

+"But when it is ready, it takes place, and grinds to pieces everything

+before it. In the meantime, it is always preparing, though it is not

+seen or heard. That is your consolation. Keep it."

+

+She tied a knot with flashing eyes, as if it throttled a foe.

+

+"I tell thee," said madame, extending her right hand, for emphasis,

+"that although it is a long time on the road, it is on the road and

+coming. I tell thee it never retreats, and never stops. I tell thee it

+is always advancing. Look around and consider the lives of all the world

+that we know, consider the faces of all the world that we know, consider

+the rage and discontent to which the Jacquerie addresses itself with

+more and more of certainty every hour. Can such things last? Bah! I mock

+you."

+

+"My brave wife," returned Defarge, standing before her with his head

+a little bent, and his hands clasped at his back, like a docile and

+attentive pupil before his catechist, "I do not question all this. But

+it has lasted a long time, and it is possible--you know well, my wife,

+it is possible--that it may not come, during our lives."

+

+"Eh well! How then?" demanded madame, tying another knot, as if there

+were another enemy strangled.

+

+"Well!" said Defarge, with a half complaining and half apologetic shrug.

+"We shall not see the triumph."

+

+"We shall have helped it," returned madame, with her extended hand in

+strong action. "Nothing that we do, is done in vain. I believe, with all

+my soul, that we shall see the triumph. But even if not, even if I knew

+certainly not, show me the neck of an aristocrat and tyrant, and still I

+would--"

+

+Then madame, with her teeth set, tied a very terrible knot indeed.

+

+"Hold!" cried Defarge, reddening a little as if he felt charged with

+cowardice; "I too, my dear, will stop at nothing."

+

+"Yes! But it is your weakness that you sometimes need to see your victim

+and your opportunity, to sustain you. Sustain yourself without that.

+When the time comes, let loose a tiger and a devil; but wait for the

+time with the tiger and the devil chained--not shown--yet always ready."

+

+Madame enforced the conclusion of this piece of advice by striking her

+little counter with her chain of money as if she knocked its brains

+out, and then gathering the heavy handkerchief under her arm in a serene

+manner, and observing that it was time to go to bed.

+

+Next noontide saw the admirable woman in her usual place in the

+wine-shop, knitting away assiduously. A rose lay beside her, and if she

+now and then glanced at the flower, it was with no infraction of her

+usual preoccupied air. There were a few customers, drinking or not

+drinking, standing or seated, sprinkled about. The day was very hot,

+and heaps of flies, who were extending their inquisitive and adventurous

+perquisitions into all the glutinous little glasses near madame, fell

+dead at the bottom. Their decease made no impression on the other flies

+out promenading, who looked at them in the coolest manner (as if they

+themselves were elephants, or something as far removed), until they met

+the same fate. Curious to consider how heedless flies are!--perhaps they

+thought as much at Court that sunny summer day.

+

+A figure entering at the door threw a shadow on Madame Defarge which she

+felt to be a new one. She laid down her knitting, and began to pin her

+rose in her head-dress, before she looked at the figure.

+

+It was curious. The moment Madame Defarge took up the rose, the

+customers ceased talking, and began gradually to drop out of the

+wine-shop.

+

+"Good day, madame," said the new-comer.

+

+"Good day, monsieur."

+

+She said it aloud, but added to herself, as she resumed her knitting:

+"Hah! Good day, age about forty, height about five feet nine, black

+hair, generally rather handsome visage, complexion dark, eyes dark,

+thin, long and sallow face, aquiline nose but not straight, having a

+peculiar inclination towards the left cheek which imparts a sinister

+expression! Good day, one and all!"

+

+"Have the goodness to give me a little glass of old cognac, and a

+mouthful of cool fresh water, madame."

+

+Madame complied with a polite air.

+

+"Marvellous cognac this, madame!"

+

+It was the first time it had ever been so complimented, and Madame

+Defarge knew enough of its antecedents to know better. She said,

+however, that the cognac was flattered, and took up her knitting. The

+visitor watched her fingers for a few moments, and took the opportunity

+of observing the place in general.

+

+"You knit with great skill, madame."

+

+"I am accustomed to it."

+

+"A pretty pattern too!"

+

+"_You_ think so?" said madame, looking at him with a smile.

+

+"Decidedly. May one ask what it is for?"

+

+"Pastime," said madame, still looking at him with a smile while her

+fingers moved nimbly.

+

+"Not for use?"

+

+"That depends. I may find a use for it one day. If I do--Well," said

+madame, drawing a breath and nodding her head with a stern kind of

+coquetry, "I'll use it!"

+

+It was remarkable; but, the taste of Saint Antoine seemed to be

+decidedly opposed to a rose on the head-dress of Madame Defarge. Two

+men had entered separately, and had been about to order drink, when,

+catching sight of that novelty, they faltered, made a pretence of

+looking about as if for some friend who was not there, and went away.

+Nor, of those who had been there when this visitor entered, was there

+one left. They had all dropped off. The spy had kept his eyes open,

+but had been able to detect no sign. They had lounged away in a

+poverty-stricken, purposeless, accidental manner, quite natural and

+unimpeachable.

+

+"_John_," thought madame, checking off her work as her fingers knitted,

+and her eyes looked at the stranger. "Stay long enough, and I shall knit

+'BARSAD' before you go."

+

+"You have a husband, madame?"

+

+"I have."

+

+"Children?"

+

+"No children."

+

+"Business seems bad?"

+

+"Business is very bad; the people are so poor."

+

+"Ah, the unfortunate, miserable people! So oppressed, too--as you say."

+

+"As _you_ say," madame retorted, correcting him, and deftly knitting an

+extra something into his name that boded him no good.

+

+"Pardon me; certainly it was I who said so, but you naturally think so.

+Of course."

+

+"_I_ think?" returned madame, in a high voice. "I and my husband have

+enough to do to keep this wine-shop open, without thinking. All we

+think, here, is how to live. That is the subject _we_ think of, and

+it gives us, from morning to night, enough to think about, without

+embarrassing our heads concerning others. _I_ think for others? No, no."

+

+The spy, who was there to pick up any crumbs he could find or make, did

+not allow his baffled state to express itself in his sinister face; but,

+stood with an air of gossiping gallantry, leaning his elbow on Madame

+Defarge's little counter, and occasionally sipping his cognac.

+

+"A bad business this, madame, of Gaspard's execution. Ah! the poor

+Gaspard!" With a sigh of great compassion.

+

+"My faith!" returned madame, coolly and lightly, "if people use knives

+for such purposes, they have to pay for it. He knew beforehand what the

+price of his luxury was; he has paid the price."

+

+"I believe," said the spy, dropping his soft voice to a tone

+that invited confidence, and expressing an injured revolutionary

+susceptibility in every muscle of his wicked face: "I believe there

+is much compassion and anger in this neighbourhood, touching the poor

+fellow? Between ourselves."

+

+"Is there?" asked madame, vacantly.

+

+"Is there not?"

+

+"--Here is my husband!" said Madame Defarge.

+

+As the keeper of the wine-shop entered at the door, the spy saluted

+him by touching his hat, and saying, with an engaging smile, "Good day,

+Jacques!" Defarge stopped short, and stared at him.

+

+"Good day, Jacques!" the spy repeated; with not quite so much

+confidence, or quite so easy a smile under the stare.

+

+"You deceive yourself, monsieur," returned the keeper of the wine-shop.

+"You mistake me for another. That is not my name. I am Ernest Defarge."

+

+"It is all the same," said the spy, airily, but discomfited too: "good

+day!"

+

+"Good day!" answered Defarge, drily.

+

+"I was saying to madame, with whom I had the pleasure of chatting when

+you entered, that they tell me there is--and no wonder!--much sympathy

+and anger in Saint Antoine, touching the unhappy fate of poor Gaspard."

+

+"No one has told me so," said Defarge, shaking his head. "I know nothing

+of it."

+

+Having said it, he passed behind the little counter, and stood with his

+hand on the back of his wife's chair, looking over that barrier at the

+person to whom they were both opposed, and whom either of them would

+have shot with the greatest satisfaction.

+

+The spy, well used to his business, did not change his unconscious

+attitude, but drained his little glass of cognac, took a sip of fresh

+water, and asked for another glass of cognac. Madame Defarge poured it

+out for him, took to her knitting again, and hummed a little song over

+it.

+

+"You seem to know this quarter well; that is to say, better than I do?"

+observed Defarge.

+

+"Not at all, but I hope to know it better. I am so profoundly interested

+in its miserable inhabitants."

+

+"Hah!" muttered Defarge.

+

+"The pleasure of conversing with you, Monsieur Defarge, recalls to me,"

+pursued the spy, "that I have the honour of cherishing some interesting

+associations with your name."

+

+"Indeed!" said Defarge, with much indifference.

+

+"Yes, indeed. When Doctor Manette was released, you, his old domestic,

+had the charge of him, I know. He was delivered to you. You see I am

+informed of the circumstances?"

+

+"Such is the fact, certainly," said Defarge. He had had it conveyed

+to him, in an accidental touch of his wife's elbow as she knitted and

+warbled, that he would do best to answer, but always with brevity.

+

+"It was to you," said the spy, "that his daughter came; and it was

+from your care that his daughter took him, accompanied by a neat brown

+monsieur; how is he called?--in a little wig--Lorry--of the bank of

+Tellson and Company--over to England."

+

+"Such is the fact," repeated Defarge.

+

+"Very interesting remembrances!" said the spy. "I have known Doctor

+Manette and his daughter, in England."

+

+"Yes?" said Defarge.

+

+"You don't hear much about them now?" said the spy.

+

+"No," said Defarge.

+

+"In effect," madame struck in, looking up from her work and her little

+song, "we never hear about them. We received the news of their safe

+arrival, and perhaps another letter, or perhaps two; but, since then,

+they have gradually taken their road in life--we, ours--and we have held

+no correspondence."

+

+"Perfectly so, madame," replied the spy. "She is going to be married."

+

+"Going?" echoed madame. "She was pretty enough to have been married long

+ago. You English are cold, it seems to me."

+

+"Oh! You know I am English."

+

+"I perceive your tongue is," returned madame; "and what the tongue is, I

+suppose the man is."

+

+He did not take the identification as a compliment; but he made the best

+of it, and turned it off with a laugh. After sipping his cognac to the

+end, he added:

+

+"Yes, Miss Manette is going to be married. But not to an Englishman; to

+one who, like herself, is French by birth. And speaking of Gaspard (ah,

+poor Gaspard! It was cruel, cruel!), it is a curious thing that she is

+going to marry the nephew of Monsieur the Marquis, for whom Gaspard

+was exalted to that height of so many feet; in other words, the present

+Marquis. But he lives unknown in England, he is no Marquis there; he is

+Mr. Charles Darnay. D'Aulnais is the name of his mother's family."

+

+Madame Defarge knitted steadily, but the intelligence had a palpable

+effect upon her husband. Do what he would, behind the little counter,

+as to the striking of a light and the lighting of his pipe, he was

+troubled, and his hand was not trustworthy. The spy would have been no

+spy if he had failed to see it, or to record it in his mind.

+

+Having made, at least, this one hit, whatever it might prove to be

+worth, and no customers coming in to help him to any other, Mr. Barsad

+paid for what he had drunk, and took his leave: taking occasion to say,

+in a genteel manner, before he departed, that he looked forward to the

+pleasure of seeing Monsieur and Madame Defarge again. For some minutes

+after he had emerged into the outer presence of Saint Antoine, the

+husband and wife remained exactly as he had left them, lest he should

+come back.

+

+"Can it be true," said Defarge, in a low voice, looking down at his wife

+as he stood smoking with his hand on the back of her chair: "what he has

+said of Ma'amselle Manette?"

+

+"As he has said it," returned madame, lifting her eyebrows a little, "it

+is probably false. But it may be true."

+

+"If it is--" Defarge began, and stopped.

+

+"If it is?" repeated his wife.

+

+"--And if it does come, while we live to see it triumph--I hope, for her

+sake, Destiny will keep her husband out of France."

+

+"Her husband's destiny," said Madame Defarge, with her usual composure,

+"will take him where he is to go, and will lead him to the end that is

+to end him. That is all I know."

+

+"But it is very strange--now, at least, is it not very strange"--said

+Defarge, rather pleading with his wife to induce her to admit it,

+"that, after all our sympathy for Monsieur her father, and herself, her

+husband's name should be proscribed under your hand at this moment, by

+the side of that infernal dog's who has just left us?"

+

+"Stranger things than that will happen when it does come," answered

+madame. "I have them both here, of a certainty; and they are both here

+for their merits; that is enough."

+

+She rolled up her knitting when she had said those words, and presently

+took the rose out of the handkerchief that was wound about her head.

+Either Saint Antoine had an instinctive sense that the objectionable

+decoration was gone, or Saint Antoine was on the watch for its

+disappearance; howbeit, the Saint took courage to lounge in, very

+shortly afterwards, and the wine-shop recovered its habitual aspect.

+

+In the evening, at which season of all others Saint Antoine turned

+himself inside out, and sat on door-steps and window-ledges, and came

+to the corners of vile streets and courts, for a breath of air, Madame

+Defarge with her work in her hand was accustomed to pass from place

+to place and from group to group: a Missionary--there were many like

+her--such as the world will do well never to breed again. All the women

+knitted. They knitted worthless things; but, the mechanical work was a

+mechanical substitute for eating and drinking; the hands moved for the

+jaws and the digestive apparatus: if the bony fingers had been still,

+the stomachs would have been more famine-pinched.

+

+But, as the fingers went, the eyes went, and the thoughts. And as Madame

+Defarge moved on from group to group, all three went quicker and fiercer

+among every little knot of women that she had spoken with, and left

+behind.

+

+Her husband smoked at his door, looking after her with admiration. "A

+great woman," said he, "a strong woman, a grand woman, a frightfully

+grand woman!"

+

+Darkness closed around, and then came the ringing of church bells and

+the distant beating of the military drums in the Palace Courtyard, as

+the women sat knitting, knitting. Darkness encompassed them. Another

+darkness was closing in as surely, when the church bells, then ringing

+pleasantly in many an airy steeple over France, should be melted into

+thundering cannon; when the military drums should be beating to drown a

+wretched voice, that night all potent as the voice of Power and Plenty,

+Freedom and Life. So much was closing in about the women who sat

+knitting, knitting, that they their very selves were closing in around

+a structure yet unbuilt, where they were to sit knitting, knitting,

+counting dropping heads.

+

+

+

+

+XVII. One Night

+

+

+Never did the sun go down with a brighter glory on the quiet corner in

+Soho, than one memorable evening when the Doctor and his daughter sat

+under the plane-tree together. Never did the moon rise with a milder

+radiance over great London, than on that night when it found them still

+seated under the tree, and shone upon their faces through its leaves.

+

+Lucie was to be married to-morrow. She had reserved this last evening

+for her father, and they sat alone under the plane-tree.

+

+"You are happy, my dear father?"

+

+"Quite, my child."

+

+They had said little, though they had been there a long time. When it

+was yet light enough to work and read, she had neither engaged herself

+in her usual work, nor had she read to him. She had employed herself in

+both ways, at his side under the tree, many and many a time; but, this

+time was not quite like any other, and nothing could make it so.

+

+"And I am very happy to-night, dear father. I am deeply happy in the

+love that Heaven has so blessed--my love for Charles, and Charles's love

+for me. But, if my life were not to be still consecrated to you, or

+if my marriage were so arranged as that it would part us, even by

+the length of a few of these streets, I should be more unhappy and

+self-reproachful now than I can tell you. Even as it is--"

+

+Even as it was, she could not command her voice.

+

+In the sad moonlight, she clasped him by the neck, and laid her face

+upon his breast. In the moonlight which is always sad, as the light of

+the sun itself is--as the light called human life is--at its coming and

+its going.

+

+"Dearest dear! Can you tell me, this last time, that you feel quite,

+quite sure, no new affections of mine, and no new duties of mine, will

+ever interpose between us? _I_ know it well, but do you know it? In your

+own heart, do you feel quite certain?"

+

+Her father answered, with a cheerful firmness of conviction he could

+scarcely have assumed, "Quite sure, my darling! More than that," he

+added, as he tenderly kissed her: "my future is far brighter, Lucie,

+seen through your marriage, than it could have been--nay, than it ever

+was--without it."

+

+"If I could hope _that_, my father!--"

+

+"Believe it, love! Indeed it is so. Consider how natural and how plain

+it is, my dear, that it should be so. You, devoted and young, cannot

+fully appreciate the anxiety I have felt that your life should not be

+wasted--"

+

+She moved her hand towards his lips, but he took it in his, and repeated

+the word.

+

+"--wasted, my child--should not be wasted, struck aside from the

+natural order of things--for my sake. Your unselfishness cannot entirely

+comprehend how much my mind has gone on this; but, only ask yourself,

+how could my happiness be perfect, while yours was incomplete?"

+

+"If I had never seen Charles, my father, I should have been quite happy

+with you."

+

+He smiled at her unconscious admission that she would have been unhappy

+without Charles, having seen him; and replied:

+

+"My child, you did see him, and it is Charles. If it had not been

+Charles, it would have been another. Or, if it had been no other, I

+should have been the cause, and then the dark part of my life would have

+cast its shadow beyond myself, and would have fallen on you."

+

+It was the first time, except at the trial, of her ever hearing him

+refer to the period of his suffering. It gave her a strange and new

+sensation while his words were in her ears; and she remembered it long

+afterwards.

+

+"See!" said the Doctor of Beauvais, raising his hand towards the moon.

+"I have looked at her from my prison-window, when I could not bear her

+light. I have looked at her when it has been such torture to me to think

+of her shining upon what I had lost, that I have beaten my head against

+my prison-walls. I have looked at her, in a state so dull and lethargic,

+that I have thought of nothing but the number of horizontal lines I

+could draw across her at the full, and the number of perpendicular lines

+with which I could intersect them." He added in his inward and pondering

+manner, as he looked at the moon, "It was twenty either way, I remember,

+and the twentieth was difficult to squeeze in."

+

+The strange thrill with which she heard him go back to that time,

+deepened as he dwelt upon it; but, there was nothing to shock her in

+the manner of his reference. He only seemed to contrast his present

+cheerfulness and felicity with the dire endurance that was over.

+

+"I have looked at her, speculating thousands of times upon the unborn

+child from whom I had been rent. Whether it was alive. Whether it had

+been born alive, or the poor mother's shock had killed it. Whether it

+was a son who would some day avenge his father. (There was a time in my

+imprisonment, when my desire for vengeance was unbearable.) Whether it

+was a son who would never know his father's story; who might even live

+to weigh the possibility of his father's having disappeared of his own

+will and act. Whether it was a daughter who would grow to be a woman."

+

+She drew closer to him, and kissed his cheek and his hand.

+

+"I have pictured my daughter, to myself, as perfectly forgetful of

+me--rather, altogether ignorant of me, and unconscious of me. I have

+cast up the years of her age, year after year. I have seen her married

+to a man who knew nothing of my fate. I have altogether perished from

+the remembrance of the living, and in the next generation my place was a

+blank."

+

+"My father! Even to hear that you had such thoughts of a daughter who

+never existed, strikes to my heart as if I had been that child."

+

+"You, Lucie? It is out of the Consolation and restoration you have

+brought to me, that these remembrances arise, and pass between us and

+the moon on this last night.--What did I say just now?"

+

+"She knew nothing of you. She cared nothing for you."

+

+"So! But on other moonlight nights, when the sadness and the silence

+have touched me in a different way--have affected me with something as

+like a sorrowful sense of peace, as any emotion that had pain for its

+foundations could--I have imagined her as coming to me in my cell, and

+leading me out into the freedom beyond the fortress. I have seen her

+image in the moonlight often, as I now see you; except that I never held

+her in my arms; it stood between the little grated window and the door.

+But, you understand that that was not the child I am speaking of?"

+

+"The figure was not; the--the--image; the fancy?"

+

+"No. That was another thing. It stood before my disturbed sense of

+sight, but it never moved. The phantom that my mind pursued, was another

+and more real child. Of her outward appearance I know no more than

+that she was like her mother. The other had that likeness too--as you

+have--but was not the same. Can you follow me, Lucie? Hardly, I think?

+I doubt you must have been a solitary prisoner to understand these

+perplexed distinctions."

+

+His collected and calm manner could not prevent her blood from running

+cold, as he thus tried to anatomise his old condition.

+

+"In that more peaceful state, I have imagined her, in the moonlight,

+coming to me and taking me out to show me that the home of her married

+life was full of her loving remembrance of her lost father. My picture

+was in her room, and I was in her prayers. Her life was active,

+cheerful, useful; but my poor history pervaded it all."

+

+"I was that child, my father, I was not half so good, but in my love

+that was I."

+

+"And she showed me her children," said the Doctor of Beauvais, "and

+they had heard of me, and had been taught to pity me. When they passed

+a prison of the State, they kept far from its frowning walls, and looked

+up at its bars, and spoke in whispers. She could never deliver me; I

+imagined that she always brought me back after showing me such things.

+But then, blessed with the relief of tears, I fell upon my knees, and

+blessed her."

+

+"I am that child, I hope, my father. O my dear, my dear, will you bless

+me as fervently to-morrow?"

+

+"Lucie, I recall these old troubles in the reason that I have to-night

+for loving you better than words can tell, and thanking God for my great

+happiness. My thoughts, when they were wildest, never rose near the

+happiness that I have known with you, and that we have before us."

+

+He embraced her, solemnly commended her to Heaven, and humbly thanked

+Heaven for having bestowed her on him. By-and-bye, they went into the

+house.

+

+There was no one bidden to the marriage but Mr. Lorry; there was even to

+be no bridesmaid but the gaunt Miss Pross. The marriage was to make no

+change in their place of residence; they had been able to extend it,

+by taking to themselves the upper rooms formerly belonging to the

+apocryphal invisible lodger, and they desired nothing more.

+

+Doctor Manette was very cheerful at the little supper. They were only

+three at table, and Miss Pross made the third. He regretted that Charles

+was not there; was more than half disposed to object to the loving

+little plot that kept him away; and drank to him affectionately.

+

+So, the time came for him to bid Lucie good night, and they separated.

+But, in the stillness of the third hour of the morning, Lucie came

+downstairs again, and stole into his room; not free from unshaped fears,

+beforehand.

+

+All things, however, were in their places; all was quiet; and he lay

+asleep, his white hair picturesque on the untroubled pillow, and his

+hands lying quiet on the coverlet. She put her needless candle in the

+shadow at a distance, crept up to his bed, and put her lips to his;

+then, leaned over him, and looked at him.

+

+Into his handsome face, the bitter waters of captivity had worn; but, he

+covered up their tracks with a determination so strong, that he held the

+mastery of them even in his sleep. A more remarkable face in its quiet,

+resolute, and guarded struggle with an unseen assailant, was not to be

+beheld in all the wide dominions of sleep, that night.

+

+She timidly laid her hand on his dear breast, and put up a prayer that

+she might ever be as true to him as her love aspired to be, and as his

+sorrows deserved. Then, she withdrew her hand, and kissed his lips once

+more, and went away. So, the sunrise came, and the shadows of the leaves

+of the plane-tree moved upon his face, as softly as her lips had moved

+in praying for him.

+

+

+

+

+XVIII. Nine Days

+

+

+The marriage-day was shining brightly, and they were ready outside the

+closed door of the Doctor's room, where he was speaking with Charles

+Darnay. They were ready to go to church; the beautiful bride, Mr.

+Lorry, and Miss Pross--to whom the event, through a gradual process of

+reconcilement to the inevitable, would have been one of absolute bliss,

+but for the yet lingering consideration that her brother Solomon should

+have been the bridegroom.

+

+"And so," said Mr. Lorry, who could not sufficiently admire the bride,

+and who had been moving round her to take in every point of her quiet,

+pretty dress; "and so it was for this, my sweet Lucie, that I brought

+you across the Channel, such a baby! Lord bless me! How little I thought

+what I was doing! How lightly I valued the obligation I was conferring

+on my friend Mr. Charles!"

+

+"You didn't mean it," remarked the matter-of-fact Miss Pross, "and

+therefore how could you know it? Nonsense!"

+

+"Really? Well; but don't cry," said the gentle Mr. Lorry.

+

+"I am not crying," said Miss Pross; "_you_ are."

+

+"I, my Pross?" (By this time, Mr. Lorry dared to be pleasant with her,

+on occasion.)

+

+"You were, just now; I saw you do it, and I don't wonder at it. Such

+a present of plate as you have made 'em, is enough to bring tears into

+anybody's eyes. There's not a fork or a spoon in the collection," said

+Miss Pross, "that I didn't cry over, last night after the box came, till

+I couldn't see it."

+

+"I am highly gratified," said Mr. Lorry, "though, upon my honour, I

+had no intention of rendering those trifling articles of remembrance

+invisible to any one. Dear me! This is an occasion that makes a man

+speculate on all he has lost. Dear, dear, dear! To think that there

+might have been a Mrs. Lorry, any time these fifty years almost!"

+

+"Not at all!" From Miss Pross.

+

+"You think there never might have been a Mrs. Lorry?" asked the

+gentleman of that name.

+

+"Pooh!" rejoined Miss Pross; "you were a bachelor in your cradle."

+

+"Well!" observed Mr. Lorry, beamingly adjusting his little wig, "that

+seems probable, too."

+

+"And you were cut out for a bachelor," pursued Miss Pross, "before you

+were put in your cradle."

+

+"Then, I think," said Mr. Lorry, "that I was very unhandsomely dealt

+with, and that I ought to have had a voice in the selection of my

+pattern. Enough! Now, my dear Lucie," drawing his arm soothingly round

+her waist, "I hear them moving in the next room, and Miss Pross and

+I, as two formal folks of business, are anxious not to lose the final

+opportunity of saying something to you that you wish to hear. You leave

+your good father, my dear, in hands as earnest and as loving as your

+own; he shall be taken every conceivable care of; during the next

+fortnight, while you are in Warwickshire and thereabouts, even Tellson's

+shall go to the wall (comparatively speaking) before him. And when, at

+the fortnight's end, he comes to join you and your beloved husband, on

+your other fortnight's trip in Wales, you shall say that we have sent

+him to you in the best health and in the happiest frame. Now, I hear

+Somebody's step coming to the door. Let me kiss my dear girl with an

+old-fashioned bachelor blessing, before Somebody comes to claim his

+own."

+

+For a moment, he held the fair face from him to look at the

+well-remembered expression on the forehead, and then laid the bright

+golden hair against his little brown wig, with a genuine tenderness and

+delicacy which, if such things be old-fashioned, were as old as Adam.

+

+The door of the Doctor's room opened, and he came out with Charles

+Darnay. He was so deadly pale--which had not been the case when they

+went in together--that no vestige of colour was to be seen in his face.

+But, in the composure of his manner he was unaltered, except that to the

+shrewd glance of Mr. Lorry it disclosed some shadowy indication that the

+old air of avoidance and dread had lately passed over him, like a cold

+wind.

+

+He gave his arm to his daughter, and took her down-stairs to the chariot

+which Mr. Lorry had hired in honour of the day. The rest followed in

+another carriage, and soon, in a neighbouring church, where no strange

+eyes looked on, Charles Darnay and Lucie Manette were happily married.

+

+Besides the glancing tears that shone among the smiles of the little

+group when it was done, some diamonds, very bright and sparkling,

+glanced on the bride's hand, which were newly released from the

+dark obscurity of one of Mr. Lorry's pockets. They returned home to

+breakfast, and all went well, and in due course the golden hair that had

+mingled with the poor shoemaker's white locks in the Paris garret, were

+mingled with them again in the morning sunlight, on the threshold of the

+door at parting.

+

+It was a hard parting, though it was not for long. But her father

+cheered her, and said at last, gently disengaging himself from her

+enfolding arms, "Take her, Charles! She is yours!"

+

+And her agitated hand waved to them from a chaise window, and she was

+gone.

+

+The corner being out of the way of the idle and curious, and the

+preparations having been very simple and few, the Doctor, Mr. Lorry,

+and Miss Pross, were left quite alone. It was when they turned into

+the welcome shade of the cool old hall, that Mr. Lorry observed a great

+change to have come over the Doctor; as if the golden arm uplifted

+there, had struck him a poisoned blow.

+

+He had naturally repressed much, and some revulsion might have been

+expected in him when the occasion for repression was gone. But, it was

+the old scared lost look that troubled Mr. Lorry; and through his absent

+manner of clasping his head and drearily wandering away into his own

+room when they got up-stairs, Mr. Lorry was reminded of Defarge the

+wine-shop keeper, and the starlight ride.

+

+"I think," he whispered to Miss Pross, after anxious consideration, "I

+think we had best not speak to him just now, or at all disturb him.

+I must look in at Tellson's; so I will go there at once and come back

+presently. Then, we will take him a ride into the country, and dine

+there, and all will be well."

+

+It was easier for Mr. Lorry to look in at Tellson's, than to look out of

+Tellson's. He was detained two hours. When he came back, he ascended the

+old staircase alone, having asked no question of the servant; going thus

+into the Doctor's rooms, he was stopped by a low sound of knocking.

+

+"Good God!" he said, with a start. "What's that?"

+

+Miss Pross, with a terrified face, was at his ear. "O me, O me! All is

+lost!" cried she, wringing her hands. "What is to be told to Ladybird?

+He doesn't know me, and is making shoes!"

+

+Mr. Lorry said what he could to calm her, and went himself into the

+Doctor's room. The bench was turned towards the light, as it had been

+when he had seen the shoemaker at his work before, and his head was bent

+down, and he was very busy.

+

+"Doctor Manette. My dear friend, Doctor Manette!"

+

+The Doctor looked at him for a moment--half inquiringly, half as if he

+were angry at being spoken to--and bent over his work again.

+

+He had laid aside his coat and waistcoat; his shirt was open at the

+throat, as it used to be when he did that work; and even the old

+haggard, faded surface of face had come back to him. He worked

+hard--impatiently--as if in some sense of having been interrupted.

+

+Mr. Lorry glanced at the work in his hand, and observed that it was a

+shoe of the old size and shape. He took up another that was lying by

+him, and asked what it was.

+

+"A young lady's walking shoe," he muttered, without looking up. "It

+ought to have been finished long ago. Let it be."

+

+"But, Doctor Manette. Look at me!"

+

+He obeyed, in the old mechanically submissive manner, without pausing in

+his work.

+

+"You know me, my dear friend? Think again. This is not your proper

+occupation. Think, dear friend!"

+

+Nothing would induce him to speak more. He looked up, for an instant at

+a time, when he was requested to do so; but, no persuasion would extract

+a word from him. He worked, and worked, and worked, in silence, and

+words fell on him as they would have fallen on an echoless wall, or on

+the air. The only ray of hope that Mr. Lorry could discover, was, that

+he sometimes furtively looked up without being asked. In that, there

+seemed a faint expression of curiosity or perplexity--as though he were

+trying to reconcile some doubts in his mind.

+

+Two things at once impressed themselves on Mr. Lorry, as important above

+all others; the first, that this must be kept secret from Lucie;

+the second, that it must be kept secret from all who knew him. In

+conjunction with Miss Pross, he took immediate steps towards the latter

+precaution, by giving out that the Doctor was not well, and required a

+few days of complete rest. In aid of the kind deception to be practised

+on his daughter, Miss Pross was to write, describing his having been

+called away professionally, and referring to an imaginary letter of

+two or three hurried lines in his own hand, represented to have been

+addressed to her by the same post.

+

+These measures, advisable to be taken in any case, Mr. Lorry took in

+the hope of his coming to himself. If that should happen soon, he kept

+another course in reserve; which was, to have a certain opinion that he

+thought the best, on the Doctor's case.

+

+In the hope of his recovery, and of resort to this third course

+being thereby rendered practicable, Mr. Lorry resolved to watch him

+attentively, with as little appearance as possible of doing so. He

+therefore made arrangements to absent himself from Tellson's for the

+first time in his life, and took his post by the window in the same

+room.

+

+He was not long in discovering that it was worse than useless to speak

+to him, since, on being pressed, he became worried. He abandoned that

+attempt on the first day, and resolved merely to keep himself always

+before him, as a silent protest against the delusion into which he had

+fallen, or was falling. He remained, therefore, in his seat near the

+window, reading and writing, and expressing in as many pleasant and

+natural ways as he could think of, that it was a free place.

+

+Doctor Manette took what was given him to eat and drink, and worked on,

+that first day, until it was too dark to see--worked on, half an hour

+after Mr. Lorry could not have seen, for his life, to read or write.

+When he put his tools aside as useless, until morning, Mr. Lorry rose

+and said to him:

+

+"Will you go out?"

+

+He looked down at the floor on either side of him in the old manner,

+looked up in the old manner, and repeated in the old low voice:

+

+"Out?"

+

+"Yes; for a walk with me. Why not?"

+

+He made no effort to say why not, and said not a word more. But, Mr.

+Lorry thought he saw, as he leaned forward on his bench in the dusk,

+with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, that he was in

+some misty way asking himself, "Why not?" The sagacity of the man of

+business perceived an advantage here, and determined to hold it.

+

+Miss Pross and he divided the night into two watches, and observed him

+at intervals from the adjoining room. He paced up and down for a long

+time before he lay down; but, when he did finally lay himself down, he

+fell asleep. In the morning, he was up betimes, and went straight to his

+bench and to work.

+

+On this second day, Mr. Lorry saluted him cheerfully by his name,

+and spoke to him on topics that had been of late familiar to them. He

+returned no reply, but it was evident that he heard what was said, and

+that he thought about it, however confusedly. This encouraged Mr. Lorry

+to have Miss Pross in with her work, several times during the day;

+at those times, they quietly spoke of Lucie, and of her father then

+present, precisely in the usual manner, and as if there were nothing

+amiss. This was done without any demonstrative accompaniment, not long

+enough, or often enough to harass him; and it lightened Mr. Lorry's

+friendly heart to believe that he looked up oftener, and that he

+appeared to be stirred by some perception of inconsistencies surrounding

+him.

+

+When it fell dark again, Mr. Lorry asked him as before:

+

+"Dear Doctor, will you go out?"

+

+As before, he repeated, "Out?"

+

+"Yes; for a walk with me. Why not?"

+

+This time, Mr. Lorry feigned to go out when he could extract no answer

+from him, and, after remaining absent for an hour, returned. In the

+meanwhile, the Doctor had removed to the seat in the window, and had

+sat there looking down at the plane-tree; but, on Mr. Lorry's return, he

+slipped away to his bench.

+

+The time went very slowly on, and Mr. Lorry's hope darkened, and his

+heart grew heavier again, and grew yet heavier and heavier every day.

+The third day came and went, the fourth, the fifth. Five days, six days,

+seven days, eight days, nine days.

+

+With a hope ever darkening, and with a heart always growing heavier and

+heavier, Mr. Lorry passed through this anxious time. The secret was

+well kept, and Lucie was unconscious and happy; but he could not fail to

+observe that the shoemaker, whose hand had been a little out at first,

+was growing dreadfully skilful, and that he had never been so intent on

+his work, and that his hands had never been so nimble and expert, as in

+the dusk of the ninth evening.

+

+

+

+

+XIX. An Opinion

+

+

+Worn out by anxious watching, Mr. Lorry fell asleep at his post. On the

+tenth morning of his suspense, he was startled by the shining of the sun

+into the room where a heavy slumber had overtaken him when it was dark

+night.

+

+He rubbed his eyes and roused himself; but he doubted, when he had

+done so, whether he was not still asleep. For, going to the door of the

+Doctor's room and looking in, he perceived that the shoemaker's bench

+and tools were put aside again, and that the Doctor himself sat reading

+at the window. He was in his usual morning dress, and his face (which

+Mr. Lorry could distinctly see), though still very pale, was calmly

+studious and attentive.

+

+Even when he had satisfied himself that he was awake, Mr. Lorry felt

+giddily uncertain for some few moments whether the late shoemaking might

+not be a disturbed dream of his own; for, did not his eyes show him his

+friend before him in his accustomed clothing and aspect, and employed

+as usual; and was there any sign within their range, that the change of

+which he had so strong an impression had actually happened?

+

+It was but the inquiry of his first confusion and astonishment, the

+answer being obvious. If the impression were not produced by a real

+corresponding and sufficient cause, how came he, Jarvis Lorry, there?

+How came he to have fallen asleep, in his clothes, on the sofa in Doctor

+Manette's consulting-room, and to be debating these points outside the

+Doctor's bedroom door in the early morning?

+

+Within a few minutes, Miss Pross stood whispering at his side. If he

+had had any particle of doubt left, her talk would of necessity have

+resolved it; but he was by that time clear-headed, and had none.

+He advised that they should let the time go by until the regular

+breakfast-hour, and should then meet the Doctor as if nothing unusual

+had occurred. If he appeared to be in his customary state of mind, Mr.

+Lorry would then cautiously proceed to seek direction and guidance from

+the opinion he had been, in his anxiety, so anxious to obtain.

+

+Miss Pross, submitting herself to his judgment, the scheme was worked

+out with care. Having abundance of time for his usual methodical

+toilette, Mr. Lorry presented himself at the breakfast-hour in his usual

+white linen, and with his usual neat leg. The Doctor was summoned in the

+usual way, and came to breakfast.

+

+So far as it was possible to comprehend him without overstepping those

+delicate and gradual approaches which Mr. Lorry felt to be the only safe

+advance, he at first supposed that his daughter's marriage had taken

+place yesterday. An incidental allusion, purposely thrown out, to

+the day of the week, and the day of the month, set him thinking and

+counting, and evidently made him uneasy. In all other respects, however,

+he was so composedly himself, that Mr. Lorry determined to have the aid

+he sought. And that aid was his own.

+

+Therefore, when the breakfast was done and cleared away, and he and the

+Doctor were left together, Mr. Lorry said, feelingly:

+

+"My dear Manette, I am anxious to have your opinion, in confidence, on a

+very curious case in which I am deeply interested; that is to say, it is

+very curious to me; perhaps, to your better information it may be less

+so."

+

+Glancing at his hands, which were discoloured by his late work, the

+Doctor looked troubled, and listened attentively. He had already glanced

+at his hands more than once.

+

+"Doctor Manette," said Mr. Lorry, touching him affectionately on the

+arm, "the case is the case of a particularly dear friend of mine. Pray

+give your mind to it, and advise me well for his sake--and above all,

+for his daughter's--his daughter's, my dear Manette."

+

+"If I understand," said the Doctor, in a subdued tone, "some mental

+shock--?"

+

+"Yes!"

+

+"Be explicit," said the Doctor. "Spare no detail."

+

+Mr. Lorry saw that they understood one another, and proceeded.

+

+"My dear Manette, it is the case of an old and a prolonged shock,

+of great acuteness and severity to the affections, the feelings,

+the--the--as you express it--the mind. The mind. It is the case of a

+shock under which the sufferer was borne down, one cannot say for how

+long, because I believe he cannot calculate the time himself, and there

+are no other means of getting at it. It is the case of a shock from

+which the sufferer recovered, by a process that he cannot trace

+himself--as I once heard him publicly relate in a striking manner. It is

+the case of a shock from which he has recovered, so completely, as to

+be a highly intelligent man, capable of close application of mind, and

+great exertion of body, and of constantly making fresh additions to his

+stock of knowledge, which was already very large. But, unfortunately,

+there has been," he paused and took a deep breath--"a slight relapse."

+

+The Doctor, in a low voice, asked, "Of how long duration?"

+

+"Nine days and nights."

+

+"How did it show itself? I infer," glancing at his hands again, "in the

+resumption of some old pursuit connected with the shock?"

+

+"That is the fact."

+

+"Now, did you ever see him," asked the Doctor, distinctly and

+collectedly, though in the same low voice, "engaged in that pursuit

+originally?"

+

+"Once."

+

+"And when the relapse fell on him, was he in most respects--or in all

+respects--as he was then?"

+

+"I think in all respects."

+

+"You spoke of his daughter. Does his daughter know of the relapse?"

+

+"No. It has been kept from her, and I hope will always be kept from her.

+It is known only to myself, and to one other who may be trusted."

+

+The Doctor grasped his hand, and murmured, "That was very kind. That was

+very thoughtful!" Mr. Lorry grasped his hand in return, and neither of

+the two spoke for a little while.

+

+"Now, my dear Manette," said Mr. Lorry, at length, in his most

+considerate and most affectionate way, "I am a mere man of business,

+and unfit to cope with such intricate and difficult matters. I do not

+possess the kind of information necessary; I do not possess the kind of

+intelligence; I want guiding. There is no man in this world on whom

+I could so rely for right guidance, as on you. Tell me, how does this

+relapse come about? Is there danger of another? Could a repetition of it

+be prevented? How should a repetition of it be treated? How does it come

+about at all? What can I do for my friend? No man ever can have been

+more desirous in his heart to serve a friend, than I am to serve mine,

+if I knew how.

+

+"But I don't know how to originate, in such a case. If your sagacity,

+knowledge, and experience, could put me on the right track, I might be

+able to do so much; unenlightened and undirected, I can do so little.

+Pray discuss it with me; pray enable me to see it a little more clearly,

+and teach me how to be a little more useful."

+

+Doctor Manette sat meditating after these earnest words were spoken, and

+Mr. Lorry did not press him.

+

+"I think it probable," said the Doctor, breaking silence with an effort,

+"that the relapse you have described, my dear friend, was not quite

+unforeseen by its subject."

+

+"Was it dreaded by him?" Mr. Lorry ventured to ask.

+

+"Very much." He said it with an involuntary shudder.

+

+"You have no idea how such an apprehension weighs on the sufferer's

+mind, and how difficult--how almost impossible--it is, for him to force

+himself to utter a word upon the topic that oppresses him."

+

+"Would he," asked Mr. Lorry, "be sensibly relieved if he could prevail

+upon himself to impart that secret brooding to any one, when it is on

+him?"

+

+"I think so. But it is, as I have told you, next to impossible. I even

+believe it--in some cases--to be quite impossible."

+

+"Now," said Mr. Lorry, gently laying his hand on the Doctor's arm again,

+after a short silence on both sides, "to what would you refer this

+attack?"

+

+"I believe," returned Doctor Manette, "that there had been a strong and

+extraordinary revival of the train of thought and remembrance that

+was the first cause of the malady. Some intense associations of a most

+distressing nature were vividly recalled, I think. It is probable that

+there had long been a dread lurking in his mind, that those associations

+would be recalled--say, under certain circumstances--say, on a

+particular occasion. He tried to prepare himself in vain; perhaps the

+effort to prepare himself made him less able to bear it."

+

+"Would he remember what took place in the relapse?" asked Mr. Lorry,

+with natural hesitation.

+

+The Doctor looked desolately round the room, shook his head, and

+answered, in a low voice, "Not at all."

+

+"Now, as to the future," hinted Mr. Lorry.

+

+"As to the future," said the Doctor, recovering firmness, "I should have

+great hope. As it pleased Heaven in its mercy to restore him so soon, I

+should have great hope. He, yielding under the pressure of a complicated

+something, long dreaded and long vaguely foreseen and contended against,

+and recovering after the cloud had burst and passed, I should hope that

+the worst was over."

+

+"Well, well! That's good comfort. I am thankful!" said Mr. Lorry.

+

+"I am thankful!" repeated the Doctor, bending his head with reverence.

+

+"There are two other points," said Mr. Lorry, "on which I am anxious to

+be instructed. I may go on?"

+

+"You cannot do your friend a better service." The Doctor gave him his

+hand.

+

+"To the first, then. He is of a studious habit, and unusually energetic;

+he applies himself with great ardour to the acquisition of professional

+knowledge, to the conducting of experiments, to many things. Now, does

+he do too much?"

+

+"I think not. It may be the character of his mind, to be always in

+singular need of occupation. That may be, in part, natural to it; in

+part, the result of affliction. The less it was occupied with healthy

+things, the more it would be in danger of turning in the unhealthy

+direction. He may have observed himself, and made the discovery."

+

+"You are sure that he is not under too great a strain?"

+

+"I think I am quite sure of it."

+

+"My dear Manette, if he were overworked now--"

+

+"My dear Lorry, I doubt if that could easily be. There has been a

+violent stress in one direction, and it needs a counterweight."

+

+"Excuse me, as a persistent man of business. Assuming for a moment,

+that he _was_ overworked; it would show itself in some renewal of this

+disorder?"

+

+"I do not think so. I do not think," said Doctor Manette with the

+firmness of self-conviction, "that anything but the one train of

+association would renew it. I think that, henceforth, nothing but some

+extraordinary jarring of that chord could renew it. After what has

+happened, and after his recovery, I find it difficult to imagine any

+such violent sounding of that string again. I trust, and I almost

+believe, that the circumstances likely to renew it are exhausted."

+

+He spoke with the diffidence of a man who knew how slight a thing

+would overset the delicate organisation of the mind, and yet with the

+confidence of a man who had slowly won his assurance out of personal

+endurance and distress. It was not for his friend to abate that

+confidence. He professed himself more relieved and encouraged than he

+really was, and approached his second and last point. He felt it to

+be the most difficult of all; but, remembering his old Sunday morning

+conversation with Miss Pross, and remembering what he had seen in the

+last nine days, he knew that he must face it.

+

+"The occupation resumed under the influence of this passing affliction

+so happily recovered from," said Mr. Lorry, clearing his throat, "we

+will call--Blacksmith's work, Blacksmith's work. We will say, to put a

+case and for the sake of illustration, that he had been used, in his bad

+time, to work at a little forge. We will say that he was unexpectedly

+found at his forge again. Is it not a pity that he should keep it by

+him?"

+

+The Doctor shaded his forehead with his hand, and beat his foot

+nervously on the ground.

+

+"He has always kept it by him," said Mr. Lorry, with an anxious look at

+his friend. "Now, would it not be better that he should let it go?"

+

+Still, the Doctor, with shaded forehead, beat his foot nervously on the

+ground.

+

+"You do not find it easy to advise me?" said Mr. Lorry. "I quite

+understand it to be a nice question. And yet I think--" And there he

+shook his head, and stopped.

+

+"You see," said Doctor Manette, turning to him after an uneasy pause,

+"it is very hard to explain, consistently, the innermost workings

+of this poor man's mind. He once yearned so frightfully for that

+occupation, and it was so welcome when it came; no doubt it relieved

+his pain so much, by substituting the perplexity of the fingers for

+the perplexity of the brain, and by substituting, as he became more

+practised, the ingenuity of the hands, for the ingenuity of the mental

+torture; that he has never been able to bear the thought of putting it

+quite out of his reach. Even now, when I believe he is more hopeful of

+himself than he has ever been, and even speaks of himself with a kind

+of confidence, the idea that he might need that old employment, and not

+find it, gives him a sudden sense of terror, like that which one may

+fancy strikes to the heart of a lost child."

+

+He looked like his illustration, as he raised his eyes to Mr. Lorry's

+face.

+

+"But may not--mind! I ask for information, as a plodding man of business

+who only deals with such material objects as guineas, shillings, and

+bank-notes--may not the retention of the thing involve the retention of

+the idea? If the thing were gone, my dear Manette, might not the fear go

+with it? In short, is it not a concession to the misgiving, to keep the

+forge?"

+

+There was another silence.

+

+"You see, too," said the Doctor, tremulously, "it is such an old

+companion."

+

+"I would not keep it," said Mr. Lorry, shaking his head; for he gained

+in firmness as he saw the Doctor disquieted. "I would recommend him to

+sacrifice it. I only want your authority. I am sure it does no good.

+Come! Give me your authority, like a dear good man. For his daughter's

+sake, my dear Manette!"

+

+Very strange to see what a struggle there was within him!

+

+"In her name, then, let it be done; I sanction it. But, I would not take

+it away while he was present. Let it be removed when he is not there;

+let him miss his old companion after an absence."

+

+Mr. Lorry readily engaged for that, and the conference was ended. They

+passed the day in the country, and the Doctor was quite restored. On the

+three following days he remained perfectly well, and on the fourteenth

+day he went away to join Lucie and her husband. The precaution that

+had been taken to account for his silence, Mr. Lorry had previously

+explained to him, and he had written to Lucie in accordance with it, and

+she had no suspicions.

+

+On the night of the day on which he left the house, Mr. Lorry went into

+his room with a chopper, saw, chisel, and hammer, attended by Miss Pross

+carrying a light. There, with closed doors, and in a mysterious and

+guilty manner, Mr. Lorry hacked the shoemaker's bench to pieces, while

+Miss Pross held the candle as if she were assisting at a murder--for

+which, indeed, in her grimness, she was no unsuitable figure. The

+burning of the body (previously reduced to pieces convenient for the

+purpose) was commenced without delay in the kitchen fire; and the tools,

+shoes, and leather, were buried in the garden. So wicked do destruction

+and secrecy appear to honest minds, that Mr. Lorry and Miss Pross,

+while engaged in the commission of their deed and in the removal of its

+traces, almost felt, and almost looked, like accomplices in a horrible

+crime.

+

+

+

+

+XX. A Plea

+

+

+When the newly-married pair came home, the first person who appeared, to

+offer his congratulations, was Sydney Carton. They had not been at home

+many hours, when he presented himself. He was not improved in habits, or

+in looks, or in manner; but there was a certain rugged air of fidelity

+about him, which was new to the observation of Charles Darnay.

+

+He watched his opportunity of taking Darnay aside into a window, and of

+speaking to him when no one overheard.

+

+"Mr. Darnay," said Carton, "I wish we might be friends."

+

+"We are already friends, I hope."

+

+"You are good enough to say so, as a fashion of speech; but, I don't

+mean any fashion of speech. Indeed, when I say I wish we might be

+friends, I scarcely mean quite that, either."

+

+Charles Darnay--as was natural--asked him, in all good-humour and

+good-fellowship, what he did mean?

+

+"Upon my life," said Carton, smiling, "I find that easier to comprehend

+in my own mind, than to convey to yours. However, let me try. You

+remember a certain famous occasion when I was more drunk than--than

+usual?"

+

+"I remember a certain famous occasion when you forced me to confess that

+you had been drinking."

+

+"I remember it too. The curse of those occasions is heavy upon me, for I

+always remember them. I hope it may be taken into account one day,

+when all days are at an end for me! Don't be alarmed; I am not going to

+preach."

+

+"I am not at all alarmed. Earnestness in you, is anything but alarming

+to me."

+

+"Ah!" said Carton, with a careless wave of his hand, as if he waved that

+away. "On the drunken occasion in question (one of a large number, as

+you know), I was insufferable about liking you, and not liking you. I

+wish you would forget it."

+

+"I forgot it long ago."

+

+"Fashion of speech again! But, Mr. Darnay, oblivion is not so easy to

+me, as you represent it to be to you. I have by no means forgotten it,

+and a light answer does not help me to forget it."

+

+"If it was a light answer," returned Darnay, "I beg your forgiveness

+for it. I had no other object than to turn a slight thing, which, to my

+surprise, seems to trouble you too much, aside. I declare to you, on the

+faith of a gentleman, that I have long dismissed it from my mind. Good

+Heaven, what was there to dismiss! Have I had nothing more important to

+remember, in the great service you rendered me that day?"

+

+"As to the great service," said Carton, "I am bound to avow to you, when

+you speak of it in that way, that it was mere professional claptrap, I

+don't know that I cared what became of you, when I rendered it.--Mind! I

+say when I rendered it; I am speaking of the past."

+

+"You make light of the obligation," returned Darnay, "but I will not

+quarrel with _your_ light answer."

+

+"Genuine truth, Mr. Darnay, trust me! I have gone aside from my purpose;

+I was speaking about our being friends. Now, you know me; you know I am

+incapable of all the higher and better flights of men. If you doubt it,

+ask Stryver, and he'll tell you so."

+

+"I prefer to form my own opinion, without the aid of his."

+

+"Well! At any rate you know me as a dissolute dog, who has never done

+any good, and never will."

+

+"I don't know that you 'never will.'"

+

+"But I do, and you must take my word for it. Well! If you could endure

+to have such a worthless fellow, and a fellow of such indifferent

+reputation, coming and going at odd times, I should ask that I might be

+permitted to come and go as a privileged person here; that I might

+be regarded as an useless (and I would add, if it were not for the

+resemblance I detected between you and me, an unornamental) piece of

+furniture, tolerated for its old service, and taken no notice of. I

+doubt if I should abuse the permission. It is a hundred to one if I

+should avail myself of it four times in a year. It would satisfy me, I

+dare say, to know that I had it."

+

+"Will you try?"

+

+"That is another way of saying that I am placed on the footing I have

+indicated. I thank you, Darnay. I may use that freedom with your name?"

+

+"I think so, Carton, by this time."

+

+They shook hands upon it, and Sydney turned away. Within a minute

+afterwards, he was, to all outward appearance, as unsubstantial as ever.

+

+When he was gone, and in the course of an evening passed with Miss

+Pross, the Doctor, and Mr. Lorry, Charles Darnay made some mention of

+this conversation in general terms, and spoke of Sydney Carton as a

+problem of carelessness and recklessness. He spoke of him, in short, not

+bitterly or meaning to bear hard upon him, but as anybody might who saw

+him as he showed himself.

+

+He had no idea that this could dwell in the thoughts of his fair young

+wife; but, when he afterwards joined her in their own rooms, he found

+her waiting for him with the old pretty lifting of the forehead strongly

+marked.

+

+"We are thoughtful to-night!" said Darnay, drawing his arm about her.

+

+"Yes, dearest Charles," with her hands on his breast, and the inquiring

+and attentive expression fixed upon him; "we are rather thoughtful

+to-night, for we have something on our mind to-night."

+

+"What is it, my Lucie?"

+

+"Will you promise not to press one question on me, if I beg you not to

+ask it?"

+

+"Will I promise? What will I not promise to my Love?"

+

+What, indeed, with his hand putting aside the golden hair from the

+cheek, and his other hand against the heart that beat for him!

+

+"I think, Charles, poor Mr. Carton deserves more consideration and

+respect than you expressed for him to-night."

+

+"Indeed, my own? Why so?"

+

+"That is what you are not to ask me. But I think--I know--he does."

+

+"If you know it, it is enough. What would you have me do, my Life?"

+

+"I would ask you, dearest, to be very generous with him always, and very

+lenient on his faults when he is not by. I would ask you to believe that

+he has a heart he very, very seldom reveals, and that there are deep

+wounds in it. My dear, I have seen it bleeding."

+

+"It is a painful reflection to me," said Charles Darnay, quite

+astounded, "that I should have done him any wrong. I never thought this

+of him."

+

+"My husband, it is so. I fear he is not to be reclaimed; there is

+scarcely a hope that anything in his character or fortunes is reparable

+now. But, I am sure that he is capable of good things, gentle things,

+even magnanimous things."

+

+She looked so beautiful in the purity of her faith in this lost man,

+that her husband could have looked at her as she was for hours.

+

+"And, O my dearest Love!" she urged, clinging nearer to him, laying her

+head upon his breast, and raising her eyes to his, "remember how strong

+we are in our happiness, and how weak he is in his misery!"

+

+The supplication touched him home. "I will always remember it, dear

+Heart! I will remember it as long as I live."

+

+He bent over the golden head, and put the rosy lips to his, and folded

+her in his arms. If one forlorn wanderer then pacing the dark streets,

+could have heard her innocent disclosure, and could have seen the drops

+of pity kissed away by her husband from the soft blue eyes so loving of

+that husband, he might have cried to the night--and the words would not

+have parted from his lips for the first time--

+

+"God bless her for her sweet compassion!"

+

+

+

+

+XXI. Echoing Footsteps

+

+

+A wonderful corner for echoes, it has been remarked, that corner where

+the Doctor lived. Ever busily winding the golden thread which bound

+her husband, and her father, and herself, and her old directress and

+companion, in a life of quiet bliss, Lucie sat in the still house in

+the tranquilly resounding corner, listening to the echoing footsteps of

+years.

+

+At first, there were times, though she was a perfectly happy young wife,

+when her work would slowly fall from her hands, and her eyes would be

+dimmed. For, there was something coming in the echoes, something light,

+afar off, and scarcely audible yet, that stirred her heart too much.

+Fluttering hopes and doubts--hopes, of a love as yet unknown to her:

+doubts, of her remaining upon earth, to enjoy that new delight--divided

+her breast. Among the echoes then, there would arise the sound of

+footsteps at her own early grave; and thoughts of the husband who would

+be left so desolate, and who would mourn for her so much, swelled to her

+eyes, and broke like waves.

+

+That time passed, and her little Lucie lay on her bosom. Then, among the

+advancing echoes, there was the tread of her tiny feet and the sound of

+her prattling words. Let greater echoes resound as they would, the young

+mother at the cradle side could always hear those coming. They came, and

+the shady house was sunny with a child's laugh, and the Divine friend of

+children, to whom in her trouble she had confided hers, seemed to take

+her child in his arms, as He took the child of old, and made it a sacred

+joy to her.

+

+Ever busily winding the golden thread that bound them all together,

+weaving the service of her happy influence through the tissue of all

+their lives, and making it predominate nowhere, Lucie heard in the

+echoes of years none but friendly and soothing sounds. Her husband's

+step was strong and prosperous among them; her father's firm and equal.

+Lo, Miss Pross, in harness of string, awakening the echoes, as an

+unruly charger, whip-corrected, snorting and pawing the earth under the

+plane-tree in the garden!

+

+Even when there were sounds of sorrow among the rest, they were not

+harsh nor cruel. Even when golden hair, like her own, lay in a halo on a

+pillow round the worn face of a little boy, and he said, with a radiant

+smile, "Dear papa and mamma, I am very sorry to leave you both, and to

+leave my pretty sister; but I am called, and I must go!" those were not

+tears all of agony that wetted his young mother's cheek, as the spirit

+departed from her embrace that had been entrusted to it. Suffer them and

+forbid them not. They see my Father's face. O Father, blessed words!

+

+Thus, the rustling of an Angel's wings got blended with the other

+echoes, and they were not wholly of earth, but had in them that breath

+of Heaven. Sighs of the winds that blew over a little garden-tomb were

+mingled with them also, and both were audible to Lucie, in a hushed

+murmur--like the breathing of a summer sea asleep upon a sandy shore--as

+the little Lucie, comically studious at the task of the morning, or

+dressing a doll at her mother's footstool, chattered in the tongues of

+the Two Cities that were blended in her life.

+

+The Echoes rarely answered to the actual tread of Sydney Carton. Some

+half-dozen times a year, at most, he claimed his privilege of coming in

+uninvited, and would sit among them through the evening, as he had once

+done often. He never came there heated with wine. And one other thing

+regarding him was whispered in the echoes, which has been whispered by

+all true echoes for ages and ages.

+

+No man ever really loved a woman, lost her, and knew her with a

+blameless though an unchanged mind, when she was a wife and a mother,

+but her children had a strange sympathy with him--an instinctive

+delicacy of pity for him. What fine hidden sensibilities are touched in

+such a case, no echoes tell; but it is so, and it was so here. Carton

+was the first stranger to whom little Lucie held out her chubby arms,

+and he kept his place with her as she grew. The little boy had spoken of

+him, almost at the last. "Poor Carton! Kiss him for me!"

+

+Mr. Stryver shouldered his way through the law, like some great engine

+forcing itself through turbid water, and dragged his useful friend in

+his wake, like a boat towed astern. As the boat so favoured is usually

+in a rough plight, and mostly under water, so, Sydney had a swamped

+life of it. But, easy and strong custom, unhappily so much easier and

+stronger in him than any stimulating sense of desert or disgrace, made

+it the life he was to lead; and he no more thought of emerging from his

+state of lion's jackal, than any real jackal may be supposed to think of

+rising to be a lion. Stryver was rich; had married a florid widow with

+property and three boys, who had nothing particularly shining about them

+but the straight hair of their dumpling heads.

+

+These three young gentlemen, Mr. Stryver, exuding patronage of the most

+offensive quality from every pore, had walked before him like three

+sheep to the quiet corner in Soho, and had offered as pupils to

+Lucie's husband: delicately saying "Halloa! here are three lumps of

+bread-and-cheese towards your matrimonial picnic, Darnay!" The polite

+rejection of the three lumps of bread-and-cheese had quite bloated Mr.

+Stryver with indignation, which he afterwards turned to account in the

+training of the young gentlemen, by directing them to beware of the

+pride of Beggars, like that tutor-fellow. He was also in the habit of

+declaiming to Mrs. Stryver, over his full-bodied wine, on the arts

+Mrs. Darnay had once put in practice to "catch" him, and on the

+diamond-cut-diamond arts in himself, madam, which had rendered him "not

+to be caught." Some of his King's Bench familiars, who were occasionally

+parties to the full-bodied wine and the lie, excused him for the

+latter by saying that he had told it so often, that he believed

+it himself--which is surely such an incorrigible aggravation of an

+originally bad offence, as to justify any such offender's being carried

+off to some suitably retired spot, and there hanged out of the way.

+

+These were among the echoes to which Lucie, sometimes pensive, sometimes

+amused and laughing, listened in the echoing corner, until her little

+daughter was six years old. How near to her heart the echoes of her

+child's tread came, and those of her own dear father's, always active

+and self-possessed, and those of her dear husband's, need not be told.

+Nor, how the lightest echo of their united home, directed by herself

+with such a wise and elegant thrift that it was more abundant than any

+waste, was music to her. Nor, how there were echoes all about her, sweet

+in her ears, of the many times her father had told her that he found her

+more devoted to him married (if that could be) than single, and of the

+many times her husband had said to her that no cares and duties seemed

+to divide her love for him or her help to him, and asked her "What is

+the magic secret, my darling, of your being everything to all of us,

+as if there were only one of us, yet never seeming to be hurried, or to

+have too much to do?"

+

+But, there were other echoes, from a distance, that rumbled menacingly

+in the corner all through this space of time. And it was now, about

+little Lucie's sixth birthday, that they began to have an awful sound,

+as of a great storm in France with a dreadful sea rising.

+

+On a night in mid-July, one thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine, Mr.

+Lorry came in late, from Tellson's, and sat himself down by Lucie and

+her husband in the dark window. It was a hot, wild night, and they were

+all three reminded of the old Sunday night when they had looked at the

+lightning from the same place.

+

+"I began to think," said Mr. Lorry, pushing his brown wig back, "that

+I should have to pass the night at Tellson's. We have been so full of

+business all day, that we have not known what to do first, or which way

+to turn. There is such an uneasiness in Paris, that we have actually a

+run of confidence upon us! Our customers over there, seem not to be able

+to confide their property to us fast enough. There is positively a mania

+among some of them for sending it to England."

+

+"That has a bad look," said Darnay--

+

+"A bad look, you say, my dear Darnay? Yes, but we don't know what reason

+there is in it. People are so unreasonable! Some of us at Tellson's are

+getting old, and we really can't be troubled out of the ordinary course

+without due occasion."

+

+"Still," said Darnay, "you know how gloomy and threatening the sky is."

+

+"I know that, to be sure," assented Mr. Lorry, trying to persuade

+himself that his sweet temper was soured, and that he grumbled, "but I

+am determined to be peevish after my long day's botheration. Where is

+Manette?"

+

+"Here he is," said the Doctor, entering the dark room at the moment.

+

+"I am quite glad you are at home; for these hurries and forebodings by

+which I have been surrounded all day long, have made me nervous without

+reason. You are not going out, I hope?"

+

+"No; I am going to play backgammon with you, if you like," said the

+Doctor.

+

+"I don't think I do like, if I may speak my mind. I am not fit to be

+pitted against you to-night. Is the teaboard still there, Lucie? I can't

+see."

+

+"Of course, it has been kept for you."

+

+"Thank ye, my dear. The precious child is safe in bed?"

+

+"And sleeping soundly."

+

+"That's right; all safe and well! I don't know why anything should be

+otherwise than safe and well here, thank God; but I have been so put out

+all day, and I am not as young as I was! My tea, my dear! Thank ye. Now,

+come and take your place in the circle, and let us sit quiet, and hear

+the echoes about which you have your theory."

+

+"Not a theory; it was a fancy."

+

+"A fancy, then, my wise pet," said Mr. Lorry, patting her hand. "They

+are very numerous and very loud, though, are they not? Only hear them!"

+

+Headlong, mad, and dangerous footsteps to force their way into anybody's

+life, footsteps not easily made clean again if once stained red, the

+footsteps raging in Saint Antoine afar off, as the little circle sat in

+the dark London window.

+

+Saint Antoine had been, that morning, a vast dusky mass of scarecrows

+heaving to and fro, with frequent gleams of light above the billowy

+heads, where steel blades and bayonets shone in the sun. A tremendous

+roar arose from the throat of Saint Antoine, and a forest of naked arms

+struggled in the air like shrivelled branches of trees in a winter wind:

+all the fingers convulsively clutching at every weapon or semblance of a

+weapon that was thrown up from the depths below, no matter how far off.

+

+Who gave them out, whence they last came, where they began, through what

+agency they crookedly quivered and jerked, scores at a time, over the

+heads of the crowd, like a kind of lightning, no eye in the throng could

+have told; but, muskets were being distributed--so were cartridges,

+powder, and ball, bars of iron and wood, knives, axes, pikes, every

+weapon that distracted ingenuity could discover or devise. People who

+could lay hold of nothing else, set themselves with bleeding hands to

+force stones and bricks out of their places in walls. Every pulse and

+heart in Saint Antoine was on high-fever strain and at high-fever heat.

+Every living creature there held life as of no account, and was demented

+with a passionate readiness to sacrifice it.

+

+As a whirlpool of boiling waters has a centre point, so, all this raging

+circled round Defarge's wine-shop, and every human drop in the caldron

+had a tendency to be sucked towards the vortex where Defarge himself,

+already begrimed with gunpowder and sweat, issued orders, issued arms,

+thrust this man back, dragged this man forward, disarmed one to arm

+another, laboured and strove in the thickest of the uproar.

+

+"Keep near to me, Jacques Three," cried Defarge; "and do you, Jacques

+One and Two, separate and put yourselves at the head of as many of these

+patriots as you can. Where is my wife?"

+

+"Eh, well! Here you see me!" said madame, composed as ever, but not

+knitting to-day. Madame's resolute right hand was occupied with an axe,

+in place of the usual softer implements, and in her girdle were a pistol

+and a cruel knife.

+

+"Where do you go, my wife?"

+

+"I go," said madame, "with you at present. You shall see me at the head

+of women, by-and-bye."

+

+"Come, then!" cried Defarge, in a resounding voice. "Patriots and

+friends, we are ready! The Bastille!"

+

+With a roar that sounded as if all the breath in France had been shaped

+into the detested word, the living sea rose, wave on wave, depth on

+depth, and overflowed the city to that point. Alarm-bells ringing, drums

+beating, the sea raging and thundering on its new beach, the attack

+began.

+

+Deep ditches, double drawbridge, massive stone walls, eight great

+towers, cannon, muskets, fire and smoke. Through the fire and through

+the smoke--in the fire and in the smoke, for the sea cast him up against

+a cannon, and on the instant he became a cannonier--Defarge of the

+wine-shop worked like a manful soldier, Two fierce hours.

+

+Deep ditch, single drawbridge, massive stone walls, eight great towers,

+cannon, muskets, fire and smoke. One drawbridge down! "Work, comrades

+all, work! Work, Jacques One, Jacques Two, Jacques One Thousand, Jacques

+Two Thousand, Jacques Five-and-Twenty Thousand; in the name of all

+the Angels or the Devils--which you prefer--work!" Thus Defarge of the

+wine-shop, still at his gun, which had long grown hot.

+

+"To me, women!" cried madame his wife. "What! We can kill as well as

+the men when the place is taken!" And to her, with a shrill thirsty

+cry, trooping women variously armed, but all armed alike in hunger and

+revenge.

+

+Cannon, muskets, fire and smoke; but, still the deep ditch, the single

+drawbridge, the massive stone walls, and the eight great towers. Slight

+displacements of the raging sea, made by the falling wounded. Flashing

+weapons, blazing torches, smoking waggonloads of wet straw, hard work

+at neighbouring barricades in all directions, shrieks, volleys,

+execrations, bravery without stint, boom smash and rattle, and the

+furious sounding of the living sea; but, still the deep ditch, and the

+single drawbridge, and the massive stone walls, and the eight great

+towers, and still Defarge of the wine-shop at his gun, grown doubly hot

+by the service of Four fierce hours.

+

+A white flag from within the fortress, and a parley--this dimly

+perceptible through the raging storm, nothing audible in it--suddenly

+the sea rose immeasurably wider and higher, and swept Defarge of the

+wine-shop over the lowered drawbridge, past the massive stone outer

+walls, in among the eight great towers surrendered!

+

+So resistless was the force of the ocean bearing him on, that even to

+draw his breath or turn his head was as impracticable as if he had been

+struggling in the surf at the South Sea, until he was landed in the

+outer courtyard of the Bastille. There, against an angle of a wall, he

+made a struggle to look about him. Jacques Three was nearly at his side;

+Madame Defarge, still heading some of her women, was visible in the

+inner distance, and her knife was in her hand. Everywhere was tumult,

+exultation, deafening and maniacal bewilderment, astounding noise, yet

+furious dumb-show.

+

+"The Prisoners!"

+

+"The Records!"

+

+"The secret cells!"

+

+"The instruments of torture!"

+

+"The Prisoners!"

+

+Of all these cries, and ten thousand incoherences, "The Prisoners!" was

+the cry most taken up by the sea that rushed in, as if there were an

+eternity of people, as well as of time and space. When the foremost

+billows rolled past, bearing the prison officers with them, and

+threatening them all with instant death if any secret nook remained

+undisclosed, Defarge laid his strong hand on the breast of one of

+these men--a man with a grey head, who had a lighted torch in his

+hand--separated him from the rest, and got him between himself and the

+wall.

+

+"Show me the North Tower!" said Defarge. "Quick!"

+

+"I will faithfully," replied the man, "if you will come with me. But

+there is no one there."

+

+"What is the meaning of One Hundred and Five, North Tower?" asked

+Defarge. "Quick!"

+

+"The meaning, monsieur?"

+

+"Does it mean a captive, or a place of captivity? Or do you mean that I

+shall strike you dead?"

+

+"Kill him!" croaked Jacques Three, who had come close up.

+

+"Monsieur, it is a cell."

+

+"Show it me!"

+

+"Pass this way, then."

+

+Jacques Three, with his usual craving on him, and evidently disappointed

+by the dialogue taking a turn that did not seem to promise bloodshed,

+held by Defarge's arm as he held by the turnkey's. Their three heads had

+been close together during this brief discourse, and it had been as much

+as they could do to hear one another, even then: so tremendous was the

+noise of the living ocean, in its irruption into the Fortress, and

+its inundation of the courts and passages and staircases. All around

+outside, too, it beat the walls with a deep, hoarse roar, from which,

+occasionally, some partial shouts of tumult broke and leaped into the

+air like spray.

+

+Through gloomy vaults where the light of day had never shone, past

+hideous doors of dark dens and cages, down cavernous flights of steps,

+and again up steep rugged ascents of stone and brick, more like dry

+waterfalls than staircases, Defarge, the turnkey, and Jacques Three,

+linked hand and arm, went with all the speed they could make. Here and

+there, especially at first, the inundation started on them and swept by;

+but when they had done descending, and were winding and climbing up a

+tower, they were alone. Hemmed in here by the massive thickness of walls

+and arches, the storm within the fortress and without was only audible

+to them in a dull, subdued way, as if the noise out of which they had

+come had almost destroyed their sense of hearing.

+

+The turnkey stopped at a low door, put a key in a clashing lock, swung

+the door slowly open, and said, as they all bent their heads and passed

+in:

+

+"One hundred and five, North Tower!"

+

+There was a small, heavily-grated, unglazed window high in the wall,

+with a stone screen before it, so that the sky could be only seen by

+stooping low and looking up. There was a small chimney, heavily barred

+across, a few feet within. There was a heap of old feathery wood-ashes

+on the hearth. There was a stool, and table, and a straw bed. There were

+the four blackened walls, and a rusted iron ring in one of them.

+

+"Pass that torch slowly along these walls, that I may see them," said

+Defarge to the turnkey.

+

+The man obeyed, and Defarge followed the light closely with his eyes.

+

+"Stop!--Look here, Jacques!"

+

+"A. M.!" croaked Jacques Three, as he read greedily.

+

+"Alexandre Manette," said Defarge in his ear, following the letters

+with his swart forefinger, deeply engrained with gunpowder. "And here he

+wrote 'a poor physician.' And it was he, without doubt, who scratched

+a calendar on this stone. What is that in your hand? A crowbar? Give it

+me!"

+

+He had still the linstock of his gun in his own hand. He made a sudden

+exchange of the two instruments, and turning on the worm-eaten stool and

+table, beat them to pieces in a few blows.

+

+"Hold the light higher!" he said, wrathfully, to the turnkey. "Look

+among those fragments with care, Jacques. And see! Here is my knife,"

+throwing it to him; "rip open that bed, and search the straw. Hold the

+light higher, you!"

+

+With a menacing look at the turnkey he crawled upon the hearth, and,

+peering up the chimney, struck and prised at its sides with the crowbar,

+and worked at the iron grating across it. In a few minutes, some mortar

+and dust came dropping down, which he averted his face to avoid; and

+in it, and in the old wood-ashes, and in a crevice in the chimney

+into which his weapon had slipped or wrought itself, he groped with a

+cautious touch.

+

+"Nothing in the wood, and nothing in the straw, Jacques?"

+

+"Nothing."

+

+"Let us collect them together, in the middle of the cell. So! Light

+them, you!"

+

+The turnkey fired the little pile, which blazed high and hot. Stooping

+again to come out at the low-arched door, they left it burning, and

+retraced their way to the courtyard; seeming to recover their sense

+of hearing as they came down, until they were in the raging flood once

+more.

+

+They found it surging and tossing, in quest of Defarge himself. Saint

+Antoine was clamorous to have its wine-shop keeper foremost in the guard

+upon the governor who had defended the Bastille and shot the people.

+Otherwise, the governor would not be marched to the Hotel de Ville for

+judgment. Otherwise, the governor would escape, and the people's

+blood (suddenly of some value, after many years of worthlessness) be

+unavenged.

+

+In the howling universe of passion and contention that seemed to

+encompass this grim old officer conspicuous in his grey coat and red

+decoration, there was but one quite steady figure, and that was a

+woman's. "See, there is my husband!" she cried, pointing him out.

+"See Defarge!" She stood immovable close to the grim old officer, and

+remained immovable close to him; remained immovable close to him through

+the streets, as Defarge and the rest bore him along; remained immovable

+close to him when he was got near his destination, and began to

+be struck at from behind; remained immovable close to him when the

+long-gathering rain of stabs and blows fell heavy; was so close to him

+when he dropped dead under it, that, suddenly animated, she put her foot

+upon his neck, and with her cruel knife--long ready--hewed off his head.

+

+The hour was come, when Saint Antoine was to execute his horrible idea

+of hoisting up men for lamps to show what he could be and do. Saint

+Antoine's blood was up, and the blood of tyranny and domination by the

+iron hand was down--down on the steps of the Hotel de Ville where the

+governor's body lay--down on the sole of the shoe of Madame Defarge

+where she had trodden on the body to steady it for mutilation. "Lower

+the lamp yonder!" cried Saint Antoine, after glaring round for a new

+means of death; "here is one of his soldiers to be left on guard!" The

+swinging sentinel was posted, and the sea rushed on.

+

+The sea of black and threatening waters, and of destructive upheaving

+of wave against wave, whose depths were yet unfathomed and whose forces

+were yet unknown. The remorseless sea of turbulently swaying shapes,

+voices of vengeance, and faces hardened in the furnaces of suffering

+until the touch of pity could make no mark on them.

+

+But, in the ocean of faces where every fierce and furious expression was

+in vivid life, there were two groups of faces--each seven in number--so

+fixedly contrasting with the rest, that never did sea roll which bore

+more memorable wrecks with it. Seven faces of prisoners, suddenly

+released by the storm that had burst their tomb, were carried high

+overhead: all scared, all lost, all wondering and amazed, as if the Last

+Day were come, and those who rejoiced around them were lost spirits.

+Other seven faces there were, carried higher, seven dead faces, whose

+drooping eyelids and half-seen eyes awaited the Last Day. Impassive

+faces, yet with a suspended--not an abolished--expression on them;

+faces, rather, in a fearful pause, as having yet to raise the dropped

+lids of the eyes, and bear witness with the bloodless lips, "THOU DIDST

+IT!"

+

+Seven prisoners released, seven gory heads on pikes, the keys of the

+accursed fortress of the eight strong towers, some discovered letters

+and other memorials of prisoners of old time, long dead of broken

+hearts,--such, and such--like, the loudly echoing footsteps of Saint

+Antoine escort through the Paris streets in mid-July, one thousand seven

+hundred and eighty-nine. Now, Heaven defeat the fancy of Lucie Darnay,

+and keep these feet far out of her life! For, they are headlong, mad,

+and dangerous; and in the years so long after the breaking of the cask

+at Defarge's wine-shop door, they are not easily purified when once

+stained red.

+

+

+

+

+XXII. The Sea Still Rises

+

+

+Haggard Saint Antoine had had only one exultant week, in which to soften

+his modicum of hard and bitter bread to such extent as he could, with

+the relish of fraternal embraces and congratulations, when Madame

+Defarge sat at her counter, as usual, presiding over the customers.

+Madame Defarge wore no rose in her head, for the great brotherhood of

+Spies had become, even in one short week, extremely chary of trusting

+themselves to the saint's mercies. The lamps across his streets had a

+portentously elastic swing with them.

+

+Madame Defarge, with her arms folded, sat in the morning light and heat,

+contemplating the wine-shop and the street. In both, there were several

+knots of loungers, squalid and miserable, but now with a manifest sense

+of power enthroned on their distress. The raggedest nightcap, awry on

+the wretchedest head, had this crooked significance in it: "I know how

+hard it has grown for me, the wearer of this, to support life in myself;

+but do you know how easy it has grown for me, the wearer of this, to

+destroy life in you?" Every lean bare arm, that had been without work

+before, had this work always ready for it now, that it could strike.

+The fingers of the knitting women were vicious, with the experience that

+they could tear. There was a change in the appearance of Saint Antoine;

+the image had been hammering into this for hundreds of years, and the

+last finishing blows had told mightily on the expression.

+

+Madame Defarge sat observing it, with such suppressed approval as was

+to be desired in the leader of the Saint Antoine women. One of her

+sisterhood knitted beside her. The short, rather plump wife of a starved

+grocer, and the mother of two children withal, this lieutenant had

+already earned the complimentary name of The Vengeance.

+

+"Hark!" said The Vengeance. "Listen, then! Who comes?"

+

+As if a train of powder laid from the outermost bound of Saint Antoine

+Quarter to the wine-shop door, had been suddenly fired, a fast-spreading

+murmur came rushing along.

+

+"It is Defarge," said madame. "Silence, patriots!"

+

+Defarge came in breathless, pulled off a red cap he wore, and looked

+around him! "Listen, everywhere!" said madame again. "Listen to him!"

+Defarge stood, panting, against a background of eager eyes and open

+mouths, formed outside the door; all those within the wine-shop had

+sprung to their feet.

+

+"Say then, my husband. What is it?"

+

+"News from the other world!"

+

+"How, then?" cried madame, contemptuously. "The other world?"

+

+"Does everybody here recall old Foulon, who told the famished people

+that they might eat grass, and who died, and went to Hell?"

+

+"Everybody!" from all throats.

+

+"The news is of him. He is among us!"

+

+"Among us!" from the universal throat again. "And dead?"

+

+"Not dead! He feared us so much--and with reason--that he caused himself

+to be represented as dead, and had a grand mock-funeral. But they have

+found him alive, hiding in the country, and have brought him in. I have

+seen him but now, on his way to the Hotel de Ville, a prisoner. I have

+said that he had reason to fear us. Say all! _Had_ he reason?"

+

+Wretched old sinner of more than threescore years and ten, if he had

+never known it yet, he would have known it in his heart of hearts if he

+could have heard the answering cry.

+

+A moment of profound silence followed. Defarge and his wife looked

+steadfastly at one another. The Vengeance stooped, and the jar of a drum

+was heard as she moved it at her feet behind the counter.

+

+"Patriots!" said Defarge, in a determined voice, "are we ready?"

+

+Instantly Madame Defarge's knife was in her girdle; the drum was beating

+in the streets, as if it and a drummer had flown together by magic; and

+The Vengeance, uttering terrific shrieks, and flinging her arms about

+her head like all the forty Furies at once, was tearing from house to

+house, rousing the women.

+

+The men were terrible, in the bloody-minded anger with which they looked

+from windows, caught up what arms they had, and came pouring down into

+the streets; but, the women were a sight to chill the boldest. From

+such household occupations as their bare poverty yielded, from their

+children, from their aged and their sick crouching on the bare ground

+famished and naked, they ran out with streaming hair, urging one

+another, and themselves, to madness with the wildest cries and actions.

+Villain Foulon taken, my sister! Old Foulon taken, my mother! Miscreant

+Foulon taken, my daughter! Then, a score of others ran into the midst of

+these, beating their breasts, tearing their hair, and screaming, Foulon

+alive! Foulon who told the starving people they might eat grass! Foulon

+who told my old father that he might eat grass, when I had no bread

+to give him! Foulon who told my baby it might suck grass, when these

+breasts were dry with want! O mother of God, this Foulon! O Heaven our

+suffering! Hear me, my dead baby and my withered father: I swear on my

+knees, on these stones, to avenge you on Foulon! Husbands, and brothers,

+and young men, Give us the blood of Foulon, Give us the head of Foulon,

+Give us the heart of Foulon, Give us the body and soul of Foulon, Rend

+Foulon to pieces, and dig him into the ground, that grass may grow from

+him! With these cries, numbers of the women, lashed into blind frenzy,

+whirled about, striking and tearing at their own friends until they

+dropped into a passionate swoon, and were only saved by the men

+belonging to them from being trampled under foot.

+

+Nevertheless, not a moment was lost; not a moment! This Foulon was at

+the Hotel de Ville, and might be loosed. Never, if Saint Antoine knew

+his own sufferings, insults, and wrongs! Armed men and women flocked out

+of the Quarter so fast, and drew even these last dregs after them with

+such a force of suction, that within a quarter of an hour there was not

+a human creature in Saint Antoine's bosom but a few old crones and the

+wailing children.

+

+No. They were all by that time choking the Hall of Examination where

+this old man, ugly and wicked, was, and overflowing into the adjacent

+open space and streets. The Defarges, husband and wife, The Vengeance,

+and Jacques Three, were in the first press, and at no great distance

+from him in the Hall.

+

+"See!" cried madame, pointing with her knife. "See the old villain bound

+with ropes. That was well done to tie a bunch of grass upon his back.

+Ha, ha! That was well done. Let him eat it now!" Madame put her knife

+under her arm, and clapped her hands as at a play.

+

+The people immediately behind Madame Defarge, explaining the cause of

+her satisfaction to those behind them, and those again explaining to

+others, and those to others, the neighbouring streets resounded with the

+clapping of hands. Similarly, during two or three hours of drawl,

+and the winnowing of many bushels of words, Madame Defarge's frequent

+expressions of impatience were taken up, with marvellous quickness, at

+a distance: the more readily, because certain men who had by some

+wonderful exercise of agility climbed up the external architecture

+to look in from the windows, knew Madame Defarge well, and acted as a

+telegraph between her and the crowd outside the building.

+

+At length the sun rose so high that it struck a kindly ray as of hope or

+protection, directly down upon the old prisoner's head. The favour was

+too much to bear; in an instant the barrier of dust and chaff that had

+stood surprisingly long, went to the winds, and Saint Antoine had got

+him!

+

+It was known directly, to the furthest confines of the crowd. Defarge

+had but sprung over a railing and a table, and folded the miserable

+wretch in a deadly embrace--Madame Defarge had but followed and turned

+her hand in one of the ropes with which he was tied--The Vengeance and

+Jacques Three were not yet up with them, and the men at the windows

+had not yet swooped into the Hall, like birds of prey from their high

+perches--when the cry seemed to go up, all over the city, "Bring him

+out! Bring him to the lamp!"

+

+Down, and up, and head foremost on the steps of the building; now, on

+his knees; now, on his feet; now, on his back; dragged, and struck at,

+and stifled by the bunches of grass and straw that were thrust into his

+face by hundreds of hands; torn, bruised, panting, bleeding, yet always

+entreating and beseeching for mercy; now full of vehement agony of

+action, with a small clear space about him as the people drew one

+another back that they might see; now, a log of dead wood drawn through

+a forest of legs; he was hauled to the nearest street corner where one

+of the fatal lamps swung, and there Madame Defarge let him go--as a cat

+might have done to a mouse--and silently and composedly looked at him

+while they made ready, and while he besought her: the women passionately

+screeching at him all the time, and the men sternly calling out to have

+him killed with grass in his mouth. Once, he went aloft, and the rope

+broke, and they caught him shrieking; twice, he went aloft, and the rope

+broke, and they caught him shrieking; then, the rope was merciful, and

+held him, and his head was soon upon a pike, with grass enough in the

+mouth for all Saint Antoine to dance at the sight of.

+

+Nor was this the end of the day's bad work, for Saint Antoine so shouted

+and danced his angry blood up, that it boiled again, on hearing when

+the day closed in that the son-in-law of the despatched, another of the

+people's enemies and insulters, was coming into Paris under a guard

+five hundred strong, in cavalry alone. Saint Antoine wrote his crimes

+on flaring sheets of paper, seized him--would have torn him out of the

+breast of an army to bear Foulon company--set his head and heart on

+pikes, and carried the three spoils of the day, in Wolf-procession

+through the streets.

+

+Not before dark night did the men and women come back to the children,

+wailing and breadless. Then, the miserable bakers' shops were beset by

+long files of them, patiently waiting to buy bad bread; and while

+they waited with stomachs faint and empty, they beguiled the time by

+embracing one another on the triumphs of the day, and achieving them

+again in gossip. Gradually, these strings of ragged people shortened and

+frayed away; and then poor lights began to shine in high windows, and

+slender fires were made in the streets, at which neighbours cooked in

+common, afterwards supping at their doors.

+

+Scanty and insufficient suppers those, and innocent of meat, as of

+most other sauce to wretched bread. Yet, human fellowship infused

+some nourishment into the flinty viands, and struck some sparks of

+cheerfulness out of them. Fathers and mothers who had had their full

+share in the worst of the day, played gently with their meagre children;

+and lovers, with such a world around them and before them, loved and

+hoped.

+

+It was almost morning, when Defarge's wine-shop parted with its last

+knot of customers, and Monsieur Defarge said to madame his wife, in

+husky tones, while fastening the door:

+

+"At last it is come, my dear!"

+

+"Eh well!" returned madame. "Almost."

+

+Saint Antoine slept, the Defarges slept: even The Vengeance slept with

+her starved grocer, and the drum was at rest. The drum's was the

+only voice in Saint Antoine that blood and hurry had not changed. The

+Vengeance, as custodian of the drum, could have wakened him up and had

+the same speech out of him as before the Bastille fell, or old Foulon

+was seized; not so with the hoarse tones of the men and women in Saint

+Antoine's bosom.

+

+

+

+

+XXIII. Fire Rises

+

+

+There was a change on the village where the fountain fell, and where

+the mender of roads went forth daily to hammer out of the stones on the

+highway such morsels of bread as might serve for patches to hold his

+poor ignorant soul and his poor reduced body together. The prison on the

+crag was not so dominant as of yore; there were soldiers to guard it,

+but not many; there were officers to guard the soldiers, but not one of

+them knew what his men would do--beyond this: that it would probably not

+be what he was ordered.

+

+Far and wide lay a ruined country, yielding nothing but desolation.

+Every green leaf, every blade of grass and blade of grain, was as

+shrivelled and poor as the miserable people. Everything was bowed down,

+dejected, oppressed, and broken. Habitations, fences, domesticated

+animals, men, women, children, and the soil that bore them--all worn

+out.

+

+Monseigneur (often a most worthy individual gentleman) was a national

+blessing, gave a chivalrous tone to things, was a polite example of

+luxurious and shining life, and a great deal more to equal purpose;

+nevertheless, Monseigneur as a class had, somehow or other, brought

+things to this. Strange that Creation, designed expressly for

+Monseigneur, should be so soon wrung dry and squeezed out! There must

+be something short-sighted in the eternal arrangements, surely! Thus it

+was, however; and the last drop of blood having been extracted from the

+flints, and the last screw of the rack having been turned so often that

+its purchase crumbled, and it now turned and turned with nothing

+to bite, Monseigneur began to run away from a phenomenon so low and

+unaccountable.

+

+But, this was not the change on the village, and on many a village like

+it. For scores of years gone by, Monseigneur had squeezed it and wrung

+it, and had seldom graced it with his presence except for the pleasures

+of the chase--now, found in hunting the people; now, found in hunting

+the beasts, for whose preservation Monseigneur made edifying spaces

+of barbarous and barren wilderness. No. The change consisted in

+the appearance of strange faces of low caste, rather than in the

+disappearance of the high caste, chiselled, and otherwise beautified and

+beautifying features of Monseigneur.

+

+For, in these times, as the mender of roads worked, solitary, in the

+dust, not often troubling himself to reflect that dust he was and

+to dust he must return, being for the most part too much occupied in

+thinking how little he had for supper and how much more he would eat if

+he had it--in these times, as he raised his eyes from his lonely labour,

+and viewed the prospect, he would see some rough figure approaching on

+foot, the like of which was once a rarity in those parts, but was now

+a frequent presence. As it advanced, the mender of roads would discern

+without surprise, that it was a shaggy-haired man, of almost barbarian

+aspect, tall, in wooden shoes that were clumsy even to the eyes of a

+mender of roads, grim, rough, swart, steeped in the mud and dust of many

+highways, dank with the marshy moisture of many low grounds, sprinkled

+with the thorns and leaves and moss of many byways through woods.

+

+Such a man came upon him, like a ghost, at noon in the July weather,

+as he sat on his heap of stones under a bank, taking such shelter as he

+could get from a shower of hail.

+

+The man looked at him, looked at the village in the hollow, at the mill,

+and at the prison on the crag. When he had identified these objects

+in what benighted mind he had, he said, in a dialect that was just

+intelligible:

+

+"How goes it, Jacques?"

+

+"All well, Jacques."

+

+"Touch then!"

+

+They joined hands, and the man sat down on the heap of stones.

+

+"No dinner?"

+

+"Nothing but supper now," said the mender of roads, with a hungry face.

+

+"It is the fashion," growled the man. "I meet no dinner anywhere."

+

+He took out a blackened pipe, filled it, lighted it with flint and

+steel, pulled at it until it was in a bright glow: then, suddenly held

+it from him and dropped something into it from between his finger and

+thumb, that blazed and went out in a puff of smoke.

+

+"Touch then." It was the turn of the mender of roads to say it this

+time, after observing these operations. They again joined hands.

+

+"To-night?" said the mender of roads.

+

+"To-night," said the man, putting the pipe in his mouth.

+

+"Where?"

+

+"Here."

+

+He and the mender of roads sat on the heap of stones looking silently at

+one another, with the hail driving in between them like a pigmy charge

+of bayonets, until the sky began to clear over the village.

+

+"Show me!" said the traveller then, moving to the brow of the hill.

+

+"See!" returned the mender of roads, with extended finger. "You go down

+here, and straight through the street, and past the fountain--"

+

+"To the Devil with all that!" interrupted the other, rolling his eye

+over the landscape. "_I_ go through no streets and past no fountains.

+Well?"

+

+"Well! About two leagues beyond the summit of that hill above the

+village."

+

+"Good. When do you cease to work?"

+

+"At sunset."

+

+"Will you wake me, before departing? I have walked two nights without

+resting. Let me finish my pipe, and I shall sleep like a child. Will you

+wake me?"

+

+"Surely."

+

+The wayfarer smoked his pipe out, put it in his breast, slipped off his

+great wooden shoes, and lay down on his back on the heap of stones. He

+was fast asleep directly.

+

+As the road-mender plied his dusty labour, and the hail-clouds, rolling

+away, revealed bright bars and streaks of sky which were responded to

+by silver gleams upon the landscape, the little man (who wore a red cap

+now, in place of his blue one) seemed fascinated by the figure on the

+heap of stones. His eyes were so often turned towards it, that he used

+his tools mechanically, and, one would have said, to very poor account.

+The bronze face, the shaggy black hair and beard, the coarse woollen

+red cap, the rough medley dress of home-spun stuff and hairy skins of

+beasts, the powerful frame attenuated by spare living, and the sullen

+and desperate compression of the lips in sleep, inspired the mender

+of roads with awe. The traveller had travelled far, and his feet were

+footsore, and his ankles chafed and bleeding; his great shoes, stuffed

+with leaves and grass, had been heavy to drag over the many long

+leagues, and his clothes were chafed into holes, as he himself was into

+sores. Stooping down beside him, the road-mender tried to get a peep at

+secret weapons in his breast or where not; but, in vain, for he slept

+with his arms crossed upon him, and set as resolutely as his lips.

+Fortified towns with their stockades, guard-houses, gates, trenches, and

+drawbridges, seemed to the mender of roads, to be so much air as against

+this figure. And when he lifted his eyes from it to the horizon and

+looked around, he saw in his small fancy similar figures, stopped by no

+obstacle, tending to centres all over France.

+

+The man slept on, indifferent to showers of hail and intervals of

+brightness, to sunshine on his face and shadow, to the paltering lumps

+of dull ice on his body and the diamonds into which the sun changed

+them, until the sun was low in the west, and the sky was glowing. Then,

+the mender of roads having got his tools together and all things ready

+to go down into the village, roused him.

+

+"Good!" said the sleeper, rising on his elbow. "Two leagues beyond the

+summit of the hill?"

+

+"About."

+

+"About. Good!"

+

+The mender of roads went home, with the dust going on before him

+according to the set of the wind, and was soon at the fountain,

+squeezing himself in among the lean kine brought there to drink, and

+appearing even to whisper to them in his whispering to all the village.

+When the village had taken its poor supper, it did not creep to bed,

+as it usually did, but came out of doors again, and remained there. A

+curious contagion of whispering was upon it, and also, when it gathered

+together at the fountain in the dark, another curious contagion of

+looking expectantly at the sky in one direction only. Monsieur Gabelle,

+chief functionary of the place, became uneasy; went out on his house-top

+alone, and looked in that direction too; glanced down from behind his

+chimneys at the darkening faces by the fountain below, and sent word to

+the sacristan who kept the keys of the church, that there might be need

+to ring the tocsin by-and-bye.

+

+The night deepened. The trees environing the old chateau, keeping its

+solitary state apart, moved in a rising wind, as though they threatened

+the pile of building massive and dark in the gloom. Up the two terrace

+flights of steps the rain ran wildly, and beat at the great door, like a

+swift messenger rousing those within; uneasy rushes of wind went through

+the hall, among the old spears and knives, and passed lamenting up the

+stairs, and shook the curtains of the bed where the last Marquis

+had slept. East, West, North, and South, through the woods, four

+heavy-treading, unkempt figures crushed the high grass and cracked the

+branches, striding on cautiously to come together in the courtyard. Four

+lights broke out there, and moved away in different directions, and all

+was black again.

+

+But, not for long. Presently, the chateau began to make itself strangely

+visible by some light of its own, as though it were growing luminous.

+Then, a flickering streak played behind the architecture of the front,

+picking out transparent places, and showing where balustrades, arches,

+and windows were. Then it soared higher, and grew broader and brighter.

+Soon, from a score of the great windows, flames burst forth, and the

+stone faces awakened, stared out of fire.

+

+A faint murmur arose about the house from the few people who were left

+there, and there was a saddling of a horse and riding away. There was

+spurring and splashing through the darkness, and bridle was drawn in the

+space by the village fountain, and the horse in a foam stood at Monsieur

+Gabelle's door. "Help, Gabelle! Help, every one!" The tocsin rang

+impatiently, but other help (if that were any) there was none. The

+mender of roads, and two hundred and fifty particular friends, stood

+with folded arms at the fountain, looking at the pillar of fire in the

+sky. "It must be forty feet high," said they, grimly; and never moved.

+

+The rider from the chateau, and the horse in a foam, clattered away

+through the village, and galloped up the stony steep, to the prison on

+the crag. At the gate, a group of officers were looking at the fire;

+removed from them, a group of soldiers. "Help, gentlemen--officers! The

+chateau is on fire; valuable objects may be saved from the flames by

+timely aid! Help, help!" The officers looked towards the soldiers who

+looked at the fire; gave no orders; and answered, with shrugs and biting

+of lips, "It must burn."

+

+As the rider rattled down the hill again and through the street, the

+village was illuminating. The mender of roads, and the two hundred and

+fifty particular friends, inspired as one man and woman by the idea of

+lighting up, had darted into their houses, and were putting candles in

+every dull little pane of glass. The general scarcity of everything,

+occasioned candles to be borrowed in a rather peremptory manner of

+Monsieur Gabelle; and in a moment of reluctance and hesitation on

+that functionary's part, the mender of roads, once so submissive to

+authority, had remarked that carriages were good to make bonfires with,

+and that post-horses would roast.

+

+The chateau was left to itself to flame and burn. In the roaring and

+raging of the conflagration, a red-hot wind, driving straight from the

+infernal regions, seemed to be blowing the edifice away. With the rising

+and falling of the blaze, the stone faces showed as if they were in

+torment. When great masses of stone and timber fell, the face with the

+two dints in the nose became obscured: anon struggled out of the smoke

+again, as if it were the face of the cruel Marquis, burning at the stake

+and contending with the fire.

+

+The chateau burned; the nearest trees, laid hold of by the fire,

+scorched and shrivelled; trees at a distance, fired by the four fierce

+figures, begirt the blazing edifice with a new forest of smoke. Molten

+lead and iron boiled in the marble basin of the fountain; the water ran

+dry; the extinguisher tops of the towers vanished like ice before the

+heat, and trickled down into four rugged wells of flame. Great rents and

+splits branched out in the solid walls, like crystallisation; stupefied

+birds wheeled about and dropped into the furnace; four fierce figures

+trudged away, East, West, North, and South, along the night-enshrouded

+roads, guided by the beacon they had lighted, towards their next

+destination. The illuminated village had seized hold of the tocsin, and,

+abolishing the lawful ringer, rang for joy.

+

+Not only that; but the village, light-headed with famine, fire, and

+bell-ringing, and bethinking itself that Monsieur Gabelle had to do with

+the collection of rent and taxes--though it was but a small instalment

+of taxes, and no rent at all, that Gabelle had got in those latter

+days--became impatient for an interview with him, and, surrounding his

+house, summoned him to come forth for personal conference. Whereupon,

+Monsieur Gabelle did heavily bar his door, and retire to hold counsel

+with himself. The result of that conference was, that Gabelle again

+withdrew himself to his housetop behind his stack of chimneys; this time

+resolved, if his door were broken in (he was a small Southern man

+of retaliative temperament), to pitch himself head foremost over the

+parapet, and crush a man or two below.

+

+Probably, Monsieur Gabelle passed a long night up there, with the

+distant chateau for fire and candle, and the beating at his door,

+combined with the joy-ringing, for music; not to mention his having an

+ill-omened lamp slung across the road before his posting-house gate,

+which the village showed a lively inclination to displace in his favour.

+A trying suspense, to be passing a whole summer night on the brink of

+the black ocean, ready to take that plunge into it upon which Monsieur

+Gabelle had resolved! But, the friendly dawn appearing at last, and the

+rush-candles of the village guttering out, the people happily dispersed,

+and Monsieur Gabelle came down bringing his life with him for that

+while.

+

+Within a hundred miles, and in the light of other fires, there were

+other functionaries less fortunate, that night and other nights, whom

+the rising sun found hanging across once-peaceful streets, where they

+had been born and bred; also, there were other villagers and townspeople

+less fortunate than the mender of roads and his fellows, upon whom the

+functionaries and soldiery turned with success, and whom they strung up

+in their turn. But, the fierce figures were steadily wending East, West,

+North, and South, be that as it would; and whosoever hung, fire burned.

+The altitude of the gallows that would turn to water and quench it,

+no functionary, by any stretch of mathematics, was able to calculate

+successfully.

+

+

+

+

+XXIV. Drawn to the Loadstone Rock

+

+

+In such risings of fire and risings of sea--the firm earth shaken by

+the rushes of an angry ocean which had now no ebb, but was always on the

+flow, higher and higher, to the terror and wonder of the beholders on

+the shore--three years of tempest were consumed. Three more birthdays

+of little Lucie had been woven by the golden thread into the peaceful

+tissue of the life of her home.

+

+Many a night and many a day had its inmates listened to the echoes in

+the corner, with hearts that failed them when they heard the thronging

+feet. For, the footsteps had become to their minds as the footsteps of

+a people, tumultuous under a red flag and with their country declared in

+danger, changed into wild beasts, by terrible enchantment long persisted

+in.

+

+Monseigneur, as a class, had dissociated himself from the phenomenon of

+his not being appreciated: of his being so little wanted in France, as

+to incur considerable danger of receiving his dismissal from it, and

+this life together. Like the fabled rustic who raised the Devil with

+infinite pains, and was so terrified at the sight of him that he could

+ask the Enemy no question, but immediately fled; so, Monseigneur, after

+boldly reading the Lord's Prayer backwards for a great number of years,

+and performing many other potent spells for compelling the Evil One, no

+sooner beheld him in his terrors than he took to his noble heels.

+

+The shining Bull's Eye of the Court was gone, or it would have been the

+mark for a hurricane of national bullets. It had never been a good

+eye to see with--had long had the mote in it of Lucifer's pride,

+Sardanapalus's luxury, and a mole's blindness--but it had dropped

+out and was gone. The Court, from that exclusive inner circle to its

+outermost rotten ring of intrigue, corruption, and dissimulation, was

+all gone together. Royalty was gone; had been besieged in its Palace and

+"suspended," when the last tidings came over.

+

+The August of the year one thousand seven hundred and ninety-two was

+come, and Monseigneur was by this time scattered far and wide.

+

+As was natural, the head-quarters and great gathering-place of

+Monseigneur, in London, was Tellson's Bank. Spirits are supposed to

+haunt the places where their bodies most resorted, and Monseigneur

+without a guinea haunted the spot where his guineas used to be.

+Moreover, it was the spot to which such French intelligence as was most

+to be relied upon, came quickest. Again: Tellson's was a munificent

+house, and extended great liberality to old customers who had fallen

+from their high estate. Again: those nobles who had seen the coming

+storm in time, and anticipating plunder or confiscation, had made

+provident remittances to Tellson's, were always to be heard of there

+by their needy brethren. To which it must be added that every new-comer

+from France reported himself and his tidings at Tellson's, almost as

+a matter of course. For such variety of reasons, Tellson's was at that

+time, as to French intelligence, a kind of High Exchange; and this

+was so well known to the public, and the inquiries made there were in

+consequence so numerous, that Tellson's sometimes wrote the latest news

+out in a line or so and posted it in the Bank windows, for all who ran

+through Temple Bar to read.

+

+On a steaming, misty afternoon, Mr. Lorry sat at his desk, and Charles

+Darnay stood leaning on it, talking with him in a low voice. The

+penitential den once set apart for interviews with the House, was now

+the news-Exchange, and was filled to overflowing. It was within half an

+hour or so of the time of closing.

+

+"But, although you are the youngest man that ever lived," said Charles

+Darnay, rather hesitating, "I must still suggest to you--"

+

+"I understand. That I am too old?" said Mr. Lorry.

+

+"Unsettled weather, a long journey, uncertain means of travelling, a

+disorganised country, a city that may not be even safe for you."

+

+"My dear Charles," said Mr. Lorry, with cheerful confidence, "you touch

+some of the reasons for my going: not for my staying away. It is safe

+enough for me; nobody will care to interfere with an old fellow of hard

+upon fourscore when there are so many people there much better worth

+interfering with. As to its being a disorganised city, if it were not a

+disorganised city there would be no occasion to send somebody from our

+House here to our House there, who knows the city and the business, of

+old, and is in Tellson's confidence. As to the uncertain travelling, the

+long journey, and the winter weather, if I were not prepared to submit

+myself to a few inconveniences for the sake of Tellson's, after all

+these years, who ought to be?"

+

+"I wish I were going myself," said Charles Darnay, somewhat restlessly,

+and like one thinking aloud.

+

+"Indeed! You are a pretty fellow to object and advise!" exclaimed Mr.

+Lorry. "You wish you were going yourself? And you a Frenchman born? You

+are a wise counsellor."

+

+"My dear Mr. Lorry, it is because I am a Frenchman born, that the

+thought (which I did not mean to utter here, however) has passed through

+my mind often. One cannot help thinking, having had some sympathy for

+the miserable people, and having abandoned something to them," he spoke

+here in his former thoughtful manner, "that one might be listened to,

+and might have the power to persuade to some restraint. Only last night,

+after you had left us, when I was talking to Lucie--"

+

+"When you were talking to Lucie," Mr. Lorry repeated. "Yes. I wonder you

+are not ashamed to mention the name of Lucie! Wishing you were going to

+France at this time of day!"

+

+"However, I am not going," said Charles Darnay, with a smile. "It is

+more to the purpose that you say you are."

+

+"And I am, in plain reality. The truth is, my dear Charles," Mr. Lorry

+glanced at the distant House, and lowered his voice, "you can have no

+conception of the difficulty with which our business is transacted, and

+of the peril in which our books and papers over yonder are involved. The

+Lord above knows what the compromising consequences would be to numbers

+of people, if some of our documents were seized or destroyed; and they

+might be, at any time, you know, for who can say that Paris is not set

+afire to-day, or sacked to-morrow! Now, a judicious selection from these

+with the least possible delay, and the burying of them, or otherwise

+getting of them out of harm's way, is within the power (without loss of

+precious time) of scarcely any one but myself, if any one. And shall

+I hang back, when Tellson's knows this and says this--Tellson's, whose

+bread I have eaten these sixty years--because I am a little stiff about

+the joints? Why, I am a boy, sir, to half a dozen old codgers here!"

+

+"How I admire the gallantry of your youthful spirit, Mr. Lorry."

+

+"Tut! Nonsense, sir!--And, my dear Charles," said Mr. Lorry, glancing at

+the House again, "you are to remember, that getting things out of

+Paris at this present time, no matter what things, is next to an

+impossibility. Papers and precious matters were this very day brought

+to us here (I speak in strict confidence; it is not business-like to

+whisper it, even to you), by the strangest bearers you can imagine,

+every one of whom had his head hanging on by a single hair as he passed

+the Barriers. At another time, our parcels would come and go, as easily

+as in business-like Old England; but now, everything is stopped."

+

+"And do you really go to-night?"

+

+"I really go to-night, for the case has become too pressing to admit of

+delay."

+

+"And do you take no one with you?"

+

+"All sorts of people have been proposed to me, but I will have nothing

+to say to any of them. I intend to take Jerry. Jerry has been my

+bodyguard on Sunday nights for a long time past and I am used to him.

+Nobody will suspect Jerry of being anything but an English bull-dog, or

+of having any design in his head but to fly at anybody who touches his

+master."

+

+"I must say again that I heartily admire your gallantry and

+youthfulness."

+

+"I must say again, nonsense, nonsense! When I have executed this little

+commission, I shall, perhaps, accept Tellson's proposal to retire and

+live at my ease. Time enough, then, to think about growing old."

+

+This dialogue had taken place at Mr. Lorry's usual desk, with

+Monseigneur swarming within a yard or two of it, boastful of what he

+would do to avenge himself on the rascal-people before long. It was too

+much the way of Monseigneur under his reverses as a refugee, and it

+was much too much the way of native British orthodoxy, to talk of this

+terrible Revolution as if it were the only harvest ever known under

+the skies that had not been sown--as if nothing had ever been done, or

+omitted to be done, that had led to it--as if observers of the wretched

+millions in France, and of the misused and perverted resources that

+should have made them prosperous, had not seen it inevitably coming,

+years before, and had not in plain words recorded what they saw. Such

+vapouring, combined with the extravagant plots of Monseigneur for the

+restoration of a state of things that had utterly exhausted itself,

+and worn out Heaven and earth as well as itself, was hard to be endured

+without some remonstrance by any sane man who knew the truth. And it was

+such vapouring all about his ears, like a troublesome confusion of blood

+in his own head, added to a latent uneasiness in his mind, which had

+already made Charles Darnay restless, and which still kept him so.

+

+Among the talkers, was Stryver, of the King's Bench Bar, far on his

+way to state promotion, and, therefore, loud on the theme: broaching

+to Monseigneur, his devices for blowing the people up and exterminating

+them from the face of the earth, and doing without them: and for

+accomplishing many similar objects akin in their nature to the abolition

+of eagles by sprinkling salt on the tails of the race. Him, Darnay heard

+with a particular feeling of objection; and Darnay stood divided between

+going away that he might hear no more, and remaining to interpose his

+word, when the thing that was to be, went on to shape itself out.

+

+The House approached Mr. Lorry, and laying a soiled and unopened letter

+before him, asked if he had yet discovered any traces of the person to

+whom it was addressed? The House laid the letter down so close to Darnay

+that he saw the direction--the more quickly because it was his own right

+name. The address, turned into English, ran:

+

+"Very pressing. To Monsieur heretofore the Marquis St. Evremonde, of

+France. Confided to the cares of Messrs. Tellson and Co., Bankers,

+London, England."

+

+On the marriage morning, Doctor Manette had made it his one urgent and

+express request to Charles Darnay, that the secret of this name should

+be--unless he, the Doctor, dissolved the obligation--kept inviolate

+between them. Nobody else knew it to be his name; his own wife had no

+suspicion of the fact; Mr. Lorry could have none.

+

+"No," said Mr. Lorry, in reply to the House; "I have referred it,

+I think, to everybody now here, and no one can tell me where this

+gentleman is to be found."

+

+The hands of the clock verging upon the hour of closing the Bank, there

+was a general set of the current of talkers past Mr. Lorry's desk. He

+held the letter out inquiringly; and Monseigneur looked at it, in the

+person of this plotting and indignant refugee; and Monseigneur looked at

+it in the person of that plotting and indignant refugee; and This, That,

+and The Other, all had something disparaging to say, in French or in

+English, concerning the Marquis who was not to be found.

+

+"Nephew, I believe--but in any case degenerate successor--of the

+polished Marquis who was murdered," said one. "Happy to say, I never

+knew him."

+

+"A craven who abandoned his post," said another--this Monseigneur had

+been got out of Paris, legs uppermost and half suffocated, in a load of

+hay--"some years ago."

+

+"Infected with the new doctrines," said a third, eyeing the direction

+through his glass in passing; "set himself in opposition to the last

+Marquis, abandoned the estates when he inherited them, and left them to

+the ruffian herd. They will recompense him now, I hope, as he deserves."

+

+"Hey?" cried the blatant Stryver. "Did he though? Is that the sort of

+fellow? Let us look at his infamous name. D--n the fellow!"

+

+Darnay, unable to restrain himself any longer, touched Mr. Stryver on

+the shoulder, and said:

+

+"I know the fellow."

+

+"Do you, by Jupiter?" said Stryver. "I am sorry for it."

+

+"Why?"

+

+"Why, Mr. Darnay? D'ye hear what he did? Don't ask, why, in these

+times."

+

+"But I do ask why?"

+

+"Then I tell you again, Mr. Darnay, I am sorry for it. I am sorry to

+hear you putting any such extraordinary questions. Here is a fellow,

+who, infected by the most pestilent and blasphemous code of devilry that

+ever was known, abandoned his property to the vilest scum of the earth

+that ever did murder by wholesale, and you ask me why I am sorry that a

+man who instructs youth knows him? Well, but I'll answer you. I am sorry

+because I believe there is contamination in such a scoundrel. That's

+why."

+

+Mindful of the secret, Darnay with great difficulty checked himself, and

+said: "You may not understand the gentleman."

+

+"I understand how to put _you_ in a corner, Mr. Darnay," said Bully

+Stryver, "and I'll do it. If this fellow is a gentleman, I _don't_

+understand him. You may tell him so, with my compliments. You may also

+tell him, from me, that after abandoning his worldly goods and position

+to this butcherly mob, I wonder he is not at the head of them. But, no,

+gentlemen," said Stryver, looking all round, and snapping his fingers,

+"I know something of human nature, and I tell you that you'll never

+find a fellow like this fellow, trusting himself to the mercies of such

+precious _proteges_. No, gentlemen; he'll always show 'em a clean pair

+of heels very early in the scuffle, and sneak away."

+

+With those words, and a final snap of his fingers, Mr. Stryver

+shouldered himself into Fleet-street, amidst the general approbation of

+his hearers. Mr. Lorry and Charles Darnay were left alone at the desk,

+in the general departure from the Bank.

+

+"Will you take charge of the letter?" said Mr. Lorry. "You know where to

+deliver it?"

+

+"I do."

+

+"Will you undertake to explain, that we suppose it to have been

+addressed here, on the chance of our knowing where to forward it, and

+that it has been here some time?"

+

+"I will do so. Do you start for Paris from here?"

+

+"From here, at eight."

+

+"I will come back, to see you off."

+

+Very ill at ease with himself, and with Stryver and most other men,

+Darnay made the best of his way into the quiet of the Temple, opened the

+letter, and read it. These were its contents:

+

+

+"Prison of the Abbaye, Paris.

+

+"June 21, 1792. "MONSIEUR HERETOFORE THE MARQUIS.

+

+"After having long been in danger of my life at the hands of the

+village, I have been seized, with great violence and indignity, and

+brought a long journey on foot to Paris. On the road I have suffered a

+great deal. Nor is that all; my house has been destroyed--razed to the

+ground.

+

+"The crime for which I am imprisoned, Monsieur heretofore the Marquis,

+and for which I shall be summoned before the tribunal, and shall lose my

+life (without your so generous help), is, they tell me, treason against

+the majesty of the people, in that I have acted against them for an

+emigrant. It is in vain I represent that I have acted for them, and not

+against, according to your commands. It is in vain I represent that,

+before the sequestration of emigrant property, I had remitted the

+imposts they had ceased to pay; that I had collected no rent; that I had

+had recourse to no process. The only response is, that I have acted for

+an emigrant, and where is that emigrant?

+

+"Ah! most gracious Monsieur heretofore the Marquis, where is that

+emigrant? I cry in my sleep where is he? I demand of Heaven, will he

+not come to deliver me? No answer. Ah Monsieur heretofore the Marquis,

+I send my desolate cry across the sea, hoping it may perhaps reach your

+ears through the great bank of Tilson known at Paris!

+

+"For the love of Heaven, of justice, of generosity, of the honour of

+your noble name, I supplicate you, Monsieur heretofore the Marquis, to

+succour and release me. My fault is, that I have been true to you. Oh

+Monsieur heretofore the Marquis, I pray you be you true to me!

+

+"From this prison here of horror, whence I every hour tend nearer and

+nearer to destruction, I send you, Monsieur heretofore the Marquis, the

+assurance of my dolorous and unhappy service.

+

+"Your afflicted,

+

+"Gabelle."

+

+

+The latent uneasiness in Darnay's mind was roused to vigourous life

+by this letter. The peril of an old servant and a good one, whose

+only crime was fidelity to himself and his family, stared him so

+reproachfully in the face, that, as he walked to and fro in the Temple

+considering what to do, he almost hid his face from the passersby.

+

+He knew very well, that in his horror of the deed which had culminated

+the bad deeds and bad reputation of the old family house, in his

+resentful suspicions of his uncle, and in the aversion with which his

+conscience regarded the crumbling fabric that he was supposed to uphold,

+he had acted imperfectly. He knew very well, that in his love for Lucie,

+his renunciation of his social place, though by no means new to his own

+mind, had been hurried and incomplete. He knew that he ought to have

+systematically worked it out and supervised it, and that he had meant to

+do it, and that it had never been done.

+

+The happiness of his own chosen English home, the necessity of being

+always actively employed, the swift changes and troubles of the time

+which had followed on one another so fast, that the events of this week

+annihilated the immature plans of last week, and the events of the week

+following made all new again; he knew very well, that to the force of

+these circumstances he had yielded:--not without disquiet, but still

+without continuous and accumulating resistance. That he had watched

+the times for a time of action, and that they had shifted and struggled

+until the time had gone by, and the nobility were trooping from

+France by every highway and byway, and their property was in course of

+confiscation and destruction, and their very names were blotting out,

+was as well known to himself as it could be to any new authority in

+France that might impeach him for it.

+

+But, he had oppressed no man, he had imprisoned no man; he was so

+far from having harshly exacted payment of his dues, that he had

+relinquished them of his own will, thrown himself on a world with no

+favour in it, won his own private place there, and earned his own

+bread. Monsieur Gabelle had held the impoverished and involved estate

+on written instructions, to spare the people, to give them what little

+there was to give--such fuel as the heavy creditors would let them have

+in the winter, and such produce as could be saved from the same grip in

+the summer--and no doubt he had put the fact in plea and proof, for his

+own safety, so that it could not but appear now.

+

+This favoured the desperate resolution Charles Darnay had begun to make,

+that he would go to Paris.

+

+Yes. Like the mariner in the old story, the winds and streams had driven

+him within the influence of the Loadstone Rock, and it was drawing him

+to itself, and he must go. Everything that arose before his mind drifted

+him on, faster and faster, more and more steadily, to the terrible

+attraction. His latent uneasiness had been, that bad aims were being

+worked out in his own unhappy land by bad instruments, and that he who

+could not fail to know that he was better than they, was not there,

+trying to do something to stay bloodshed, and assert the claims of mercy

+and humanity. With this uneasiness half stifled, and half reproaching

+him, he had been brought to the pointed comparison of himself with the

+brave old gentleman in whom duty was so strong; upon that comparison

+(injurious to himself) had instantly followed the sneers of Monseigneur,

+which had stung him bitterly, and those of Stryver, which above all were

+coarse and galling, for old reasons. Upon those, had followed Gabelle's

+letter: the appeal of an innocent prisoner, in danger of death, to his

+justice, honour, and good name.

+

+His resolution was made. He must go to Paris.

+

+Yes. The Loadstone Rock was drawing him, and he must sail on, until he

+struck. He knew of no rock; he saw hardly any danger. The intention

+with which he had done what he had done, even although he had left

+it incomplete, presented it before him in an aspect that would be

+gratefully acknowledged in France on his presenting himself to assert

+it. Then, that glorious vision of doing good, which is so often the

+sanguine mirage of so many good minds, arose before him, and he even

+saw himself in the illusion with some influence to guide this raging

+Revolution that was running so fearfully wild.

+

+As he walked to and fro with his resolution made, he considered that

+neither Lucie nor her father must know of it until he was gone.

+Lucie should be spared the pain of separation; and her father, always

+reluctant to turn his thoughts towards the dangerous ground of old,

+should come to the knowledge of the step, as a step taken, and not in

+the balance of suspense and doubt. How much of the incompleteness of his

+situation was referable to her father, through the painful anxiety

+to avoid reviving old associations of France in his mind, he did not

+discuss with himself. But, that circumstance too, had had its influence

+in his course.

+

+He walked to and fro, with thoughts very busy, until it was time to

+return to Tellson's and take leave of Mr. Lorry. As soon as he arrived

+in Paris he would present himself to this old friend, but he must say

+nothing of his intention now.

+

+A carriage with post-horses was ready at the Bank door, and Jerry was

+booted and equipped.

+

+"I have delivered that letter," said Charles Darnay to Mr. Lorry. "I

+would not consent to your being charged with any written answer, but

+perhaps you will take a verbal one?"

+

+"That I will, and readily," said Mr. Lorry, "if it is not dangerous."

+

+"Not at all. Though it is to a prisoner in the Abbaye."

+

+"What is his name?" said Mr. Lorry, with his open pocket-book in his

+hand.

+

+"Gabelle."

+

+"Gabelle. And what is the message to the unfortunate Gabelle in prison?"

+

+"Simply, 'that he has received the letter, and will come.'"

+

+"Any time mentioned?"

+

+"He will start upon his journey to-morrow night."

+

+"Any person mentioned?"

+

+"No."

+

+He helped Mr. Lorry to wrap himself in a number of coats and cloaks,

+and went out with him from the warm atmosphere of the old Bank, into the

+misty air of Fleet-street. "My love to Lucie, and to little Lucie," said

+Mr. Lorry at parting, "and take precious care of them till I come back."

+Charles Darnay shook his head and doubtfully smiled, as the carriage

+rolled away.

+

+That night--it was the fourteenth of August--he sat up late, and wrote

+two fervent letters; one was to Lucie, explaining the strong obligation

+he was under to go to Paris, and showing her, at length, the reasons

+that he had, for feeling confident that he could become involved in no

+personal danger there; the other was to the Doctor, confiding Lucie and

+their dear child to his care, and dwelling on the same topics with the

+strongest assurances. To both, he wrote that he would despatch letters

+in proof of his safety, immediately after his arrival.

+

+It was a hard day, that day of being among them, with the first

+reservation of their joint lives on his mind. It was a hard matter to

+preserve the innocent deceit of which they were profoundly unsuspicious.

+But, an affectionate glance at his wife, so happy and busy, made him

+resolute not to tell her what impended (he had been half moved to do it,

+so strange it was to him to act in anything without her quiet aid), and

+the day passed quickly. Early in the evening he embraced her, and her

+scarcely less dear namesake, pretending that he would return by-and-bye

+(an imaginary engagement took him out, and he had secreted a valise

+of clothes ready), and so he emerged into the heavy mist of the heavy

+streets, with a heavier heart.

+

+The unseen force was drawing him fast to itself, now, and all the tides

+and winds were setting straight and strong towards it. He left his

+two letters with a trusty porter, to be delivered half an hour before

+midnight, and no sooner; took horse for Dover; and began his journey.

+"For the love of Heaven, of justice, of generosity, of the honour of

+your noble name!" was the poor prisoner's cry with which he strengthened

+his sinking heart, as he left all that was dear on earth behind him, and

+floated away for the Loadstone Rock.

+

+

+The end of the second book.

+

+

+

+

+

+Book the Third--the Track of a Storm

+

+

+

+

+I. 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 with other obstacles than

+these. Every town-gate and village taxing-house had its band of

+citizen-patriots, with their national muskets 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 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, 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 so encompassed 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 his progress twenty times in a day, by

+riding after him and taking him back, riding before him and stopping him

+by anticipation, 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 Gabelle's letter from his

+prison of the Abbaye would have got him on so far. His difficulty at the

+guard-house 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 at the small inn to which he

+had been remitted until morning, in the middle of the night.

+

+Awakened by a timid local functionary and three armed patriots in rough

+red caps and with pipes in their mouths, who sat down on the bed.

+

+"Emigrant," said the functionary, "I am going to send you on to Paris,

+under an escort."

+

+"Citizen, I desire nothing more than to get to Paris, though I could

+dispense with the escort."

+

+"Silence!" growled a red-cap, striking at the coverlet with the butt-end

+of his musket. "Peace, aristocrat!"

+

+"It is as the good patriot 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 red-cap. "As if it was

+not a favour to be protected from the lamp-iron!"

+

+"It is always as the good patriot says," observed the functionary. "Rise

+and dress yourself, emigrant."

+

+Darnay complied, and was taken back to the guard-house, where other

+patriots in rough red caps were smoking, drinking, and sleeping, by

+a watch-fire. Here he paid a heavy price for his escort, and hence he

+started with it on the wet, wet roads at three o'clock in the morning.

+

+The escort were two mounted patriots in red caps and tri-coloured

+cockades, armed with national muskets and sabres, who rode one on either

+side of him.

+

+The escorted governed his own horse, but a loose line was attached to

+his bridle, the end of which one of the patriots kept girded round his

+wrist. In this state they set forth with the sharp rain driving in their

+faces: clattering at a heavy dragoon trot over the uneven town pavement,

+and out upon the mire-deep roads. In this state they traversed without

+change, except of horses and pace, all the mire-deep leagues that lay

+between them and the capital.

+

+They travelled in the night, halting an hour or two after daybreak, and

+lying by until the twilight fell. The escort were so wretchedly clothed,

+that they twisted straw round their bare legs, and thatched their ragged

+shoulders to keep the wet off. Apart from the personal discomfort of

+being so attended, and apart from such considerations of present danger

+as arose from one of the patriots being chronically drunk, and carrying

+his musket very recklessly, Charles Darnay did not allow the restraint

+that was laid upon him to awaken any serious fears in his breast; for,

+he reasoned with himself that it could have no reference to the merits

+of an individual case that was not yet stated, and of representations,

+confirmable by the prisoner in the Abbaye, that were not yet made.

+

+But when they came to the town of Beauvais--which they did at eventide,

+when the streets were filled with people--he could not conceal from

+himself that the aspect of affairs was very alarming. An ominous crowd

+gathered to see him dismount of the posting-yard, and many voices called

+out loudly, "Down with the emigrant!"

+

+He stopped in the act of swinging himself out of his saddle, and,

+resuming it as his safest place, said:

+

+"Emigrant, my friends! Do you not see me here, in France, of my own

+will?"

+

+"You are a cursed emigrant," cried a farrier, making at him in a

+furious manner through the press, hammer in hand; "and you are a cursed

+aristocrat!"

+

+The postmaster interposed himself between this man and the rider's

+bridle (at which he was evidently making), and soothingly said, "Let him

+be; let him be! He will be judged at Paris."

+

+"Judged!" repeated the farrier, swinging his hammer. "Ay! and condemned

+as a traitor." At this the crowd roared approval.

+

+Checking the postmaster, who was for turning his horse's head to the

+yard (the drunken patriot sat composedly in his saddle looking on, with

+the line round his wrist), Darnay said, as soon as he could make his

+voice heard:

+

+"Friends, you deceive yourselves, or you are deceived. I am not a

+traitor."

+

+"He lies!" cried the smith. "He is a traitor since the decree. His life

+is forfeit to the people. His cursed life is not his own!"

+

+At the instant when Darnay saw a rush in the eyes of the crowd, which

+another instant would have brought upon him, the postmaster turned his

+horse into the yard, the escort rode in close upon his horse's flanks,

+and the postmaster shut and barred the crazy double gates. The farrier

+struck a blow upon them with his hammer, and the crowd groaned; but, no

+more was done.

+

+"What is this decree that the smith spoke of?" Darnay asked the

+postmaster, when he had thanked him, and stood beside him in the yard.

+

+"Truly, a decree for selling the property of emigrants."

+

+"When passed?"

+

+"On the fourteenth."

+

+"The day I left England!"

+

+"Everybody says it is but one of several, and that there will be

+others--if there are not already--banishing all emigrants, and

+condemning all to death who return. That is what he meant when he said

+your life was not your own."

+

+"But there are no such decrees yet?"

+

+"What do I know!" said the postmaster, shrugging his shoulders; "there

+may be, or there will be. It is all the same. What would you have?"

+

+They rested on some straw in a loft until the middle of the night, and

+then rode forward again when all the town was asleep. Among the many

+wild changes observable on familiar things which made this wild ride

+unreal, not the least was the seeming rarity of sleep. After long and

+lonely spurring over dreary roads, they would come to a cluster of poor

+cottages, not steeped in darkness, but all glittering with lights, and

+would find the people, in a ghostly manner in the dead of the night,

+circling hand in hand round a shrivelled tree of Liberty, or all drawn

+up together singing a Liberty song. Happily, however, there was sleep in

+Beauvais that night to help them out of it and they passed on once more

+into solitude and loneliness: jingling through the untimely cold and

+wet, among impoverished fields that had yielded no fruits of the earth

+that year, diversified by the blackened remains of burnt houses, and by

+the sudden emergence from ambuscade, and sharp reining up across their

+way, of patriot patrols on the watch on all the roads.

+

+Daylight at last found them before the wall of Paris. The barrier was

+closed and strongly guarded when they rode up to it.

+

+"Where are the papers of this prisoner?" demanded a resolute-looking man

+in authority, who was summoned out by the guard.

+

+Naturally struck by the disagreeable word, Charles Darnay requested the

+speaker to take notice that he was a free traveller and French citizen,

+in charge of an escort which the disturbed state of the country had

+imposed upon him, and which he had paid for.

+

+"Where," repeated the same personage, without taking any heed of him

+whatever, "are the papers of this prisoner?"

+

+The drunken patriot had them in his cap, and produced them. Casting his

+eyes over Gabelle's letter, the same personage in authority showed some

+disorder and surprise, and looked at Darnay with a close attention.

+

+He left escort and escorted without saying a word, however, and went

+into the guard-room; meanwhile, they sat upon their horses outside the

+gate. Looking about him while in this state of suspense, Charles

+Darnay observed that the gate was held by a mixed guard of soldiers and

+patriots, the latter far outnumbering the former; and that while ingress

+into the city for peasants' carts bringing in supplies, and for similar

+traffic and traffickers, was easy enough, egress, even for the homeliest

+people, was very difficult. A numerous medley of men and women, not

+to mention beasts and vehicles of various sorts, was waiting to issue

+forth; but, the previous identification was so strict, that they

+filtered through the barrier very slowly. Some of these people knew

+their turn for examination to be so far off, that they lay down on the

+ground to sleep or smoke, while others talked together, or loitered

+about. The red cap and tri-colour cockade were universal, both among men

+and women.

+

+When he had sat in his saddle some half-hour, taking note of these

+things, Darnay found himself confronted by the same man in authority,

+who directed the guard to open the barrier. Then he delivered to the

+escort, drunk and sober, a receipt for the escorted, and requested him

+to dismount. He did so, and the two patriots, leading his tired horse,

+turned and rode away without entering the city.

+

+He accompanied his conductor into a guard-room, smelling of common wine

+and tobacco, where certain soldiers and patriots, asleep and awake,

+drunk and sober, and in various neutral states between sleeping and

+waking, drunkenness and sobriety, were standing and lying about. The

+light in the guard-house, half derived from the waning oil-lamps of

+the night, and half from the overcast day, was in a correspondingly

+uncertain condition. Some registers were lying open on a desk, and an

+officer of a coarse, dark aspect, presided over these.

+

+"Citizen Defarge," said he to Darnay's conductor, as he took a slip of

+paper to write on. "Is this the emigrant Evremonde?"

+

+"This is the man."

+

+"Your age, Evremonde?"

+

+"Thirty-seven."

+

+"Married, Evremonde?"

+

+"Yes."

+

+"Where married?"

+

+"In England."

+

+"Without doubt. Where is your wife, Evremonde?"

+

+"In England."

+

+"Without doubt. You are consigned, Evremonde, to the prison of La

+Force."

+

+"Just Heaven!" exclaimed Darnay. "Under what law, and for what offence?"

+

+The officer looked up from his slip of paper for a moment.

+

+"We have new laws, Evremonde, and new offences, since you were here." He

+said it with a hard smile, and went on writing.

+

+"I entreat you to observe that I have come here voluntarily, in response

+to that written appeal of a fellow-countryman which lies before you. I

+demand no more than the opportunity to do so without delay. Is not that

+my right?"

+

+"Emigrants have no rights, Evremonde," was the stolid reply. The officer

+wrote until he had finished, read over to himself what he had written,

+sanded it, and handed it to Defarge, with the words "In secret."

+

+Defarge motioned with the paper to the prisoner that he must accompany

+him. The prisoner obeyed, and a guard of two armed patriots attended

+them.

+

+"Is it you," said Defarge, in a low voice, as they went down the

+guardhouse steps and turned into Paris, "who married the daughter of

+Doctor Manette, once a prisoner in the Bastille that is no more?"

+

+"Yes," replied Darnay, looking at him with surprise.

+

+"My name is Defarge, and I keep a wine-shop in the Quarter Saint

+Antoine. Possibly you have heard of me."

+

+"My wife came to your house to reclaim her father? Yes!"

+

+The word "wife" seemed to serve as a gloomy reminder to Defarge, to say

+with sudden impatience, "In the name of that sharp female newly-born,

+and called La Guillotine, why did you come to France?"

+

+"You heard me say why, a minute ago. Do you not believe it is the

+truth?"

+

+"A bad truth for you," said Defarge, speaking with knitted brows, and

+looking straight before him.

+

+"Indeed I am lost here. All here is so unprecedented, so changed, so

+sudden and unfair, that I am absolutely lost. Will you render me a

+little help?"

+

+"None." Defarge spoke, always looking straight before him.

+

+"Will you answer me a single question?"

+

+"Perhaps. According to its nature. You can say what it is."

+

+"In this prison that I am going to so unjustly, shall I have some free

+communication with the world outside?"

+

+"You will see."

+

+"I am not to be buried there, prejudged, and without any means of

+presenting my case?"

+

+"You will see. But, what then? Other people have been similarly buried

+in worse prisons, before now."

+

+"But never by me, Citizen Defarge."

+

+Defarge glanced darkly at him for answer, and walked on in a steady

+and set silence. The deeper he sank into this silence, the fainter hope

+there was--or so Darnay thought--of his softening in any slight degree.

+He, therefore, made haste to say:

+

+"It is of the utmost importance to me (you know, Citizen, even better

+than I, of how much importance), that I should be able to communicate to

+Mr. Lorry of Tellson's Bank, an English gentleman who is now in Paris,

+the simple fact, without comment, that I have been thrown into the

+prison of La Force. Will you cause that to be done for me?"

+

+"I will do," Defarge doggedly rejoined, "nothing for you. My duty is to

+my country and the People. I am the sworn servant of both, against you.

+I will do nothing for you."

+

+Charles Darnay felt it hopeless to entreat him further, and his pride

+was touched besides. As they walked on in silence, he could not but see

+how used the people were to the spectacle of prisoners passing along the

+streets. The very children scarcely noticed him. A few passers turned

+their heads, and a few shook their fingers at him as an aristocrat;

+otherwise, that a man in good clothes should be going to prison, was no

+more remarkable than that a labourer in working clothes should be

+going to work. In one narrow, dark, and dirty street through which they

+passed, an excited orator, mounted on a stool, was addressing an excited

+audience on the crimes against the people, of the king and the royal

+family. The few words that he caught from this man's lips, first made

+it known to Charles Darnay that the king was in prison, and that the

+foreign ambassadors had one and all left Paris. On the road (except at

+Beauvais) he had heard absolutely nothing. The escort and the universal

+watchfulness had completely isolated him.

+

+That he had fallen among far greater dangers than those which had

+developed themselves when he left England, he of course knew now. That

+perils had thickened about him fast, and might thicken faster and faster

+yet, he of course knew now. He could not but admit to himself that he

+might not have made this journey, if he could have foreseen the events

+of a few days. And yet his misgivings were not so dark as, imagined by

+the light of this later time, they would appear. Troubled as the future

+was, it was the unknown future, and in its obscurity there was ignorant

+hope. The horrible massacre, days and nights long, which, within a few

+rounds of the clock, was to set a great mark of blood upon the blessed

+garnering time of harvest, was as far out of his knowledge as if it had

+been a hundred thousand years away. The "sharp female newly-born, and

+called La Guillotine," was hardly known to him, or to the generality

+of people, by name. The frightful deeds that were to be soon done, were

+probably unimagined at that time in the brains of the doers. How could

+they have a place in the shadowy conceptions of a gentle mind?

+

+Of unjust treatment in detention and hardship, and in cruel separation

+from his wife and child, he foreshadowed the likelihood, or the

+certainty; but, beyond this, he dreaded nothing distinctly. With this on

+his mind, which was enough to carry into a dreary prison courtyard, he

+arrived at the prison of La Force.

+

+A man with a bloated face opened the strong wicket, to whom Defarge

+presented "The Emigrant Evremonde."

+

+"What the Devil! How many more of them!" exclaimed the man with the

+bloated face.

+

+Defarge took his receipt without noticing the exclamation, and withdrew,

+with his two fellow-patriots.

+

+"What the Devil, I say again!" exclaimed the gaoler, left with his wife.

+"How many more!"

+

+The gaoler's wife, being provided with no answer to the question, merely

+replied, "One must have patience, my dear!" Three turnkeys who entered

+responsive to a bell she rang, echoed the sentiment, and one added, "For

+the love of Liberty;" which sounded in that place like an inappropriate

+conclusion.

+

+The prison of La Force was a gloomy prison, dark and filthy, and with a

+horrible smell of foul sleep in it. Extraordinary how soon the noisome

+flavour of imprisoned sleep, becomes manifest in all such places that

+are ill cared for!

+

+"In secret, too," grumbled the gaoler, looking at the written paper. "As

+if I was not already full to bursting!"

+

+He stuck the paper on a file, in an ill-humour, and Charles Darnay

+awaited his further pleasure for half an hour: sometimes, pacing to and

+fro in the strong arched room: sometimes, resting on a stone seat: in

+either case detained to be imprinted on the memory of the chief and his

+subordinates.

+

+"Come!" said the chief, at length taking up his keys, "come with me,

+emigrant."

+

+Through the dismal prison twilight, his new charge accompanied him by

+corridor and staircase, many doors clanging and locking behind them,

+until they came into a large, low, vaulted chamber, crowded with

+prisoners of both sexes. The women were seated at a long table, reading

+and writing, knitting, sewing, and embroidering; the men were for the

+most part standing behind their chairs, or lingering up and down the

+room.

+

+In the instinctive association of prisoners with shameful crime and

+disgrace, the new-comer recoiled from this company. But the crowning

+unreality of his long unreal ride, was, their all at once rising to

+receive him, with every refinement of manner known to the time, and with

+all the engaging graces and courtesies of life.

+

+So strangely clouded were these refinements by the prison manners and

+gloom, so spectral did they become in the inappropriate squalor and

+misery through which they were seen, that Charles Darnay seemed to stand

+in a company of the dead. Ghosts all! The ghost of beauty, the ghost

+of stateliness, the ghost of elegance, the ghost of pride, the ghost of

+frivolity, the ghost of wit, the ghost of youth, the ghost of age, all

+waiting their dismissal from the desolate shore, all turning on him eyes

+that were changed by the death they had died in coming there.

+

+It struck him motionless. The gaoler standing at his side, and the other

+gaolers moving about, who would have been well enough as to appearance

+in the ordinary exercise of their functions, looked so extravagantly

+coarse contrasted with sorrowing mothers and blooming daughters who were

+there--with the apparitions of the coquette, the young beauty, and the

+mature woman delicately bred--that the inversion of all experience and

+likelihood which the scene of shadows presented, was heightened to its

+utmost. Surely, ghosts all. Surely, the long unreal ride some progress

+of disease that had brought him to these gloomy shades!

+

+"In the name of the assembled companions in misfortune," said a

+gentleman of courtly appearance and address, coming forward, "I have the

+honour of giving you welcome to La Force, and of condoling with you

+on the calamity that has brought you among us. May it soon terminate

+happily! It would be an impertinence elsewhere, but it is not so here,

+to ask your name and condition?"

+

+Charles Darnay roused himself, and gave the required information, in

+words as suitable as he could find.

+

+"But I hope," said the gentleman, following the chief gaoler with his

+eyes, who moved across the room, "that you are not in secret?"

+

+"I do not understand the meaning of the term, but I have heard them say

+so."

+

+"Ah, what a pity! We so much regret it! But take courage; several

+members of our society have been in secret, at first, and it has lasted

+but a short time." Then he added, raising his voice, "I grieve to inform

+the society--in secret."

+

+There was a murmur of commiseration as Charles Darnay crossed the room

+to a grated door where the gaoler awaited him, and many voices--among

+which, the soft and compassionate voices of women were conspicuous--gave

+him good wishes and encouragement. He turned at the grated door, to

+render the thanks of his heart; it closed under the gaoler's hand; and

+the apparitions vanished from his sight forever.

+

+The wicket opened on a stone staircase, leading upward. When they had

+ascended forty steps (the prisoner of half an hour already counted

+them), the gaoler opened a low black door, and they passed into a

+solitary cell. It struck cold and damp, but was not dark.

+

+"Yours," said the gaoler.

+

+"Why am I confined alone?"

+

+"How do I know!"

+

+"I can buy pen, ink, and paper?"

+

+"Such are not my orders. You will be visited, and can ask then. At

+present, you may buy your food, and nothing more."

+

+There were in the cell, a chair, a table, and a straw mattress. As

+the gaoler made a general inspection of these objects, and of the four

+walls, before going out, a wandering fancy wandered through the mind of

+the prisoner leaning against the wall opposite to him, that this gaoler

+was so unwholesomely bloated, both in face and person, as to look like

+a man who had been drowned and filled with water. When the gaoler was

+gone, he thought in the same wandering way, "Now am I left, as if I were

+dead." Stopping then, to look down at the mattress, he turned from it

+with a sick feeling, and thought, "And here in these crawling creatures

+is the first condition of the body after death."

+

+"Five paces by four and a half, five paces by four and a half, five

+paces by four and a half." The prisoner walked to and fro in his cell,

+counting its measurement, and the roar of the city arose like muffled

+drums with a wild swell of voices added to them. "He made shoes, he made

+shoes, he made shoes." The prisoner counted the measurement again, and

+paced faster, to draw his mind with him from that latter repetition.

+"The ghosts that vanished when the wicket closed. There was one among

+them, the appearance of a lady dressed in black, who was leaning in the

+embrasure of a window, and she had a light shining upon her golden

+hair, and she looked like * * * * Let us ride on again, for God's sake,

+through the illuminated villages with the people all awake! * * * * He

+made shoes, he made shoes, he made shoes. * * * * Five paces by four and

+a half." With such scraps tossing and rolling upward from the depths of

+his mind, the prisoner walked faster and faster, obstinately counting

+and counting; and the roar of the city changed to this extent--that it

+still rolled in like muffled drums, but with the wail of voices that he

+knew, in the swell that rose above them.

+

+

+

+

+II. The Grindstone

+

+

+Tellson's Bank, established in the Saint Germain Quarter of Paris, was

+in a wing of a large house, approached by a courtyard and shut off from

+the street by a high wall and a strong gate. The house belonged to

+a great nobleman who had lived in it until he made a flight from the

+troubles, in his own cook's dress, and got across the borders. A

+mere beast of the chase flying from hunters, he was still in his

+metempsychosis no other than the same Monseigneur, the preparation

+of whose chocolate for whose lips had once occupied three strong men

+besides the cook in question.

+

+Monseigneur gone, and the three strong men absolving themselves from the

+sin of having drawn his high wages, by being more than ready and

+willing to cut his throat on the altar of the dawning Republic one and

+indivisible of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death, Monseigneur's

+house had been first sequestrated, and then confiscated. For, all

+things moved so fast, and decree followed decree with that fierce

+precipitation, that now upon the third night of the autumn month

+of September, patriot emissaries of the law were in possession of

+Monseigneur's house, and had marked it with the tri-colour, and were

+drinking brandy in its state apartments.

+

+A place of business in London like Tellson's place of business in Paris,

+would soon have driven the House out of its mind and into the Gazette.

+For, what would staid British responsibility and respectability have

+said to orange-trees in boxes in a Bank courtyard, and even to a Cupid

+over the counter? Yet such things were. Tellson's had whitewashed the

+Cupid, but he was still to be seen on the ceiling, in the coolest

+linen, aiming (as he very often does) at money from morning to

+night. Bankruptcy must inevitably have come of this young Pagan, in

+Lombard-street, London, and also of a curtained alcove in the rear of

+the immortal boy, and also of a looking-glass let into the wall, and

+also of clerks not at all old, who danced in public on the slightest

+provocation. Yet, a French Tellson's could get on with these things

+exceedingly well, and, as long as the times held together, no man had

+taken fright at them, and drawn out his money.

+

+What money would be drawn out of Tellson's henceforth, and what would

+lie there, lost and forgotten; what plate and jewels would tarnish in

+Tellson's hiding-places, while the depositors rusted in prisons,

+and when they should have violently perished; how many accounts with

+Tellson's never to be balanced in this world, must be carried over into

+the next; no man could have said, that night, any more than Mr. Jarvis

+Lorry could, though he thought heavily of these questions. He sat by

+a newly-lighted wood fire (the blighted and unfruitful year was

+prematurely cold), and on his honest and courageous face there was a

+deeper shade than the pendent lamp could throw, or any object in the

+room distortedly reflect--a shade of horror.

+

+He occupied rooms in the Bank, in his fidelity to the House of which

+he had grown to be a part, like strong root-ivy. It chanced that they

+derived a kind of security from the patriotic occupation of the main

+building, but the true-hearted old gentleman never calculated about

+that. All such circumstances were indifferent to him, so that he did

+his duty. On the opposite side of the courtyard, under a colonnade,

+was extensive standing--for carriages--where, indeed, some carriages

+of Monseigneur yet stood. Against two of the pillars were fastened two

+great flaring flambeaux, and in the light of these, standing out in the

+open air, was a large grindstone: a roughly mounted thing which appeared

+to have hurriedly been brought there from some neighbouring smithy,

+or other workshop. Rising and looking out of window at these harmless

+objects, Mr. Lorry shivered, and retired to his seat by the fire. He had

+opened, not only the glass window, but the lattice blind outside it, and

+he had closed both again, and he shivered through his frame.

+

+From the streets beyond the high wall and the strong gate, there came

+the usual night hum of the city, with now and then an indescribable ring

+in it, weird and unearthly, as if some unwonted sounds of a terrible

+nature were going up to Heaven.

+

+"Thank God," said Mr. Lorry, clasping his hands, "that no one near and

+dear to me is in this dreadful town to-night. May He have mercy on all

+who are in danger!"

+

+Soon afterwards, the bell at the great gate sounded, and he thought,

+"They have come back!" and sat listening. But, there was no loud

+irruption into the courtyard, as he had expected, and he heard the gate

+clash again, and all was quiet.

+

+The nervousness and dread that were upon him inspired that vague

+uneasiness respecting the Bank, which a great change would naturally

+awaken, with such feelings roused. It was well guarded, and he got up to

+go among the trusty people who were watching it, when his door suddenly

+opened, and two figures rushed in, at sight of which he fell back in

+amazement.

+

+Lucie and her father! Lucie with her arms stretched out to him, and with

+that old look of earnestness so concentrated and intensified, that it

+seemed as though it had been stamped upon her face expressly to give

+force and power to it in this one passage of her life.

+

+"What is this?" cried Mr. Lorry, breathless and confused. "What is the

+matter? Lucie! Manette! What has happened? What has brought you here?

+What is it?"

+

+With the look fixed upon him, in her paleness and wildness, she panted

+out in his arms, imploringly, "O my dear friend! My husband!"

+

+"Your husband, Lucie?"

+

+"Charles."

+

+"What of Charles?"

+

+"Here.

+

+"Here, in Paris?"

+

+"Has been here some days--three or four--I don't know how many--I can't

+collect my thoughts. An errand of generosity brought him here unknown to

+us; he was stopped at the barrier, and sent to prison."

+

+The old man uttered an irrepressible cry. Almost at the same moment, the

+bell of the great gate rang again, and a loud noise of feet and voices

+came pouring into the courtyard.

+

+"What is that noise?" said the Doctor, turning towards the window.

+

+"Don't look!" cried Mr. Lorry. "Don't look out! Manette, for your life,

+don't touch the blind!"

+

+The Doctor turned, with his hand upon the fastening of the window, and

+said, with a cool, bold smile:

+

+"My dear friend, I have a charmed life in this city. I have been

+a Bastille prisoner. There is no patriot in Paris--in Paris? In

+France--who, knowing me to have been a prisoner in the Bastille, would

+touch me, except to overwhelm me with embraces, or carry me in triumph.

+My old pain has given me a power that has brought us through the

+barrier, and gained us news of Charles there, and brought us here. I

+knew it would be so; I knew I could help Charles out of all danger; I

+told Lucie so.--What is that noise?" His hand was again upon the window.

+

+"Don't look!" cried Mr. Lorry, absolutely desperate. "No, Lucie, my

+dear, nor you!" He got his arm round her, and held her. "Don't be so

+terrified, my love. I solemnly swear to you that I know of no harm

+having happened to Charles; that I had no suspicion even of his being in

+this fatal place. What prison is he in?"

+

+"La Force!"

+

+"La Force! Lucie, my child, if ever you were brave and serviceable in

+your life--and you were always both--you will compose yourself now, to

+do exactly as I bid you; for more depends upon it than you can think, or

+I can say. There is no help for you in any action on your part to-night;

+you cannot possibly stir out. I say this, because what I must bid you

+to do for Charles's sake, is the hardest thing to do of all. You must

+instantly be obedient, still, and quiet. You must let me put you in a

+room at the back here. You must leave your father and me alone for

+two minutes, and as there are Life and Death in the world you must not

+delay."

+

+"I will be submissive to you. I see in your face that you know I can do

+nothing else than this. I know you are true."

+

+The old man kissed her, and hurried her into his room, and turned the

+key; then, came hurrying back to the Doctor, and opened the window and

+partly opened the blind, and put his hand upon the Doctor's arm, and

+looked out with him into the courtyard.

+

+Looked out upon a throng of men and women: not enough in number, or near

+enough, to fill the courtyard: not more than forty or fifty in all. The

+people in possession of the house had let them in at the gate, and they

+had rushed in to work at the grindstone; it had evidently been set up

+there for their purpose, as in a convenient and retired spot.

+

+But, such awful workers, and such awful work!

+

+The grindstone had a double handle, and, turning at it madly were two

+men, whose faces, as their long hair flapped back when the whirlings of

+the grindstone brought their faces up, were more horrible and cruel than

+the visages of the wildest savages in their most barbarous disguise.

+False eyebrows and false moustaches were stuck upon them, and their

+hideous countenances were all bloody and sweaty, and all awry with

+howling, and all staring and glaring with beastly excitement and want of

+sleep. As these ruffians turned and turned, their matted locks now flung

+forward over their eyes, now flung backward over their necks, some women

+held wine to their mouths that they might drink; and what with dropping

+blood, and what with dropping wine, and what with the stream of sparks

+struck out of the stone, all their wicked atmosphere seemed gore and

+fire. The eye could not detect one creature in the group free from

+the smear of blood. Shouldering one another to get next at the

+sharpening-stone, were men stripped to the waist, with the stain all

+over their limbs and bodies; men in all sorts of rags, with the stain

+upon those rags; men devilishly set off with spoils of women's lace

+and silk and ribbon, with the stain dyeing those trifles through

+and through. Hatchets, knives, bayonets, swords, all brought to be

+sharpened, were all red with it. Some of the hacked swords were tied to

+the wrists of those who carried them, with strips of linen and fragments

+of dress: ligatures various in kind, but all deep of the one colour. And

+as the frantic wielders of these weapons snatched them from the stream

+of sparks and tore away into the streets, the same red hue was red in

+their frenzied eyes;--eyes which any unbrutalised beholder would have

+given twenty years of life, to petrify with a well-directed gun.

+

+All this was seen in a moment, as the vision of a drowning man, or of

+any human creature at any very great pass, could see a world if it

+were there. They drew back from the window, and the Doctor looked for

+explanation in his friend's ashy face.

+

+"They are," Mr. Lorry whispered the words, glancing fearfully round at

+the locked room, "murdering the prisoners. If you are sure of what you

+say; if you really have the power you think you have--as I believe you

+have--make yourself known to these devils, and get taken to La Force. It

+may be too late, I don't know, but let it not be a minute later!"

+

+Doctor Manette pressed his hand, hastened bareheaded out of the room,

+and was in the courtyard when Mr. Lorry regained the blind.

+

+His streaming white hair, his remarkable face, and the impetuous

+confidence of his manner, as he put the weapons aside like water,

+carried him in an instant to the heart of the concourse at the stone.

+For a few moments there was a pause, and a hurry, and a murmur, and

+the unintelligible sound of his voice; and then Mr. Lorry saw him,

+surrounded by all, and in the midst of a line of twenty men long, all

+linked shoulder to shoulder, and hand to shoulder, hurried out with

+cries of--"Live the Bastille prisoner! Help for the Bastille prisoner's

+kindred in La Force! Room for the Bastille prisoner in front there! Save

+the prisoner Evremonde at La Force!" and a thousand answering shouts.

+

+He closed the lattice again with a fluttering heart, closed the window

+and the curtain, hastened to Lucie, and told her that her father was

+assisted by the people, and gone in search of her husband. He found

+her child and Miss Pross with her; but, it never occurred to him to be

+surprised by their appearance until a long time afterwards, when he sat

+watching them in such quiet as the night knew.

+

+Lucie had, by that time, fallen into a stupor on the floor at his feet,

+clinging to his hand. Miss Pross had laid the child down on his own

+bed, and her head had gradually fallen on the pillow beside her pretty

+charge. O the long, long night, with the moans of the poor wife! And O

+the long, long night, with no return of her father and no tidings!

+

+Twice more in the darkness the bell at the great gate sounded, and the

+irruption was repeated, and the grindstone whirled and spluttered.

+"What is it?" cried Lucie, affrighted. "Hush! The soldiers' swords are

+sharpened there," said Mr. Lorry. "The place is national property now,

+and used as a kind of armoury, my love."

+

+Twice more in all; but, the last spell of work was feeble and fitful.

+Soon afterwards the day began to dawn, and he softly detached himself

+from the clasping hand, and cautiously looked out again. A man, so

+besmeared that he might have been a sorely wounded soldier creeping back

+to consciousness on a field of slain, was rising from the pavement by

+the side of the grindstone, and looking about him with a vacant air.

+Shortly, this worn-out murderer descried in the imperfect light one of

+the carriages of Monseigneur, and, staggering to that gorgeous vehicle,

+climbed in at the door, and shut himself up to take his rest on its

+dainty cushions.

+

+The great grindstone, Earth, had turned when Mr. Lorry looked out again,

+and the sun was red on the courtyard. But, the lesser grindstone stood

+alone there in the calm morning air, with a red upon it that the sun had

+never given, and would never take away.

+

+

+

+

+III. The Shadow

+

+

+One of the first considerations which arose in the business mind of Mr.

+Lorry when business hours came round, was this:--that he had no right to

+imperil Tellson's by sheltering the wife of an emigrant prisoner under

+the Bank roof. His own possessions, safety, life, he would have hazarded

+for Lucie and her child, without a moment's demur; but the great trust

+he held was not his own, and as to that business charge he was a strict

+man of business.

+

+At first, his mind reverted to Defarge, and he thought of finding out

+the wine-shop again and taking counsel with its master in reference to

+the safest dwelling-place in the distracted state of the city. But, the

+same consideration that suggested him, repudiated him; he lived in the

+most violent Quarter, and doubtless was influential there, and deep in

+its dangerous workings.

+

+Noon coming, and the Doctor not returning, and every minute's delay

+tending to compromise Tellson's, Mr. Lorry advised with Lucie. She said

+that her father had spoken of hiring a lodging for a short term, in that

+Quarter, near the Banking-house. As there was no business objection to

+this, and as he foresaw that even if it were all well with Charles, and

+he were to be released, he could not hope to leave the city, Mr. Lorry

+went out in quest of such a lodging, and found a suitable one, high up

+in a removed by-street where the closed blinds in all the other windows

+of a high melancholy square of buildings marked deserted homes.

+

+To this lodging he at once removed Lucie and her child, and Miss Pross:

+giving them what comfort he could, and much more than he had himself.

+He left Jerry with them, as a figure to fill a doorway that would bear

+considerable knocking on the head, and returned to his own occupations.

+A disturbed and doleful mind he brought to bear upon them, and slowly

+and heavily the day lagged on with him.

+

+It wore itself out, and wore him out with it, until the Bank closed. He

+was again alone in his room of the previous night, considering what to

+do next, when he heard a foot upon the stair. In a few moments, a

+man stood in his presence, who, with a keenly observant look at him,

+addressed him by his name.

+

+"Your servant," said Mr. Lorry. "Do you know me?"

+

+He was a strongly made man with dark curling hair, from forty-five

+to fifty years of age. For answer he repeated, without any change of

+emphasis, the words:

+

+"Do you know me?"

+

+"I have seen you somewhere."

+

+"Perhaps at my wine-shop?"

+

+Much interested and agitated, Mr. Lorry said: "You come from Doctor

+Manette?"

+

+"Yes. I come from Doctor Manette."

+

+"And what says he? What does he send me?"

+

+Defarge gave into his anxious hand, an open scrap of paper. It bore the

+words in the Doctor's writing:

+

+    "Charles is safe, but I cannot safely leave this place yet.

+     I have obtained the favour that the bearer has a short note

+     from Charles to his wife.  Let the bearer see his wife."

+

+It was dated from La Force, within an hour.

+

+"Will you accompany me," said Mr. Lorry, joyfully relieved after reading

+this note aloud, "to where his wife resides?"

+

+"Yes," returned Defarge.

+

+Scarcely noticing as yet, in what a curiously reserved and mechanical

+way Defarge spoke, Mr. Lorry put on his hat and they went down into the

+courtyard. There, they found two women; one, knitting.

+

+"Madame Defarge, surely!" said Mr. Lorry, who had left her in exactly

+the same attitude some seventeen years ago.

+

+"It is she," observed her husband.

+

+"Does Madame go with us?" inquired Mr. Lorry, seeing that she moved as

+they moved.

+

+"Yes. That she may be able to recognise the faces and know the persons.

+It is for their safety."

+

+Beginning to be struck by Defarge's manner, Mr. Lorry looked dubiously

+at him, and led the way. Both the women followed; the second woman being

+The Vengeance.

+

+They passed through the intervening streets as quickly as they might,

+ascended the staircase of the new domicile, were admitted by Jerry,

+and found Lucie weeping, alone. She was thrown into a transport by the

+tidings Mr. Lorry gave her of her husband, and clasped the hand that

+delivered his note--little thinking what it had been doing near him in

+the night, and might, but for a chance, have done to him.

+

+     "DEAREST,--Take courage.  I am well, and your father has

+      influence around me.  You cannot answer this.

+      Kiss our child for me."

+

+That was all the writing. It was so much, however, to her who received

+it, that she turned from Defarge to his wife, and kissed one of the

+hands that knitted. It was a passionate, loving, thankful, womanly

+action, but the hand made no response--dropped cold and heavy, and took

+to its knitting again.

+

+There was something in its touch that gave Lucie a check. She stopped in

+the act of putting the note in her bosom, and, with her hands yet at her

+neck, looked terrified at Madame Defarge. Madame Defarge met the lifted

+eyebrows and forehead with a cold, impassive stare.

+

+"My dear," said Mr. Lorry, striking in to explain; "there are frequent

+risings in the streets; and, although it is not likely they will ever

+trouble you, Madame Defarge wishes to see those whom she has the power

+to protect at such times, to the end that she may know them--that she

+may identify them. I believe," said Mr. Lorry, rather halting in his

+reassuring words, as the stony manner of all the three impressed itself

+upon him more and more, "I state the case, Citizen Defarge?"

+

+Defarge looked gloomily at his wife, and gave no other answer than a

+gruff sound of acquiescence.

+

+"You had better, Lucie," said Mr. Lorry, doing all he could to

+propitiate, by tone and manner, "have the dear child here, and our

+good Pross. Our good Pross, Defarge, is an English lady, and knows no

+French."

+

+The lady in question, whose rooted conviction that she was more than a

+match for any foreigner, was not to be shaken by distress and, danger,

+appeared with folded arms, and observed in English to The Vengeance,

+whom her eyes first encountered, "Well, I am sure, Boldface! I hope

+_you_ are pretty well!" She also bestowed a British cough on Madame

+Defarge; but, neither of the two took much heed of her.

+

+"Is that his child?" said Madame Defarge, stopping in her work for the

+first time, and pointing her knitting-needle at little Lucie as if it

+were the finger of Fate.

+

+"Yes, madame," answered Mr. Lorry; "this is our poor prisoner's darling

+daughter, and only child."

+

+The shadow attendant on Madame Defarge and her party seemed to fall so

+threatening and dark on the child, that her mother instinctively

+kneeled on the ground beside her, and held her to her breast. The

+shadow attendant on Madame Defarge and her party seemed then to fall,

+threatening and dark, on both the mother and the child.

+

+"It is enough, my husband," said Madame Defarge. "I have seen them. We

+may go."

+

+But, the suppressed manner had enough of menace in it--not visible and

+presented, but indistinct and withheld--to alarm Lucie into saying, as

+she laid her appealing hand on Madame Defarge's dress:

+

+"You will be good to my poor husband. You will do him no harm. You will

+help me to see him if you can?"

+

+"Your husband is not my business here," returned Madame Defarge, looking

+down at her with perfect composure. "It is the daughter of your father

+who is my business here."

+

+"For my sake, then, be merciful to my husband. For my child's sake! She

+will put her hands together and pray you to be merciful. We are more

+afraid of you than of these others."

+

+Madame Defarge received it as a compliment, and looked at her husband.

+Defarge, who had been uneasily biting his thumb-nail and looking at her,

+collected his face into a sterner expression.

+

+"What is it that your husband says in that little letter?" asked Madame

+Defarge, with a lowering smile. "Influence; he says something touching

+influence?"

+

+"That my father," said Lucie, hurriedly taking the paper from her

+breast, but with her alarmed eyes on her questioner and not on it, "has

+much influence around him."

+

+"Surely it will release him!" said Madame Defarge. "Let it do so."

+

+"As a wife and mother," cried Lucie, most earnestly, "I implore you to

+have pity on me and not to exercise any power that you possess, against

+my innocent husband, but to use it in his behalf. O sister-woman, think

+of me. As a wife and mother!"

+

+Madame Defarge looked, coldly as ever, at the suppliant, and said,

+turning to her friend The Vengeance:

+

+"The wives and mothers we have been used to see, since we were as little

+as this child, and much less, have not been greatly considered? We have

+known _their_ husbands and fathers laid in prison and kept from them,

+often enough? All our lives, we have seen our sister-women suffer, in

+themselves and in their children, poverty, nakedness, hunger, thirst,

+sickness, misery, oppression and neglect of all kinds?"

+

+"We have seen nothing else," returned The Vengeance.

+

+"We have borne this a long time," said Madame Defarge, turning her eyes

+again upon Lucie. "Judge you! Is it likely that the trouble of one wife

+and mother would be much to us now?"

+

+She resumed her knitting and went out. The Vengeance followed. Defarge

+went last, and closed the door.

+

+"Courage, my dear Lucie," said Mr. Lorry, as he raised her. "Courage,

+courage! So far all goes well with us--much, much better than it has of

+late gone with many poor souls. Cheer up, and have a thankful heart."

+

+"I am not thankless, I hope, but that dreadful woman seems to throw a

+shadow on me and on all my hopes."

+

+"Tut, tut!" said Mr. Lorry; "what is this despondency in the brave

+little breast? A shadow indeed! No substance in it, Lucie."

+

+But the shadow of the manner of these Defarges was dark upon himself,

+for all that, and in his secret mind it troubled him greatly.

+

+

+

+

+IV. Calm in Storm

+

+

+Doctor Manette did not return until the morning of the fourth day of his

+absence. So much of what had happened in that dreadful time as could be

+kept from the knowledge of Lucie was so well concealed from her, that

+not until long afterwards, when France and she were far apart, did she

+know that eleven hundred defenceless prisoners of both sexes and all

+ages had been killed by the populace; that four days and nights had been

+darkened by this deed of horror; and that the air around her had been

+tainted by the slain. She only knew that there had been an attack upon

+the prisons, that all political prisoners had been in danger, and that

+some had been dragged out by the crowd and murdered.

+

+To Mr. Lorry, the Doctor communicated under an injunction of secrecy on

+which he had no need to dwell, that the crowd had taken him through a

+scene of carnage to the prison of La Force. That, in the prison he had

+found a self-appointed Tribunal sitting, before which the prisoners were

+brought singly, and by which they were rapidly ordered to be put forth

+to be massacred, or to be released, or (in a few cases) to be sent back

+to their cells. That, presented by his conductors to this Tribunal, he

+had announced himself by name and profession as having been for eighteen

+years a secret and unaccused prisoner in the Bastille; that, one of the

+body so sitting in judgment had risen and identified him, and that this

+man was Defarge.

+

+That, hereupon he had ascertained, through the registers on the table,

+that his son-in-law was among the living prisoners, and had pleaded hard

+to the Tribunal--of whom some members were asleep and some awake, some

+dirty with murder and some clean, some sober and some not--for his life

+and liberty. That, in the first frantic greetings lavished on himself as

+a notable sufferer under the overthrown system, it had been accorded

+to him to have Charles Darnay brought before the lawless Court, and

+examined. That, he seemed on the point of being at once released, when

+the tide in his favour met with some unexplained check (not intelligible

+to the Doctor), which led to a few words of secret conference. That,

+the man sitting as President had then informed Doctor Manette that

+the prisoner must remain in custody, but should, for his sake, be held

+inviolate in safe custody. That, immediately, on a signal, the prisoner

+was removed to the interior of the prison again; but, that he, the

+Doctor, had then so strongly pleaded for permission to remain and

+assure himself that his son-in-law was, through no malice or mischance,

+delivered to the concourse whose murderous yells outside the gate had

+often drowned the proceedings, that he had obtained the permission, and

+had remained in that Hall of Blood until the danger was over.

+

+The sights he had seen there, with brief snatches of food and sleep by

+intervals, shall remain untold. The mad joy over the prisoners who were

+saved, had astounded him scarcely less than the mad ferocity against

+those who were cut to pieces. One prisoner there was, he said, who had

+been discharged into the street free, but at whom a mistaken savage had

+thrust a pike as he passed out. Being besought to go to him and dress

+the wound, the Doctor had passed out at the same gate, and had found him

+in the arms of a company of Samaritans, who were seated on the bodies

+of their victims. With an inconsistency as monstrous as anything in this

+awful nightmare, they had helped the healer, and tended the wounded man

+with the gentlest solicitude--had made a litter for him and escorted him

+carefully from the spot--had then caught up their weapons and plunged

+anew into a butchery so dreadful, that the Doctor had covered his eyes

+with his hands, and swooned away in the midst of it.

+

+As Mr. Lorry received these confidences, and as he watched the face of

+his friend now sixty-two years of age, a misgiving arose within him that

+such dread experiences would revive the old danger.

+

+But, he had never seen his friend in his present aspect: he had never

+at all known him in his present character. For the first time the Doctor

+felt, now, that his suffering was strength and power. For the first time

+he felt that in that sharp fire, he had slowly forged the iron which

+could break the prison door of his daughter's husband, and deliver him.

+"It all tended to a good end, my friend; it was not mere waste and ruin.

+As my beloved child was helpful in restoring me to myself, I will be

+helpful now in restoring the dearest part of herself to her; by the aid

+of Heaven I will do it!" Thus, Doctor Manette. And when Jarvis Lorry saw

+the kindled eyes, the resolute face, the calm strong look and bearing

+of the man whose life always seemed to him to have been stopped, like a

+clock, for so many years, and then set going again with an energy which

+had lain dormant during the cessation of its usefulness, he believed.

+

+Greater things than the Doctor had at that time to contend with, would

+have yielded before his persevering purpose. While he kept himself

+in his place, as a physician, whose business was with all degrees

+of mankind, bond and free, rich and poor, bad and good, he used his

+personal influence so wisely, that he was soon the inspecting physician

+of three prisons, and among them of La Force. He could now assure Lucie

+that her husband was no longer confined alone, but was mixed with the

+general body of prisoners; he saw her husband weekly, and brought sweet

+messages to her, straight from his lips; sometimes her husband himself

+sent a letter to her (though never by the Doctor's hand), but she was

+not permitted to write to him: for, among the many wild suspicions of

+plots in the prisons, the wildest of all pointed at emigrants who were

+known to have made friends or permanent connections abroad.

+

+This new life of the Doctor's was an anxious life, no doubt; still, the

+sagacious Mr. Lorry saw that there was a new sustaining pride in it.

+Nothing unbecoming tinged the pride; it was a natural and worthy one;

+but he observed it as a curiosity. The Doctor knew, that up to that

+time, his imprisonment had been associated in the minds of his daughter

+and his friend, with his personal affliction, deprivation, and weakness.

+Now that this was changed, and he knew himself to be invested through

+that old trial with forces to which they both looked for Charles's

+ultimate safety and deliverance, he became so far exalted by the change,

+that he took the lead and direction, and required them as the weak, to

+trust to him as the strong. The preceding relative positions of himself

+and Lucie were reversed, yet only as the liveliest gratitude and

+affection could reverse them, for he could have had no pride but in

+rendering some service to her who had rendered so much to him. "All

+curious to see," thought Mr. Lorry, in his amiably shrewd way, "but all

+natural and right; so, take the lead, my dear friend, and keep it; it

+couldn't be in better hands."

+

+But, though the Doctor tried hard, and never ceased trying, to get

+Charles Darnay set at liberty, or at least to get him brought to trial,

+the public current of the time set too strong and fast for him. The new

+era began; the king was tried, doomed, and beheaded; the Republic of

+Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death, declared for victory or death

+against the world in arms; the black flag waved night and day from the

+great towers of Notre Dame; three hundred thousand men, summoned to rise

+against the tyrants of the earth, rose from all the varying soils

+of France, as if the dragon's teeth had been sown broadcast, and

+had yielded fruit equally on hill and plain, on rock, in gravel, and

+alluvial mud, under the bright sky of the South and under the clouds of

+the North, in fell and forest, in the vineyards and the olive-grounds

+and among the cropped grass and the stubble of the corn, along the

+fruitful banks of the broad rivers, and in the sand of the sea-shore.

+What private solicitude could rear itself against the deluge of the Year

+One of Liberty--the deluge rising from below, not falling from above,

+and with the windows of Heaven shut, not opened!

+

+There was no pause, no pity, no peace, no interval of relenting rest, no

+measurement of time. Though days and nights circled as regularly as when

+time was young, and the evening and morning were the first day, other

+count of time there was none. Hold of it was lost in the raging fever

+of a nation, as it is in the fever of one patient. Now, breaking the

+unnatural silence of a whole city, the executioner showed the people the

+head of the king--and now, it seemed almost in the same breath, the

+head of his fair wife which had had eight weary months of imprisoned

+widowhood and misery, to turn it grey.

+

+And yet, observing the strange law of contradiction which obtains in

+all such cases, the time was long, while it flamed by so fast. A

+revolutionary tribunal in the capital, and forty or fifty thousand

+revolutionary committees all over the land; a law of the Suspected,

+which struck away all security for liberty or life, and delivered over

+any good and innocent person to any bad and guilty one; prisons gorged

+with people who had committed no offence, and could obtain no hearing;

+these things became the established order and nature of appointed

+things, and seemed to be ancient usage before they were many weeks old.

+Above all, one hideous figure grew as familiar as if it had been before

+the general gaze from the foundations of the world--the figure of the

+sharp female called La Guillotine.

+

+It was the popular theme for jests; it was the best cure for headache,

+it infallibly prevented the hair from turning grey, it imparted a

+peculiar delicacy to the complexion, it was the National Razor which

+shaved close: who kissed La Guillotine, looked through the little window

+and sneezed into the sack. It was the sign of the regeneration of the

+human race. It superseded the Cross. Models of it were worn on breasts

+from which the Cross was discarded, and it was bowed down to and

+believed in where the Cross was denied.

+

+It sheared off heads so many, that it, and the ground it most polluted,

+were a rotten red. It was taken to pieces, like a toy-puzzle for a young

+Devil, and was put together again when the occasion wanted it. It hushed

+the eloquent, struck down the powerful, abolished the beautiful and

+good. Twenty-two friends of high public mark, twenty-one living and one

+dead, it had lopped the heads off, in one morning, in as many minutes.

+The name of the strong man of Old Scripture had descended to the chief

+functionary who worked it; but, so armed, he was stronger than his

+namesake, and blinder, and tore away the gates of God's own Temple every

+day.

+

+Among these terrors, and the brood belonging to them, the Doctor walked

+with a steady head: confident in his power, cautiously persistent in his

+end, never doubting that he would save Lucie's husband at last. Yet the

+current of the time swept by, so strong and deep, and carried the time

+away so fiercely, that Charles had lain in prison one year and three

+months when the Doctor was thus steady and confident. So much more

+wicked and distracted had the Revolution grown in that December month,

+that the rivers of the South were encumbered with the bodies of the

+violently drowned by night, and prisoners were shot in lines and squares

+under the southern wintry sun. Still, the Doctor walked among the

+terrors with a steady head. No man better known than he, in Paris at

+that day; no man in a stranger situation. Silent, humane, indispensable

+in hospital and prison, using his art equally among assassins and

+victims, he was a man apart. In the exercise of his skill, the

+appearance and the story of the Bastille Captive removed him from all

+other men. He was not suspected or brought in question, any more than if

+he had indeed been recalled to life some eighteen years before, or were

+a Spirit moving among mortals.

+

+

+

+

+V. The Wood-Sawyer

+

+

+One year and three months. During all that time Lucie was never

+sure, from hour to hour, but that the Guillotine would strike off her

+husband's head next day. Every day, through the stony streets, the

+tumbrils now jolted heavily, filled with Condemned. Lovely girls; bright

+women, brown-haired, black-haired, and grey; youths; stalwart men and

+old; gentle born and peasant born; all red wine for La Guillotine, all

+daily brought into light from the dark cellars of the loathsome prisons,

+and carried to her through the streets to slake her devouring thirst.

+Liberty, equality, fraternity, or death;--the last, much the easiest to

+bestow, O Guillotine!

+

+If the suddenness of her calamity, and the whirling wheels of the time,

+had stunned the Doctor's daughter into awaiting the result in idle

+despair, it would but have been with her as it was with many. But, from

+the hour when she had taken the white head to her fresh young bosom in

+the garret of Saint Antoine, she had been true to her duties. She was

+truest to them in the season of trial, as all the quietly loyal and good

+will always be.

+

+As soon as they were established in their new residence, and her father

+had entered on the routine of his avocations, she arranged the little

+household as exactly as if her husband had been there. Everything had

+its appointed place and its appointed time. Little Lucie she taught,

+as regularly, as if they had all been united in their English home. The

+slight devices with which she cheated herself into the show of a belief

+that they would soon be reunited--the little preparations for his speedy

+return, the setting aside of his chair and his books--these, and the

+solemn prayer at night for one dear prisoner especially, among the many

+unhappy souls in prison and the shadow of death--were almost the only

+outspoken reliefs of her heavy mind.

+

+She did not greatly alter in appearance. The plain dark dresses, akin to

+mourning dresses, which she and her child wore, were as neat and as well

+attended to as the brighter clothes of happy days. She lost her colour,

+and the old and intent expression was a constant, not an occasional,

+thing; otherwise, she remained very pretty and comely. Sometimes, at

+night on kissing her father, she would burst into the grief she had

+repressed all day, and would say that her sole reliance, under Heaven,

+was on him. He always resolutely answered: "Nothing can happen to him

+without my knowledge, and I know that I can save him, Lucie."

+

+They had not made the round of their changed life many weeks, when her

+father said to her, on coming home one evening:

+

+"My dear, there is an upper window in the prison, to which Charles can

+sometimes gain access at three in the afternoon. When he can get to

+it--which depends on many uncertainties and incidents--he might see you

+in the street, he thinks, if you stood in a certain place that I can

+show you. But you will not be able to see him, my poor child, and even

+if you could, it would be unsafe for you to make a sign of recognition."

+

+"O show me the place, my father, and I will go there every day."

+

+From that time, in all weathers, she waited there two hours. As the

+clock struck two, she was there, and at four she turned resignedly away.

+When it was not too wet or inclement for her child to be with her, they

+went together; at other times she was alone; but, she never missed a

+single day.

+

+It was the dark and dirty corner of a small winding street. The hovel

+of a cutter of wood into lengths for burning, was the only house at that

+end; all else was wall. On the third day of her being there, he noticed

+her.

+

+"Good day, citizeness."

+

+"Good day, citizen."

+

+This mode of address was now prescribed by decree. It had been

+established voluntarily some time ago, among the more thorough patriots;

+but, was now law for everybody.

+

+"Walking here again, citizeness?"

+

+"You see me, citizen!"

+

+The wood-sawyer, who was a little man with a redundancy of gesture (he

+had once been a mender of roads), cast a glance at the prison, pointed

+at the prison, and putting his ten fingers before his face to represent

+bars, peeped through them jocosely.

+

+"But it's not my business," said he. And went on sawing his wood.

+

+Next day he was looking out for her, and accosted her the moment she

+appeared.

+

+"What? Walking here again, citizeness?"

+

+"Yes, citizen."

+

+"Ah! A child too! Your mother, is it not, my little citizeness?"

+

+"Do I say yes, mamma?" whispered little Lucie, drawing close to her.

+

+"Yes, dearest."

+

+"Yes, citizen."

+

+"Ah! But it's not my business. My work is my business. See my saw! I

+call it my Little Guillotine. La, la, la; La, la, la! And off his head

+comes!"

+

+The billet fell as he spoke, and he threw it into a basket.

+

+"I call myself the Samson of the firewood guillotine. See here again!

+Loo, loo, loo; Loo, loo, loo! And off _her_ head comes! Now, a child.

+Tickle, tickle; Pickle, pickle! And off _its_ head comes. All the

+family!"

+

+Lucie shuddered as he threw two more billets into his basket, but it was

+impossible to be there while the wood-sawyer was at work, and not be in

+his sight. Thenceforth, to secure his good will, she always spoke to him

+first, and often gave him drink-money, which he readily received.

+

+He was an inquisitive fellow, and sometimes when she had quite forgotten

+him in gazing at the prison roof and grates, and in lifting her heart

+up to her husband, she would come to herself to find him looking at her,

+with his knee on his bench and his saw stopped in its work. "But it's

+not my business!" he would generally say at those times, and would

+briskly fall to his sawing again.

+

+In all weathers, in the snow and frost of winter, in the bitter winds of

+spring, in the hot sunshine of summer, in the rains of autumn, and again

+in the snow and frost of winter, Lucie passed two hours of every day at

+this place; and every day on leaving it, she kissed the prison wall.

+Her husband saw her (so she learned from her father) it might be once in

+five or six times: it might be twice or thrice running: it might be, not

+for a week or a fortnight together. It was enough that he could and did

+see her when the chances served, and on that possibility she would have

+waited out the day, seven days a week.

+

+These occupations brought her round to the December month, wherein her

+father walked among the terrors with a steady head. On a lightly-snowing

+afternoon she arrived at the usual corner. It was a day of some wild

+rejoicing, and a festival. She had seen the houses, as she came along,

+decorated with little pikes, and with little red caps stuck upon them;

+also, with tricoloured ribbons; also, with the standard inscription

+(tricoloured letters were the favourite), Republic One and Indivisible.

+Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death!

+

+The miserable shop of the wood-sawyer was so small, that its whole

+surface furnished very indifferent space for this legend. He had got

+somebody to scrawl it up for him, however, who had squeezed Death in

+with most inappropriate difficulty. On his house-top, he displayed pike

+and cap, as a good citizen must, and in a window he had stationed his

+saw inscribed as his "Little Sainte Guillotine"--for the great sharp

+female was by that time popularly canonised. His shop was shut and he

+was not there, which was a relief to Lucie, and left her quite alone.

+

+But, he was not far off, for presently she heard a troubled movement

+and a shouting coming along, which filled her with fear. A moment

+afterwards, and a throng of people came pouring round the corner by the

+prison wall, in the midst of whom was the wood-sawyer hand in hand with

+The Vengeance. There could not be fewer than five hundred people, and

+they were dancing like five thousand demons. There was no other music

+than their own singing. They danced to the popular Revolution song,

+keeping a ferocious time that was like a gnashing of teeth in unison.

+Men and women danced together, women danced together, men danced

+together, as hazard had brought them together. At first, they were a

+mere storm of coarse red caps and coarse woollen rags; but, as they

+filled the place, and stopped to dance about Lucie, some ghastly

+apparition of a dance-figure gone raving mad arose among them. They

+advanced, retreated, struck at one another's hands, clutched at one

+another's heads, spun round alone, caught one another and spun round

+in pairs, until many of them dropped. While those were down, the rest

+linked hand in hand, and all spun round together: then the ring broke,

+and in separate rings of two and four they turned and turned until they

+all stopped at once, began again, struck, clutched, and tore, and then

+reversed the spin, and all spun round another way. Suddenly they stopped

+again, paused, struck out the time afresh, formed into lines the width

+of the public way, and, with their heads low down and their hands high

+up, swooped screaming off. No fight could have been half so terrible

+as this dance. It was so emphatically a fallen sport--a something, once

+innocent, delivered over to all devilry--a healthy pastime changed into

+a means of angering the blood, bewildering the senses, and steeling the

+heart. Such grace as was visible in it, made it the uglier, showing how

+warped and perverted all things good by nature were become. The maidenly

+bosom bared to this, the pretty almost-child's head thus distracted, the

+delicate foot mincing in this slough of blood and dirt, were types of

+the disjointed time.

+

+This was the Carmagnole. As it passed, leaving Lucie frightened and

+bewildered in the doorway of the wood-sawyer's house, the feathery snow

+fell as quietly and lay as white and soft, as if it had never been.

+

+"O my father!" for he stood before her when she lifted up the eyes she

+had momentarily darkened with her hand; "such a cruel, bad sight."

+

+"I know, my dear, I know. I have seen it many times. Don't be

+frightened! Not one of them would harm you."

+

+"I am not frightened for myself, my father. But when I think of my

+husband, and the mercies of these people--"

+

+"We will set him above their mercies very soon. I left him climbing to

+the window, and I came to tell you. There is no one here to see. You may

+kiss your hand towards that highest shelving roof."

+

+"I do so, father, and I send him my Soul with it!"

+

+"You cannot see him, my poor dear?"

+

+"No, father," said Lucie, yearning and weeping as she kissed her hand,

+"no."

+

+A footstep in the snow. Madame Defarge. "I salute you, citizeness,"

+from the Doctor. "I salute you, citizen." This in passing. Nothing more.

+Madame Defarge gone, like a shadow over the white road.

+

+"Give me your arm, my love. Pass from here with an air of cheerfulness

+and courage, for his sake. That was well done;" they had left the spot;

+"it shall not be in vain. Charles is summoned for to-morrow."

+

+"For to-morrow!"

+

+"There is no time to lose. I am well prepared, but there are precautions

+to be taken, that could not be taken until he was actually summoned

+before the Tribunal. He has not received the notice yet, but I know

+that he will presently be summoned for to-morrow, and removed to the

+Conciergerie; I have timely information. You are not afraid?"

+

+She could scarcely answer, "I trust in you."

+

+"Do so, implicitly. Your suspense is nearly ended, my darling; he shall

+be restored to you within a few hours; I have encompassed him with every

+protection. I must see Lorry."

+

+He stopped. There was a heavy lumbering of wheels within hearing. They

+both knew too well what it meant. One. Two. Three. Three tumbrils faring

+away with their dread loads over the hushing snow.

+

+"I must see Lorry," the Doctor repeated, turning her another way.

+

+The staunch old gentleman was still in his trust; had never left it. He

+and his books were in frequent requisition as to property confiscated

+and made national. What he could save for the owners, he saved. No

+better man living to hold fast by what Tellson's had in keeping, and to

+hold his peace.

+

+A murky red and yellow sky, and a rising mist from the Seine, denoted

+the approach of darkness. It was almost dark when they arrived at the

+Bank. The stately residence of Monseigneur was altogether blighted and

+deserted. Above a heap of dust and ashes in the court, ran the letters:

+National Property. Republic One and Indivisible. Liberty, Equality,

+Fraternity, or Death!

+

+Who could that be with Mr. Lorry--the owner of the riding-coat upon the

+chair--who must not be seen? From whom newly arrived, did he come out,

+agitated and surprised, to take his favourite in his arms? To whom did

+he appear to repeat her faltering words, when, raising his voice and

+turning his head towards the door of the room from which he had issued,

+he said: "Removed to the Conciergerie, and summoned for to-morrow?"

+

+

+

+

+VI. Triumph

+

+

+The dread tribunal of five Judges, Public Prosecutor, and determined

+Jury, sat every day. Their lists went forth every evening, and were

+read out by the gaolers of the various prisons to their prisoners. The

+standard gaoler-joke was, "Come out and listen to the Evening Paper, you

+inside there!"

+

+"Charles Evremonde, called Darnay!"

+

+So at last began the Evening Paper at La Force.

+

+When a name was called, its owner stepped apart into a spot reserved

+for those who were announced as being thus fatally recorded. Charles

+Evremonde, called Darnay, had reason to know the usage; he had seen

+hundreds pass away so.

+

+His bloated gaoler, who wore spectacles to read with, glanced over them

+to assure himself that he had taken his place, and went through the

+list, making a similar short pause at each name. 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.

+

+The passage to the Conciergerie was short and dark; the night in its

+vermin-haunted cells was long and cold. Next day, fifteen prisoners were

+put to the bar before Charles Darnay's name was called. All the fifteen

+were condemned, and the trials of the whole occupied an hour and a half.

+

+"Charles Evremonde, called Darnay," was at length arraigned.

+

+His judges sat upon the Bench in feathered hats; but the rough red cap

+and tricoloured cockade was the head-dress otherwise prevailing. Looking

+at the Jury and the turbulent audience, he might have thought that the

+usual order of things was reversed, and that the felons were trying the

+honest men. The lowest, cruelest, and worst populace of a city, never

+without its quantity of low, cruel, and bad, were the directing

+spirits of the scene: noisily commenting, applauding, disapproving,

+anticipating, and precipitating the result, without a check. Of the men,

+the greater part were armed in various ways; of the women, some wore

+knives, some daggers, some ate and drank as they looked on, many

+knitted. Among these last, was one, with a spare piece of knitting under

+her arm as she worked. She was in a front row, by the side of a man whom

+he had never seen since his arrival at the Barrier, but whom he directly

+remembered as Defarge. He noticed that she once or twice whispered in

+his ear, and that she seemed to be his wife; but, what he most noticed

+in the two figures was, that although they were posted as close to

+himself as they could be, they never looked towards him. They seemed to

+be waiting for something with a dogged determination, and they looked at

+the Jury, but at nothing else. Under the President sat Doctor Manette,

+in his usual quiet dress. As well as the prisoner could see, he and Mr.

+Lorry were the only men there, unconnected with the Tribunal, who

+wore their usual clothes, and had not assumed the coarse garb of the

+Carmagnole.

+

+Charles Evremonde, called Darnay, was accused by the public prosecutor

+as an emigrant, whose life was forfeit to the Republic, under the decree

+which banished all emigrants on pain of Death. It was nothing that the

+decree bore date since his return to France. There he was, and there was

+the decree; he had been taken in France, and his head was demanded.

+

+"Take off his head!" cried the audience. "An enemy to the Republic!"

+

+The President rang his bell to silence those cries, and asked the

+prisoner whether it was not true that he had lived many years in

+England?

+

+Undoubtedly it was.

+

+Was he not an emigrant then? What did he call himself?

+

+Not an emigrant, he hoped, within the sense and spirit of the law.

+

+Why not? the President desired to know.

+

+Because he had voluntarily relinquished a title that was distasteful

+to him, and a station that was distasteful to him, and had left

+his country--he submitted before the word emigrant in the present

+acceptation by the Tribunal was in use--to live by his own industry in

+England, rather than on the industry of the overladen people of France.

+

+What proof had he of this?

+

+He handed in the names of two witnesses; Theophile Gabelle, and

+Alexandre Manette.

+

+But he had married in England? the President reminded him.

+

+True, but not an English woman.

+

+A citizeness of France?

+

+Yes. By birth.

+

+Her name and family?

+

+"Lucie Manette, only daughter of Doctor Manette, the good physician who

+sits there."

+

+This answer had a happy effect upon the audience. Cries in exaltation

+of the well-known good physician rent the hall. So capriciously were

+the people moved, that tears immediately rolled down several ferocious

+countenances which had been glaring at the prisoner a moment before, as

+if with impatience to pluck him out into the streets and kill him.

+

+On these few steps of his dangerous way, Charles Darnay had set his foot

+according to Doctor Manette's reiterated instructions. The same cautious

+counsel directed every step that lay before him, and had prepared every

+inch of his road.

+

+The President asked, why had he returned to France when he did, and not

+sooner?

+

+He had not returned sooner, he replied, simply because he had no means

+of living in France, save those he had resigned; whereas, in England,

+he lived by giving instruction in the French language and literature.

+He had returned when he did, on the pressing and written entreaty of

+a French citizen, who represented that his life was endangered by his

+absence. He had come back, to save a citizen's life, and to bear his

+testimony, at whatever personal hazard, to the truth. Was that criminal

+in the eyes of the Republic?

+

+The populace cried enthusiastically, "No!" and the President rang his

+bell to quiet them. Which it did not, for they continued to cry "No!"

+until they left off, of their own will.

+

+The President required the name of that citizen. The accused explained

+that the citizen was his first witness. He also referred with confidence

+to the citizen's letter, which had been taken from him at the Barrier,

+but which he did not doubt would be found among the papers then before

+the President.

+

+The Doctor had taken care that it should be there--had assured him that

+it would be there--and at this stage of the proceedings it was produced

+and read. Citizen Gabelle was called to confirm it, and did so. Citizen

+Gabelle hinted, with infinite delicacy and politeness, that in the

+pressure of business imposed on the Tribunal by the multitude of

+enemies of the Republic with which it had to deal, he had been slightly

+overlooked in his prison of the Abbaye--in fact, had rather passed out

+of the Tribunal's patriotic remembrance--until three days ago; when he

+had been summoned before it, and had been set at liberty on the Jury's

+declaring themselves satisfied that the accusation against him was

+answered, as to himself, by the surrender of the citizen Evremonde,

+called Darnay.

+

+Doctor Manette was next questioned. His high personal popularity,

+and the clearness of his answers, made a great impression; but, as he

+proceeded, as he showed that the Accused was his first friend on his

+release from his long imprisonment; that, the accused had remained in

+England, always faithful and devoted to his daughter and himself in

+their exile; that, so far from being in favour with the Aristocrat

+government there, he had actually been tried for his life by it, as

+the foe of England and friend of the United States--as he brought these

+circumstances into view, with the greatest discretion and with the

+straightforward force of truth and earnestness, the Jury and the

+populace became one. At last, when he appealed by name to Monsieur

+Lorry, an English gentleman then and there present, who, like himself,

+had been a witness on that English trial and could corroborate his

+account of it, the Jury declared that they had heard enough, and that

+they were ready with their votes if the President were content to

+receive them.

+

+At every vote (the Jurymen voted aloud and individually), the populace

+set up a shout of applause. All the voices were in the prisoner's

+favour, and the President declared him free.

+

+Then, began one of those extraordinary scenes with which the populace

+sometimes gratified their fickleness, or their better impulses towards

+generosity and mercy, or which they regarded as some set-off against

+their swollen account of cruel rage. No man can decide now to which of

+these motives such extraordinary scenes were referable; it is probable,

+to a blending of all the three, with the second predominating. No sooner

+was the acquittal pronounced, than tears were shed as freely as blood

+at another time, and such fraternal embraces were bestowed upon the

+prisoner by as many of both sexes as could rush at him, that after

+his long and unwholesome confinement he was in danger of fainting from

+exhaustion; none the less because he knew very well, that the very same

+people, carried by another current, would have rushed at him with

+the very same intensity, to rend him to pieces and strew him over the

+streets.

+

+His removal, to make way for other accused persons who were to be tried,

+rescued him from these caresses for the moment. Five were to be tried

+together, next, as enemies of the Republic, forasmuch as they had not

+assisted it by word or deed. So quick was the Tribunal to compensate

+itself and the nation for a chance lost, that these five came down to

+him before he left the place, condemned to die within twenty-four

+hours. The first of them told him so, with the customary prison sign

+of Death--a raised finger--and they all added in words, "Long live the

+Republic!"

+

+The five had had, it is true, no audience to lengthen their proceedings,

+for when he and Doctor Manette emerged from the gate, there was a great

+crowd about it, in which there seemed to be every face he had seen in

+Court--except two, for which he looked in vain. On his coming out, the

+concourse made at him anew, weeping, embracing, and shouting, all by

+turns and all together, until the very tide of the river on the bank of

+which the mad scene was acted, seemed to run mad, like the people on the

+shore.

+

+They put him into a great chair they had among them, and which they had

+taken either out of the Court itself, or one of its rooms or passages.

+Over the chair they had thrown a red flag, and to the back of it they

+had bound a pike with a red cap on its top. In this car of triumph, not

+even the Doctor's entreaties could prevent his being carried to his home

+on men's shoulders, with a confused sea of red caps heaving about him,

+and casting up to sight from the stormy deep such wrecks of faces, that

+he more than once misdoubted his mind being in confusion, and that he

+was in the tumbril on his way to the Guillotine.

+

+In wild dreamlike procession, embracing whom they met and pointing

+him out, they carried him on. Reddening the snowy streets with the

+prevailing Republican colour, in winding and tramping through them, as

+they had reddened them below the snow with a deeper dye, they carried

+him thus into the courtyard of the building where he lived. Her father

+had gone on before, to prepare her, and when her husband stood upon his

+feet, she dropped insensible in his arms.

+

+As he held her to his heart and turned her beautiful head between his

+face and the brawling crowd, so that his tears and her lips might come

+together unseen, a few of the people fell to dancing. Instantly, all the

+rest fell to dancing, and the courtyard overflowed with the Carmagnole.

+Then, they elevated into the vacant chair a young woman from the

+crowd to be carried as the Goddess of Liberty, and then swelling and

+overflowing out into the adjacent streets, and along the river's bank,

+and over the bridge, the Carmagnole absorbed them every one and whirled

+them away.

+

+After grasping the Doctor's hand, as he stood victorious and proud

+before him; after grasping the hand of Mr. Lorry, who came panting in

+breathless from his struggle against the waterspout of the Carmagnole;

+after kissing little Lucie, who was lifted up to clasp her arms round

+his neck; and after embracing the ever zealous and faithful Pross who

+lifted her; he took his wife in his arms, and carried her up to their

+rooms.

+

+"Lucie! My own! I am safe."

+

+"O dearest Charles, let me thank God for this on my knees as I have

+prayed to Him."

+

+They all reverently bowed their heads and hearts. When she was again in

+his arms, he said to her:

+

+"And now speak to your father, dearest. No other man in all this France

+could have done what he has done for me."

+

+She laid her head upon her father's breast, as she had laid his poor

+head on her own breast, long, long ago. He was happy in the return he

+had made her, he was recompensed for his suffering, he was proud of his

+strength. "You must not be weak, my darling," he remonstrated; "don't

+tremble so. I have saved him."

+

+

+

+

+VII. A Knock at the Door

+

+

+"I have saved him." It was not another of the dreams in which he had

+often come back; he was really here. And yet his wife trembled, and a

+vague but heavy fear was upon her.

+

+All the air round was so thick and dark, the people were so passionately

+revengeful and fitful, the innocent were so constantly put to death on

+vague suspicion and black malice, it was so impossible to forget that

+many as blameless as her husband and as dear to others as he was to

+her, every day shared the fate from which he had been clutched, that her

+heart could not be as lightened of its load as she felt it ought to be.

+The shadows of the wintry afternoon were beginning to fall, and even now

+the dreadful carts were rolling through the streets. Her mind pursued

+them, looking for him among the Condemned; and then she clung closer to

+his real presence and trembled more.

+

+Her father, cheering her, showed a compassionate superiority to this

+woman's weakness, which was wonderful to see. No garret, no shoemaking,

+no One Hundred and Five, North Tower, now! He had accomplished the task

+he had set himself, his promise was redeemed, he had saved Charles. Let

+them all lean upon him.

+

+Their housekeeping was of a very frugal kind: not only because that was

+the safest way of life, involving the least offence to the people, but

+because they were not rich, and Charles, throughout his imprisonment,

+had had to pay heavily for his bad food, and for his guard, and towards

+the living of the poorer prisoners. Partly on this account, and

+partly to avoid a domestic spy, they kept no servant; the citizen and

+citizeness who acted as porters at the courtyard gate, rendered them

+occasional service; and Jerry (almost wholly transferred to them by

+Mr. Lorry) had become their daily retainer, and had his bed there every

+night.

+

+It was an ordinance of the Republic One and Indivisible of Liberty,

+Equality, Fraternity, or Death, that on the door or doorpost of every

+house, the name of every inmate must be legibly inscribed in letters

+of a certain size, at a certain convenient height from the ground. Mr.

+Jerry Cruncher's name, therefore, duly embellished the doorpost down

+below; and, as the afternoon shadows deepened, the owner of that name

+himself appeared, from overlooking a painter whom Doctor Manette had

+employed to add to the list the name of Charles Evremonde, called

+Darnay.

+

+In the universal fear and distrust that darkened the time, all the usual

+harmless ways of life were changed. In the Doctor's little household, as

+in very many others, the articles of daily consumption that were wanted

+were purchased every evening, in small quantities and at various small

+shops. To avoid attracting notice, and to give as little occasion as

+possible for talk and envy, was the general desire.

+

+For some months past, Miss Pross and Mr. Cruncher had discharged the

+office of purveyors; the former carrying the money; the latter, the

+basket. Every afternoon at about the time when the public lamps were

+lighted, they fared forth on this duty, and made and brought home

+such purchases as were needful. Although Miss Pross, through her long

+association with a French family, might have known as much of their

+language as of her own, if she had had a mind, she had no mind in that

+direction; consequently she knew no more of that "nonsense" (as she was

+pleased to call it) than Mr. Cruncher did. So her manner of marketing

+was to plump a noun-substantive at the head of a shopkeeper without any

+introduction in the nature of an article, and, if it happened not to be

+the name of the thing she wanted, to look round for that thing, lay hold

+of it, and hold on by it until the bargain was concluded. She always

+made a bargain for it, by holding up, as a statement of its just price,

+one finger less than the merchant held up, whatever his number might be.

+

+"Now, Mr. Cruncher," said Miss Pross, whose eyes were red with felicity;

+"if you are ready, I am."

+

+Jerry hoarsely professed himself at Miss Pross's service. He had worn

+all his rust off long ago, but nothing would file his spiky head down.

+

+"There's all manner of things wanted," said Miss Pross, "and we shall

+have a precious time of it. We want wine, among the rest. Nice toasts

+these Redheads will be drinking, wherever we buy it."

+

+"It will be much the same to your knowledge, miss, I should think,"

+retorted Jerry, "whether they drink your health or the Old Un's."

+

+"Who's he?" said Miss Pross.

+

+Mr. Cruncher, with some diffidence, explained himself as meaning "Old

+Nick's."

+

+"Ha!" said Miss Pross, "it doesn't need an interpreter to explain the

+meaning of these creatures. They have but one, and it's Midnight Murder,

+and Mischief."

+

+"Hush, dear! Pray, pray, be cautious!" cried Lucie.

+

+"Yes, yes, yes, I'll be cautious," said Miss Pross; "but I may say

+among ourselves, that I do hope there will be no oniony and tobaccoey

+smotherings in the form of embracings all round, going on in the

+streets. Now, Ladybird, never you stir from that fire till I come back!

+Take care of the dear husband you have recovered, and don't move your

+pretty head from his shoulder as you have it now, till you see me again!

+May I ask a question, Doctor Manette, before I go?"

+

+"I think you may take that liberty," the Doctor answered, smiling.

+

+"For gracious sake, don't talk about Liberty; we have quite enough of

+that," said Miss Pross.

+

+"Hush, dear! Again?" Lucie remonstrated.

+

+"Well, my sweet," said Miss Pross, nodding her head emphatically, "the

+short and the long of it is, that I am a subject of His Most Gracious

+Majesty King George the Third;" Miss Pross curtseyed at the name; "and

+as such, my maxim is, Confound their politics, Frustrate their knavish

+tricks, On him our hopes we fix, God save the King!"

+

+Mr. Cruncher, in an access of loyalty, growlingly repeated the words

+after Miss Pross, like somebody at church.

+

+"I am glad you have so much of the Englishman in you, though I wish you

+had never taken that cold in your voice," said Miss Pross, approvingly.

+"But the question, Doctor Manette. Is there"--it was the good creature's

+way to affect to make light of anything that was a great anxiety

+with them all, and to come at it in this chance manner--"is there any

+prospect yet, of our getting out of this place?"

+

+"I fear not yet. It would be dangerous for Charles yet."

+

+"Heigh-ho-hum!" said Miss Pross, cheerfully repressing a sigh as she

+glanced at her darling's golden hair in the light of the fire, "then we

+must have patience and wait: that's all. We must hold up our heads and

+fight low, as my brother Solomon used to say. Now, Mr. Cruncher!--Don't

+you move, Ladybird!"

+

+They went out, leaving Lucie, and her husband, her father, and the

+child, by a bright fire. Mr. Lorry was expected back presently from the

+Banking House. Miss Pross had lighted the lamp, but had put it aside in

+a corner, that they might enjoy the fire-light undisturbed. Little Lucie

+sat by her grandfather with her hands clasped through his arm: and he,

+in a tone not rising much above a whisper, began to tell her a story of

+a great and powerful Fairy who had opened a prison-wall and let out

+a captive who had once done the Fairy a service. All was subdued and

+quiet, and Lucie was more at ease than she had been.

+

+"What is that?" she cried, all at once.

+

+"My dear!" said her father, stopping in his story, and laying his hand

+on hers, "command yourself. What a disordered state you are in! The

+least thing--nothing--startles you! _You_, your father's daughter!"

+

+"I thought, my father," said Lucie, excusing herself, with a pale face

+and in a faltering voice, "that I heard strange feet upon the stairs."

+

+"My love, the staircase is as still as Death."

+

+As he said the word, a blow was struck upon the door.

+

+"Oh father, father. What can this be! Hide Charles. Save him!"

+

+"My child," said the Doctor, rising, and laying his hand upon her

+shoulder, "I _have_ saved him. What weakness is this, my dear! Let me go

+to the door."

+

+He took the lamp in his hand, crossed the two intervening outer rooms,

+and opened it. A rude clattering of feet over the floor, and four rough

+men in red caps, armed with sabres and pistols, entered the room.

+

+"The Citizen Evremonde, called Darnay," said the first.

+

+"Who seeks him?" answered Darnay.

+

+"I seek him. We seek him. I know you, Evremonde; I saw you before the

+Tribunal to-day. You are again the prisoner of the Republic."

+

+The four surrounded him, where he stood with his wife and child clinging

+to him.

+

+"Tell me how and why am I again a prisoner?"

+

+"It is enough that you return straight to the Conciergerie, and will

+know to-morrow. You are summoned for to-morrow."

+

+Doctor Manette, whom this visitation had so turned into stone, that he

+stood with the lamp in his hand, as if he were a statue made to hold it,

+moved after these words were spoken, put the lamp down, and confronting

+the speaker, and taking him, not ungently, by the loose front of his red

+woollen shirt, said:

+

+"You know him, you have said. Do you know me?"

+

+"Yes, I know you, Citizen Doctor."

+

+"We all know you, Citizen Doctor," said the other three.

+

+He looked abstractedly from one to another, and said, in a lower voice,

+after a pause:

+

+"Will you answer his question to me then? How does this happen?"

+

+"Citizen Doctor," said the first, reluctantly, "he has been denounced to

+the Section of Saint Antoine. This citizen," pointing out the second who

+had entered, "is from Saint Antoine."

+

+The citizen here indicated nodded his head, and added:

+

+"He is accused by Saint Antoine."

+

+"Of what?" asked the Doctor.

+

+"Citizen Doctor," said the first, with his former reluctance, "ask no

+more. If the Republic demands sacrifices from you, without doubt you as

+a good patriot will be happy to make them. The Republic goes before all.

+The People is supreme. Evremonde, we are pressed."

+

+"One word," the Doctor entreated. "Will you tell me who denounced him?"

+

+"It is against rule," answered the first; "but you can ask Him of Saint

+Antoine here."

+

+The Doctor turned his eyes upon that man. Who moved uneasily on his

+feet, rubbed his beard a little, and at length said:

+

+"Well! Truly it is against rule. But he is denounced--and gravely--by

+the Citizen and Citizeness Defarge. And by one other."

+

+"What other?"

+

+"Do _you_ ask, Citizen Doctor?"

+

+"Yes."

+

+"Then," said he of Saint Antoine, with a strange look, "you will be

+answered to-morrow. Now, I am dumb!"

+

+

+

+

+VIII. A Hand at Cards

+

+

+Happily unconscious of the new calamity at home, Miss Pross threaded her

+way along the narrow streets and crossed the river by the bridge of the

+Pont-Neuf, reckoning in her mind the number of indispensable purchases

+she had to make. Mr. Cruncher, with the basket, walked at her side. They

+both looked to the right and to the left into most of the shops they

+passed, had a wary eye for all gregarious assemblages of people, and

+turned out of their road to avoid any very excited group of talkers. It

+was a raw evening, and the misty river, blurred to the eye with blazing

+lights and to the ear with harsh noises, showed where the barges were

+stationed in which the smiths worked, making guns for the Army of the

+Republic. Woe to the man who played tricks with _that_ Army, or got

+undeserved promotion in it! Better for him that his beard had never

+grown, for the National Razor shaved him close.

+

+Having purchased a few small articles of grocery, and a measure of oil

+for the lamp, Miss Pross bethought herself of the wine they wanted.

+After peeping into several wine-shops, she stopped at the sign of the

+Good Republican Brutus of Antiquity, not far from the National Palace,

+once (and twice) the Tuileries, where the aspect of things rather

+took her fancy. It had a quieter look than any other place of the same

+description they had passed, and, though red with patriotic caps, was

+not so red as the rest. Sounding Mr. Cruncher, and finding him of her

+opinion, Miss Pross resorted to the Good Republican Brutus of Antiquity,

+attended by her cavalier.

+

+Slightly observant of the smoky lights; of the people, pipe in mouth,

+playing with limp cards and yellow dominoes; of the one bare-breasted,

+bare-armed, soot-begrimed workman reading a journal aloud, and of

+the others listening to him; of the weapons worn, or laid aside to be

+resumed; of the two or three customers fallen forward asleep, who in the

+popular high-shouldered shaggy black spencer looked, in that attitude,

+like slumbering bears or dogs; the two outlandish customers approached

+the counter, and showed what they wanted.

+

+As their wine was measuring out, a man parted from another man in a

+corner, and rose to depart. In going, he had to face Miss Pross. No

+sooner did he face her, than Miss Pross uttered a scream, and clapped

+her hands.

+

+In a moment, the whole company were on their feet. That somebody was

+assassinated by somebody vindicating a difference of opinion was the

+likeliest occurrence. Everybody looked to see somebody fall, but only

+saw a man and a woman standing staring at each other; the man with all

+the outward aspect of a Frenchman and a thorough Republican; the woman,

+evidently English.

+

+What was said in this disappointing anti-climax, by the disciples of the

+Good Republican Brutus of Antiquity, except that it was something very

+voluble and loud, would have been as so much Hebrew or Chaldean to Miss

+Pross and her protector, though they had been all ears. But, they had no

+ears for anything in their surprise. For, it must be recorded, that

+not only was Miss Pross lost in amazement and agitation, but,

+Mr. Cruncher--though it seemed on his own separate and individual

+account--was in a state of the greatest wonder.

+

+"What is the matter?" said the man who had caused Miss Pross to scream;

+speaking in a vexed, abrupt voice (though in a low tone), and in

+English.

+

+"Oh, Solomon, dear Solomon!" cried Miss Pross, clapping her hands again.

+"After not setting eyes upon you or hearing of you for so long a time,

+do I find you here!"

+

+"Don't call me Solomon. Do you want to be the death of me?" asked the

+man, in a furtive, frightened way.

+

+"Brother, brother!" cried Miss Pross, bursting into tears. "Have I ever

+been so hard with you that you ask me such a cruel question?"

+

+"Then hold your meddlesome tongue," said Solomon, "and come out, if you

+want to speak to me. Pay for your wine, and come out. Who's this man?"

+

+Miss Pross, shaking her loving and dejected head at her by no means

+affectionate brother, said through her tears, "Mr. Cruncher."

+

+"Let him come out too," said Solomon. "Does he think me a ghost?"

+

+Apparently, Mr. Cruncher did, to judge from his looks. He said not a

+word, however, and Miss Pross, exploring the depths of her reticule

+through her tears with great difficulty paid for her wine. As she did

+so, Solomon turned to the followers of the Good Republican Brutus

+of Antiquity, and offered a few words of explanation in the French

+language, which caused them all to relapse into their former places and

+pursuits.

+

+"Now," said Solomon, stopping at the dark street corner, "what do you

+want?"

+

+"How dreadfully unkind in a brother nothing has ever turned my love away

+from!" cried Miss Pross, "to give me such a greeting, and show me no

+affection."

+

+"There. Confound it! There," said Solomon, making a dab at Miss Pross's

+lips with his own. "Now are you content?"

+

+Miss Pross only shook her head and wept in silence.

+

+"If you expect me to be surprised," said her brother Solomon, "I am not

+surprised; I knew you were here; I know of most people who are here. If

+you really don't want to endanger my existence--which I half believe you

+do--go your ways as soon as possible, and let me go mine. I am busy. I

+am an official."

+

+"My English brother Solomon," mourned Miss Pross, casting up her

+tear-fraught eyes, "that had the makings in him of one of the best and

+greatest of men in his native country, an official among foreigners, and

+such foreigners! I would almost sooner have seen the dear boy lying in

+his--"

+

+"I said so!" cried her brother, interrupting. "I knew it. You want to be

+the death of me. I shall be rendered Suspected, by my own sister. Just

+as I am getting on!"

+

+"The gracious and merciful Heavens forbid!" cried Miss Pross. "Far

+rather would I never see you again, dear Solomon, though I have ever

+loved you truly, and ever shall. Say but one affectionate word to me,

+and tell me there is nothing angry or estranged between us, and I will

+detain you no longer."

+

+Good Miss Pross! As if the estrangement between them had come of any

+culpability of hers. As if Mr. Lorry had not known it for a fact, years

+ago, in the quiet corner in Soho, that this precious brother had spent

+her money and left her!

+

+He was saying the affectionate word, however, with a far more grudging

+condescension and patronage than he could have shown if their relative

+merits and positions had been reversed (which is invariably the case,

+all the world over), when Mr. Cruncher, touching him on the shoulder,

+hoarsely and unexpectedly interposed with the following singular

+question:

+

+"I say! Might I ask the favour? As to whether your name is John Solomon,

+or Solomon John?"

+

+The official turned towards him with sudden distrust. He had not

+previously uttered a word.

+

+"Come!" said Mr. Cruncher. "Speak out, you know." (Which, by the way,

+was more than he could do himself.) "John Solomon, or Solomon John? She

+calls you Solomon, and she must know, being your sister. And _I_ know

+you're John, you know. Which of the two goes first? And regarding that

+name of Pross, likewise. That warn't your name over the water."

+

+"What do you mean?"

+

+"Well, I don't know all I mean, for I can't call to mind what your name

+was, over the water."

+

+"No?"

+

+"No. But I'll swear it was a name of two syllables."

+

+"Indeed?"

+

+"Yes. T'other one's was one syllable. I know you. You was a spy--witness

+at the Bailey. What, in the name of the Father of Lies, own father to

+yourself, was you called at that time?"

+

+"Barsad," said another voice, striking in.

+

+"That's the name for a thousand pound!" cried Jerry.

+

+The speaker who struck in, was Sydney Carton. He had his hands behind

+him under the skirts of his riding-coat, and he stood at Mr. Cruncher's

+elbow as negligently as he might have stood at the Old Bailey itself.

+

+"Don't be alarmed, my dear Miss Pross. I arrived at Mr. Lorry's, to his

+surprise, yesterday evening; we agreed that I would not present myself

+elsewhere until all was well, or unless I could be useful; I present

+myself here, to beg a little talk with your brother. I wish you had a

+better employed brother than Mr. Barsad. I wish for your sake Mr. Barsad

+was not a Sheep of the Prisons."

+

+Sheep was a cant word of the time for a spy, under the gaolers. The spy,

+who was pale, turned paler, and asked him how he dared--

+

+"I'll tell you," said Sydney. "I lighted on you, Mr. Barsad, coming out

+of the prison of the Conciergerie while I was contemplating the walls,

+an hour or more ago. You have a face to be remembered, and I remember

+faces well. Made curious by seeing you in that connection, and having

+a reason, to which you are no stranger, for associating you with

+the misfortunes of a friend now very unfortunate, I walked in your

+direction. I walked into the wine-shop here, close after you, and

+sat near you. I had no difficulty in deducing from your unreserved

+conversation, and the rumour openly going about among your admirers, the

+nature of your calling. And gradually, what I had done at random, seemed

+to shape itself into a purpose, Mr. Barsad."

+

+"What purpose?" the spy asked.

+

+"It would be troublesome, and might be dangerous, to explain in the

+street. Could you favour me, in confidence, with some minutes of your

+company--at the office of Tellson's Bank, for instance?"

+

+"Under a threat?"

+

+"Oh! Did I say that?"

+

+"Then, why should I go there?"

+

+"Really, Mr. Barsad, I can't say, if you can't."

+

+"Do you mean that you won't say, sir?" the spy irresolutely asked.

+

+"You apprehend me very clearly, Mr. Barsad. I won't."

+

+Carton's negligent recklessness of manner came powerfully in aid of his

+quickness and skill, in such a business as he had in his secret mind,

+and with such a man as he had to do with. His practised eye saw it, and

+made the most of it.

+

+"Now, I told you so," said the spy, casting a reproachful look at his

+sister; "if any trouble comes of this, it's your doing."

+

+"Come, come, Mr. Barsad!" exclaimed Sydney. "Don't be ungrateful.

+But for my great respect for your sister, I might not have led up so

+pleasantly to a little proposal that I wish to make for our mutual

+satisfaction. Do you go with me to the Bank?"

+

+"I'll hear what you have got to say. Yes, I'll go with you."

+

+"I propose that we first conduct your sister safely to the corner of her

+own street. Let me take your arm, Miss Pross. This is not a good city,

+at this time, for you to be out in, unprotected; and as your escort

+knows Mr. Barsad, I will invite him to Mr. Lorry's with us. Are we

+ready? Come then!"

+

+Miss Pross recalled soon afterwards, and to the end of her life

+remembered, that as she pressed her hands on Sydney's arm and looked up

+in his face, imploring him to do no hurt to Solomon, there was a braced

+purpose in the arm and a kind of inspiration in the eyes, which not only

+contradicted his light manner, but changed and raised the man. She was

+too much occupied then with fears for the brother who so little deserved

+her affection, and with Sydney's friendly reassurances, adequately to

+heed what she observed.

+

+They left her at the corner of the street, and Carton led the way to Mr.

+Lorry's, which was within a few minutes' walk. John Barsad, or Solomon

+Pross, walked at his side.

+

+Mr. Lorry had just finished his dinner, and was sitting before a cheery

+little log or two of fire--perhaps looking into their blaze for the

+picture of that younger elderly gentleman from Tellson's, who had looked

+into the red coals at the Royal George at Dover, now a good many years

+ago. He turned his head as they entered, and showed the surprise with

+which he saw a stranger.

+

+"Miss Pross's brother, sir," said Sydney. "Mr. Barsad."

+

+"Barsad?" repeated the old gentleman, "Barsad? I have an association

+with the name--and with the face."

+

+"I told you you had a remarkable face, Mr. Barsad," observed Carton,

+coolly. "Pray sit down."

+

+As he took a chair himself, he supplied the link that Mr. Lorry wanted,

+by saying to him with a frown, "Witness at that trial." Mr. Lorry

+immediately remembered, and regarded his new visitor with an undisguised

+look of abhorrence.

+

+"Mr. Barsad has been recognised by Miss Pross as the affectionate

+brother you have heard of," said Sydney, "and has acknowledged the

+relationship. I pass to worse news. Darnay has been arrested again."

+

+Struck with consternation, the old gentleman exclaimed, "What do you

+tell me! I left him safe and free within these two hours, and am about

+to return to him!"

+

+"Arrested for all that. When was it done, Mr. Barsad?"

+

+"Just now, if at all."

+

+"Mr. Barsad is the best authority possible, sir," said Sydney, "and I

+have it from Mr. Barsad's communication to a friend and brother Sheep

+over a bottle of wine, that the arrest has taken place. He left the

+messengers at the gate, and saw them admitted by the porter. There is no

+earthly doubt that he is retaken."

+

+Mr. Lorry's business eye read in the speaker's face that it was loss

+of time to dwell upon the point. Confused, but sensible that something

+might depend on his presence of mind, he commanded himself, and was

+silently attentive.

+

+"Now, I trust," said Sydney to him, "that the name and influence of

+Doctor Manette may stand him in as good stead to-morrow--you said he

+would be before the Tribunal again to-morrow, Mr. Barsad?--"

+

+"Yes; I believe so."

+

+"--In as good stead to-morrow as to-day. But it may not be so. I own

+to you, I am shaken, Mr. Lorry, by Doctor Manette's not having had the

+power to prevent this arrest."

+

+"He may not have known of it beforehand," said Mr. Lorry.

+

+"But that very circumstance would be alarming, when we remember how

+identified he is with his son-in-law."

+

+"That's true," Mr. Lorry acknowledged, with his troubled hand at his

+chin, and his troubled eyes on Carton.

+

+"In short," said Sydney, "this is a desperate time, when desperate games

+are played for desperate stakes. Let the Doctor play the winning game; I

+will play the losing one. No man's life here is worth purchase. Any one

+carried home by the people to-day, may be condemned tomorrow. Now, the

+stake I have resolved to play for, in case of the worst, is a friend

+in the Conciergerie. And the friend I purpose to myself to win, is Mr.

+Barsad."

+

+"You need have good cards, sir," said the spy.

+

+"I'll run them over. I'll see what I hold,--Mr. Lorry, you know what a

+brute I am; I wish you'd give me a little brandy."

+

+It was put before him, and he drank off a glassful--drank off another

+glassful--pushed the bottle thoughtfully away.

+

+"Mr. Barsad," he went on, in the tone of one who really was looking

+over a hand at cards: "Sheep of the prisons, emissary of Republican

+committees, now turnkey, now prisoner, always spy and secret informer,

+so much the more valuable here for being English that an Englishman

+is less open to suspicion of subornation in those characters than a

+Frenchman, represents himself to his employers under a false name.

+That's a very good card. Mr. Barsad, now in the employ of the republican

+French government, was formerly in the employ of the aristocratic

+English government, the enemy of France and freedom. That's an excellent

+card. Inference clear as day in this region of suspicion, that Mr.

+Barsad, still in the pay of the aristocratic English government, is the

+spy of Pitt, the treacherous foe of the Republic crouching in its bosom,

+the English traitor and agent of all mischief so much spoken of and so

+difficult to find. That's a card not to be beaten. Have you followed my

+hand, Mr. Barsad?"

+

+"Not to understand your play," returned the spy, somewhat uneasily.

+

+"I play my Ace, Denunciation of Mr. Barsad to the nearest Section

+Committee. Look over your hand, Mr. Barsad, and see what you have. Don't

+hurry."

+

+He drew the bottle near, poured out another glassful of brandy, and

+drank it off. He saw that the spy was fearful of his drinking himself

+into a fit state for the immediate denunciation of him. Seeing it, he

+poured out and drank another glassful.

+

+"Look over your hand carefully, Mr. Barsad. Take time."

+

+It was a poorer hand than he suspected. Mr. Barsad saw losing cards

+in it that Sydney Carton knew nothing of. Thrown out of his honourable

+employment in England, through too much unsuccessful hard swearing

+there--not because he was not wanted there; our English reasons for

+vaunting our superiority to secrecy and spies are of very modern

+date--he knew that he had crossed the Channel, and accepted service in

+France: first, as a tempter and an eavesdropper among his own countrymen

+there: gradually, as a tempter and an eavesdropper among the natives. He

+knew that under the overthrown government he had been a spy upon Saint

+Antoine and Defarge's wine-shop; had received from the watchful police

+such heads of information concerning Doctor Manette's imprisonment,

+release, and history, as should serve him for an introduction to

+familiar conversation with the Defarges; and tried them on Madame

+Defarge, and had broken down with them signally. He always remembered

+with fear and trembling, that that terrible woman had knitted when he

+talked with her, and had looked ominously at him as her fingers moved.

+He had since seen her, in the Section of Saint Antoine, over and over

+again produce her knitted registers, and denounce people whose lives the

+guillotine then surely swallowed up. He knew, as every one employed as

+he was did, that he was never safe; that flight was impossible; that

+he was tied fast under the shadow of the axe; and that in spite of

+his utmost tergiversation and treachery in furtherance of the reigning

+terror, a word might bring it down upon him. Once denounced, and on such

+grave grounds as had just now been suggested to his mind, he foresaw

+that the dreadful woman of whose unrelenting character he had seen many

+proofs, would produce against him that fatal register, and would quash

+his last chance of life. Besides that all secret men are men soon

+terrified, here were surely cards enough of one black suit, to justify

+the holder in growing rather livid as he turned them over.

+

+"You scarcely seem to like your hand," said Sydney, with the greatest

+composure. "Do you play?"

+

+"I think, sir," said the spy, in the meanest manner, as he turned to Mr.

+Lorry, "I may appeal to a gentleman of your years and benevolence, to

+put it to this other gentleman, so much your junior, whether he can

+under any circumstances reconcile it to his station to play that Ace

+of which he has spoken. I admit that _I_ am a spy, and that it is

+considered a discreditable station--though it must be filled by

+somebody; but this gentleman is no spy, and why should he so demean

+himself as to make himself one?"

+

+"I play my Ace, Mr. Barsad," said Carton, taking the answer on himself,

+and looking at his watch, "without any scruple, in a very few minutes."

+

+"I should have hoped, gentlemen both," said the spy, always striving to

+hook Mr. Lorry into the discussion, "that your respect for my sister--"

+

+"I could not better testify my respect for your sister than by finally

+relieving her of her brother," said Sydney Carton.

+

+"You think not, sir?"

+

+"I have thoroughly made up my mind about it."

+

+The smooth manner of the spy, curiously in dissonance with his

+ostentatiously rough dress, and probably with his usual demeanour,

+received such a check from the inscrutability of Carton,--who was a

+mystery to wiser and honester men than he,--that it faltered here and

+failed him. While he was at a loss, Carton said, resuming his former air

+of contemplating cards:

+

+"And indeed, now I think again, I have a strong impression that I

+have another good card here, not yet enumerated. That friend and

+fellow-Sheep, who spoke of himself as pasturing in the country prisons;

+who was he?"

+

+"French. You don't know him," said the spy, quickly.

+

+"French, eh?" repeated Carton, musing, and not appearing to notice him

+at all, though he echoed his word. "Well; he may be."

+

+"Is, I assure you," said the spy; "though it's not important."

+

+"Though it's not important," repeated Carton, in the same mechanical

+way--"though it's not important--No, it's not important. No. Yet I know

+the face."

+

+"I think not. I am sure not. It can't be," said the spy.

+

+"It-can't-be," muttered Sydney Carton, retrospectively, and idling his

+glass (which fortunately was a small one) again. "Can't-be. Spoke good

+French. Yet like a foreigner, I thought?"

+

+"Provincial," said the spy.

+

+"No. Foreign!" cried Carton, striking his open hand on the table, as a

+light broke clearly on his mind. "Cly! Disguised, but the same man. We

+had that man before us at the Old Bailey."

+

+"Now, there you are hasty, sir," said Barsad, with a smile that gave his

+aquiline nose an extra inclination to one side; "there you really give

+me an advantage over you. Cly (who I will unreservedly admit, at this

+distance of time, was a partner of mine) has been dead several years. I

+attended him in his last illness. He was buried in London, at the church

+of Saint Pancras-in-the-Fields. His unpopularity with the blackguard

+multitude at the moment prevented my following his remains, but I helped

+to lay him in his coffin."

+

+Here, Mr. Lorry became aware, from where he sat, of a most remarkable

+goblin shadow on the wall. Tracing it to its source, he discovered it

+to be caused by a sudden extraordinary rising and stiffening of all the

+risen and stiff hair on Mr. Cruncher's head.

+

+"Let us be reasonable," said the spy, "and let us be fair. To show you

+how mistaken you are, and what an unfounded assumption yours is, I will

+lay before you a certificate of Cly's burial, which I happened to have

+carried in my pocket-book," with a hurried hand he produced and opened

+it, "ever since. There it is. Oh, look at it, look at it! You may take

+it in your hand; it's no forgery."

+

+Here, Mr. Lorry perceived the reflection on the wall to elongate, and

+Mr. Cruncher rose and stepped forward. His hair could not have been more

+violently on end, if it had been that moment dressed by the Cow with the

+crumpled horn in the house that Jack built.

+

+Unseen by the spy, Mr. Cruncher stood at his side, and touched him on

+the shoulder like a ghostly bailiff.

+

+"That there Roger Cly, master," said Mr. Cruncher, with a taciturn and

+iron-bound visage. "So _you_ put him in his coffin?"

+

+"I did."

+

+"Who took him out of it?"

+

+Barsad leaned back in his chair, and stammered, "What do you mean?"

+

+"I mean," said Mr. Cruncher, "that he warn't never in it. No! Not he!

+I'll have my head took off, if he was ever in it."

+

+The spy looked round at the two gentlemen; they both looked in

+unspeakable astonishment at Jerry.

+

+"I tell you," said Jerry, "that you buried paving-stones and earth in

+that there coffin. Don't go and tell me that you buried Cly. It was a

+take in. Me and two more knows it."

+

+"How do you know it?"

+

+"What's that to you? Ecod!" growled Mr. Cruncher, "it's you I have got a

+old grudge again, is it, with your shameful impositions upon tradesmen!

+I'd catch hold of your throat and choke you for half a guinea."

+

+Sydney Carton, who, with Mr. Lorry, had been lost in amazement at

+this turn of the business, here requested Mr. Cruncher to moderate and

+explain himself.

+

+"At another time, sir," he returned, evasively, "the present time is

+ill-conwenient for explainin'. What I stand to, is, that he knows well

+wot that there Cly was never in that there coffin. Let him say he was,

+in so much as a word of one syllable, and I'll either catch hold of his

+throat and choke him for half a guinea;" Mr. Cruncher dwelt upon this as

+quite a liberal offer; "or I'll out and announce him."

+

+"Humph! I see one thing," said Carton. "I hold another card, Mr. Barsad.

+Impossible, here in raging Paris, with Suspicion filling the air, for

+you to outlive denunciation, when you are in communication with another

+aristocratic spy of the same antecedents as yourself, who, moreover, has

+the mystery about him of having feigned death and come to life again!

+A plot in the prisons, of the foreigner against the Republic. A strong

+card--a certain Guillotine card! Do you play?"

+

+"No!" returned the spy. "I throw up. I confess that we were so unpopular

+with the outrageous mob, that I only got away from England at the risk

+of being ducked to death, and that Cly was so ferreted up and down, that

+he never would have got away at all but for that sham. Though how this

+man knows it was a sham, is a wonder of wonders to me."

+

+"Never you trouble your head about this man," retorted the contentious

+Mr. Cruncher; "you'll have trouble enough with giving your attention to

+that gentleman. And look here! Once more!"--Mr. Cruncher could not

+be restrained from making rather an ostentatious parade of his

+liberality--"I'd catch hold of your throat and choke you for half a

+guinea."

+

+The Sheep of the prisons turned from him to Sydney Carton, and said,

+with more decision, "It has come to a point. I go on duty soon, and

+can't overstay my time. You told me you had a proposal; what is it?

+Now, it is of no use asking too much of me. Ask me to do anything in my

+office, putting my head in great extra danger, and I had better trust my

+life to the chances of a refusal than the chances of consent. In short,

+I should make that choice. You talk of desperation. We are all desperate

+here. Remember! I may denounce you if I think proper, and I can swear my

+way through stone walls, and so can others. Now, what do you want with

+me?"

+

+"Not very much. You are a turnkey at the Conciergerie?"

+

+"I tell you once for all, there is no such thing as an escape possible,"

+said the spy, firmly.

+

+"Why need you tell me what I have not asked? You are a turnkey at the

+Conciergerie?"

+

+"I am sometimes."

+

+"You can be when you choose?"

+

+"I can pass in and out when I choose."

+

+Sydney Carton filled another glass with brandy, poured it slowly out

+upon the hearth, and watched it as it dropped. It being all spent, he

+said, rising:

+

+"So far, we have spoken before these two, because it was as well that

+the merits of the cards should not rest solely between you and me. Come

+into the dark room here, and let us have one final word alone."

+

+

+

+

+IX. The Game Made

+

+

+While Sydney Carton and the Sheep of the prisons were in the adjoining

+dark room, speaking so low that not a sound was heard, Mr. Lorry looked

+at Jerry in considerable doubt and mistrust. That honest tradesman's

+manner of receiving the look, did not inspire confidence; he changed the

+leg on which he rested, as often as if he had fifty of those limbs,

+and were trying them all; he examined his finger-nails with a very

+questionable closeness of attention; and whenever Mr. Lorry's eye caught

+his, he was taken with that peculiar kind of short cough requiring the

+hollow of a hand before it, which is seldom, if ever, known to be an

+infirmity attendant on perfect openness of character.

+

+"Jerry," said Mr. Lorry. "Come here."

+

+Mr. Cruncher came forward sideways, with one of his shoulders in advance

+of him.

+

+"What have you been, besides a messenger?"

+

+After some cogitation, accompanied with an intent look at his patron,

+Mr. Cruncher conceived the luminous idea of replying, "Agicultooral

+character."

+

+"My mind misgives me much," said Mr. Lorry, angrily shaking a forefinger

+at him, "that you have used the respectable and great house of Tellson's

+as a blind, and that you have had an unlawful occupation of an infamous

+description. If you have, don't expect me to befriend you when you

+get back to England. If you have, don't expect me to keep your secret.

+Tellson's shall not be imposed upon."

+

+"I hope, sir," pleaded the abashed Mr. Cruncher, "that a gentleman like

+yourself wot I've had the honour of odd jobbing till I'm grey at it,

+would think twice about harming of me, even if it wos so--I don't say it

+is, but even if it wos. And which it is to be took into account that if

+it wos, it wouldn't, even then, be all o' one side. There'd be two sides

+to it. There might be medical doctors at the present hour, a picking

+up their guineas where a honest tradesman don't pick up his

+fardens--fardens! no, nor yet his half fardens--half fardens! no, nor

+yet his quarter--a banking away like smoke at Tellson's, and a cocking

+their medical eyes at that tradesman on the sly, a going in and going

+out to their own carriages--ah! equally like smoke, if not more so.

+Well, that 'ud be imposing, too, on Tellson's. For you cannot sarse the

+goose and not the gander. And here's Mrs. Cruncher, or leastways wos

+in the Old England times, and would be to-morrow, if cause given,

+a floppin' again the business to that degree as is ruinating--stark

+ruinating! Whereas them medical doctors' wives don't flop--catch 'em at

+it! Or, if they flop, their floppings goes in favour of more patients,

+and how can you rightly have one without t'other? Then, wot with

+undertakers, and wot with parish clerks, and wot with sextons, and wot

+with private watchmen (all awaricious and all in it), a man wouldn't get

+much by it, even if it wos so. And wot little a man did get, would never

+prosper with him, Mr. Lorry. He'd never have no good of it; he'd want

+all along to be out of the line, if he, could see his way out, being

+once in--even if it wos so."

+

+"Ugh!" cried Mr. Lorry, rather relenting, nevertheless, "I am shocked at

+the sight of you."

+

+"Now, what I would humbly offer to you, sir," pursued Mr. Cruncher,

+"even if it wos so, which I don't say it is--"

+

+"Don't prevaricate," said Mr. Lorry.

+

+"No, I will _not_, sir," returned Mr. Crunches as if nothing were

+further from his thoughts or practice--"which I don't say it is--wot I

+would humbly offer to you, sir, would be this. Upon that there stool, at

+that there Bar, sets that there boy of mine, brought up and growed up to

+be a man, wot will errand you, message you, general-light-job you, till

+your heels is where your head is, if such should be your wishes. If it

+wos so, which I still don't say it is (for I will not prewaricate to

+you, sir), let that there boy keep his father's place, and take care of

+his mother; don't blow upon that boy's father--do not do it, sir--and

+let that father go into the line of the reg'lar diggin', and make amends

+for what he would have undug--if it wos so--by diggin' of 'em in with

+a will, and with conwictions respectin' the futur' keepin' of 'em safe.

+That, Mr. Lorry," said Mr. Cruncher, wiping his forehead with his

+arm, as an announcement that he had arrived at the peroration of his

+discourse, "is wot I would respectfully offer to you, sir. A man don't

+see all this here a goin' on dreadful round him, in the way of Subjects

+without heads, dear me, plentiful enough fur to bring the price down

+to porterage and hardly that, without havin' his serious thoughts of

+things. And these here would be mine, if it wos so, entreatin' of you

+fur to bear in mind that wot I said just now, I up and said in the good

+cause when I might have kep' it back."

+

+"That at least is true," said Mr. Lorry. "Say no more now. It may be

+that I shall yet stand your friend, if you deserve it, and repent in

+action--not in words. I want no more words."

+

+Mr. Cruncher knuckled his forehead, as Sydney Carton and the spy

+returned from the dark room. "Adieu, Mr. Barsad," said the former; "our

+arrangement thus made, you have nothing to fear from me."

+

+He sat down in a chair on the hearth, over against Mr. Lorry. When they

+were alone, Mr. Lorry asked him what he had done?

+

+"Not much. If it should go ill with the prisoner, I have ensured access

+to him, once."

+

+Mr. Lorry's countenance fell.

+

+"It is all I could do," said Carton. "To propose too much, would be

+to put this man's head under the axe, and, as he himself said, nothing

+worse could happen to him if he were denounced. It was obviously the

+weakness of the position. There is no help for it."

+

+"But access to him," said Mr. Lorry, "if it should go ill before the

+Tribunal, will not save him."

+

+"I never said it would."

+

+Mr. Lorry's eyes gradually sought the fire; his sympathy with his

+darling, and the heavy disappointment of his second arrest, gradually

+weakened them; he was an old man now, overborne with anxiety of late,

+and his tears fell.

+

+"You are a good man and a true friend," said Carton, in an altered

+voice. "Forgive me if I notice that you are affected. I could not see my

+father weep, and sit by, careless. And I could not respect your

+sorrow more, if you were my father. You are free from that misfortune,

+however."

+

+Though he said the last words, with a slip into his usual manner, there

+was a true feeling and respect both in his tone and in his touch,

+that Mr. Lorry, who had never seen the better side of him, was wholly

+unprepared for. He gave him his hand, and Carton gently pressed it.

+

+"To return to poor Darnay," said Carton. "Don't tell Her of this

+interview, or this arrangement. It would not enable Her to go to see

+him. She might think it was contrived, in case of the worse, to convey

+to him the means of anticipating the sentence."

+

+Mr. Lorry had not thought of that, and he looked quickly at Carton to

+see if it were in his mind. It seemed to be; he returned the look, and

+evidently understood it.

+

+"She might think a thousand things," Carton said, "and any of them would

+only add to her trouble. Don't speak of me to her. As I said to you when

+I first came, I had better not see her. I can put my hand out, to do any

+little helpful work for her that my hand can find to do, without that.

+You are going to her, I hope? She must be very desolate to-night."

+

+"I am going now, directly."

+

+"I am glad of that. She has such a strong attachment to you and reliance

+on you. How does she look?"

+

+"Anxious and unhappy, but very beautiful."

+

+"Ah!"

+

+It was a long, grieving sound, like a sigh--almost like a sob. It

+attracted Mr. Lorry's eyes to Carton's face, which was turned to the

+fire. A light, or a shade (the old gentleman could not have said which),

+passed from it as swiftly as a change will sweep over a hill-side on a

+wild bright day, and he lifted his foot to put back one of the little

+flaming logs, which was tumbling forward. He wore the white riding-coat

+and top-boots, then in vogue, and the light of the fire touching their

+light surfaces made him look very pale, with his long brown hair,

+all untrimmed, hanging loose about him. His indifference to fire was

+sufficiently remarkable to elicit a word of remonstrance from Mr. Lorry;

+his boot was still upon the hot embers of the flaming log, when it had

+broken under the weight of his foot.

+

+"I forgot it," he said.

+

+Mr. Lorry's eyes were again attracted to his face. Taking note of the

+wasted air which clouded the naturally handsome features, and having

+the expression of prisoners' faces fresh in his mind, he was strongly

+reminded of that expression.

+

+"And your duties here have drawn to an end, sir?" said Carton, turning

+to him.

+

+"Yes. As I was telling you last night when Lucie came in so

+unexpectedly, I have at length done all that I can do here. I hoped to

+have left them in perfect safety, and then to have quitted Paris. I have

+my Leave to Pass. I was ready to go."

+

+They were both silent.

+

+"Yours is a long life to look back upon, sir?" said Carton, wistfully.

+

+"I am in my seventy-eighth year."

+

+"You have been useful all your life; steadily and constantly occupied;

+trusted, respected, and looked up to?"

+

+"I have been a man of business, ever since I have been a man. Indeed, I

+may say that I was a man of business when a boy."

+

+"See what a place you fill at seventy-eight. How many people will miss

+you when you leave it empty!"

+

+"A solitary old bachelor," answered Mr. Lorry, shaking his head. "There

+is nobody to weep for me."

+

+"How can you say that? Wouldn't She weep for you? Wouldn't her child?"

+

+"Yes, yes, thank God. I didn't quite mean what I said."

+

+"It _is_ a thing to thank God for; is it not?"

+

+"Surely, surely."

+

+"If you could say, with truth, to your own solitary heart, to-night,

+'I have secured to myself the love and attachment, the gratitude or

+respect, of no human creature; I have won myself a tender place in no

+regard; I have done nothing good or serviceable to be remembered by!'

+your seventy-eight years would be seventy-eight heavy curses; would they

+not?"

+

+"You say truly, Mr. Carton; I think they would be."

+

+Sydney turned his eyes again upon the fire, and, after a silence of a

+few moments, said:

+

+"I should like to ask you:--Does your childhood seem far off? Do the

+days when you sat at your mother's knee, seem days of very long ago?"

+

+Responding to his softened manner, Mr. Lorry answered:

+

+"Twenty years back, yes; at this time of my life, no. For, as I draw

+closer and closer to the end, I travel in the circle, nearer and

+nearer to the beginning. It seems to be one of the kind smoothings and

+preparings of the way. My heart is touched now, by many remembrances

+that had long fallen asleep, of my pretty young mother (and I so old!),

+and by many associations of the days when what we call the World was not

+so real with me, and my faults were not confirmed in me."

+

+"I understand the feeling!" exclaimed Carton, with a bright flush. "And

+you are the better for it?"

+

+"I hope so."

+

+Carton terminated the conversation here, by rising to help him on with

+his outer coat; "But you," said Mr. Lorry, reverting to the theme, "you

+are young."

+

+"Yes," said Carton. "I am not old, but my young way was never the way to

+age. Enough of me."

+

+"And of me, I am sure," said Mr. Lorry. "Are you going out?"

+

+"I'll walk with you to her gate. You know my vagabond and restless

+habits. If I should prowl about the streets a long time, don't be

+uneasy; I shall reappear in the morning. You go to the Court to-morrow?"

+

+"Yes, unhappily."

+

+"I shall be there, but only as one of the crowd. My Spy will find a

+place for me. Take my arm, sir."

+

+Mr. Lorry did so, and they went down-stairs and out in the streets. A

+few minutes brought them to Mr. Lorry's destination. Carton left him

+there; but lingered at a little distance, and turned back to the gate

+again when it was shut, and touched it. He had heard of her going to

+the prison every day. "She came out here," he said, looking about him,

+"turned this way, must have trod on these stones often. Let me follow in

+her steps."

+

+It was ten o'clock at night when he stood before the prison of La Force,

+where she had stood hundreds of times. A little wood-sawyer, having

+closed his shop, was smoking his pipe at his shop-door.

+

+"Good night, citizen," said Sydney Carton, pausing in going by; for, the

+man eyed him inquisitively.

+

+"Good night, citizen."

+

+"How goes the Republic?"

+

+"You mean the Guillotine. Not ill. Sixty-three to-day. We shall mount

+to a hundred soon. Samson and his men complain sometimes, of being

+exhausted. Ha, ha, ha! He is so droll, that Samson. Such a Barber!"

+

+"Do you often go to see him--"

+

+"Shave? Always. Every day. What a barber! You have seen him at work?"

+

+"Never."

+

+"Go and see him when he has a good batch. Figure this to yourself,

+citizen; he shaved the sixty-three to-day, in less than two pipes! Less

+than two pipes. Word of honour!"

+

+As the grinning little man held out the pipe he was smoking, to explain

+how he timed the executioner, Carton was so sensible of a rising desire

+to strike the life out of him, that he turned away.

+

+"But you are not English," said the wood-sawyer, "though you wear

+English dress?"

+

+"Yes," said Carton, pausing again, and answering over his shoulder.

+

+"You speak like a Frenchman."

+

+"I am an old student here."

+

+"Aha, a perfect Frenchman! Good night, Englishman."

+

+"Good night, citizen."

+

+"But go and see that droll dog," the little man persisted, calling after

+him. "And take a pipe with you!"

+

+Sydney had not gone far out of sight, when he stopped in the middle of

+the street under a glimmering lamp, and wrote with his pencil on a scrap

+of paper. Then, traversing with the decided step of one who remembered

+the way well, several dark and dirty streets--much dirtier than usual,

+for the best public thoroughfares remained uncleansed in those times of

+terror--he stopped at a chemist's shop, which the owner was closing with

+his own hands. A small, dim, crooked shop, kept in a tortuous, up-hill

+thoroughfare, by a small, dim, crooked man.

+

+Giving this citizen, too, good night, as he confronted him at his

+counter, he laid the scrap of paper before him. "Whew!" the chemist

+whistled softly, as he read it. "Hi! hi! hi!"

+

+Sydney Carton took no heed, and the chemist said:

+

+"For you, citizen?"

+

+"For me."

+

+"You will be careful to keep them separate, citizen? You know the

+consequences of mixing them?"

+

+"Perfectly."

+

+Certain small packets were made and given to him. He put them, one by

+one, in the breast of his inner coat, counted out the money for them,

+and deliberately left the shop. "There is nothing more to do," said he,

+glancing upward at the moon, "until to-morrow. I can't sleep."

+

+It was not a reckless manner, the manner in which he said these words

+aloud under the fast-sailing clouds, nor was it more expressive of

+negligence than defiance. It was the settled manner of a tired man, who

+had wandered and struggled and got lost, but who at length struck into

+his road and saw its end.

+

+Long ago, when he had been famous among his earliest competitors as a

+youth of great promise, he had followed his father to the grave. His

+mother had died, years before. These solemn words, which had been

+read at his father's grave, arose in his mind as he went down the dark

+streets, among the heavy shadows, with the moon and the clouds sailing

+on high above him. "I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord:

+he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and

+whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die."

+

+In a city dominated by the axe, alone at night, with natural sorrow

+rising in him for the sixty-three who had been that day put to death,

+and for to-morrow's victims then awaiting their doom in the prisons,

+and still of to-morrow's and to-morrow's, the chain of association that

+brought the words home, like a rusty old ship's anchor from the deep,

+might have been easily found. He did not seek it, but repeated them and

+went on.

+

+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.

+

+Few coaches were abroad, for riders in coaches were liable to be

+suspected, and gentility hid its head in red nightcaps, and put on heavy

+shoes, and trudged. But, the theatres were all well filled, and the

+people poured cheerfully out as he passed, and went chatting home. At

+one of the theatre doors, there was a little girl with a mother, looking

+for a way across the street through the mud. He carried the child over,

+and before the timid arm was loosed from his neck asked her for a kiss.

+

+"I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth

+in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and

+believeth in me, shall never die."

+

+Now, that the streets were quiet, and the night wore on, the words

+were in the echoes of his feet, and were in the air. Perfectly calm

+and steady, he sometimes repeated them to himself as he walked; but, he

+heard them always.

+

+The night wore out, and, as he stood upon the bridge listening to the

+water as it splashed the river-walls of the Island of Paris, where the

+picturesque confusion of houses and cathedral shone bright in the light

+of the moon, the day came coldly, looking like a dead face out of the

+sky. Then, the night, with the moon and the stars, turned pale and died,

+and for a little while it seemed as if Creation were delivered over to

+Death's dominion.

+

+But, the glorious sun, rising, seemed to strike those words, that burden

+of the night, straight and warm to his heart in its long bright rays.

+And looking along them, with reverently shaded eyes, a bridge of light

+appeared to span the air between him and the sun, while the river

+sparkled under it.

+

+The strong tide, so swift, so deep, and certain, was like a congenial

+friend, in the morning stillness. He walked by the stream, far from the

+houses, and in the light and warmth of the sun fell asleep on the

+bank. When he awoke and was afoot again, he lingered there yet a little

+longer, watching an eddy that turned and turned purposeless, until the

+stream absorbed it, and carried it on to the sea.--"Like me."

+

+A trading-boat, with a sail of the softened colour of a dead leaf, then

+glided into his view, floated by him, and died away. As its silent track

+in the water disappeared, the prayer that had broken up out of his heart

+for a merciful consideration of all his poor blindnesses and errors,

+ended in the words, "I am the resurrection and the life."

+

+Mr. Lorry was already out when he got back, and it was easy to surmise

+where the good old man was gone. Sydney Carton drank nothing but a

+little coffee, ate some bread, and, having washed and changed to refresh

+himself, went out to the place of trial.

+

+The court was all astir and a-buzz, when the black sheep--whom many fell

+away from in dread--pressed him into an obscure corner among the crowd.

+Mr. Lorry was there, and Doctor Manette was there. She was there,

+sitting beside her father.

+

+When her husband was brought in, she turned a look upon him, so

+sustaining, so encouraging, so full of admiring love and pitying

+tenderness, yet so courageous for his sake, that it called the healthy

+blood into his face, brightened his glance, and animated his heart. If

+there had been any eyes to notice the influence of her look, on Sydney

+Carton, it would have been seen to be the same influence exactly.

+

+Before that unjust Tribunal, there was little or no order of procedure,

+ensuring to any accused person any reasonable hearing. There could have

+been no such Revolution, if all laws, forms, and ceremonies, had not

+first been so monstrously abused, that the suicidal vengeance of the

+Revolution was to scatter them all to the winds.

+

+Every eye was turned to the jury. The same determined patriots and good

+republicans as yesterday and the day before, and to-morrow and the day

+after. Eager and prominent among them, one man with a craving face, and

+his fingers perpetually hovering about his lips, whose appearance

+gave great satisfaction to the spectators. A life-thirsting,

+cannibal-looking, bloody-minded juryman, the Jacques Three of St.

+Antoine. The whole jury, as a jury of dogs empannelled to try the deer.

+

+Every eye then turned to the five judges and the public prosecutor.

+No favourable leaning in that quarter to-day. A fell, uncompromising,

+murderous business-meaning there. Every eye then sought some other eye

+in the crowd, and gleamed at it approvingly; and heads nodded at one

+another, before bending forward with a strained attention.

+

+Charles Evremonde, called Darnay. Released yesterday. Reaccused and

+retaken yesterday. Indictment delivered to him last night. Suspected and

+Denounced enemy of the Republic, Aristocrat, one of a family of tyrants,

+one of a race proscribed, for that they had used their abolished

+privileges to the infamous oppression of the people. Charles Evremonde,

+called Darnay, in right of such proscription, absolutely Dead in Law.

+

+To this effect, in as few or fewer words, the Public Prosecutor.

+

+The President asked, was the Accused openly denounced or secretly?

+

+"Openly, President."

+

+"By whom?"

+

+"Three voices. Ernest Defarge, wine-vendor of St. Antoine."

+

+"Good."

+

+"Therese Defarge, his wife."

+

+"Good."

+

+"Alexandre Manette, physician."

+

+A great uproar took place in the court, and in the midst of it, Doctor

+Manette was seen, pale and trembling, standing where he had been seated.

+

+"President, I indignantly protest to you that this is a forgery and

+a fraud. You know the accused to be the husband of my daughter. My

+daughter, and those dear to her, are far dearer to me than my life. Who

+and where is the false conspirator who says that I denounce the husband

+of my child!"

+

+"Citizen Manette, be tranquil. To fail in submission to the authority of

+the Tribunal would be to put yourself out of Law. As to what is dearer

+to you than life, nothing can be so dear to a good citizen as the

+Republic."

+

+Loud acclamations hailed this rebuke. The President rang his bell, and

+with warmth resumed.

+

+"If the Republic should demand of you the sacrifice of your child

+herself, you would have no duty but to sacrifice her. Listen to what is

+to follow. In the meanwhile, be silent!"

+

+Frantic acclamations were again raised. Doctor Manette sat down, with

+his eyes looking around, and his lips trembling; his daughter drew

+closer to him. The craving man on the jury rubbed his hands together,

+and restored the usual hand to his mouth.

+

+Defarge was produced, when the court was quiet enough to admit of his

+being heard, and rapidly expounded the story of the imprisonment, and of

+his having been a mere boy in the Doctor's service, and of the release,

+and of the state of the prisoner when released and delivered to him.

+This short examination followed, for the court was quick with its work.

+

+"You did good service at the taking of the Bastille, citizen?"

+

+"I believe so."

+

+Here, an excited woman screeched from the crowd: "You were one of the

+best patriots there. Why not say so? You were a cannonier that day

+there, and you were among the first to enter the accursed fortress when

+it fell. Patriots, I speak the truth!"

+

+It was The Vengeance who, amidst the warm commendations of the audience,

+thus assisted the proceedings. The President rang his bell; but, The

+Vengeance, warming with encouragement, shrieked, "I defy that bell!"

+wherein she was likewise much commended.

+

+"Inform the Tribunal of what you did that day within the Bastille,

+citizen."

+

+"I knew," said Defarge, looking down at his wife, who stood at the

+bottom of the steps on which he was raised, looking steadily up at him;

+"I knew that this prisoner, of whom I speak, had been confined in a cell

+known as One Hundred and Five, North Tower. I knew it from himself. He

+knew himself by no other name than One Hundred and Five, North Tower,

+when he made shoes under my care. As I serve my gun that day, I resolve,

+when the place shall fall, to examine that cell. It falls. I mount to

+the cell, with a fellow-citizen who is one of the Jury, directed by a

+gaoler. I examine it, very closely. In a hole in the chimney, where a

+stone has been worked out and replaced, I find a written paper. This is

+that written paper. I have made it my business to examine some specimens

+of the writing of Doctor Manette. This is the writing of Doctor Manette.

+I confide this paper, in the writing of Doctor Manette, to the hands of

+the President."

+

+"Let it be read."

+

+In a dead silence and stillness--the prisoner under trial looking

+lovingly at his wife, his wife only looking from him to look with

+solicitude at her father, Doctor Manette keeping his eyes fixed on the

+reader, Madame Defarge never taking hers from the prisoner, Defarge

+never taking his from his feasting wife, and all the other eyes there

+intent upon the Doctor, who saw none of them--the paper was read, as

+follows.

+

+

+

+

+X. The Substance of the Shadow

+

+

+"I, Alexandre Manette, unfortunate physician, native of Beauvais, and

+afterwards resident in Paris, write this melancholy paper in my doleful

+cell in the Bastille, during the last month of the year, 1767. I write

+it at stolen intervals, under every difficulty. I design to secrete it

+in the wall of the chimney, where I have slowly and laboriously made a

+place of concealment for it. Some pitying hand may find it there, when I

+and my sorrows are dust.

+

+"These words are formed by the rusty iron point with which I write with

+difficulty in scrapings of soot and charcoal from the chimney, mixed

+with blood, in the last month of the tenth year of my captivity. Hope

+has quite departed from my breast. I know from terrible warnings I have

+noted in myself that my reason will not long remain unimpaired, but I

+solemnly declare that I am at this time in the possession of my right

+mind--that my memory is exact and circumstantial--and that I write the

+truth as I shall answer for these my last recorded words, whether they

+be ever read by men or not, at the Eternal Judgment-seat.

+

+"One cloudy moonlight night, in the third week of December (I think the

+twenty-second of the month) in the year 1757, I was walking on a retired

+part of the quay by the Seine for the refreshment of the frosty air,

+at an hour's distance from my place of residence in the Street of the

+School of Medicine, when a carriage came along behind me, driven very

+fast. As I stood aside to let that carriage pass, apprehensive that it

+might otherwise run me down, a head was put out at the window, and a

+voice called to the driver to stop.

+

+"The carriage stopped as soon as the driver could rein in his horses,

+and the same voice called to me by my name. I answered. The carriage

+was then so far in advance of me that two gentlemen had time to open the

+door and alight before I came up with it.

+

+"I observed that they were both wrapped in cloaks, and appeared to

+conceal themselves. As they stood side by side near the carriage door,

+I also observed that they both looked of about my own age, or rather

+younger, and that they were greatly alike, in stature, manner, voice,

+and (as far as I could see) face too.

+

+"'You are Doctor Manette?' said one.

+

+"I am."

+

+"'Doctor Manette, formerly of Beauvais,' said the other; 'the young

+physician, originally an expert surgeon, who within the last year or two

+has made a rising reputation in Paris?'

+

+"'Gentlemen,' I returned, 'I am that Doctor Manette of whom you speak so

+graciously.'

+

+"'We have been to your residence,' said the first, 'and not being

+so fortunate as to find you there, and being informed that you were

+probably walking in this direction, we followed, in the hope of

+overtaking you. Will you please to enter the carriage?'

+

+"The manner of both was imperious, and they both moved, as these words

+were spoken, so as to place me between themselves and the carriage door.

+They were armed. I was not.

+

+"'Gentlemen,' said I, 'pardon me; but I usually inquire who does me

+the honour to seek my assistance, and what is the nature of the case to

+which I am summoned.'

+

+"The reply to this was made by him who had spoken second. 'Doctor,

+your clients are people of condition. As to the nature of the case,

+our confidence in your skill assures us that you will ascertain it for

+yourself better than we can describe it. Enough. Will you please to

+enter the carriage?'

+

+"I could do nothing but comply, and I entered it in silence. They both

+entered after me--the last springing in, after putting up the steps. The

+carriage turned about, and drove on at its former speed.

+

+"I repeat this conversation exactly as it occurred. I have no doubt that

+it is, word for word, the same. I describe everything exactly as it took

+place, constraining my mind not to wander from the task. Where I make

+the broken marks that follow here, I leave off for the time, and put my

+paper in its hiding-place.

+

+        *****

+

+"The carriage left the streets behind, passed the North Barrier, and

+emerged upon the country road. At two-thirds of a league from the

+Barrier--I did not estimate the distance at that time, but afterwards

+when I traversed it--it struck out of the main avenue, and presently

+stopped at a solitary house, We all three alighted, and walked, by

+a damp soft footpath in a garden where a neglected fountain had

+overflowed, to the door of the house. It was not opened immediately, in

+answer to the ringing of the bell, and one of my two conductors struck

+the man who opened it, with his heavy riding glove, across the face.

+

+"There was nothing in this action to attract my particular attention,

+for I had seen common people struck more commonly than dogs. But, the

+other of the two, being angry likewise, struck the man in like manner

+with his arm; the look and bearing of the brothers were then so exactly

+alike, that I then first perceived them to be twin brothers.

+

+"From the time of our alighting at the outer gate (which we found

+locked, and which one of the brothers had opened to admit us, and had

+relocked), I had heard cries proceeding from an upper chamber. I was

+conducted to this chamber straight, the cries growing louder as we

+ascended the stairs, and I found a patient in a high fever of the brain,

+lying on a bed.

+

+"The patient was a woman of great beauty, and young; assuredly not much

+past twenty. Her hair was torn and ragged, and her arms were bound to

+her sides with sashes and handkerchiefs. I noticed that these bonds were

+all portions of a gentleman's dress. On one of them, which was a fringed

+scarf for a dress of ceremony, I saw the armorial bearings of a Noble,

+and the letter E.

+

+"I saw this, within the first minute of my contemplation of the patient;

+for, in her restless strivings she had turned over on her face on the

+edge of the bed, had drawn the end of the scarf into her mouth, and was

+in danger of suffocation. My first act was to put out my hand to relieve

+her breathing; and in moving the scarf aside, the embroidery in the

+corner caught my sight.

+

+"I turned her gently over, placed my hands upon her breast to calm her

+and keep her down, and looked into her face. Her eyes were dilated and

+wild, and she constantly uttered piercing shrieks, and repeated the

+words, 'My husband, my father, and my brother!' and then counted up to

+twelve, and said, 'Hush!' For an instant, and no more, she would pause

+to listen, and then the piercing shrieks would begin again, and she

+would repeat the cry, 'My husband, my father, and my brother!' and

+would count up to twelve, and say, 'Hush!' There was no variation in the

+order, or the manner. There was no cessation, but the regular moment's

+pause, in the utterance of these sounds.

+

+"'How long,' I asked, 'has this lasted?'

+

+"To distinguish the brothers, I will call them the elder and the

+younger; by the elder, I mean him who exercised the most authority. It

+was the elder who replied, 'Since about this hour last night.'

+

+"'She has a husband, a father, and a brother?'

+

+"'A brother.'

+

+"'I do not address her brother?'

+

+"He answered with great contempt, 'No.'

+

+"'She has some recent association with the number twelve?'

+

+"The younger brother impatiently rejoined, 'With twelve o'clock?'

+

+"'See, gentlemen,' said I, still keeping my hands upon her breast, 'how

+useless I am, as you have brought me! If I had known what I was coming

+to see, I could have come provided. As it is, time must be lost. There

+are no medicines to be obtained in this lonely place.'

+

+"The elder brother looked to the younger, who said haughtily, 'There is

+a case of medicines here;' and brought it from a closet, and put it on

+the table.

+

+        *****

+

+"I opened some of the bottles, smelt them, and put the stoppers to my

+lips. If I had wanted to use anything save narcotic medicines that were

+poisons in themselves, I would not have administered any of those.

+

+"'Do you doubt them?' asked the younger brother.

+

+"'You see, monsieur, I am going to use them,' I replied, and said no

+more.

+

+"I made the patient swallow, with great difficulty, and after many

+efforts, the dose that I desired to give. As I intended to repeat it

+after a while, and as it was necessary to watch its influence, I then

+sat down by the side of the bed. There was a timid and suppressed woman

+in attendance (wife of the man down-stairs), who had retreated into

+a corner. The house was damp and decayed, indifferently

+furnished--evidently, recently occupied and temporarily used. Some thick

+old hangings had been nailed up before the windows, to deaden the

+sound of the shrieks. They continued to be uttered in their regular

+succession, with the cry, 'My husband, my father, and my brother!' the

+counting up to twelve, and 'Hush!' The frenzy was so violent, that I had

+not unfastened the bandages restraining the arms; but, I had looked to

+them, to see that they were not painful. The only spark of encouragement

+in the case, was, that my hand upon the sufferer's breast had this much

+soothing influence, that for minutes at a time it tranquillised the

+figure. It had no effect upon the cries; no pendulum could be more

+regular.

+

+"For the reason that my hand had this effect (I assume), I had sat by

+the side of the bed for half an hour, with the two brothers looking on,

+before the elder said:

+

+"'There is another patient.'

+

+"I was startled, and asked, 'Is it a pressing case?'

+

+"'You had better see,' he carelessly answered; and took up a light.

+

+        *****

+

+"The other patient lay in a back room across a second staircase, which

+was a species of loft over a stable. There was a low plastered ceiling

+to a part of it; the rest was open, to the ridge of the tiled roof, and

+there were beams across. Hay and straw were stored in that portion of

+the place, fagots for firing, and a heap of apples in sand. I had to

+pass through that part, to get at the other. My memory is circumstantial

+and unshaken. I try it with these details, and I see them all, in

+this my cell in the Bastille, near the close of the tenth year of my

+captivity, as I saw them all that night.

+

+"On some hay on the ground, with a cushion thrown under his head, lay a

+handsome peasant boy--a boy of not more than seventeen at the most.

+He lay on his back, with his teeth set, his right hand clenched on his

+breast, and his glaring eyes looking straight upward. I could not see

+where his wound was, as I kneeled on one knee over him; but, I could see

+that he was dying of a wound from a sharp point.

+

+"'I am a doctor, my poor fellow,' said I. 'Let me examine it.'

+

+"'I do not want it examined,' he answered; 'let it be.'

+

+"It was under his hand, and I soothed him to let me move his hand away.

+The wound was a sword-thrust, received from twenty to twenty-four hours

+before, but no skill could have saved him if it had been looked to

+without delay. He was then dying fast. As I turned my eyes to the elder

+brother, I saw him looking down at this handsome boy whose life was

+ebbing out, as if he were a wounded bird, or hare, or rabbit; not at all

+as if he were a fellow-creature.

+

+"'How has this been done, monsieur?' said I.

+

+"'A crazed young common dog! A serf! Forced my brother to draw upon him,

+and has fallen by my brother's sword--like a gentleman.'

+

+"There was no touch of pity, sorrow, or kindred humanity, in this

+answer. The speaker seemed to acknowledge that it was inconvenient to

+have that different order of creature dying there, and that it would

+have been better if he had died in the usual obscure routine of his

+vermin kind. He was quite incapable of any compassionate feeling about

+the boy, or about his fate.

+

+"The boy's eyes had slowly moved to him as he had spoken, and they now

+slowly moved to me.

+

+"'Doctor, they are very proud, these Nobles; but we common dogs are

+proud too, sometimes. They plunder us, outrage us, beat us, kill us; but

+we have a little pride left, sometimes. She--have you seen her, Doctor?'

+

+"The shrieks and the cries were audible there, though subdued by the

+distance. He referred to them, as if she were lying in our presence.

+

+"I said, 'I have seen her.'

+

+"'She is my sister, Doctor. They have had their shameful rights, these

+Nobles, in the modesty and virtue of our sisters, many years, but we

+have had good girls among us. I know it, and have heard my father say

+so. She was a good girl. She was betrothed to a good young man, too: a

+tenant of his. We were all tenants of his--that man's who stands there.

+The other is his brother, the worst of a bad race.'

+

+"It was with the greatest difficulty that the boy gathered bodily force

+to speak; but, his spirit spoke with a dreadful emphasis.

+

+"'We were so robbed by that man who stands there, as all we common dogs

+are by those superior Beings--taxed by him without mercy, obliged to

+work for him without pay, obliged to grind our corn at his mill, obliged

+to feed scores of his tame birds on our wretched crops, and forbidden

+for our lives to keep a single tame bird of our own, pillaged and

+plundered to that degree that when we chanced to have a bit of meat, we

+ate it in fear, with the door barred and the shutters closed, that his

+people should not see it and take it from us--I say, we were so robbed,

+and hunted, and were made so poor, that our father told us it was a

+dreadful thing to bring a child into the world, and that what we should

+most pray for, was, that our women might be barren and our miserable

+race die out!'

+

+"I had never before seen the sense of being oppressed, bursting forth

+like a fire. I had supposed that it must be latent in the people

+somewhere; but, I had never seen it break out, until I saw it in the

+dying boy.

+

+"'Nevertheless, Doctor, my sister married. He was ailing at that time,

+poor fellow, and she married her lover, that she might tend and comfort

+him in our cottage--our dog-hut, as that man would call it. She had not

+been married many weeks, when that man's brother saw her and admired

+her, and asked that man to lend her to him--for what are husbands among

+us! He was willing enough, but my sister was good and virtuous, and

+hated his brother with a hatred as strong as mine. What did the two

+then, to persuade her husband to use his influence with her, to make her

+willing?'

+

+"The boy's eyes, which had been fixed on mine, slowly turned to the

+looker-on, and I saw in the two faces that all he said was true. The two

+opposing kinds of pride confronting one another, I can see, even in this

+Bastille; the gentleman's, all negligent indifference; the peasant's, all

+trodden-down sentiment, and passionate revenge.

+

+"'You know, Doctor, that it is among the Rights of these Nobles to

+harness us common dogs to carts, and drive us. They so harnessed him and

+drove him. You know that it is among their Rights to keep us in their

+grounds all night, quieting the frogs, in order that their noble sleep

+may not be disturbed. They kept him out in the unwholesome mists at

+night, and ordered him back into his harness in the day. But he was

+not persuaded. No! Taken out of harness one day at noon, to feed--if he

+could find food--he sobbed twelve times, once for every stroke of the

+bell, and died on her bosom.'

+

+"Nothing human could have held life in the boy but his determination to

+tell all his wrong. He forced back the gathering shadows of death, as

+he forced his clenched right hand to remain clenched, and to cover his

+wound.

+

+"'Then, with that man's permission and even with his aid, his

+brother took her away; in spite of what I know she must have told his

+brother--and what that is, will not be long unknown to you, Doctor, if

+it is now--his brother took her away--for his pleasure and diversion,

+for a little while. I saw her pass me on the road. When I took the

+tidings home, our father's heart burst; he never spoke one of the words

+that filled it. I took my young sister (for I have another) to a place

+beyond the reach of this man, and where, at least, she will never be

+_his_ vassal. Then, I tracked the brother here, and last night climbed

+in--a common dog, but sword in hand.--Where is the loft window? It was

+somewhere here?'

+

+"The room was darkening to his sight; the world was narrowing around

+him. I glanced about me, and saw that the hay and straw were trampled

+over the floor, as if there had been a struggle.

+

+"'She heard me, and ran in. I told her not to come near us till he was

+dead. He came in and first tossed me some pieces of money; then struck

+at me with a whip. But I, though a common dog, so struck at him as to

+make him draw. Let him break into as many pieces as he will, the sword

+that he stained with my common blood; he drew to defend himself--thrust

+at me with all his skill for his life.'

+

+"My glance had fallen, but a few moments before, on the fragments of

+a broken sword, lying among the hay. That weapon was a gentleman's. In

+another place, lay an old sword that seemed to have been a soldier's.

+

+"'Now, lift me up, Doctor; lift me up. Where is he?'

+

+"'He is not here,' I said, supporting the boy, and thinking that he

+referred to the brother.

+

+"'He! Proud as these nobles are, he is afraid to see me. Where is the

+man who was here? Turn my face to him.'

+

+"I did so, raising the boy's head against my knee. But, invested for the

+moment with extraordinary power, he raised himself completely: obliging

+me to rise too, or I could not have still supported him.

+

+"'Marquis,' said the boy, turned to him with his eyes opened wide, and

+his right hand raised, 'in the days when all these things are to be

+answered for, I summon you and yours, to the last of your bad race, to

+answer for them. I mark this cross of blood upon you, as a sign that

+I do it. In the days when all these things are to be answered for,

+I summon your brother, the worst of the bad race, to answer for them

+separately. I mark this cross of blood upon him, as a sign that I do

+it.'

+

+"Twice, he put his hand to the wound in his breast, and with his

+forefinger drew a cross in the air. He stood for an instant with the

+finger yet raised, and as it dropped, he dropped with it, and I laid him

+down dead.

+

+        *****

+

+"When I returned to the bedside of the young woman, I found her raving

+in precisely the same order of continuity. I knew that this might last

+for many hours, and that it would probably end in the silence of the

+grave.

+

+"I repeated the medicines I had given her, and I sat at the side of

+the bed until the night was far advanced. She never abated the piercing

+quality of her shrieks, never stumbled in the distinctness or the order

+of her words. They were always 'My husband, my father, and my brother!

+One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven,

+twelve. Hush!'

+

+"This lasted twenty-six hours from the time when I first saw her. I had

+come and gone twice, and was again sitting by her, when she began to

+falter. I did what little could be done to assist that opportunity, and

+by-and-bye she sank into a lethargy, and lay like the dead.

+

+"It was as if the wind and rain had lulled at last, after a long and

+fearful storm. I released her arms, and called the woman to assist me to

+compose her figure and the dress she had torn. It was then that I knew

+her condition to be that of one in whom the first expectations of being

+a mother have arisen; and it was then that I lost the little hope I had

+had of her.

+

+"'Is she dead?' asked the Marquis, whom I will still describe as the

+elder brother, coming booted into the room from his horse.

+

+"'Not dead,' said I; 'but like to die.'

+

+"'What strength there is in these common bodies!' he said, looking down

+at her with some curiosity.

+

+"'There is prodigious strength,' I answered him, 'in sorrow and

+despair.'

+

+"He first laughed at my words, and then frowned at them. He moved a

+chair with his foot near to mine, ordered the woman away, and said in a

+subdued voice,

+

+"'Doctor, finding my brother in this difficulty with these hinds, I

+recommended that your aid should be invited. Your reputation is high,

+and, as a young man with your fortune to make, you are probably mindful

+of your interest. The things that you see here, are things to be seen,

+and not spoken of.'

+

+"I listened to the patient's breathing, and avoided answering.

+

+"'Do you honour me with your attention, Doctor?'

+

+"'Monsieur,' said I, 'in my profession, the communications of patients

+are always received in confidence.' I was guarded in my answer, for I

+was troubled in my mind with what I had heard and seen.

+

+"Her breathing was so difficult to trace, that I carefully tried the

+pulse and the heart. There was life, and no more. Looking round as I

+resumed my seat, I found both the brothers intent upon me.

+

+        *****

+

+"I write with so much difficulty, the cold is so severe, I am so

+fearful of being detected and consigned to an underground cell and total

+darkness, that I must abridge this narrative. There is no confusion or

+failure in my memory; it can recall, and could detail, every word that

+was ever spoken between me and those brothers.

+

+"She lingered for a week. Towards the last, I could understand some few

+syllables that she said to me, by placing my ear close to her lips. She

+asked me where she was, and I told her; who I was, and I told her. It

+was in vain that I asked her for her family name. She faintly shook her

+head upon the pillow, and kept her secret, as the boy had done.

+

+"I had no opportunity of asking her any question, until I had told the

+brothers she was sinking fast, and could not live another day. Until

+then, though no one was ever presented to her consciousness save the

+woman and myself, one or other of them had always jealously sat behind

+the curtain at the head of the bed when I was there. But when it came to

+that, they seemed careless what communication I might hold with her; as

+if--the thought passed through my mind--I were dying too.

+

+"I always observed that their pride bitterly resented the younger

+brother's (as I call him) having crossed swords with a peasant, and that

+peasant a boy. The only consideration that appeared to affect the mind

+of either of them was the consideration that this was highly degrading

+to the family, and was ridiculous. As often as I caught the younger

+brother's eyes, their expression reminded me that he disliked me deeply,

+for knowing what I knew from the boy. He was smoother and more polite to

+me than the elder; but I saw this. I also saw that I was an incumbrance

+in the mind of the elder, too.

+

+"My patient died, two hours before midnight--at a time, by my watch,

+answering almost to the minute when I had first seen her. I was alone

+with her, when her forlorn young head drooped gently on one side, and

+all her earthly wrongs and sorrows ended.

+

+"The brothers were waiting in a room down-stairs, impatient to ride

+away. I had heard them, alone at the bedside, striking their boots with

+their riding-whips, and loitering up and down.

+

+"'At last she is dead?' said the elder, when I went in.

+

+"'She is dead,' said I.

+

+"'I congratulate you, my brother,' were his words as he turned round.

+

+"He had before offered me money, which I had postponed taking. He now

+gave me a rouleau of gold. I took it from his hand, but laid it on

+the table. I had considered the question, and had resolved to accept

+nothing.

+

+"'Pray excuse me,' said I. 'Under the circumstances, no.'

+

+"They exchanged looks, but bent their heads to me as I bent mine to

+them, and we parted without another word on either side.

+

+        *****

+

+"I am weary, weary, weary--worn down by misery. I cannot read what I

+have written with this gaunt hand.

+

+"Early in the morning, the rouleau of gold was left at my door in a

+little box, with my name on the outside. From the first, I had anxiously

+considered what I ought to do. I decided, that day, to write privately

+to the Minister, stating the nature of the two cases to which I had been

+summoned, and the place to which I had gone: in effect, stating all the

+circumstances. I knew what Court influence was, and what the immunities

+of the Nobles were, and I expected that the matter would never be

+heard of; but, I wished to relieve my own mind. I had kept the matter a

+profound secret, even from my wife; and this, too, I resolved to state

+in my letter. I had no apprehension whatever of my real danger; but

+I was conscious that there might be danger for others, if others were

+compromised by possessing the knowledge that I possessed.

+

+"I was much engaged that day, and could not complete my letter that

+night. I rose long before my usual time next morning to finish it.

+It was the last day of the year. The letter was lying before me just

+completed, when I was told that a lady waited, who wished to see me.

+

+        *****

+

+"I am growing more and more unequal to the task I have set myself. It is

+so cold, so dark, my senses are so benumbed, and the gloom upon me is so

+dreadful.

+

+"The lady was young, engaging, and handsome, but not marked for long

+life. She was in great agitation. She presented herself to me as the

+wife of the Marquis St. Evremonde. I connected the title by which the

+boy had addressed the elder brother, with the initial letter embroidered

+on the scarf, and had no difficulty in arriving at the conclusion that I

+had seen that nobleman very lately.

+

+"My memory is still accurate, but I cannot write the words of our

+conversation. I suspect that I am watched more closely than I was, and I

+know not at what times I may be watched. She had in part suspected, and

+in part discovered, the main facts of the cruel story, of her husband's

+share in it, and my being resorted to. She did not know that the girl

+was dead. Her hope had been, she said in great distress, to show her,

+in secret, a woman's sympathy. Her hope had been to avert the wrath of

+Heaven from a House that had long been hateful to the suffering many.

+

+"She had reasons for believing that there was a young sister living, and

+her greatest desire was, to help that sister. I could tell her nothing

+but that there was such a sister; beyond that, I knew nothing. Her

+inducement to come to me, relying on my confidence, had been the hope

+that I could tell her the name and place of abode. Whereas, to this

+wretched hour I am ignorant of both.

+

+        *****

+

+"These scraps of paper fail me. One was taken from me, with a warning,

+yesterday. I must finish my record to-day.

+

+"She was a good, compassionate lady, and not happy in her marriage. How

+could she be! The brother distrusted and disliked her, and his influence

+was all opposed to her; she stood in dread of him, and in dread of her

+husband too. When I handed her down to the door, there was a child, a

+pretty boy from two to three years old, in her carriage.

+

+"'For his sake, Doctor,' she said, pointing to him in tears, 'I would do

+all I can to make what poor amends I can. He will never prosper in his

+inheritance otherwise. I have a presentiment that if no other innocent

+atonement is made for this, it will one day be required of him. What

+I have left to call my own--it is little beyond the worth of a few

+jewels--I will make it the first charge of his life to bestow, with the

+compassion and lamenting of his dead mother, on this injured family, if

+the sister can be discovered.'

+

+"She kissed the boy, and said, caressing him, 'It is for thine own dear

+sake. Thou wilt be faithful, little Charles?' The child answered her

+bravely, 'Yes!' I kissed her hand, and she took him in her arms, and

+went away caressing him. I never saw her more.

+

+"As she had mentioned her husband's name in the faith that I knew it,

+I added no mention of it to my letter. I sealed my letter, and, not

+trusting it out of my own hands, delivered it myself that day.

+

+"That night, the last night of the year, towards nine o'clock, a man in

+a black dress rang at my gate, demanded to see me, and softly followed

+my servant, Ernest Defarge, a youth, up-stairs. When my servant came

+into the room where I sat with my wife--O my wife, beloved of my heart!

+My fair young English wife!--we saw the man, who was supposed to be at

+the gate, standing silent behind him.

+

+"An urgent case in the Rue St. Honore, he said. It would not detain me,

+he had a coach in waiting.

+

+"It brought me here, it brought me to my grave. When I was clear of the

+house, a black muffler was drawn tightly over my mouth from behind, and

+my arms were pinioned. The two brothers crossed the road from a dark

+corner, and identified me with a single gesture. The Marquis took from

+his pocket the letter I had written, showed it me, burnt it in the light

+of a lantern that was held, and extinguished the ashes with his foot.

+Not a word was spoken. I was brought here, I was brought to my living

+grave.

+

+"If it had pleased _God_ to put it in the hard heart of either of the

+brothers, in all these frightful years, to grant me any tidings of

+my dearest wife--so much as to let me know by a word whether alive or

+dead--I might have thought that He had not quite abandoned them. But,

+now I believe that the mark of the red cross is fatal to them, and that

+they have no part in His mercies. And them and their descendants, to the

+last of their race, I, Alexandre Manette, unhappy prisoner, do this last

+night of the year 1767, in my unbearable agony, denounce to the times

+when all these things shall be answered for. I denounce them to Heaven

+and to earth."

+

+A terrible sound arose when the reading of this document was done. A

+sound of craving and eagerness that had nothing articulate in it but

+blood. The narrative called up the most revengeful passions of the time,

+and there was not a head in the nation but must have dropped before it.

+

+Little need, in presence of that tribunal and that auditory, to show

+how the Defarges had not made the paper public, with the other captured

+Bastille memorials borne in procession, and had kept it, biding their

+time. Little need to show that this detested family name had long been

+anathematised by Saint Antoine, and was wrought into the fatal register.

+The man never trod ground whose virtues and services would have

+sustained him in that place that day, against such denunciation.

+

+And all the worse for the doomed man, that the denouncer was a

+well-known citizen, his own attached friend, the father of his wife. One

+of the frenzied aspirations of the populace was, for imitations of

+the questionable public virtues of antiquity, and for sacrifices and

+self-immolations on the people's altar. Therefore when the President

+said (else had his own head quivered on his shoulders), that the good

+physician of the Republic would deserve better still of the Republic by

+rooting out an obnoxious family of Aristocrats, and would doubtless feel

+a sacred glow and joy in making his daughter a widow and her child an

+orphan, there was wild excitement, patriotic fervour, not a touch of

+human sympathy.

+

+"Much influence around him, has that Doctor?" murmured Madame Defarge,

+smiling to The Vengeance. "Save him now, my Doctor, save him!"

+

+At every juryman's vote, there was a roar. Another and another. Roar and

+roar.

+

+Unanimously voted. At heart and by descent an Aristocrat, an enemy

+of the Republic, a notorious oppressor of the People. Back to the

+Conciergerie, and Death within four-and-twenty hours!

+

+

+

+

+XI. Dusk

+

+

+The wretched wife of the innocent man thus doomed to die, fell under

+the sentence, as if she had been mortally stricken. But, she uttered no

+sound; and so strong was the voice within her, representing that it was

+she of all the world who must uphold him in his misery and not augment

+it, that it quickly raised her, even from that shock.

+

+The Judges having to take part in a public demonstration out of doors,

+the Tribunal adjourned. The quick noise and movement of the court's

+emptying itself by many passages had not ceased, when Lucie stood

+stretching out her arms towards her husband, with nothing in her face

+but love and consolation.

+

+"If I might touch him! If I might embrace him once! O, good citizens, if

+you would have so much compassion for us!"

+

+There was but a gaoler left, along with two of the four men who had

+taken him last night, and Barsad. The people had all poured out to the

+show in the streets. Barsad proposed to the rest, "Let her embrace

+him then; it is but a moment." It was silently acquiesced in, and they

+passed her over the seats in the hall to a raised place, where he, by

+leaning over the dock, could fold her in his arms.

+

+"Farewell, dear darling of my soul. My parting blessing on my love. We

+shall meet again, where the weary are at rest!"

+

+They were her husband's words, as he held her to his bosom.

+

+"I can bear it, dear Charles. I am supported from above: don't suffer

+for me. A parting blessing for our child."

+

+"I send it to her by you. I kiss her by you. I say farewell to her by

+you."

+

+"My husband. No! A moment!" He was tearing himself apart from her.

+"We shall not be separated long. I feel that this will break my heart

+by-and-bye; but I will do my duty while I can, and when I leave her, God

+will raise up friends for her, as He did for me."

+

+Her father had followed her, and would have fallen on his knees to both

+of them, but that Darnay put out a hand and seized him, crying:

+

+"No, no! What have you done, what have you done, that you should kneel

+to us! We know now, what a struggle you made of old. We know, now what

+you underwent when you suspected my descent, and when you knew it. We

+know now, the natural antipathy you strove against, and conquered, for

+her dear sake. We thank you with all our hearts, and all our love and

+duty. Heaven be with you!"

+

+Her father's only answer was to draw his hands through his white hair,

+and wring them with a shriek of anguish.

+

+"It could not be otherwise," said the prisoner. "All things have worked

+together as they have fallen out. It was the always-vain endeavour to

+discharge my poor mother's trust that first brought my fatal presence

+near you. Good could never come of such evil, a happier end was not in

+nature to so unhappy a beginning. Be comforted, and forgive me. Heaven

+bless you!"

+

+As he was drawn away, his wife released him, and stood looking after him

+with her hands touching one another in the attitude of prayer, and

+with a radiant look upon her face, in which there was even a comforting

+smile. As he went out at the prisoners' door, she turned, laid her head

+lovingly on her father's breast, tried to speak to him, and fell at his

+feet.

+

+Then, issuing from the obscure corner from which he had never moved,

+Sydney Carton came and took her up. Only her father and Mr. Lorry were

+with her. His arm trembled as it raised her, and supported her head.

+Yet, there was an air about him that was not all of pity--that had a

+flush of pride in it.

+

+"Shall I take her to a coach? I shall never feel her weight."

+

+He carried her lightly to the door, and laid her tenderly down in a

+coach. Her father and their old friend got into it, and he took his seat

+beside the driver.

+

+When they arrived at the gateway where he had paused in the dark not

+many hours before, to picture to himself on which of the rough stones of

+the street her feet had trodden, he lifted her again, and carried her up

+the staircase to their rooms. There, he laid her down on a couch, where

+her child and Miss Pross wept over her.

+

+"Don't recall her to herself," he said, softly, to the latter, "she is

+better so. Don't revive her to consciousness, while she only faints."

+

+"Oh, Carton, Carton, dear Carton!" cried little Lucie, springing up and

+throwing her arms passionately round him, in a burst of grief. "Now that

+you have come, I think you will do something to help mamma, something to

+save papa! O, look at her, dear Carton! Can you, of all the people who

+love her, bear to see her so?"

+

+He bent over the child, and laid her blooming cheek against his face. He

+put her gently from him, and looked at her unconscious mother.

+

+"Before I go," he said, and paused--"I may kiss her?"

+

+It was remembered afterwards that when he bent down and touched her face

+with his lips, he murmured some words. The child, who was nearest to

+him, told them afterwards, and told her grandchildren when she was a

+handsome old lady, that she heard him say, "A life you love."

+

+When he had gone out into the next room, he turned suddenly on Mr. Lorry

+and her father, who were following, and said to the latter:

+

+"You had great influence but yesterday, Doctor Manette; let it at least

+be tried. These judges, and all the men in power, are very friendly to

+you, and very recognisant of your services; are they not?"

+

+"Nothing connected with Charles was concealed from me. I had the

+strongest assurances that I should save him; and I did." He returned the

+answer in great trouble, and very slowly.

+

+"Try them again. The hours between this and to-morrow afternoon are few

+and short, but try."

+

+"I intend to try. I will not rest a moment."

+

+"That's well. I have known such energy as yours do great things before

+now--though never," he added, with a smile and a sigh together, "such

+great things as this. But try! Of little worth as life is when we misuse

+it, it is worth that effort. It would cost nothing to lay down if it

+were not."

+

+"I will go," said Doctor Manette, "to the Prosecutor and the President

+straight, and I will go to others whom it is better not to name. I will

+write too, and--But stay! There is a Celebration in the streets, and no

+one will be accessible until dark."

+

+"That's true. Well! It is a forlorn hope at the best, and not much the

+forlorner for being delayed till dark. I should like to know how you

+speed; though, mind! I expect nothing! When are you likely to have seen

+these dread powers, Doctor Manette?"

+

+"Immediately after dark, I should hope. Within an hour or two from

+this."

+

+"It will be dark soon after four. Let us stretch the hour or two. If I

+go to Mr. Lorry's at nine, shall I hear what you have done, either from

+our friend or from yourself?"

+

+"Yes."

+

+"May you prosper!"

+

+Mr. Lorry followed Sydney to the outer door, and, touching him on the

+shoulder as he was going away, caused him to turn.

+

+"I have no hope," said Mr. Lorry, in a low and sorrowful whisper.

+

+"Nor have I."

+

+"If any one of these men, or all of these men, were disposed to spare

+him--which is a large supposition; for what is his life, or any man's

+to them!--I doubt if they durst spare him after the demonstration in the

+court."

+

+"And so do I. I heard the fall of the axe in that sound."

+

+Mr. Lorry leaned his arm upon the door-post, and bowed his face upon it.

+

+"Don't despond," said Carton, very gently; "don't grieve. I encouraged

+Doctor Manette in this idea, because I felt that it might one day be

+consolatory to her. Otherwise, she might think 'his life was wantonly

+thrown away or wasted,' and that might trouble her."

+

+"Yes, yes, yes," returned Mr. Lorry, drying his eyes, "you are right.

+But he will perish; there is no real hope."

+

+"Yes. He will perish: there is no real hope," echoed Carton.

+

+And walked with a settled step, down-stairs.

+

+

+

+

+XII. Darkness

+

+

+Sydney Carton paused in the street, not quite decided where to go. "At

+Tellson's banking-house at nine," he said, with a musing face. "Shall I

+do well, in the mean time, to show myself? I think so. It is best that

+these people should know there is such a man as I here; it is a sound

+precaution, and may be a necessary preparation. But care, care, care!

+Let me think it out!"

+

+Checking his steps which had begun to tend towards an object, he took a

+turn or two in the already darkening street, and traced the thought

+in his mind to its possible consequences. His first impression was

+confirmed. "It is best," he said, finally resolved, "that these people

+should know there is such a man as I here." And he turned his face

+towards Saint Antoine.

+

+Defarge had described himself, that day, as the keeper of a wine-shop in

+the Saint Antoine suburb. It was not difficult for one who knew the city

+well, to find his house without asking any question. Having ascertained

+its situation, Carton came out of those closer streets again, and dined

+at a place of refreshment and fell sound asleep after dinner. For the

+first time in many years, he had no strong drink. Since last night he

+had taken nothing but a little light thin wine, and last night he had

+dropped the brandy slowly down on Mr. Lorry's hearth like a man who had

+done with it.

+

+It was as late as seven o'clock when he awoke refreshed, and went out

+into the streets again. As he passed along towards Saint Antoine, he

+stopped at a shop-window where there was a mirror, and slightly altered

+the disordered arrangement of his loose cravat, and his coat-collar, and

+his wild hair. This done, he went on direct to Defarge's, and went in.

+

+There happened to be no customer in the shop but Jacques Three, of the

+restless fingers and the croaking voice. This man, whom he had seen upon

+the Jury, stood drinking at the little counter, in conversation with the

+Defarges, man and wife. The Vengeance assisted in the conversation, like

+a regular member of the establishment.

+

+As Carton walked in, took his seat and asked (in very indifferent

+French) for a small measure of wine, Madame Defarge cast a careless

+glance at him, and then a keener, and then a keener, and then advanced

+to him herself, and asked him what it was he had ordered.

+

+He repeated what he had already said.

+

+"English?" asked Madame Defarge, inquisitively raising her dark

+eyebrows.

+

+After looking at her, as if the sound of even a single French word were

+slow to express itself to him, he answered, in his former strong foreign

+accent. "Yes, madame, yes. I am English!"

+

+Madame Defarge returned to her counter to get the wine, and, as he

+took up a Jacobin journal and feigned to pore over it puzzling out its

+meaning, he heard her say, "I swear to you, like Evremonde!"

+

+Defarge brought him the wine, and gave him Good Evening.

+

+"How?"

+

+"Good evening."

+

+"Oh! Good evening, citizen," filling his glass. "Ah! and good wine. I

+drink to the Republic."

+

+Defarge went back to the counter, and said, "Certainly, a little like."

+Madame sternly retorted, "I tell you a good deal like." Jacques Three

+pacifically remarked, "He is so much in your mind, see you, madame."

+The amiable Vengeance added, with a laugh, "Yes, my faith! And you

+are looking forward with so much pleasure to seeing him once more

+to-morrow!"

+

+Carton followed the lines and words of his paper, with a slow

+forefinger, and with a studious and absorbed face. They were all leaning

+their arms on the counter close together, speaking low. After a silence

+of a few moments, during which they all looked towards him without

+disturbing his outward attention from the Jacobin editor, they resumed

+their conversation.

+

+"It is true what madame says," observed Jacques Three. "Why stop? There

+is great force in that. Why stop?"

+

+"Well, well," reasoned Defarge, "but one must stop somewhere. After all,

+the question is still where?"

+

+"At extermination," said madame.

+

+"Magnificent!" croaked Jacques Three. The Vengeance, also, highly

+approved.

+

+"Extermination is good doctrine, my wife," said Defarge, rather

+troubled; "in general, I say nothing against it. But this Doctor has

+suffered much; you have seen him to-day; you have observed his face when

+the paper was read."

+

+"I have observed his face!" repeated madame, contemptuously and angrily.

+"Yes. I have observed his face. I have observed his face to be not the

+face of a true friend of the Republic. Let him take care of his face!"

+

+"And you have observed, my wife," said Defarge, in a deprecatory manner,

+"the anguish of his daughter, which must be a dreadful anguish to him!"

+

+"I have observed his daughter," repeated madame; "yes, I have observed

+his daughter, more times than one. I have observed her to-day, and I

+have observed her other days. I have observed her in the court, and

+I have observed her in the street by the prison. Let me but lift my

+finger--!" She seemed to raise it (the listener's eyes were always on

+his paper), and to let it fall with a rattle on the ledge before her, as

+if the axe had dropped.

+

+"The citizeness is superb!" croaked the Juryman.

+

+"She is an Angel!" said The Vengeance, and embraced her.

+

+"As to thee," pursued madame, implacably, addressing her husband, "if it

+depended on thee--which, happily, it does not--thou wouldst rescue this

+man even now."

+

+"No!" protested Defarge. "Not if to lift this glass would do it! But I

+would leave the matter there. I say, stop there."

+

+"See you then, Jacques," said Madame Defarge, wrathfully; "and see you,

+too, my little Vengeance; see you both! Listen! For other crimes as

+tyrants and oppressors, I have this race a long time on my register,

+doomed to destruction and extermination. Ask my husband, is that so."

+

+"It is so," assented Defarge, without being asked.

+

+"In the beginning of the great days, when the Bastille falls, he finds

+this paper of to-day, and he brings it home, and in the middle of the

+night when this place is clear and shut, we read it, here on this spot,

+by the light of this lamp. Ask him, is that so."

+

+"It is so," assented Defarge.

+

+"That night, I tell him, when the paper is read through, and the lamp is

+burnt out, and the day is gleaming in above those shutters and between

+those iron bars, that I have now a secret to communicate. Ask him, is

+that so."

+

+"It is so," assented Defarge again.

+

+"I communicate to him that secret. I smite this bosom with these two

+hands as I smite it now, and I tell him, 'Defarge, I was brought up

+among the fishermen of the sea-shore, and that peasant family so injured

+by the two Evremonde brothers, as that Bastille paper describes, is my

+family. Defarge, that sister of the mortally wounded boy upon the ground

+was my sister, that husband was my sister's husband, that unborn child

+was their child, that brother was my brother, that father was my father,

+those dead are my dead, and that summons to answer for those things

+descends to me!' Ask him, is that so."

+

+"It is so," assented Defarge once more.

+

+"Then tell Wind and Fire where to stop," returned madame; "but don't

+tell me."

+

+Both her hearers derived a horrible enjoyment from the deadly nature

+of her wrath--the listener could feel how white she was, without seeing

+her--and both highly commended it. Defarge, a weak minority, interposed

+a few words for the memory of the compassionate wife of the Marquis; but

+only elicited from his own wife a repetition of her last reply. "Tell

+the Wind and the Fire where to stop; not me!"

+

+Customers entered, and the group was broken up. The English customer

+paid for what he had had, perplexedly counted his change, and asked, as

+a stranger, to be directed towards the National Palace. Madame Defarge

+took him to the door, and put her arm on his, in pointing out the road.

+The English customer was not without his reflections then, that it might

+be a good deed to seize that arm, lift it, and strike under it sharp and

+deep.

+

+But, he went his way, and was soon swallowed up in the shadow of the

+prison wall. At the appointed hour, he emerged from it to present

+himself in Mr. Lorry's room again, where he found the old gentleman

+walking to and fro in restless anxiety. He said he had been with Lucie

+until just now, and had only left her for a few minutes, to come and

+keep his appointment. Her father had not been seen, since he quitted the

+banking-house towards four o'clock. She had some faint hopes that his

+mediation might save Charles, but they were very slight. He had been

+more than five hours gone: where could he be?

+

+Mr. Lorry waited until ten; but, Doctor Manette not returning, and

+he being unwilling to leave Lucie any longer, it was arranged that he

+should go back to her, and come to the banking-house again at midnight.

+In the meanwhile, Carton would wait alone by the fire for the Doctor.

+

+He waited and waited, and the clock struck twelve; but Doctor Manette

+did not come back. Mr. Lorry returned, and found no tidings of him, and

+brought none. Where could he be?

+

+They were discussing this question, and were almost building up some

+weak structure of hope on his prolonged absence, when they heard him on

+the stairs. The instant he entered the room, it was plain that all was

+lost.

+

+Whether he had really been to any one, or whether he had been all that

+time traversing the streets, was never known. As he stood staring at

+them, they asked him no question, for his face told them everything.

+

+"I cannot find it," said he, "and I must have it. Where is it?"

+

+His head and throat were bare, and, as he spoke with a helpless look

+straying all around, he took his coat off, and let it drop on the floor.

+

+"Where is my bench? I have been looking everywhere for my bench, and I

+can't find it. What have they done with my work? Time presses: I must

+finish those shoes."

+

+They looked at one another, and their hearts died within them.

+

+"Come, come!" said he, in a whimpering miserable way; "let me get to

+work. Give me my work."

+

+Receiving no answer, he tore his hair, and beat his feet upon the

+ground, like a distracted child.

+

+"Don't torture a poor forlorn wretch," he implored them, with a dreadful

+cry; "but give me my work! What is to become of us, if those shoes are

+not done to-night?"

+

+Lost, utterly lost!

+

+It was so clearly beyond hope to reason with him, or try to restore him,

+that--as if by agreement--they each put a hand upon his shoulder, and

+soothed him to sit down before the fire, with a promise that he should

+have his work presently. He sank into the chair, and brooded over the

+embers, and shed tears. As if all that had happened since the garret

+time were a momentary fancy, or a dream, Mr. Lorry saw him shrink into

+the exact figure that Defarge had had in keeping.

+

+Affected, and impressed with terror as they both were, by this spectacle

+of ruin, it was not a time to yield to such emotions. His lonely

+daughter, bereft of her final hope and reliance, appealed to them both

+too strongly. Again, as if by agreement, they looked at one another with

+one meaning in their faces. Carton was the first to speak:

+

+"The last chance is gone: it was not much. Yes; he had better be taken

+to her. But, before you go, will you, for a moment, steadily attend to

+me? Don't ask me why I make the stipulations I am going to make, and

+exact the promise I am going to exact; I have a reason--a good one."

+

+"I do not doubt it," answered Mr. Lorry. "Say on."

+

+The figure in the chair between them, was all the time monotonously

+rocking itself to and fro, and moaning. They spoke in such a tone as

+they would have used if they had been watching by a sick-bed in the

+night.

+

+Carton stooped to pick up the coat, which lay almost entangling his

+feet. As he did so, a small case in which the Doctor was accustomed to

+carry the lists of his day's duties, fell lightly on the floor. Carton

+took it up, and there was a folded paper in it. "We should look

+at this!" he said. Mr. Lorry nodded his consent. He opened it, and

+exclaimed, "Thank _God!_"

+

+"What is it?" asked Mr. Lorry, eagerly.

+

+"A moment! Let me speak of it in its place. First," he put his hand in

+his coat, and took another paper from it, "that is the certificate which

+enables me to pass out of this city. Look at it. You see--Sydney Carton,

+an Englishman?"

+

+Mr. Lorry held it open in his hand, gazing in his earnest face.

+

+"Keep it for me until to-morrow. I shall see him to-morrow, you

+remember, and I had better not take it into the prison."

+

+"Why not?"

+

+"I don't know; I prefer not to do so. Now, take this paper that Doctor

+Manette has carried about him. It is a similar certificate, enabling him

+and his daughter and her child, at any time, to pass the barrier and the

+frontier! You see?"

+

+"Yes!"

+

+"Perhaps he obtained it as his last and utmost precaution against evil,

+yesterday. When is it dated? But no matter; don't stay to look; put it

+up carefully with mine and your own. Now, observe! I never doubted until

+within this hour or two, that he had, or could have such a paper. It is

+good, until recalled. But it may be soon recalled, and, I have reason to

+think, will be."

+

+"They are not in danger?"

+

+"They are in great danger. They are in danger of denunciation by Madame

+Defarge. I know it from her own lips. I have overheard words of that

+woman's, to-night, which have presented their danger to me in strong

+colours. I have lost no time, and since then, I have seen the spy. He

+confirms me. He knows that a wood-sawyer, living by the prison wall,

+is under the control of the Defarges, and has been rehearsed by

+Madame Defarge as to his having seen Her"--he never mentioned Lucie's

+name--"making signs and signals to prisoners. It is easy to foresee that

+the pretence will be the common one, a prison plot, and that it will

+involve her life--and perhaps her child's--and perhaps her father's--for

+both have been seen with her at that place. Don't look so horrified. You

+will save them all."

+

+"Heaven grant I may, Carton! But how?"

+

+"I am going to tell you how. It will depend on you, and it could depend

+on no better man. This new denunciation will certainly not take place

+until after to-morrow; probably not until two or three days afterwards;

+more probably a week afterwards. You know it is a capital crime, to

+mourn for, or sympathise with, a victim of the Guillotine. She and her

+father would unquestionably be guilty of this crime, and this woman (the

+inveteracy of whose pursuit cannot be described) would wait to add that

+strength to her case, and make herself doubly sure. You follow me?"

+

+"So attentively, and with so much confidence in what you say, that for

+the moment I lose sight," touching the back of the Doctor's chair, "even

+of this distress."

+

+"You have money, and can buy the means of travelling to the seacoast

+as quickly as the journey can be made. Your preparations have been

+completed for some days, to return to England. Early to-morrow have your

+horses ready, so that they may be in starting trim at two o'clock in the

+afternoon."

+

+"It shall be done!"

+

+His manner was so fervent and inspiring, that Mr. Lorry caught the

+flame, and was as quick as youth.

+

+"You are a noble heart. Did I say we could depend upon no better man?

+Tell her, to-night, what you know of her danger as involving her child

+and her father. Dwell upon that, for she would lay her own fair head

+beside her husband's cheerfully." He faltered for an instant; then went

+on as before. "For the sake of her child and her father, press upon her

+the necessity of leaving Paris, with them and you, at that hour. Tell

+her that it was her husband's last arrangement. Tell her that more

+depends upon it than she dare believe, or hope. You think that her

+father, even in this sad state, will submit himself to her; do you not?"

+

+"I am sure of it."

+

+"I thought so. Quietly and steadily have all these arrangements made in

+the courtyard here, even to the taking of your own seat in the carriage.

+The moment I come to you, take me in, and drive away."

+

+"I understand that I wait for you under all circumstances?"

+

+"You have my certificate in your hand with the rest, you know, and will

+reserve my place. Wait for nothing but to have my place occupied, and

+then for England!"

+

+"Why, then," said Mr. Lorry, grasping his eager but so firm and steady

+hand, "it does not all depend on one old man, but I shall have a young

+and ardent man at my side."

+

+"By the help of Heaven you shall! Promise me solemnly that nothing will

+influence you to alter the course on which we now stand pledged to one

+another."

+

+"Nothing, Carton."

+

+"Remember these words to-morrow: change the course, or delay in it--for

+any reason--and no life can possibly be saved, and many lives must

+inevitably be sacrificed."

+

+"I will remember them. I hope to do my part faithfully."

+

+"And I hope to do mine. Now, good bye!"

+

+Though he said it with a grave smile of earnestness, and though he even

+put the old man's hand to his lips, he did not part from him then. He

+helped him so far to arouse the rocking figure before the dying embers,

+as to get a cloak and hat put upon it, and to tempt it forth to find

+where the bench and work were hidden that it still moaningly besought

+to have. He walked on the other side of it and protected it to the

+courtyard of the house where the afflicted heart--so happy in

+the memorable time when he had revealed his own desolate heart to

+it--outwatched the awful night. He entered the courtyard and remained

+there for a few moments alone, looking up at the light in the window of

+her room. Before he went away, he breathed a blessing towards it, and a

+Farewell.

+

+

+

+

+XIII. Fifty-two

+

+

+In the black prison of the Conciergerie, the doomed of the day awaited

+their fate. They were in number as the weeks of the year. Fifty-two were

+to roll that afternoon on the life-tide of the city to the boundless

+everlasting sea. Before their cells were quit of them, new occupants

+were appointed; before their blood ran into the blood spilled yesterday,

+the blood that was to mingle with theirs to-morrow was already set

+apart.

+

+Two score and twelve were told off. From the farmer-general of seventy,

+whose riches could not buy his life, to the seamstress of twenty, whose

+poverty and obscurity could not save her. Physical diseases, engendered

+in the vices and neglects of men, will seize on victims of all degrees;

+and the frightful moral disorder, born of unspeakable suffering,

+intolerable oppression, and heartless indifference, smote equally

+without distinction.

+

+Charles Darnay, alone in a cell, had sustained himself with no

+flattering delusion since he came to it from the Tribunal. In every line

+of the narrative he had heard, he had heard his condemnation. He had

+fully comprehended that no personal influence could possibly save him,

+that he was virtually sentenced by the millions, and that units could

+avail him nothing.

+

+Nevertheless, it was not easy, with the face of his beloved wife fresh

+before him, to compose his mind to what it must bear. His hold on life

+was strong, and it was very, very hard, to loosen; by gradual efforts

+and degrees unclosed a little here, it clenched the tighter there; and

+when he brought his strength to bear on that hand and it yielded,

+this was closed again. There was a hurry, too, in all his thoughts,

+a turbulent and heated working of his heart, that contended against

+resignation. If, for a moment, he did feel resigned, then his wife and

+child who had to live after him, seemed to protest and to make it a

+selfish thing.

+

+But, all this was at first. Before long, the consideration that there

+was no disgrace in the fate he must meet, and that numbers went the same

+road wrongfully, and trod it firmly every day, sprang up to stimulate

+him. Next followed the thought that much of the future peace of mind

+enjoyable by the dear ones, depended on his quiet fortitude. So,

+by degrees he calmed into the better state, when he could raise his

+thoughts much higher, and draw comfort down.

+

+Before it had set in dark on the night of his condemnation, he had

+travelled thus far on his last way. Being allowed to purchase the means

+of writing, and a light, he sat down to write until such time as the

+prison lamps should be extinguished.

+

+He wrote a long letter to Lucie, showing her that he had known nothing

+of her father's imprisonment, until he had heard of it from herself,

+and that he had been as ignorant as she of his father's and uncle's

+responsibility for that misery, until the paper had been read. He had

+already explained to her that his concealment from herself of the name

+he had relinquished, was the one condition--fully intelligible now--that

+her father had attached to their betrothal, and was the one promise he

+had still exacted on the morning of their marriage. He entreated her,

+for her father's sake, never to seek to know whether her father had

+become oblivious of the existence of the paper, or had had it recalled

+to him (for the moment, or for good), by the story of the Tower, on

+that old Sunday under the dear old plane-tree in the garden. If he had

+preserved any definite remembrance of it, there could be no doubt that

+he had supposed it destroyed with the Bastille, when he had found no

+mention of it among the relics of prisoners which the populace had

+discovered there, and which had been described to all the world. He

+besought her--though he added that he knew it was needless--to console

+her father, by impressing him through every tender means she could think

+of, with the truth that he had done nothing for which he could justly

+reproach himself, but had uniformly forgotten himself for their joint

+sakes. Next to her preservation of his own last grateful love and

+blessing, and her overcoming of her sorrow, to devote herself to their

+dear child, he adjured her, as they would meet in Heaven, to comfort her

+father.

+

+To her father himself, he wrote in the same strain; but, he told her

+father that he expressly confided his wife and child to his care. And

+he told him this, very strongly, with the hope of rousing him from any

+despondency or dangerous retrospect towards which he foresaw he might be

+tending.

+

+To Mr. Lorry, he commended them all, and explained his worldly affairs.

+That done, with many added sentences of grateful friendship and warm

+attachment, all was done. He never thought of Carton. His mind was so

+full of the others, that he never once thought of him.

+

+He had time to finish these letters before the lights were put out. When

+he lay down on his straw bed, he thought he had done with this world.

+

+But, it beckoned him back in his sleep, and showed itself in shining

+forms. Free and happy, back in the old house in Soho (though it had

+nothing in it like the real house), unaccountably released and light of

+heart, he was with Lucie again, and she told him it was all a dream, and

+he had never gone away. A pause of forgetfulness, and then he had even

+suffered, and had come back to her, dead and at peace, and yet there

+was no difference in him. Another pause of oblivion, and he awoke in the

+sombre morning, unconscious where he was or what had happened, until it

+flashed upon his mind, "this is the day of my death!"

+

+Thus, had he come through the hours, to the day when the fifty-two heads

+were to fall. And now, while he was composed, and hoped that he could

+meet the end with quiet heroism, a new action began in his waking

+thoughts, which was very difficult to master.

+

+He had never seen the instrument that was to terminate his life. How

+high it was from the ground, how many steps it had, where he would be

+stood, how he would be touched, whether the touching hands would be dyed

+red, which way his face would be turned, whether he would be the first,

+or might be the last: these and many similar questions, in nowise

+directed by his will, obtruded themselves over and over again, countless

+times. Neither were they connected with fear: he was conscious of no

+fear. Rather, they originated in a strange besetting desire to know what

+to do when the time came; a desire gigantically disproportionate to the

+few swift moments to which it referred; a wondering that was more like

+the wondering of some other spirit within his, than his own.

+

+The hours went on as he walked to and fro, and the clocks struck the

+numbers he would never hear again. Nine gone for ever, ten gone for

+ever, eleven gone for ever, twelve coming on to pass away. After a hard

+contest with that eccentric action of thought which had last perplexed

+him, he had got the better of it. He walked up and down, softly

+repeating their names to himself. The worst of the strife was over.

+He could walk up and down, free from distracting fancies, praying for

+himself and for them.

+

+Twelve gone for ever.

+

+He had been apprised that the final hour was Three, and he knew he would

+be summoned some time earlier, inasmuch as the tumbrils jolted heavily

+and slowly through the streets. Therefore, he resolved to keep Two

+before his mind, as the hour, and so to strengthen himself in the

+interval that he might be able, after that time, to strengthen others.

+

+Walking regularly to and fro with his arms folded on his breast, a very

+different man from the prisoner, who had walked to and fro at La Force,

+he heard One struck away from him, without surprise. The hour had

+measured like most other hours. Devoutly thankful to Heaven for his

+recovered self-possession, he thought, "There is but another now," and

+turned to walk again.

+

+Footsteps in the stone passage outside the door. He stopped.

+

+The key was put in the lock, and turned. Before the door was opened, or

+as it opened, a man said in a low voice, in English: "He has never seen

+me here; I have kept out of his way. Go you in alone; I wait near. Lose

+no time!"

+

+The door was quickly opened and closed, and there stood before him

+face to face, quiet, intent upon him, with the light of a smile on his

+features, and a cautionary finger on his lip, Sydney Carton.

+

+There was something so bright and remarkable in his look, that, for the

+first moment, the prisoner misdoubted him to be an apparition of his own

+imagining. But, he spoke, and it was his voice; he took the prisoner's

+hand, and it was his real grasp.

+

+"Of all the people upon earth, you least expected to see me?" he said.

+

+"I could not believe it to be you. I can scarcely believe it now. You

+are not"--the apprehension came suddenly into his mind--"a prisoner?"

+

+"No. I am accidentally possessed of a power over one of the keepers

+here, and in virtue of it I stand before you. I come from her--your

+wife, dear Darnay."

+

+The prisoner wrung his hand.

+

+"I bring you a request from her."

+

+"What is it?"

+

+"A most earnest, pressing, and emphatic entreaty, addressed to you

+in the most pathetic tones of the voice so dear to you, that you well

+remember."

+

+The prisoner turned his face partly aside.

+

+"You have no time to ask me why I bring it, or what it means; I have

+no time to tell you. You must comply with it--take off those boots you

+wear, and draw on these of mine."

+

+There was a chair against the wall of the cell, behind the prisoner.

+Carton, pressing forward, had already, with the speed of lightning, got

+him down into it, and stood over him, barefoot.

+

+"Draw on these boots of mine. Put your hands to them; put your will to

+them. Quick!"

+

+"Carton, there is no escaping from this place; it never can be done. You

+will only die with me. It is madness."

+

+"It would be madness if I asked you to escape; but do I? When I ask you

+to pass out at that door, tell me it is madness and remain here. Change

+that cravat for this of mine, that coat for this of mine. While you do

+it, let me take this ribbon from your hair, and shake out your hair like

+this of mine!"

+

+With wonderful quickness, and with a strength both of will and action,

+that appeared quite supernatural, he forced all these changes upon him.

+The prisoner was like a young child in his hands.

+

+"Carton! Dear Carton! It is madness. It cannot be accomplished, it never

+can be done, it has been attempted, and has always failed. I implore you

+not to add your death to the bitterness of mine."

+

+"Do I ask you, my dear Darnay, to pass the door? When I ask that,

+refuse. There are pen and ink and paper on this table. Is your hand

+steady enough to write?"

+

+"It was when you came in."

+

+"Steady it again, and write what I shall dictate. Quick, friend, quick!"

+

+Pressing his hand to his bewildered head, Darnay sat down at the table.

+Carton, with his right hand in his breast, stood close beside him.

+

+"Write exactly as I speak."

+

+"To whom do I address it?"

+

+"To no one." Carton still had his hand in his breast.

+

+"Do I date it?"

+

+"No."

+

+The prisoner looked up, at each question. Carton, standing over him with

+his hand in his breast, looked down.

+

+"'If you remember,'" said Carton, dictating, "'the words that passed

+between us, long ago, you will readily comprehend this when you see it.

+You do remember them, I know. It is not in your nature to forget them.'"

+

+He was drawing his hand from his breast; the prisoner chancing to look

+up in his hurried wonder as he wrote, the hand stopped, closing upon

+something.

+

+"Have you written 'forget them'?" Carton asked.

+

+"I have. Is that a weapon in your hand?"

+

+"No; I am not armed."

+

+"What is it in your hand?"

+

+"You shall know directly. Write on; there are but a few words more." He

+dictated again. "'I am thankful that the time has come, when I can prove

+them. That I do so is no subject for regret or grief.'" As he said these

+words with his eyes fixed on the writer, his hand slowly and softly

+moved down close to the writer's face.

+

+The pen dropped from Darnay's fingers on the table, and he looked about

+him vacantly.

+

+"What vapour is that?" he asked.

+

+"Vapour?"

+

+"Something that crossed me?"

+

+"I am conscious of nothing; there can be nothing here. Take up the pen

+and finish. Hurry, hurry!"

+

+As if his memory were impaired, or his faculties disordered, the

+prisoner made an effort to rally his attention. As he looked at Carton

+with clouded eyes and with an altered manner of breathing, Carton--his

+hand again in his breast--looked steadily at him.

+

+"Hurry, hurry!"

+

+The prisoner bent over the paper, once more.

+

+"'If it had been otherwise;'" Carton's hand was again watchfully and

+softly stealing down; "'I never should have used the longer opportunity.

+If it had been otherwise;'" the hand was at the prisoner's face; "'I

+should but have had so much the more to answer for. If it had been

+otherwise--'" Carton looked at the pen and saw it was trailing off into

+unintelligible signs.

+

+Carton's hand moved back to his breast no more. The prisoner sprang up

+with a reproachful look, but Carton's hand was close and firm at his

+nostrils, and Carton's left arm caught him round the waist. For a few

+seconds he faintly struggled with the man who had come to lay down his

+life for him; but, within a minute or so, he was stretched insensible on

+the ground.

+

+Quickly, but with hands as true to the purpose as his heart was, Carton

+dressed himself in the clothes the prisoner had laid aside, combed back

+his hair, and tied it with the ribbon the prisoner had worn. Then, he

+softly called, "Enter there! Come in!" and the Spy presented himself.

+

+"You see?" said Carton, looking up, as he kneeled on one knee beside the

+insensible figure, putting the paper in the breast: "is your hazard very

+great?"

+

+"Mr. Carton," the Spy answered, with a timid snap of his fingers, "my

+hazard is not _that_, in the thick of business here, if you are true to

+the whole of your bargain."

+

+"Don't fear me. I will be true to the death."

+

+"You must be, Mr. Carton, if the tale of fifty-two is to be right. Being

+made right by you in that dress, I shall have no fear."

+

+"Have no fear! I shall soon be out of the way of harming you, and the

+rest will soon be far from here, please God! Now, get assistance and

+take me to the coach."

+

+"You?" said the Spy nervously.

+

+"Him, man, with whom I have exchanged. You go out at the gate by which

+you brought me in?"

+

+"Of course."

+

+"I was weak and faint when you brought me in, and I am fainter now you

+take me out. The parting interview has overpowered me. Such a thing has

+happened here, often, and too often. Your life is in your own hands.

+Quick! Call assistance!"

+

+"You swear not to betray me?" said the trembling Spy, as he paused for a

+last moment.

+

+"Man, man!" returned Carton, stamping his foot; "have I sworn by no

+solemn vow already, to go through with this, that you waste the precious

+moments now? Take him yourself to the courtyard you know of, place

+him yourself in the carriage, show him yourself to Mr. Lorry, tell him

+yourself to give him no restorative but air, and to remember my words of

+last night, and his promise of last night, and drive away!"

+

+The Spy withdrew, and Carton seated himself at the table, resting his

+forehead on his hands. The Spy returned immediately, with two men.

+

+"How, then?" said one of them, contemplating the fallen figure. "So

+afflicted to find that his friend has drawn a prize in the lottery of

+Sainte Guillotine?"

+

+"A good patriot," said the other, "could hardly have been more afflicted

+if the Aristocrat had drawn a blank."

+

+They raised the unconscious figure, placed it on a litter they had

+brought to the door, and bent to carry it away.

+

+"The time is short, Evremonde," said the Spy, in a warning voice.

+

+"I know it well," answered Carton. "Be careful of my friend, I entreat

+you, and leave me."

+

+"Come, then, my children," said Barsad. "Lift him, and come away!"

+

+The door closed, and Carton was left alone. Straining his powers of

+listening to the utmost, he listened for any sound that might denote

+suspicion or alarm. There was none. Keys turned, doors clashed,

+footsteps passed along distant passages: no cry was raised, or hurry

+made, that seemed unusual. Breathing more freely in a little while, he

+sat down at the table, and listened again until the clock struck Two.

+

+Sounds that he was not afraid of, for he divined their meaning, then

+began to be audible. Several doors were opened in succession, and

+finally his own. A gaoler, with a list in his hand, looked in, merely

+saying, "Follow me, Evremonde!" and he followed into a large dark room,

+at a distance. It was a dark winter day, and what with the shadows

+within, and what with the shadows without, he could but dimly discern

+the others who were brought there to have their arms bound. Some were

+standing; some seated. Some were lamenting, and in restless motion;

+but, these were few. The great majority were silent and still, looking

+fixedly at the ground.

+

+As he stood by the wall in a dim corner, while some of the fifty-two

+were brought in after him, one man stopped in passing, to embrace him,

+as having a knowledge of him. It thrilled him with a great dread of

+discovery; but the man went on. A very few moments after that, a young

+woman, with a slight girlish form, a sweet spare face in which there was

+no vestige of colour, and large widely opened patient eyes, rose from

+the seat where he had observed her sitting, and came to speak to him.

+

+"Citizen Evremonde," she said, touching him with her cold hand. "I am a

+poor little seamstress, who was with you in La Force."

+

+He murmured for answer: "True. I forget what you were accused of?"

+

+"Plots. Though the just Heaven knows that I am innocent of any. Is it

+likely? Who would think of plotting with a poor little weak creature

+like me?"

+

+The forlorn smile with which she said it, so touched him, that tears

+started from his eyes.

+

+"I am not afraid to die, Citizen Evremonde, but I have done nothing. I

+am not unwilling to die, if the Republic which is to do so much good

+to us poor, will profit by my death; but I do not know how that can be,

+Citizen Evremonde. Such a poor weak little creature!"

+

+As the last thing on earth that his heart was to warm and soften to, it

+warmed and softened to this pitiable girl.

+

+"I heard you were released, Citizen Evremonde. I hoped it was true?"

+

+"It was. But, I was again taken and condemned."

+

+"If I may ride with you, Citizen Evremonde, will you let me hold your

+hand? I am not afraid, but I am little and weak, and it will give me

+more courage."

+

+As the patient eyes were lifted to his face, he saw a sudden doubt in

+them, and then astonishment. He pressed the work-worn, hunger-worn young

+fingers, and touched his lips.

+

+"Are you dying for him?" she whispered.

+

+"And his wife and child. Hush! Yes."

+

+"O you will let me hold your brave hand, stranger?"

+

+"Hush! Yes, my poor sister; to the last."

+

+        *****

+

+The same shadows that are falling on the prison, are falling, in that

+same hour of the early afternoon, on the Barrier with the crowd about

+it, when a coach going out of Paris drives up to be examined.

+

+"Who goes here? Whom have we within? Papers!"

+

+The papers are handed out, and read.

+

+"Alexandre Manette. Physician. French. Which is he?"

+

+This is he; this helpless, inarticulately murmuring, wandering old man

+pointed out.

+

+"Apparently the Citizen-Doctor is not in his right mind? The

+Revolution-fever will have been too much for him?"

+

+Greatly too much for him.

+

+"Hah! Many suffer with it. Lucie. His daughter. French. Which is she?"

+

+This is she.

+

+"Apparently it must be. Lucie, the wife of Evremonde; is it not?"

+

+It is.

+

+"Hah! Evremonde has an assignation elsewhere. Lucie, her child. English.

+This is she?"

+

+She and no other.

+

+"Kiss me, child of Evremonde. Now, thou hast kissed a good Republican;

+something new in thy family; remember it! Sydney Carton. Advocate.

+English. Which is he?"

+

+He lies here, in this corner of the carriage. He, too, is pointed out.

+

+"Apparently the English advocate is in a swoon?"

+

+It is hoped he will recover in the fresher air. It is represented that

+he is not in strong health, and has separated sadly from a friend who is

+under the displeasure of the Republic.

+

+"Is that all? It is not a great deal, that! Many are under the

+displeasure of the Republic, and must look out at the little window.

+Jarvis Lorry. Banker. English. Which is he?"

+

+"I am he. Necessarily, being the last."

+

+It is Jarvis Lorry who has replied to all the previous questions. It

+is Jarvis Lorry who has alighted and stands with his hand on the coach

+door, replying to a group of officials. They leisurely walk round the

+carriage and leisurely mount the box, to look at what little luggage it

+carries on the roof; the country-people hanging about, press nearer to

+the coach doors and greedily stare in; a little child, carried by its

+mother, has its short arm held out for it, that it may touch the wife of

+an aristocrat who has gone to the Guillotine.

+

+"Behold your papers, Jarvis Lorry, countersigned."

+

+"One can depart, citizen?"

+

+"One can depart. Forward, my postilions! A good journey!"

+

+"I salute you, citizens.--And the first danger passed!"

+

+These are again the words of Jarvis Lorry, as he clasps his hands, and

+looks upward. There is terror in the carriage, there is weeping, there

+is the heavy breathing of the insensible traveller.

+

+"Are we not going too slowly? Can they not be induced to go faster?"

+asks Lucie, clinging to the old man.

+

+"It would seem like flight, my darling. I must not urge them too much;

+it would rouse suspicion."

+

+"Look back, look back, and see if we are pursued!"

+

+"The road is clear, my dearest. So far, we are not pursued."

+

+Houses in twos and threes pass by us, solitary farms, ruinous buildings,

+dye-works, tanneries, and the like, open country, avenues of leafless

+trees. The hard uneven pavement is under us, the soft deep mud is on

+either side. Sometimes, we strike into the skirting mud, to avoid the

+stones that clatter us and shake us; sometimes, we stick in ruts and

+sloughs there. The agony of our impatience is then so great, that in our

+wild alarm and hurry we are for getting out and running--hiding--doing

+anything but stopping.

+

+Out of the open country, in again among ruinous buildings, solitary

+farms, dye-works, tanneries, and the like, cottages in twos and threes,

+avenues of leafless trees. Have these men deceived us, and taken us back

+by another road? Is not this the same place twice over? Thank Heaven,

+no. A village. Look back, look back, and see if we are pursued! Hush!

+the posting-house.

+

+Leisurely, our four horses are taken out; leisurely, the coach stands in

+the little street, bereft of horses, and with no likelihood upon it

+of ever moving again; leisurely, the new horses come into visible

+existence, one by one; leisurely, the new postilions follow, sucking and

+plaiting the lashes of their whips; leisurely, the old postilions count

+their money, make wrong additions, and arrive at dissatisfied results.

+All the time, our overfraught hearts are beating at a rate that would

+far outstrip the fastest gallop of the fastest horses ever foaled.

+

+At length the new postilions are in their saddles, and the old are left

+behind. We are through the village, up the hill, and down the hill, and

+on the low watery grounds. Suddenly, the postilions exchange speech with

+animated gesticulation, and the horses are pulled up, almost on their

+haunches. We are pursued?

+

+"Ho! Within the carriage there. Speak then!"

+

+"What is it?" asks Mr. Lorry, looking out at window.

+

+"How many did they say?"

+

+"I do not understand you."

+

+"--At the last post. How many to the Guillotine to-day?"

+

+"Fifty-two."

+

+"I said so! A brave number! My fellow-citizen here would have it

+forty-two; ten more heads are worth having. The Guillotine goes

+handsomely. I love it. Hi forward. Whoop!"

+

+The night comes on dark. He moves more; he is beginning to revive, and

+to speak intelligibly; he thinks they are still together; he asks him,

+by his name, what he has in his hand. O pity us, kind Heaven, and help

+us! Look out, look out, and see if we are pursued.

+

+The wind is rushing after us, and the clouds are flying after us, and

+the moon is plunging after us, and the whole wild night is in pursuit of

+us; but, so far, we are pursued by nothing else.

+

+

+

+

+XIV. The Knitting Done

+

+

+In that same juncture of time when the Fifty-Two awaited their fate

+Madame Defarge held darkly ominous council with The Vengeance and

+Jacques Three of the Revolutionary Jury. Not in the wine-shop did Madame

+Defarge confer with these ministers, but in the shed of the wood-sawyer,

+erst a mender of roads. The sawyer himself did not participate in the

+conference, but abided at a little distance, like an outer satellite who

+was not to speak until required, or to offer an opinion until invited.

+

+"But our Defarge," said Jacques Three, "is undoubtedly a good

+Republican? Eh?"

+

+"There is no better," the voluble Vengeance protested in her shrill

+notes, "in France."

+

+"Peace, little Vengeance," said Madame Defarge, laying her hand with

+a slight frown on her lieutenant's lips, "hear me speak. My husband,

+fellow-citizen, is a good Republican and a bold man; he has deserved

+well of the Republic, and possesses its confidence. But my husband has

+his weaknesses, and he is so weak as to relent towards this Doctor."

+

+"It is a great pity," croaked Jacques Three, dubiously shaking his head,

+with his cruel fingers at his hungry mouth; "it is not quite like a good

+citizen; it is a thing to regret."

+

+"See you," said madame, "I care nothing for this Doctor, I. He may wear

+his head or lose it, for any interest I have in him; it is all one to

+me. But, the Evremonde people are to be exterminated, and the wife and

+child must follow the husband and father."

+

+"She has a fine head for it," croaked Jacques Three. "I have seen blue

+eyes and golden hair there, and they looked charming when Samson held

+them up." Ogre that he was, he spoke like an epicure.

+

+Madame Defarge cast down her eyes, and reflected a little.

+

+"The child also," observed Jacques Three, with a meditative enjoyment

+of his words, "has golden hair and blue eyes. And we seldom have a child

+there. It is a pretty sight!"

+

+"In a word," said Madame Defarge, coming out of her short abstraction,

+"I cannot trust my husband in this matter. Not only do I feel, since

+last night, that I dare not confide to him the details of my projects;

+but also I feel that if I delay, there is danger of his giving warning,

+and then they might escape."

+

+"That must never be," croaked Jacques Three; "no one must escape. We

+have not half enough as it is. We ought to have six score a day."

+

+"In a word," Madame Defarge went on, "my husband has not my reason for

+pursuing this family to annihilation, and I have not his reason for

+regarding this Doctor with any sensibility. I must act for myself,

+therefore. Come hither, little citizen."

+

+The wood-sawyer, who held her in the respect, and himself in the

+submission, of mortal fear, advanced with his hand to his red cap.

+

+"Touching those signals, little citizen," said Madame Defarge, sternly,

+"that she made to the prisoners; you are ready to bear witness to them

+this very day?"

+

+"Ay, ay, why not!" cried the sawyer. "Every day, in all weathers, from

+two to four, always signalling, sometimes with the little one, sometimes

+without. I know what I know. I have seen with my eyes."

+

+He made all manner of gestures while he spoke, as if in incidental

+imitation of some few of the great diversity of signals that he had

+never seen.

+

+"Clearly plots," said Jacques Three. "Transparently!"

+

+"There is no doubt of the Jury?" inquired Madame Defarge, letting her

+eyes turn to him with a gloomy smile.

+

+"Rely upon the patriotic Jury, dear citizeness. I answer for my

+fellow-Jurymen."

+

+"Now, let me see," said Madame Defarge, pondering again. "Yet once more!

+Can I spare this Doctor to my husband? I have no feeling either way. Can

+I spare him?"

+

+"He would count as one head," observed Jacques Three, in a low voice.

+"We really have not heads enough; it would be a pity, I think."

+

+"He was signalling with her when I saw her," argued Madame Defarge; "I

+cannot speak of one without the other; and I must not be silent, and

+trust the case wholly to him, this little citizen here. For, I am not a

+bad witness."

+

+The Vengeance and Jacques Three vied with each other in their fervent

+protestations that she was the most admirable and marvellous of

+witnesses. The little citizen, not to be outdone, declared her to be a

+celestial witness.

+

+"He must take his chance," said Madame Defarge. "No, I cannot spare

+him! You are engaged at three o'clock; you are going to see the batch of

+to-day executed.--You?"

+

+The question was addressed to the wood-sawyer, who hurriedly replied in

+the affirmative: seizing the occasion to add that he was the most ardent

+of Republicans, and that he would be in effect the most desolate of

+Republicans, if anything prevented him from enjoying the pleasure of

+smoking his afternoon pipe in the contemplation of the droll national

+barber. He was so very demonstrative herein, that he might have been

+suspected (perhaps was, by the dark eyes that looked contemptuously at

+him out of Madame Defarge's head) of having his small individual fears

+for his own personal safety, every hour in the day.

+

+"I," said madame, "am equally engaged at the same place. After it is

+over--say at eight to-night--come you to me, in Saint Antoine, and we

+will give information against these people at my Section."

+

+The wood-sawyer said he would be proud and flattered to attend the

+citizeness. The citizeness looking at him, he became embarrassed, evaded

+her glance as a small dog would have done, retreated among his wood, and

+hid his confusion over the handle of his saw.

+

+Madame Defarge beckoned the Juryman and The Vengeance a little nearer to

+the door, and there expounded her further views to them thus:

+

+"She will now be at home, awaiting the moment of his death. She will

+be mourning and grieving. She will be in a state of mind to impeach the

+justice of the Republic. She will be full of sympathy with its enemies.

+I will go to her."

+

+"What an admirable woman; what an adorable woman!" exclaimed Jacques

+Three, rapturously. "Ah, my cherished!" cried The Vengeance; and

+embraced her.

+

+"Take you my knitting," said Madame Defarge, placing it in her

+lieutenant's hands, "and have it ready for me in my usual seat. Keep

+me my usual chair. Go you there, straight, for there will probably be a

+greater concourse than usual, to-day."

+

+"I willingly obey the orders of my Chief," said The Vengeance with

+alacrity, and kissing her cheek. "You will not be late?"

+

+"I shall be there before the commencement."

+

+"And before the tumbrils arrive. Be sure you are there, my soul," said

+The Vengeance, calling after her, for she had already turned into the

+street, "before the tumbrils arrive!"

+

+Madame Defarge slightly waved her hand, to imply that she heard, and

+might be relied upon to arrive in good time, and so went through the

+mud, and round the corner of the prison wall. The Vengeance and the

+Juryman, looking after her as she walked away, were highly appreciative

+of her fine figure, and her superb moral endowments.

+

+There were many women at that time, upon whom the time laid a dreadfully

+disfiguring hand; but, there was not one among them more to be dreaded

+than this ruthless woman, now taking her way along the streets. Of a

+strong and fearless character, of shrewd sense and readiness, of great

+determination, of that kind of beauty which not only seems to impart

+to its possessor firmness and animosity, but to strike into others an

+instinctive recognition of those qualities; the troubled time would have

+heaved her up, under any circumstances. But, imbued from her childhood

+with a brooding sense of wrong, and an inveterate hatred of a class,

+opportunity had developed her into a tigress. She was absolutely without

+pity. If she had ever had the virtue in her, it had quite gone out of

+her.

+

+It was nothing to her, that an innocent man was to die for the sins of

+his forefathers; she saw, not him, but them. It was nothing to her, that

+his wife was to be made a widow and his daughter an orphan; that was

+insufficient punishment, because they were her natural enemies and

+her prey, and as such had no right to live. To appeal to her, was made

+hopeless by her having no sense of pity, even for herself. If she had

+been laid low in the streets, in any of the many encounters in which

+she had been engaged, she would not have pitied herself; nor, if she had

+been ordered to the axe to-morrow, would she have gone to it with any

+softer feeling than a fierce desire to change places with the man who

+sent her there.

+

+Such a heart Madame Defarge carried under her rough robe. Carelessly

+worn, it was a becoming robe enough, in a certain weird way, and her

+dark hair looked rich under her coarse red cap. Lying hidden in her

+bosom, was a loaded pistol. Lying hidden at her waist, was a sharpened

+dagger. Thus accoutred, and walking with the confident tread of such

+a character, and with the supple freedom of a woman who had habitually

+walked in her girlhood, bare-foot and bare-legged, on the brown

+sea-sand, Madame Defarge took her way along the streets.

+

+Now, when the journey of the travelling coach, at that very moment

+waiting for the completion of its load, had been planned out last night,

+the difficulty of taking Miss Pross in it had much engaged Mr. Lorry's

+attention. It was not merely desirable to avoid overloading the coach,

+but it was of the highest importance that the time occupied in examining

+it and its passengers, should be reduced to the utmost; since their

+escape might depend on the saving of only a few seconds here and there.

+Finally, he had proposed, after anxious consideration, that Miss Pross

+and Jerry, who were at liberty to leave the city, should leave it at

+three o'clock in the lightest-wheeled conveyance known to that period.

+Unencumbered with luggage, they would soon overtake the coach, and,

+passing it and preceding it on the road, would order its horses in

+advance, and greatly facilitate its progress during the precious hours

+of the night, when delay was the most to be dreaded.

+

+Seeing in this arrangement the hope of rendering real service in that

+pressing emergency, Miss Pross hailed it with joy. She and Jerry had

+beheld the coach start, had known who it was that Solomon brought, had

+passed some ten minutes in tortures of suspense, and were now concluding

+their arrangements to follow the coach, even as Madame Defarge,

+taking her way through the streets, now drew nearer and nearer to the

+else-deserted lodging in which they held their consultation.

+

+"Now what do you think, Mr. Cruncher," said Miss Pross, whose agitation

+was so great that she could hardly speak, or stand, or move, or live:

+"what do you think of our not starting from this courtyard? Another

+carriage having already gone from here to-day, it might awaken

+suspicion."

+

+"My opinion, miss," returned Mr. Cruncher, "is as you're right. Likewise

+wot I'll stand by you, right or wrong."

+

+"I am so distracted with fear and hope for our precious creatures," said

+Miss Pross, wildly crying, "that I am incapable of forming any plan. Are

+_you_ capable of forming any plan, my dear good Mr. Cruncher?"

+

+"Respectin' a future spear o' life, miss," returned Mr. Cruncher, "I

+hope so. Respectin' any present use o' this here blessed old head o'

+mine, I think not. Would you do me the favour, miss, to take notice o'

+two promises and wows wot it is my wishes fur to record in this here

+crisis?"

+

+"Oh, for gracious sake!" cried Miss Pross, still wildly crying, "record

+them at once, and get them out of the way, like an excellent man."

+

+"First," said Mr. Cruncher, who was all in a tremble, and who spoke with

+an ashy and solemn visage, "them poor things well out o' this, never no

+more will I do it, never no more!"

+

+"I am quite sure, Mr. Cruncher," returned Miss Pross, "that you

+never will do it again, whatever it is, and I beg you not to think it

+necessary to mention more particularly what it is."

+

+"No, miss," returned Jerry, "it shall not be named to you. Second: them

+poor things well out o' this, and never no more will I interfere with

+Mrs. Cruncher's flopping, never no more!"

+

+"Whatever housekeeping arrangement that may be," said Miss Pross,

+striving to dry her eyes and compose herself, "I have no doubt it

+is best that Mrs. Cruncher should have it entirely under her own

+superintendence.--O my poor darlings!"

+

+"I go so far as to say, miss, moreover," proceeded Mr. Cruncher, with a

+most alarming tendency to hold forth as from a pulpit--"and let my words

+be took down and took to Mrs. Cruncher through yourself--that wot my

+opinions respectin' flopping has undergone a change, and that wot I only

+hope with all my heart as Mrs. Cruncher may be a flopping at the present

+time."

+

+"There, there, there! I hope she is, my dear man," cried the distracted

+Miss Pross, "and I hope she finds it answering her expectations."

+

+"Forbid it," proceeded Mr. Cruncher, with additional solemnity,

+additional slowness, and additional tendency to hold forth and hold

+out, "as anything wot I have ever said or done should be wisited on my

+earnest wishes for them poor creeturs now! Forbid it as we shouldn't all

+flop (if it was anyways conwenient) to get 'em out o' this here dismal

+risk! Forbid it, miss! Wot I say, for-_bid_ it!" This was Mr. Cruncher's

+conclusion after a protracted but vain endeavour to find a better one.

+

+And still Madame Defarge, pursuing her way along the streets, came

+nearer and nearer.

+

+"If we ever get back to our native land," said Miss Pross, "you may rely

+upon my telling Mrs. Cruncher as much as I may be able to remember and

+understand of what you have so impressively said; and at all events

+you may be sure that I shall bear witness to your being thoroughly in

+earnest at this dreadful time. Now, pray let us think! My esteemed Mr.

+Cruncher, let us think!"

+

+Still, Madame Defarge, pursuing her way along the streets, came nearer

+and nearer.

+

+"If you were to go before," said Miss Pross, "and stop the vehicle and

+horses from coming here, and were to wait somewhere for me; wouldn't

+that be best?"

+

+Mr. Cruncher thought it might be best.

+

+"Where could you wait for me?" asked Miss Pross.

+

+Mr. Cruncher was so bewildered that he could think of no locality but

+Temple Bar. Alas! Temple Bar was hundreds of miles away, and Madame

+Defarge was drawing very near indeed.

+

+"By the cathedral door," said Miss Pross. "Would it be much out of

+the way, to take me in, near the great cathedral door between the two

+towers?"

+

+"No, miss," answered Mr. Cruncher.

+

+"Then, like the best of men," said Miss Pross, "go to the posting-house

+straight, and make that change."

+

+"I am doubtful," said Mr. Cruncher, hesitating and shaking his head,

+"about leaving of you, you see. We don't know what may happen."

+

+"Heaven knows we don't," returned Miss Pross, "but have no fear for me.

+Take me in at the cathedral, at Three o'Clock, or as near it as you can,

+and I am sure it will be better than our going from here. I feel certain

+of it. There! Bless you, Mr. Cruncher! Think-not of me, but of the lives

+that may depend on both of us!"

+

+This exordium, and Miss Pross's two hands in quite agonised entreaty

+clasping his, decided Mr. Cruncher. With an encouraging nod or two, he

+immediately went out to alter the arrangements, and left her by herself

+to follow as she had proposed.

+

+The having originated a precaution which was already in course of

+execution, was a great relief to Miss Pross. The necessity of composing

+her appearance so that it should attract no special notice in the

+streets, was another relief. She looked at her watch, and it was twenty

+minutes past two. She had no time to lose, but must get ready at once.

+

+Afraid, in her extreme perturbation, of the loneliness of the deserted

+rooms, and of half-imagined faces peeping from behind every open door

+in them, Miss Pross got a basin of cold water and began laving her eyes,

+which were swollen and red. Haunted by her feverish apprehensions, she

+could not bear to have her sight obscured for a minute at a time by the

+dripping water, but constantly paused and looked round to see that there

+was no one watching her. In one of those pauses she recoiled and cried

+out, for she saw a figure standing in the room.

+

+The basin fell to the ground broken, and the water flowed to the feet of

+Madame Defarge. By strange stern ways, and through much staining blood,

+those feet had come to meet that water.

+

+Madame Defarge looked coldly at her, and said, "The wife of Evremonde;

+where is she?"

+

+It flashed upon Miss Pross's mind that the doors were all standing open,

+and would suggest the flight. Her first act was to shut them. There were

+four in the room, and she shut them all. She then placed herself before

+the door of the chamber which Lucie had occupied.

+

+Madame Defarge's dark eyes followed her through this rapid movement,

+and rested on her when it was finished. Miss Pross had nothing beautiful

+about her; years had not tamed the wildness, or softened the grimness,

+of her appearance; but, she too was a determined woman in her different

+way, and she measured Madame Defarge with her eyes, every inch.

+

+"You might, from your appearance, be the wife of Lucifer," said Miss

+Pross, in her breathing. "Nevertheless, you shall not get the better of

+me. I am an Englishwoman."

+

+Madame Defarge looked at her scornfully, but still with something of

+Miss Pross's own perception that they two were at bay. She saw a tight,

+hard, wiry woman before her, as Mr. Lorry had seen in the same figure a

+woman with a strong hand, in the years gone by. She knew full well that

+Miss Pross was the family's devoted friend; Miss Pross knew full well

+that Madame Defarge was the family's malevolent enemy.

+

+"On my way yonder," said Madame Defarge, with a slight movement of

+her hand towards the fatal spot, "where they reserve my chair and my

+knitting for me, I am come to make my compliments to her in passing. I

+wish to see her."

+

+"I know that your intentions are evil," said Miss Pross, "and you may

+depend upon it, I'll hold my own against them."

+

+Each spoke in her own language; neither understood the other's words;

+both were very watchful, and intent to deduce from look and manner, what

+the unintelligible words meant.

+

+"It will do her no good to keep herself concealed from me at this

+moment," said Madame Defarge. "Good patriots will know what that means.

+Let me see her. Go tell her that I wish to see her. Do you hear?"

+

+"If those eyes of yours were bed-winches," returned Miss Pross, "and I

+was an English four-poster, they shouldn't loose a splinter of me. No,

+you wicked foreign woman; I am your match."

+

+Madame Defarge was not likely to follow these idiomatic remarks in

+detail; but, she so far understood them as to perceive that she was set

+at naught.

+

+"Woman imbecile and pig-like!" said Madame Defarge, frowning. "I take no

+answer from you. I demand to see her. Either tell her that I demand

+to see her, or stand out of the way of the door and let me go to her!"

+This, with an angry explanatory wave of her right arm.

+

+"I little thought," said Miss Pross, "that I should ever want to

+understand your nonsensical language; but I would give all I have,

+except the clothes I wear, to know whether you suspect the truth, or any

+part of it."

+

+Neither of them for a single moment released the other's eyes. Madame

+Defarge had not moved from the spot where she stood when Miss Pross

+first became aware of her; but, she now advanced one step.

+

+"I am a Briton," said Miss Pross, "I am desperate. I don't care an

+English Twopence for myself. I know that the longer I keep you here, the

+greater hope there is for my Ladybird. I'll not leave a handful of that

+dark hair upon your head, if you lay a finger on me!"

+

+Thus Miss Pross, with a shake of her head and a flash of her eyes

+between every rapid sentence, and every rapid sentence a whole breath.

+Thus Miss Pross, who had never struck a blow in her life.

+

+But, her courage was of that emotional nature that it brought the

+irrepressible tears into her eyes. This was a courage that Madame

+Defarge so little comprehended as to mistake for weakness. "Ha, ha!" she

+laughed, "you poor wretch! What are you worth! I address myself to that

+Doctor." Then she raised her voice and called out, "Citizen Doctor! Wife

+of Evremonde! Child of Evremonde! Any person but this miserable fool,

+answer the Citizeness Defarge!"

+

+Perhaps the following silence, perhaps some latent disclosure in the

+expression of Miss Pross's face, perhaps a sudden misgiving apart from

+either suggestion, whispered to Madame Defarge that they were gone.

+Three of the doors she opened swiftly, and looked in.

+

+"Those rooms are all in disorder, there has been hurried packing, there

+are odds and ends upon the ground. There is no one in that room behind

+you! Let me look."

+

+"Never!" said Miss Pross, who understood the request as perfectly as

+Madame Defarge understood the answer.

+

+"If they are not in that room, they are gone, and can be pursued and

+brought back," said Madame Defarge to herself.

+

+"As long as you don't know whether they are in that room or not, you are

+uncertain what to do," said Miss Pross to herself; "and you shall not

+know that, if I can prevent your knowing it; and know that, or not know

+that, you shall not leave here while I can hold you."

+

+"I have been in the streets from the first, nothing has stopped me,

+I will tear you to pieces, but I will have you from that door," said

+Madame Defarge.

+

+"We are alone at the top of a high house in a solitary courtyard, we are

+not likely to be heard, and I pray for bodily strength to keep you here,

+while every minute you are here is worth a hundred thousand guineas to

+my darling," said Miss Pross.

+

+Madame Defarge made at the door. Miss Pross, on the instinct of the

+moment, seized her round the waist in both her arms, and held her tight.

+It was in vain for Madame Defarge to struggle and to strike; Miss Pross,

+with the vigorous tenacity of love, always so much stronger than hate,

+clasped her tight, and even lifted her from the floor in the struggle

+that they had. The two hands of Madame Defarge buffeted and tore her

+face; but, Miss Pross, with her head down, held her round the waist, and

+clung to her with more than the hold of a drowning woman.

+

+Soon, Madame Defarge's hands ceased to strike, and felt at her encircled

+waist. "It is under my arm," said Miss Pross, in smothered tones, "you

+shall not draw it. I am stronger than you, I bless Heaven for it. I hold

+you till one or other of us faints or dies!"

+

+Madame Defarge's hands were at her bosom. Miss Pross looked up, saw

+what it was, struck at it, struck out a flash and a crash, and stood

+alone--blinded with smoke.

+

+All this was in a second. As the smoke cleared, leaving an awful

+stillness, it passed out on the air, like the soul of the furious woman

+whose body lay lifeless on the ground.

+

+In the first fright and horror of her situation, Miss Pross passed the

+body as far from it as she could, and ran down the stairs to call for

+fruitless help. Happily, she bethought herself of the consequences of

+what she did, in time to check herself and go back. It was dreadful to

+go in at the door again; but, she did go in, and even went near it, to

+get the bonnet and other things that she must wear. These she put on,

+out on the staircase, first shutting and locking the door and taking

+away the key. She then sat down on the stairs a few moments to breathe

+and to cry, and then got up and hurried away.

+

+By good fortune she had a veil on her bonnet, or she could hardly have

+gone along the streets without being stopped. By good fortune, too, she

+was naturally so peculiar in appearance as not to show disfigurement

+like any other woman. She needed both advantages, for the marks of

+gripping fingers were deep in her face, and her hair was torn, and her

+dress (hastily composed with unsteady hands) was clutched and dragged a

+hundred ways.

+

+In crossing the bridge, she dropped the door key in the river. Arriving

+at the cathedral some few minutes before her escort, and waiting there,

+she thought, what if the key were already taken in a net, what if

+it were identified, what if the door were opened and the remains

+discovered, what if she were stopped at the gate, sent to prison, and

+charged with murder! In the midst of these fluttering thoughts, the

+escort appeared, took her in, and took her away.

+

+"Is there any noise in the streets?" she asked him.

+

+"The usual noises," Mr. Cruncher replied; and looked surprised by the

+question and by her aspect.

+

+"I don't hear you," said Miss Pross. "What do you say?"

+

+It was in vain for Mr. Cruncher to repeat what he said; Miss Pross could

+not hear him. "So I'll nod my head," thought Mr. Cruncher, amazed, "at

+all events she'll see that." And she did.

+

+"Is there any noise in the streets now?" asked Miss Pross again,

+presently.

+

+Again Mr. Cruncher nodded his head.

+

+"I don't hear it."

+

+"Gone deaf in an hour?" said Mr. Cruncher, ruminating, with his mind

+much disturbed; "wot's come to her?"

+

+"I feel," said Miss Pross, "as if there had been a flash and a crash,

+and that crash was the last thing I should ever hear in this life."

+

+"Blest if she ain't in a queer condition!" said Mr. Cruncher, more and

+more disturbed. "Wot can she have been a takin', to keep her courage up?

+Hark! There's the roll of them dreadful carts! You can hear that, miss?"

+

+"I can hear," said Miss Pross, seeing that he spoke to her, "nothing. O,

+my good man, there was first a great crash, and then a great stillness,

+and that stillness seems to be fixed and unchangeable, never to be

+broken any more as long as my life lasts."

+

+"If she don't hear the roll of those dreadful carts, now very nigh their

+journey's end," said Mr. Cruncher, glancing over his shoulder, "it's my

+opinion that indeed she never will hear anything else in this world."

+

+And indeed she never did.

+

+

+

+

+XV. The Footsteps Die Out For Ever

+

+

+Along the Paris streets, the death-carts rumble, hollow and harsh. Six

+tumbrils carry the day's wine to La Guillotine. All the devouring and

+insatiate Monsters imagined since imagination could record itself,

+are fused in the one realisation, Guillotine. And yet there is not in

+France, with its rich variety of soil and climate, a blade, a leaf,

+a root, a sprig, a peppercorn, which will grow to maturity under

+conditions more certain than those that have produced this horror. Crush

+humanity out of shape once more, under similar hammers, and it will

+twist itself into the same tortured forms. Sow the same seed of

+rapacious license and oppression over again, and it will surely yield

+the same fruit according to its kind.

+

+Six tumbrils roll along the streets. Change these back again to what

+they were, thou powerful enchanter, Time, and they shall be seen to be

+the carriages of absolute monarchs, the equipages of feudal nobles, the

+toilettes of flaring Jezebels, the churches that are not my father's

+house but dens of thieves, the huts of millions of starving peasants!

+No; the great magician who majestically works out the appointed order

+of the Creator, never reverses his transformations. "If thou be changed

+into this shape by the will of God," say the seers to the enchanted, in

+the wise Arabian stories, "then remain so! But, if thou wear this

+form through mere passing conjuration, then resume thy former aspect!"

+Changeless and hopeless, the tumbrils roll along.

+

+As the sombre wheels of the six carts go round, they seem to plough up

+a long crooked furrow among the populace in the streets. Ridges of faces

+are thrown to this side and to that, and the ploughs go steadily onward.

+So used are the regular inhabitants of the houses to the spectacle, that

+in many windows there are no people, and in some the occupation of the

+hands is not so much as suspended, while the eyes survey the faces in

+the tumbrils. Here and there, the inmate has visitors to see the sight;

+then he points his finger, with something of the complacency of a

+curator or authorised exponent, to this cart and to this, and seems to

+tell who sat here yesterday, and who there the day before.

+

+Of the riders in the tumbrils, some observe these things, and all

+things on their last roadside, with an impassive stare; others, with

+a lingering interest in the ways of life and men. Some, seated with

+drooping heads, are sunk in silent despair; again, there are some so

+heedful of their looks that they cast upon the multitude such glances as

+they have seen in theatres, and in pictures. Several close their eyes,

+and think, or try to get their straying thoughts together. Only one, and

+he a miserable creature, of a crazed aspect, is so shattered and made

+drunk by horror, that he sings, and tries to dance. Not one of the whole

+number appeals by look or gesture, to the pity of the people.

+

+There is a guard of sundry horsemen riding abreast of the tumbrils,

+and faces are often turned up to some of them, and they are asked some

+question. It would seem to be always the same question, for, it is

+always followed by a press of people towards the third cart. The

+horsemen abreast of that cart, frequently point out one man in it with

+their swords. The leading curiosity is, to know which is he; he stands

+at the back of the tumbril with his head bent down, to converse with a

+mere girl who sits on the side of the cart, and holds his hand. He has

+no curiosity or care for the scene about him, and always speaks to the

+girl. Here and there in the long street of St. Honore, cries are raised

+against him. If they move him at all, it is only to a quiet smile, as he

+shakes his hair a little more loosely about his face. He cannot easily

+touch his face, his arms being bound.

+

+On the steps of a church, awaiting the coming-up of the tumbrils, stands

+the Spy and prison-sheep. He looks into the first of them: not there.

+He looks into the second: not there. He already asks himself, "Has he

+sacrificed me?" when his face clears, as he looks into the third.

+

+"Which is Evremonde?" says a man behind him.

+

+"That. At the back there."

+

+"With his hand in the girl's?"

+

+"Yes."

+

+The man cries, "Down, Evremonde! To the Guillotine all aristocrats!

+Down, Evremonde!"

+

+"Hush, hush!" the Spy entreats him, timidly.

+

+"And why not, citizen?"

+

+"He is going to pay the forfeit: it will be paid in five minutes more.

+Let him be at peace."

+

+But the man continuing to exclaim, "Down, Evremonde!" the face of

+Evremonde is for a moment turned towards him. Evremonde then sees the

+Spy, and looks attentively at him, and goes his way.

+

+The clocks are on the stroke of three, and the furrow ploughed among the

+populace is turning round, to come on into the place of execution, and

+end. The ridges thrown to this side and to that, now crumble in and

+close behind the last plough as it passes on, for all are following

+to the Guillotine. In front of it, seated in chairs, as in a garden of

+public diversion, are a number of women, busily knitting. On one of the

+fore-most chairs, stands The Vengeance, looking about for her friend.

+

+"Therese!" she cries, in her shrill tones. "Who has seen her? Therese

+Defarge!"

+

+"She never missed before," says a knitting-woman of the sisterhood.

+

+"No; nor will she miss now," cries The Vengeance, petulantly. "Therese."

+

+"Louder," the woman recommends.

+

+Ay! Louder, Vengeance, much louder, and still she will scarcely hear

+thee. Louder yet, Vengeance, with a little oath or so added, and yet

+it will hardly bring her. Send other women up and down to seek her,

+lingering somewhere; and yet, although the messengers have done dread

+deeds, it is questionable whether of their own wills they will go far

+enough to find her!

+

+"Bad Fortune!" cries The Vengeance, stamping her foot in the chair, "and

+here are the tumbrils! And Evremonde will be despatched in a wink, and

+she not here! See her knitting in my hand, and her empty chair ready for

+her. I cry with vexation and disappointment!"

+

+As The Vengeance descends from her elevation to do it, the tumbrils

+begin to discharge their loads. The ministers of Sainte Guillotine are

+robed and ready. Crash!--A head is held up, and the knitting-women who

+scarcely lifted their eyes to look at it a moment ago when it could

+think and speak, count One.

+

+The second tumbril empties and moves on; the third comes up. Crash!--And

+the knitting-women, never faltering or pausing in their Work, count Two.

+

+The supposed Evremonde descends, and the seamstress is lifted out next

+after him. He has not relinquished her patient hand in getting out, but

+still holds it as he promised. He gently places her with her back to the

+crashing engine that constantly whirrs up and falls, and she looks into

+his face and thanks him.

+

+"But for you, dear stranger, I should not be so composed, for I am

+naturally a poor little thing, faint of heart; nor should I have been

+able to raise my thoughts to Him who was put to death, that we might

+have hope and comfort here to-day. I think you were sent to me by

+Heaven."

+

+"Or you to me," says Sydney Carton. "Keep your eyes upon me, dear child,

+and mind no other object."

+

+"I mind nothing while I hold your hand. I shall mind nothing when I let

+it go, if they are rapid."

+

+"They will be rapid. Fear not!"

+

+The two stand in the fast-thinning throng of victims, but they speak as

+if they were alone. Eye to eye, voice to voice, hand to hand, heart to

+heart, these two children of the Universal Mother, else so wide apart

+and differing, have come together on the dark highway, to repair home

+together, and to rest in her bosom.

+

+"Brave and generous friend, will you let me ask you one last question? I

+am very ignorant, and it troubles me--just a little."

+

+"Tell me what it is."

+

+"I have a cousin, an only relative and an orphan, like myself, whom I

+love very dearly. She is five years younger than I, and she lives in a

+farmer's house in the south country. Poverty parted us, and she knows

+nothing of my fate--for I cannot write--and if I could, how should I

+tell her! It is better as it is."

+

+"Yes, yes: better as it is."

+

+"What I have been thinking as we came along, and what I am still

+thinking now, as I look into your kind strong face which gives me so

+much support, is this:--If the Republic really does good to the poor,

+and they come to be less hungry, and in all ways to suffer less, she may

+live a long time: she may even live to be old."

+

+"What then, my gentle sister?"

+

+"Do you think:" the uncomplaining eyes in which there is so much

+endurance, fill with tears, and the lips part a little more and tremble:

+"that it will seem long to me, while I wait for her in the better land

+where I trust both you and I will be mercifully sheltered?"

+

+"It cannot be, my child; there is no Time there, and no trouble there."

+

+"You comfort me so much! I am so ignorant. Am I to kiss you now? Is the

+moment come?"

+

+"Yes."

+

+She kisses his lips; he kisses hers; they solemnly bless each other.

+The spare hand does not tremble as he releases it; nothing worse than

+a sweet, bright constancy is in the patient face. She goes next before

+him--is gone; the knitting-women count Twenty-Two.

+

+"I am the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord: he that believeth

+in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and

+believeth in me shall never die."

+

+The murmuring of many voices, the upturning of many faces, the pressing

+on of many footsteps in the outskirts of the crowd, so that it swells

+forward in a mass, like one great heave of water, all flashes away.

+Twenty-Three.

+

+        *****

+

+They said of him, about the city that night, that it was the

+peacefullest man's face ever beheld there. Many added that he looked

+sublime and prophetic.

+

+One of the most remarkable sufferers by the same axe--a woman--had asked

+at the foot of the same scaffold, not long before, to be allowed to

+write down the thoughts that were inspiring her. If he had given any

+utterance to his, and they were prophetic, they would have been these:

+

+"I see Barsad, and Cly, Defarge, The Vengeance, the Juryman, the Judge,

+long ranks of the new oppressors who have risen on the destruction of

+the old, perishing by this retributive instrument, before it shall cease

+out of its present use. I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people

+rising from this abyss, and, in their struggles to be truly free, in

+their triumphs and defeats, through long years to come, I see the evil

+of this time and of the previous time of which this is the natural

+birth, gradually making expiation for itself and wearing out.

+

+"I see the lives for which I lay down my life, peaceful, useful,

+prosperous and happy, in that England which I shall see no more. I see

+Her with a child upon her bosom, who bears my name. I see her father,

+aged and bent, but otherwise restored, and faithful to all men in his

+healing office, and at peace. I see the good old man, so long their

+friend, in ten years' time enriching them with all he has, and passing

+tranquilly to his reward.

+

+"I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in the hearts of

+their descendants, generations hence. I see her, an old woman, weeping

+for me on the anniversary of this day. I see her and her husband, their

+course done, lying side by side in their last earthly bed, and I know

+that each was not more honoured and held sacred in the other's soul,

+than I was in the souls of both.

+

+"I see that child who lay upon her bosom and who bore my name, a man

+winning his way up in that path of life which once was mine. I see him

+winning it so well, that my name is made illustrious there by the

+light of his. I see the blots I threw upon it, faded away. I see him,

+fore-most of just judges and honoured men, bringing a boy of my name,

+with a forehead that I know and golden hair, to this place--then fair to

+look upon, with not a trace of this day's disfigurement--and I hear him

+tell the child my story, with a tender and a faltering voice.

+

+"It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a

+far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known."

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens

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diff --git a/prototypes/browse/test1.md b/prototypes/browse/test1.md
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..850edc90
--- /dev/null
+++ b/prototypes/browse/test1.md
@@ -0,0 +1,20 @@
+# abc
+
+## abc
+
+### abc
+
+#### abc
+
+##### abc
+
+###### abc
+
+abc
+def
+
+abc *def* ghi
+
+a;dj faljdf lajd flajd faljdf ladj flajd flajdf aljd flajkdf al;jd faljdf aljdf aljdf aljdf aljdf lajdf ljf
+
+_klm no_ pqr