A Tale of Two Cities - Vol. IX
Charles Dickens
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A Tale of Two Cities - Vol. IX
by Charles Dickens
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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
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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
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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.
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"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
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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
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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.
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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:
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"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
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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.
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"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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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X. The Substance of the Shadow
"I, Alexandre Manette, unfortunate physician, native of Beauvais, and afterwards resident in Paris, write this melancholy paper
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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"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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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,
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
*****
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"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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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?'
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"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
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brother?'
"'A brother.'
"'I do not address her brother?'
"He answered with great contempt, 'No.'
"'She has some recent association with the number
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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--eviden
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tly, 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
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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
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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
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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
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patient.'
"I was startled, and asked, 'Is it a pressing case?'
"'You had better see,' he carelessly answered; and took up a light.
*****
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"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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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"'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,
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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,
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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,
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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
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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
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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?'
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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,
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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,
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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
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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.
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"'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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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.
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"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
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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.
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"'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
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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.
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"'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.
*****
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"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
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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
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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
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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.
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"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
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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.
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"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
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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
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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
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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
#pgx131
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
#pgx132
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.
*****
#pgx133
"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
#pgx134
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.
#pgx135
"'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
#pgx136
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
#pgx137
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
#pgx138
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
#pgx139
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
#pgx140
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
#pgx141
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
#pgx142
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
#pgx143
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
#pgx144
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
#pgx145
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."
#pgx146
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
#pgx147
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
#pgx148
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
#pgx149
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
#pgx150
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
#pgx151
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
#pgx152
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
#pgx153
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!
#pgx154
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
#pgx155
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
#pgx156
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
#pgx157
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
#pgx158
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
#pgx159
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,
#pgx160
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
#pgx161
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
#pgx162
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
#pgx163
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
#pgx164
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.
#pgx165
"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
#pgx166
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
#pgx167
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,
#pgx168
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
#pgx169
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
#pgx170
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
#pgx171
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.
#pgx172
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
#pgx173
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
#pgx174
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
#pgx175
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
#pgx176
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
#pgx177
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.
#pgx178
"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
#pgx179
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
#pgx180
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
#pgx181
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
#pgx182
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,
#pgx183
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
#pgx184
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
#pgx185
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
#pgx186
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
#pgx187
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."
#pgx188
"Yes. He will perish: there is no real hope," echoed Carton.
And walked with a settled step, down-stairs.
XII. Darkness
Sydney Carton
#pgx189
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
#pgx190
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
#pgx191
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.
#pgx192
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,
#pgx193
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
#pgx194
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
#pgx195
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.
#pgx196
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
#pgx197
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
#pgx198
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
#pgx199
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
#pgx200
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?"
#pgx201
"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,
#pgx202
"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
#pgx203
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
#pgx204
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
#pgx205
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.
#pgx206
"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
#pgx207
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
#pgx208
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,
#pgx209
"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
#pgx210
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
#pgx211
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,"
#pgx212
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
#pgx213
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
#pgx214
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
#pgx215
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."
#pgx216
"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
#pgx217
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
#pgx218
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
#pgx219
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."
#pgx220
"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
#pgx221
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
#pgx222
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
#pgx223
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
#pgx224
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
#pgx225
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
#pgx226
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
#pgx227
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
#pgx228
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
#pgx229
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
#pgx230
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
#pgx231
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
#pgx232
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
#pgx233
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
#pgx234
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
#pgx235
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
#pgx236
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
#pgx237
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,
#pgx238
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.
#pgx239
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
#pgx240
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
#pgx241
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
#pgx242
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.
#pgx243
"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
#pgx244
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
#pgx245
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
#pgx246
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
#pgx247
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
#pgx248
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
#pgx249
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
#pgx250
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
#pgx251
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
#pgx252
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
#pgx253
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
#pgx254
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!"
#pgx255
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
#pgx256
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
#pgx257
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
#pgx258
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
#pgx259
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
#pgx260
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."
#pgx261
"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
#pgx262
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."
#pgx263
"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
#pgx264
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
#pgx265
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
#pgx266
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
#pgx267
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
#pgx268
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
#pgx269
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
#pgx270
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
#pgx271
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
#pgx272
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
#pgx273
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
#pgx274
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
#pgx275
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
#pgx276
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
#pgx277
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
#pgx278
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
#pgx279
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
#pgx280
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
#pgx281
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
#pgx282
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
#pgx283
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
#pgx284
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
#pgx285
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
#pgx286
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
#pgx287
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
#pgx288
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.
#pgx289
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
#pgx290
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
#pgx291
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:
#pgx292
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
#pgx293
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
#pgx294
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
#pgx295
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.
#pgx296
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
#pgx297
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
#pgx298
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
#pgx299
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
#pgx300
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.
#pgx301
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
#pgx302
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
#pgx303
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
#pgx304
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
#pgx305
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
#pgx306
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.
#pgx307
"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."
#pgx308
"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
#pgx309
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
#pgx310
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."
#pgx311
"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."
#pgx312
"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
#pgx313
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
#pgx314
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
#pgx315
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.
#pgx316
"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?"
#pgx317
"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
#pgx318
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.
#pgx319
"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
#pgx320
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.
#pgx321
"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
#pgx322
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
#pgx323
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
#pgx324
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
#pgx325
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,
#pgx326
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."
#pgx327
"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
#pgx328
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
#pgx329
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,
#pgx330
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
#pgx331
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
#pgx332
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
#pgx333
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,"
#pgx334
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,
#pgx335
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,
#pgx336
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
#pgx337
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
#pgx338
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
#pgx339
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;
#pgx340
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
#pgx341
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
#pgx342
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
#pgx343
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,
#pgx344
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
#pgx345
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
#pgx346
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
#pgx347
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.
#pgx348
"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."
#pgx349
*****
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?