prompt:
Chapter: 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.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: The Wine shop The wine was red wine, and had stained the ground of the narrow street. The setting shifts from Dover, England to Saint Antoine, a poor suburb of Paris. A wine cask falls to the pavement in the street and everyone rushes to it. Men kneel and scoop up the wine that has pooled in the paving stones, while women sop up the liquid with handkerchiefs and wring them into the mouths of their babies. One man dips his finger into the "muddy wine-lees" and scrawls the word blood on a wall. The wine shop is owned by Monsieur Defarge, a "bull-necked, martial-looking man of thirty. His wife, Madame Defarge, sits solemnly behind the counter, watchful of everything that goes on around her. She signals to her husband as he enters the wine shop, alerting him to the presence of an elderly gentleman and a young lady. Defarge eyes the strangers but pretends not to notice them, speaking instead with three familiar customers, each of whom refers to the other two as "Jacques". After Defarge directs the men to a chamber on the fifth floor and sends them out, Mr. Lorry approaches from the corner and begs a word with Defarge. The men have a brief conversation, and soon Defarge leads Lorry and Lucie up a steep, dangerous rise of stairs. They come to a filthy landing, where the three men from the wine shop stand staring through chinks in the wall. Stating that he makes a show of Doctor Manette to a chosen few "to whom the sight is likely to do good," Defarge opens the door to reveal a white-haired man busily making shoes


prompt:
Chapter: 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

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: The Shoemaker Manette reports, in a voice gone faint with "solitude and disuse," that he is making a lady's shoe in the "present mode," or fashion, even though he has never seen the present fashion. When asked his name, he responds, "One Hundred and Five, North Tower. Lucie approaches. Noticing her radiant golden hair, Manette opens a knot of rag that he wears around his neck, in which he keeps a strand of similarly golden curls. At first, Manette mistakes Lucie for his wife and recalls that, on the first day of his imprisonment, he begged to be allowed to keep these few stray hairs of his wife's as a means of escaping his circumstances "in the spirit. Lucie delivers an impassioned speech, imploring her father to weep if her voice or her hair recalls a loved one whom he once knew. She hints to him of the home that awaits him and assures him that his "agony is over. Manette collapses under a storm of emotion; Lucie urges that arrangements be made for his immediate departure for England. Fearing for Manette's health, Lorry protests, but Lucie insists that travel guarantees more safety than a continued stay in Paris. Defarge agrees and ushers the group into a coach


prompt:
Chapter: 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!"

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Five Years Later It is now 1780. Tellson's Bank in London prides itself on being "very small, very dark, very ugly, very incommodious. Were it more welcoming, the bank's partners believe, it would lose its status as a respectable business. It is located by Temple Bar, the spot where, until recently, the government displayed the heads of executed criminals. The narrator explains that at this time, "death was a recipe much in vogue," used against all manner of criminals, from forgers to horse thieves to counterfeiters. Jerry Cruncher, employed by Tellson's as a runner and messenger, wakes up in his small apartment, located in an unsavory London neighborhood. He begins the day by yelling at his wife for "praying against" him; he throws his muddy boot at her. Around nine o'clock, Cruncher and his young son camp outside Tellson's Bank, where they await the bankers' instructions. When an indoor messenger calls for a porter, Cruncher takes off to do the job. As young Jerry sits alone, he wonders why his father's fingers always have rust on them


prompt:
Chapter: 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.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: A Sight The bank clerk instructs Cruncher to go to the Old Bailey Courthouse and await orders from Jarvis Lorry. Cruncher arrives at the court, where Charles Darnay, a handsome, well-bred young man, stands trial for treason. Cruncher understands little of the legal jargon, but he gleans that Darnay has been charged with divulging secret information to the king of France : namely, that England plans to send armed forces to fight in the American colonies. As Darnay looks to a young lady and her distinguished father, a whisper rushes through the courtroom, speculating on the identity of the two. Eventually, Cruncher discovers that they will serve as witnesses against the prisoner