Chapter: VIII. A Hand at Cards

Happily unconscious of the new calamity at home, Miss Pross threaded her
way along the narrow streets and crossed the river by the bridge of the
Pont-Neuf, reckoning in her mind the number of indispensable purchases
she had to make. Mr. Cruncher, with the basket, walked at her side. They
both looked to the right and to the left into most of the shops they
passed, had a wary eye for all gregarious assemblages of people, and
turned out of their road to avoid any very excited group of talkers. It
was a raw evening, and the misty river, blurred to the eye with blazing
lights and to the ear with harsh noises, showed where the barges were
stationed in which the smiths worked, making guns for the Army of the
Republic. Woe to the man who played tricks with _that_ Army, or got
undeserved promotion in it! Better for him that his beard had never
grown, for the National Razor shaved him close.

Having purchased a few small articles of grocery, and a measure of oil
for the lamp, Miss Pross bethought herself of the wine they wanted.
After peeping into several wine-shops, she stopped at the sign of the
Good Republican Brutus of Antiquity, not far from the National Palace,
once (and twice) the Tuileries, where the aspect of things rather
took her fancy. It had a quieter look than any other place of the same
description they had passed, and, though red with patriotic caps, was
not so red as the rest. Sounding Mr. Cruncher, and finding him of her
opinion, Miss Pross resorted to the Good Republican Brutus of Antiquity,
attended by her cavalier.

Slightly observant of the smoky lights; of the people, pipe in mouth,
playing with limp cards and yellow dominoes; of the one bare-breasted,
bare-armed, soot-begrimed workman reading a journal aloud, and of
the others listening to him; of the weapons worn, or laid aside to be
resumed; of the two or three customers fallen forward asleep, who in the
popular high-shouldered shaggy black spencer looked, in that attitude,
like slumbering bears or dogs; the two outlandish customers approached
the counter, and showed what they wanted.

As their wine was measuring out, a man parted from another man in a
corner, and rose to depart. In going, he had to face Miss Pross. No
sooner did he face her, than Miss Pross uttered a scream, and clapped
her hands.

In a moment, the whole company were on their feet. That somebody was
assassinated by somebody vindicating a difference of opinion was the
likeliest occurrence. Everybody looked to see somebody fall, but only
saw a man and a woman standing staring at each other; the man with all
the outward aspect of a Frenchman and a thorough Republican; the woman,
evidently English.

What was said in this disappointing anti-climax, by the disciples of the
Good Republican Brutus of Antiquity, except that it was something very
voluble and loud, would have been as so much Hebrew or Chaldean to Miss
Pross and her protector, though they had been all ears. But, they had no
ears for anything in their surprise. For, it must be recorded, that
not only was Miss Pross lost in amazement and agitation, but,
Mr. Cruncher--though it seemed on his own separate and individual
account--was in a state of the greatest wonder.

"What is the matter?" said the man who had caused Miss Pross to scream;
speaking in a vexed, abrupt voice (though in a low tone), and in
English.

"Oh, Solomon, dear Solomon!" cried Miss Pross, clapping her hands again.
"After not setting eyes upon you or hearing of you for so long a time,
do I find you here!"

"Don't call me Solomon. Do you want to be the death of me?" asked the
man, in a furtive, frightened way.

"Brother, brother!" cried Miss Pross, bursting into tears. "Have I ever
been so hard with you that you ask me such a cruel question?"

"Then hold your meddlesome tongue," said Solomon, "and come out, if you
want to speak to me. Pay for your wine, and come out. Who's this man?"

Miss Pross, shaking her loving and dejected head at her by no means
affectionate brother, said through her tears, "Mr. Cruncher."

"Let him come out too," said Solomon. "Does he think me a ghost?"

Apparently, Mr. Cruncher did, to judge from his looks. He said not a
word, however, and Miss Pross, exploring the depths of her reticule
through her tears with great difficulty paid for her wine. As she did
so, Solomon turned to the followers of the Good Republican Brutus
of Antiquity, and offered a few words of explanation in the French
language, which caused them all to relapse into their former places and
pursuits.

"Now," said Solomon, stopping at the dark street corner, "what do you
want?"

"How dreadfully unkind in a brother nothing has ever turned my love away
from!" cried Miss Pross, "to give me such a greeting, and show me no
affection."

"There. Confound it! There," said Solomon, making a dab at Miss Pross's
lips with his own. "Now are you content?"

Miss Pross only shook her head and wept in silence.

"If you expect me to be surprised," said her brother Solomon, "I am not
surprised; I knew you were here; I know of most people who are here. If
you really don't want to endanger my existence--which I half believe you
do--go your ways as soon as possible, and let me go mine. I am busy. I
am an official."

"My English brother Solomon," mourned Miss Pross, casting up her
tear-fraught eyes, "that had the makings in him of one of the best and
greatest of men in his native country, an official among foreigners, and
such foreigners! I would almost sooner have seen the dear boy lying in
his--"

"I said so!" cried her brother, interrupting. "I knew it. You want to be
the death of me. I shall be rendered Suspected, by my own sister. Just
as I am getting on!"

"The gracious and merciful Heavens forbid!" cried Miss Pross. "Far
rather would I never see you again, dear Solomon, though I have ever
loved you truly, and ever shall. Say but one affectionate word to me,
and tell me there is nothing angry or estranged between us, and I will
detain you no longer."

Good Miss Pross! As if the estrangement between them had come of any
culpability of hers. As if Mr. Lorry had not known it for a fact, years
ago, in the quiet corner in Soho, that this precious brother had spent
her money and left her!

He was saying the affectionate word, however, with a far more grudging
condescension and patronage than he could have shown if their relative
merits and positions had been reversed (which is invariably the case,
all the world over), when Mr. Cruncher, touching him on the shoulder,
hoarsely and unexpectedly interposed with the following singular
question:

"I say! Might I ask the favour? As to whether your name is John Solomon,
or Solomon John?"

The official turned towards him with sudden distrust. He had not
previously uttered a word.

"Come!" said Mr. Cruncher. "Speak out, you know." (Which, by the way,
was more than he could do himself.) "John Solomon, or Solomon John? She
calls you Solomon, and she must know, being your sister. And _I_ know
you're John, you know. Which of the two goes first? And regarding that
name of Pross, likewise. That warn't your name over the water."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I don't know all I mean, for I can't call to mind what your name
was, over the water."

"No?"

"No. But I'll swear it was a name of two syllables."

"Indeed?"

"Yes. T'other one's was one syllable. I know you. You was a spy--witness
at the Bailey. What, in the name of the Father of Lies, own father to
yourself, was you called at that time?"

"Barsad," said another voice, striking in.

"That's the name for a thousand pound!" cried Jerry.

The speaker who struck in, was Sydney Carton. He had his hands behind
him under the skirts of his riding-coat, and he stood at Mr. Cruncher's
elbow as negligently as he might have stood at the Old Bailey itself.

"Don't be alarmed, my dear Miss Pross. I arrived at Mr. Lorry's, to his
surprise, yesterday evening; we agreed that I would not present myself
elsewhere until all was well, or unless I could be useful; I present
myself here, to beg a little talk with your brother. I wish you had a
better employed brother than Mr. Barsad. I wish for your sake Mr. Barsad
was not a Sheep of the Prisons."

Sheep was a cant word of the time for a spy, under the gaolers. The spy,
who was pale, turned paler, and asked him how he dared--

"I'll tell you," said Sydney. "I lighted on you, Mr. Barsad, coming out
of the prison of the Conciergerie while I was contemplating the walls,
an hour or more ago. You have a face to be remembered, and I remember
faces well. Made curious by seeing you in that connection, and having
a reason, to which you are no stranger, for associating you with
the misfortunes of a friend now very unfortunate, I walked in your
direction. I walked into the wine-shop here, close after you, and
sat near you. I had no difficulty in deducing from your unreserved
conversation, and the rumour openly going about among your admirers, the
nature of your calling. And gradually, what I had done at random, seemed
to shape itself into a purpose, Mr. Barsad."

"What purpose?" the spy asked.

"It would be troublesome, and might be dangerous, to explain in the
street. Could you favour me, in confidence, with some minutes of your
company--at the office of Tellson's Bank, for instance?"

"Under a threat?"

"Oh! Did I say that?"

"Then, why should I go there?"

"Really, Mr. Barsad, I can't say, if you can't."

"Do you mean that you won't say, sir?" the spy irresolutely asked.

"You apprehend me very clearly, Mr. Barsad. I won't."

Carton's negligent recklessness of manner came powerfully in aid of his
quickness and skill, in such a business as he had in his secret mind,
and with such a man as he had to do with. His practised eye saw it, and
made the most of it.

"Now, I told you so," said the spy, casting a reproachful look at his
sister; "if any trouble comes of this, it's your doing."

"Come, come, Mr. Barsad!" exclaimed Sydney. "Don't be ungrateful.
But for my great respect for your sister, I might not have led up so
pleasantly to a little proposal that I wish to make for our mutual
satisfaction. Do you go with me to the Bank?"

"I'll hear what you have got to say. Yes, I'll go with you."

"I propose that we first conduct your sister safely to the corner of her
own street. Let me take your arm, Miss Pross. This is not a good city,
at this time, for you to be out in, unprotected; and as your escort
knows Mr. Barsad, I will invite him to Mr. Lorry's with us. Are we
ready? Come then!"

Miss Pross recalled soon afterwards, and to the end of her life
remembered, that as she pressed her hands on Sydney's arm and looked up
in his face, imploring him to do no hurt to Solomon, there was a braced
purpose in the arm and a kind of inspiration in the eyes, which not only
contradicted his light manner, but changed and raised the man. She was
too much occupied then with fears for the brother who so little deserved
her affection, and with Sydney's friendly reassurances, adequately to
heed what she observed.

They left her at the corner of the street, and Carton led the way to Mr.
Lorry's, which was within a few minutes' walk. John Barsad, or Solomon
Pross, walked at his side.

Mr. Lorry had just finished his dinner, and was sitting before a cheery
little log or two of fire--perhaps looking into their blaze for the
picture of that younger elderly gentleman from Tellson's, who had looked
into the red coals at the Royal George at Dover, now a good many years
ago. He turned his head as they entered, and showed the surprise with
which he saw a stranger.

"Miss Pross's brother, sir," said Sydney. "Mr. Barsad."

"Barsad?" repeated the old gentleman, "Barsad? I have an association
with the name--and with the face."

"I told you you had a remarkable face, Mr. Barsad," observed Carton,
coolly. "Pray sit down."

As he took a chair himself, he supplied the link that Mr. Lorry wanted,
by saying to him with a frown, "Witness at that trial." Mr. Lorry
immediately remembered, and regarded his new visitor with an undisguised
look of abhorrence.

"Mr. Barsad has been recognised by Miss Pross as the affectionate
brother you have heard of," said Sydney, "and has acknowledged the
relationship. I pass to worse news. Darnay has been arrested again."

Struck with consternation, the old gentleman exclaimed, "What do you
tell me! I left him safe and free within these two hours, and am about
to return to him!"

"Arrested for all that. When was it done, Mr. Barsad?"

"Just now, if at all."

"Mr. Barsad is the best authority possible, sir," said Sydney, "and I
have it from Mr. Barsad's communication to a friend and brother Sheep
over a bottle of wine, that the arrest has taken place. He left the
messengers at the gate, and saw them admitted by the porter. There is no
earthly doubt that he is retaken."

Mr. Lorry's business eye read in the speaker's face that it was loss
of time to dwell upon the point. Confused, but sensible that something
might depend on his presence of mind, he commanded himself, and was
silently attentive.

"Now, I trust," said Sydney to him, "that the name and influence of
Doctor Manette may stand him in as good stead to-morrow--you said he
would be before the Tribunal again to-morrow, Mr. Barsad?--"

"Yes; I believe so."

"--In as good stead to-morrow as to-day. But it may not be so. I own
to you, I am shaken, Mr. Lorry, by Doctor Manette's not having had the
power to prevent this arrest."

"He may not have known of it beforehand," said Mr. Lorry.

"But that very circumstance would be alarming, when we remember how
identified he is with his son-in-law."

"That's true," Mr. Lorry acknowledged, with his troubled hand at his
chin, and his troubled eyes on Carton.

"In short," said Sydney, "this is a desperate time, when desperate games
are played for desperate stakes. Let the Doctor play the winning game; I
will play the losing one. No man's life here is worth purchase. Any one
carried home by the people to-day, may be condemned tomorrow. Now, the
stake I have resolved to play for, in case of the worst, is a friend
in the Conciergerie. And the friend I purpose to myself to win, is Mr.
Barsad."

"You need have good cards, sir," said the spy.

"I'll run them over. I'll see what I hold,--Mr. Lorry, you know what a
brute I am; I wish you'd give me a little brandy."

It was put before him, and he drank off a glassful--drank off another
glassful--pushed the bottle thoughtfully away.

"Mr. Barsad," he went on, in the tone of one who really was looking
over a hand at cards: "Sheep of the prisons, emissary of Republican
committees, now turnkey, now prisoner, always spy and secret informer,
so much the more valuable here for being English that an Englishman
is less open to suspicion of subornation in those characters than a
Frenchman, represents himself to his employers under a false name.
That's a very good card. Mr. Barsad, now in the employ of the republican
French government, was formerly in the employ of the aristocratic
English government, the enemy of France and freedom. That's an excellent
card. Inference clear as day in this region of suspicion, that Mr.
Barsad, still in the pay of the aristocratic English government, is the
spy of Pitt, the treacherous foe of the Republic crouching in its bosom,
the English traitor and agent of all mischief so much spoken of and so
difficult to find. That's a card not to be beaten. Have you followed my
hand, Mr. Barsad?"

"Not to understand your play," returned the spy, somewhat uneasily.

"I play my Ace, Denunciation of Mr. Barsad to the nearest Section
Committee. Look over your hand, Mr. Barsad, and see what you have. Don't
hurry."

He drew the bottle near, poured out another glassful of brandy, and
drank it off. He saw that the spy was fearful of his drinking himself
into a fit state for the immediate denunciation of him. Seeing it, he
poured out and drank another glassful.

"Look over your hand carefully, Mr. Barsad. Take time."

It was a poorer hand than he suspected. Mr. Barsad saw losing cards
in it that Sydney Carton knew nothing of. Thrown out of his honourable
employment in England, through too much unsuccessful hard swearing
there--not because he was not wanted there; our English reasons for
vaunting our superiority to secrecy and spies are of very modern
date--he knew that he had crossed the Channel, and accepted service in
France: first, as a tempter and an eavesdropper among his own countrymen
there: gradually, as a tempter and an eavesdropper among the natives. He
knew that under the overthrown government he had been a spy upon Saint
Antoine and Defarge's wine-shop; had received from the watchful police
such heads of information concerning Doctor Manette's imprisonment,
release, and history, as should serve him for an introduction to
familiar conversation with the Defarges; and tried them on Madame
Defarge, and had broken down with them signally. He always remembered
with fear and trembling, that that terrible woman had knitted when he
talked with her, and had looked ominously at him as her fingers moved.
He had since seen her, in the Section of Saint Antoine, over and over
again produce her knitted registers, and denounce people whose lives the
guillotine then surely swallowed up. He knew, as every one employed as
he was did, that he was never safe; that flight was impossible; that
he was tied fast under the shadow of the axe; and that in spite of
his utmost tergiversation and treachery in furtherance of the reigning
terror, a word might bring it down upon him. Once denounced, and on such
grave grounds as had just now been suggested to his mind, he foresaw
that the dreadful woman of whose unrelenting character he had seen many
proofs, would produce against him that fatal register, and would quash
his last chance of life. Besides that all secret men are men soon
terrified, here were surely cards enough of one black suit, to justify
the holder in growing rather livid as he turned them over.

"You scarcely seem to like your hand," said Sydney, with the greatest
composure. "Do you play?"

"I think, sir," said the spy, in the meanest manner, as he turned to Mr.
Lorry, "I may appeal to a gentleman of your years and benevolence, to
put it to this other gentleman, so much your junior, whether he can
under any circumstances reconcile it to his station to play that Ace
of which he has spoken. I admit that _I_ am a spy, and that it is
considered a discreditable station--though it must be filled by
somebody; but this gentleman is no spy, and why should he so demean
himself as to make himself one?"

"I play my Ace, Mr. Barsad," said Carton, taking the answer on himself,
and looking at his watch, "without any scruple, in a very few minutes."

"I should have hoped, gentlemen both," said the spy, always striving to
hook Mr. Lorry into the discussion, "that your respect for my sister--"

"I could not better testify my respect for your sister than by finally
relieving her of her brother," said Sydney Carton.

"You think not, sir?"

"I have thoroughly made up my mind about it."

The smooth manner of the spy, curiously in dissonance with his
ostentatiously rough dress, and probably with his usual demeanour,
received such a check from the inscrutability of Carton,--who was a
mystery to wiser and honester men than he,--that it faltered here and
failed him. While he was at a loss, Carton said, resuming his former air
of contemplating cards:

"And indeed, now I think again, I have a strong impression that I
have another good card here, not yet enumerated. That friend and
fellow-Sheep, who spoke of himself as pasturing in the country prisons;
who was he?"

"French. You don't know him," said the spy, quickly.

"French, eh?" repeated Carton, musing, and not appearing to notice him
at all, though he echoed his word. "Well; he may be."

"Is, I assure you," said the spy; "though it's not important."

"Though it's not important," repeated Carton, in the same mechanical
way--"though it's not important--No, it's not important. No. Yet I know
the face."

"I think not. I am sure not. It can't be," said the spy.

"It-can't-be," muttered Sydney Carton, retrospectively, and idling his
glass (which fortunately was a small one) again. "Can't-be. Spoke good
French. Yet like a foreigner, I thought?"

"Provincial," said the spy.

"No. Foreign!" cried Carton, striking his open hand on the table, as a
light broke clearly on his mind. "Cly! Disguised, but the same man. We
had that man before us at the Old Bailey."

"Now, there you are hasty, sir," said Barsad, with a smile that gave his
aquiline nose an extra inclination to one side; "there you really give
me an advantage over you. Cly (who I will unreservedly admit, at this
distance of time, was a partner of mine) has been dead several years. I
attended him in his last illness. He was buried in London, at the church
of Saint Pancras-in-the-Fields. His unpopularity with the blackguard
multitude at the moment prevented my following his remains, but I helped
to lay him in his coffin."

Here, Mr. Lorry became aware, from where he sat, of a most remarkable
goblin shadow on the wall. Tracing it to its source, he discovered it
to be caused by a sudden extraordinary rising and stiffening of all the
risen and stiff hair on Mr. Cruncher's head.

"Let us be reasonable," said the spy, "and let us be fair. To show you
how mistaken you are, and what an unfounded assumption yours is, I will
lay before you a certificate of Cly's burial, which I happened to have
carried in my pocket-book," with a hurried hand he produced and opened
it, "ever since. There it is. Oh, look at it, look at it! You may take
it in your hand; it's no forgery."

Here, Mr. Lorry perceived the reflection on the wall to elongate, and
Mr. Cruncher rose and stepped forward. His hair could not have been more
violently on end, if it had been that moment dressed by the Cow with the
crumpled horn in the house that Jack built.

Unseen by the spy, Mr. Cruncher stood at his side, and touched him on
the shoulder like a ghostly bailiff.

"That there Roger Cly, master," said Mr. Cruncher, with a taciturn and
iron-bound visage. "So _you_ put him in his coffin?"

"I did."

"Who took him out of it?"

Barsad leaned back in his chair, and stammered, "What do you mean?"

"I mean," said Mr. Cruncher, "that he warn't never in it. No! Not he!
I'll have my head took off, if he was ever in it."

The spy looked round at the two gentlemen; they both looked in
unspeakable astonishment at Jerry.

"I tell you," said Jerry, "that you buried paving-stones and earth in
that there coffin. Don't go and tell me that you buried Cly. It was a
take in. Me and two more knows it."

"How do you know it?"

"What's that to you? Ecod!" growled Mr. Cruncher, "it's you I have got a
old grudge again, is it, with your shameful impositions upon tradesmen!
I'd catch hold of your throat and choke you for half a guinea."

Sydney Carton, who, with Mr. Lorry, had been lost in amazement at
this turn of the business, here requested Mr. Cruncher to moderate and
explain himself.

"At another time, sir," he returned, evasively, "the present time is
ill-conwenient for explainin'. What I stand to, is, that he knows well
wot that there Cly was never in that there coffin. Let him say he was,
in so much as a word of one syllable, and I'll either catch hold of his
throat and choke him for half a guinea;" Mr. Cruncher dwelt upon this as
quite a liberal offer; "or I'll out and announce him."

"Humph! I see one thing," said Carton. "I hold another card, Mr. Barsad.
Impossible, here in raging Paris, with Suspicion filling the air, for
you to outlive denunciation, when you are in communication with another
aristocratic spy of the same antecedents as yourself, who, moreover, has
the mystery about him of having feigned death and come to life again!
A plot in the prisons, of the foreigner against the Republic. A strong
card--a certain Guillotine card! Do you play?"

"No!" returned the spy. "I throw up. I confess that we were so unpopular
with the outrageous mob, that I only got away from England at the risk
of being ducked to death, and that Cly was so ferreted up and down, that
he never would have got away at all but for that sham. Though how this
man knows it was a sham, is a wonder of wonders to me."

"Never you trouble your head about this man," retorted the contentious
Mr. Cruncher; "you'll have trouble enough with giving your attention to
that gentleman. And look here! Once more!"--Mr. Cruncher could not
be restrained from making rather an ostentatious parade of his
liberality--"I'd catch hold of your throat and choke you for half a
guinea."

The Sheep of the prisons turned from him to Sydney Carton, and said,
with more decision, "It has come to a point. I go on duty soon, and
can't overstay my time. You told me you had a proposal; what is it?
Now, it is of no use asking too much of me. Ask me to do anything in my
office, putting my head in great extra danger, and I had better trust my
life to the chances of a refusal than the chances of consent. In short,
I should make that choice. You talk of desperation. We are all desperate
here. Remember! I may denounce you if I think proper, and I can swear my
way through stone walls, and so can others. Now, what do you want with
me?"

"Not very much. You are a turnkey at the Conciergerie?"

"I tell you once for all, there is no such thing as an escape possible,"
said the spy, firmly.

"Why need you tell me what I have not asked? You are a turnkey at the
Conciergerie?"

"I am sometimes."

"You can be when you choose?"

"I can pass in and out when I choose."

Sydney Carton filled another glass with brandy, poured it slowly out
upon the hearth, and watched it as it dropped. It being all spent, he
said, rising:

"So far, we have spoken before these two, because it was as well that
the merits of the cards should not rest solely between you and me. Come
into the dark room here, and let us have one final word alone."





IX. The Game Made


While Sydney Carton and the Sheep of the prisons were in the adjoining
dark room, speaking so low that not a sound was heard, Mr. Lorry looked
at Jerry in considerable doubt and mistrust. That honest tradesman's
manner of receiving the look, did not inspire confidence; he changed the
leg on which he rested, as often as if he had fifty of those limbs,
and were trying them all; he examined his finger-nails with a very
questionable closeness of attention; and whenever Mr. Lorry's eye caught
his, he was taken with that peculiar kind of short cough requiring the
hollow of a hand before it, which is seldom, if ever, known to be an
infirmity attendant on perfect openness of character.

"Jerry," said Mr. Lorry. "Come here."

Mr. Cruncher came forward sideways, with one of his shoulders in advance
of him.

"What have you been, besides a messenger?"

After some cogitation, accompanied with an intent look at his patron,
Mr. Cruncher conceived the luminous idea of replying, "Agicultooral
character."

"My mind misgives me much," said Mr. Lorry, angrily shaking a forefinger
at him, "that you have used the respectable and great house of Tellson's
as a blind, and that you have had an unlawful occupation of an infamous
description. If you have, don't expect me to befriend you when you
get back to England. If you have, don't expect me to keep your secret.
Tellson's shall not be imposed upon."

"I hope, sir," pleaded the abashed Mr. Cruncher, "that a gentleman like
yourself wot I've had the honour of odd jobbing till I'm grey at it,
would think twice about harming of me, even if it wos so--I don't say it
is, but even if it wos. And which it is to be took into account that if
it wos, it wouldn't, even then, be all o' one side. There'd be two sides
to it. There might be medical doctors at the present hour, a picking
up their guineas where a honest tradesman don't pick up his
fardens--fardens! no, nor yet his half fardens--half fardens! no, nor
yet his quarter--a banking away like smoke at Tellson's, and a cocking
their medical eyes at that tradesman on the sly, a going in and going
out to their own carriages--ah! equally like smoke, if not more so.
Well, that 'ud be imposing, too, on Tellson's. For you cannot sarse the
goose and not the gander. And here's Mrs. Cruncher, or leastways wos
in the Old England times, and would be to-morrow, if cause given,
a floppin' again the business to that degree as is ruinating--stark
ruinating! Whereas them medical doctors' wives don't flop--catch 'em at
it! Or, if they flop, their floppings goes in favour of more patients,
and how can you rightly have one without t'other? Then, wot with
undertakers, and wot with parish clerks, and wot with sextons, and wot
with private watchmen (all awaricious and all in it), a man wouldn't get
much by it, even if it wos so. And wot little a man did get, would never
prosper with him, Mr. Lorry. He'd never have no good of it; he'd want
all along to be out of the line, if he, could see his way out, being
once in--even if it wos so."

"Ugh!" cried Mr. Lorry, rather relenting, nevertheless, "I am shocked at
the sight of you."

"Now, what I would humbly offer to you, sir," pursued Mr. Cruncher,
"even if it wos so, which I don't say it is--"

"Don't prevaricate," said Mr. Lorry.

"No, I will _not_, sir," returned Mr. Crunches as if nothing were
further from his thoughts or practice--"which I don't say it is--wot I
would humbly offer to you, sir, would be this. Upon that there stool, at
that there Bar, sets that there boy of mine, brought up and growed up to
be a man, wot will errand you, message you, general-light-job you, till
your heels is where your head is, if such should be your wishes. If it
wos so, which I still don't say it is (for I will not prewaricate to
you, sir), let that there boy keep his father's place, and take care of
his mother; don't blow upon that boy's father--do not do it, sir--and
let that father go into the line of the reg'lar diggin', and make amends
for what he would have undug--if it wos so--by diggin' of 'em in with
a will, and with conwictions respectin' the futur' keepin' of 'em safe.
That, Mr. Lorry," said Mr. Cruncher, wiping his forehead with his
arm, as an announcement that he had arrived at the peroration of his
discourse, "is wot I would respectfully offer to you, sir. A man don't
see all this here a goin' on dreadful round him, in the way of Subjects
without heads, dear me, plentiful enough fur to bring the price down
to porterage and hardly that, without havin' his serious thoughts of
things. And these here would be mine, if it wos so, entreatin' of you
fur to bear in mind that wot I said just now, I up and said in the good
cause when I might have kep' it back."

"That at least is true," said Mr. Lorry. "Say no more now. It may be
that I shall yet stand your friend, if you deserve it, and repent in
action--not in words. I want no more words."

Mr. Cruncher knuckled his forehead, as Sydney Carton and the spy
returned from the dark room. "Adieu, Mr. Barsad," said the former; "our
arrangement thus made, you have nothing to fear from me."

He sat down in a chair on the hearth, over against Mr. Lorry. When they
were alone, Mr. Lorry asked him what he had done?

"Not much. If it should go ill with the prisoner, I have ensured access
to him, once."

Mr. Lorry's countenance fell.

"It is all I could do," said Carton. "To propose too much, would be
to put this man's head under the axe, and, as he himself said, nothing
worse could happen to him if he were denounced. It was obviously the
weakness of the position. There is no help for it."

"But access to him," said Mr. Lorry, "if it should go ill before the
Tribunal, will not save him."

"I never said it would."

Mr. Lorry's eyes gradually sought the fire; his sympathy with his
darling, and the heavy disappointment of his second arrest, gradually
weakened them; he was an old man now, overborne with anxiety of late,
and his tears fell.

"You are a good man and a true friend," said Carton, in an altered
voice. "Forgive me if I notice that you are affected. I could not see my
father weep, and sit by, careless. And I could not respect your
sorrow more, if you were my father. You are free from that misfortune,
however."

Though he said the last words, with a slip into his usual manner, there
was a true feeling and respect both in his tone and in his touch,
that Mr. Lorry, who had never seen the better side of him, was wholly
unprepared for. He gave him his hand, and Carton gently pressed it.

"To return to poor Darnay," said Carton. "Don't tell Her of this
interview, or this arrangement. It would not enable Her to go to see
him. She might think it was contrived, in case of the worse, to convey
to him the means of anticipating the sentence."

Mr. Lorry had not thought of that, and he looked quickly at Carton to
see if it were in his mind. It seemed to be; he returned the look, and
evidently understood it.

"She might think a thousand things," Carton said, "and any of them would
only add to her trouble. Don't speak of me to her. As I said to you when
I first came, I had better not see her. I can put my hand out, to do any
little helpful work for her that my hand can find to do, without that.
You are going to her, I hope? She must be very desolate to-night."

"I am going now, directly."

"I am glad of that. She has such a strong attachment to you and reliance
on you. How does she look?"

"Anxious and unhappy, but very beautiful."

"Ah!"

It was a long, grieving sound, like a sigh--almost like a sob. It
attracted Mr. Lorry's eyes to Carton's face, which was turned to the
fire. A light, or a shade (the old gentleman could not have said which),
passed from it as swiftly as a change will sweep over a hill-side on a
wild bright day, and he lifted his foot to put back one of the little
flaming logs, which was tumbling forward. He wore the white riding-coat
and top-boots, then in vogue, and the light of the fire touching their
light surfaces made him look very pale, with his long brown hair,
all untrimmed, hanging loose about him. His indifference to fire was
sufficiently remarkable to elicit a word of remonstrance from Mr. Lorry;
his boot was still upon the hot embers of the flaming log, when it had
broken under the weight of his foot.

"I forgot it," he said.

Mr. Lorry's eyes were again attracted to his face. Taking note of the
wasted air which clouded the naturally handsome features, and having
the expression of prisoners' faces fresh in his mind, he was strongly
reminded of that expression.

"And your duties here have drawn to an end, sir?" said Carton, turning
to him.

"Yes. As I was telling you last night when Lucie came in so
unexpectedly, I have at length done all that I can do here. I hoped to
have left them in perfect safety, and then to have quitted Paris. I have
my Leave to Pass. I was ready to go."

They were both silent.

"Yours is a long life to look back upon, sir?" said Carton, wistfully.

"I am in my seventy-eighth year."

"You have been useful all your life; steadily and constantly occupied;
trusted, respected, and looked up to?"

"I have been a man of business, ever since I have been a man. Indeed, I
may say that I was a man of business when a boy."

"See what a place you fill at seventy-eight. How many people will miss
you when you leave it empty!"

"A solitary old bachelor," answered Mr. Lorry, shaking his head. "There
is nobody to weep for me."

"How can you say that? Wouldn't She weep for you? Wouldn't her child?"

"Yes, yes, thank God. I didn't quite mean what I said."

"It _is_ a thing to thank God for; is it not?"

"Surely, surely."

"If you could say, with truth, to your own solitary heart, to-night,
'I have secured to myself the love and attachment, the gratitude or
respect, of no human creature; I have won myself a tender place in no
regard; I have done nothing good or serviceable to be remembered by!'
your seventy-eight years would be seventy-eight heavy curses; would they
not?"

"You say truly, Mr. Carton; I think they would be."

Sydney turned his eyes again upon the fire, and, after a silence of a
few moments, said:

"I should like to ask you:--Does your childhood seem far off? Do the
days when you sat at your mother's knee, seem days of very long ago?"

Responding to his softened manner, Mr. Lorry answered:

"Twenty years back, yes; at this time of my life, no. For, as I draw
closer and closer to the end, I travel in the circle, nearer and
nearer to the beginning. It seems to be one of the kind smoothings and
preparings of the way. My heart is touched now, by many remembrances
that had long fallen asleep, of my pretty young mother (and I so old!),
and by many associations of the days when what we call the World was not
so real with me, and my faults were not confirmed in me."

"I understand the feeling!" exclaimed Carton, with a bright flush. "And
you are the better for it?"

"I hope so."

Carton terminated the conversation here, by rising to help him on with
his outer coat; "But you," said Mr. Lorry, reverting to the theme, "you
are young."

"Yes," said Carton. "I am not old, but my young way was never the way to
age. Enough of me."

"And of me, I am sure," said Mr. Lorry. "Are you going out?"

"I'll walk with you to her gate. You know my vagabond and restless
habits. If I should prowl about the streets a long time, don't be
uneasy; I shall reappear in the morning. You go to the Court to-morrow?"

"Yes, unhappily."

"I shall be there, but only as one of the crowd. My Spy will find a
place for me. Take my arm, sir."

Mr. Lorry did so, and they went down-stairs and out in the streets. A
few minutes brought them to Mr. Lorry's destination. Carton left him
there; but lingered at a little distance, and turned back to the gate
again when it was shut, and touched it. He had heard of her going to
the prison every day. "She came out here," he said, looking about him,
"turned this way, must have trod on these stones often. Let me follow in
her steps."

It was ten o'clock at night when he stood before the prison of La Force,
where she had stood hundreds of times. A little wood-sawyer, having
closed his shop, was smoking his pipe at his shop-door.

"Good night, citizen," said Sydney Carton, pausing in going by; for, the
man eyed him inquisitively.

"Good night, citizen."

"How goes the Republic?"

"You mean the Guillotine. Not ill. Sixty-three to-day. We shall mount
to a hundred soon. Samson and his men complain sometimes, of being
exhausted. Ha, ha, ha! He is so droll, that Samson. Such a Barber!"

"Do you often go to see him--"

"Shave? Always. Every day. What a barber! You have seen him at work?"

"Never."

"Go and see him when he has a good batch. Figure this to yourself,
citizen; he shaved the sixty-three to-day, in less than two pipes! Less
than two pipes. Word of honour!"

As the grinning little man held out the pipe he was smoking, to explain
how he timed the executioner, Carton was so sensible of a rising desire
to strike the life out of him, that he turned away.

"But you are not English," said the wood-sawyer, "though you wear
English dress?"

"Yes," said Carton, pausing again, and answering over his shoulder.

"You speak like a Frenchman."

"I am an old student here."

"Aha, a perfect Frenchman! Good night, Englishman."

"Good night, citizen."

"But go and see that droll dog," the little man persisted, calling after
him. "And take a pipe with you!"

Sydney had not gone far out of sight, when he stopped in the middle of
the street under a glimmering lamp, and wrote with his pencil on a scrap
of paper. Then, traversing with the decided step of one who remembered
the way well, several dark and dirty streets--much dirtier than usual,
for the best public thoroughfares remained uncleansed in those times of
terror--he stopped at a chemist's shop, which the owner was closing with
his own hands. A small, dim, crooked shop, kept in a tortuous, up-hill
thoroughfare, by a small, dim, crooked man.

Giving this citizen, too, good night, as he confronted him at his
counter, he laid the scrap of paper before him. "Whew!" the chemist
whistled softly, as he read it. "Hi! hi! hi!"

Sydney Carton took no heed, and the chemist said:

"For you, citizen?"

"For me."

"You will be careful to keep them separate, citizen? You know the
consequences of mixing them?"

"Perfectly."

Certain small packets were made and given to him. He put them, one by
one, in the breast of his inner coat, counted out the money for them,
and deliberately left the shop. "There is nothing more to do," said he,
glancing upward at the moon, "until to-morrow. I can't sleep."

It was not a reckless manner, the manner in which he said these words
aloud under the fast-sailing clouds, nor was it more expressive of
negligence than defiance. It was the settled manner of a tired man, who
had wandered and struggled and got lost, but who at length struck into
his road and saw its end.

Long ago, when he had been famous among his earliest competitors as a
youth of great promise, he had followed his father to the grave. His
mother had died, years before. These solemn words, which had been
read at his father's grave, arose in his mind as he went down the dark
streets, among the heavy shadows, with the moon and the clouds sailing
on high above him. "I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord:
he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and
whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die."

In a city dominated by the axe, alone at night, with natural sorrow
rising in him for the sixty-three who had been that day put to death,
and for to-morrow's victims then awaiting their doom in the prisons,
and still of to-morrow's and to-morrow's, the chain of association that
brought the words home, like a rusty old ship's anchor from the deep,
might have been easily found. He did not seek it, but repeated them and
went on.

With a solemn interest in the lighted windows where the people were
going to rest, forgetful through a few calm hours of the horrors
surrounding them; in the towers of the churches, where no prayers
were said, for the popular revulsion had even travelled that length
of self-destruction from years of priestly impostors, plunderers, and
profligates; in the distant burial-places, reserved, as they wrote upon
the gates, for Eternal Sleep; in the abounding gaols; and in the streets
along which the sixties rolled to a death which had become so common and
material, that no sorrowful story of a haunting Spirit ever arose among
the people out of all the working of the Guillotine; with a solemn
interest in the whole life and death of the city settling down to its
short nightly pause in fury; Sydney Carton crossed the Seine again for
the lighter streets.

Few coaches were abroad, for riders in coaches were liable to be
suspected, and gentility hid its head in red nightcaps, and put on heavy
shoes, and trudged. But, the theatres were all well filled, and the
people poured cheerfully out as he passed, and went chatting home. At
one of the theatre doors, there was a little girl with a mother, looking
for a way across the street through the mud. He carried the child over,
and before the timid arm was loosed from his neck asked her for a kiss.

"I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth
in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and
believeth in me, shall never die."

Now, that the streets were quiet, and the night wore on, the words
were in the echoes of his feet, and were in the air. Perfectly calm
and steady, he sometimes repeated them to himself as he walked; but, he
heard them always.

The night wore out, and, as he stood upon the bridge listening to the
water as it splashed the river-walls of the Island of Paris, where the
picturesque confusion of houses and cathedral shone bright in the light
of the moon, the day came coldly, looking like a dead face out of the
sky. Then, the night, with the moon and the stars, turned pale and died,
and for a little while it seemed as if Creation were delivered over to
Death's dominion.

But, the glorious sun, rising, seemed to strike those words, that burden
of the night, straight and warm to his heart in its long bright rays.
And looking along them, with reverently shaded eyes, a bridge of light
appeared to span the air between him and the sun, while the river
sparkled under it.

The strong tide, so swift, so deep, and certain, was like a congenial
friend, in the morning stillness. He walked by the stream, far from the
houses, and in the light and warmth of the sun fell asleep on the
bank. When he awoke and was afoot again, he lingered there yet a little
longer, watching an eddy that turned and turned purposeless, until the
stream absorbed it, and carried it on to the sea.--"Like me."

A trading-boat, with a sail of the softened colour of a dead leaf, then
glided into his view, floated by him, and died away. As its silent track
in the water disappeared, the prayer that had broken up out of his heart
for a merciful consideration of all his poor blindnesses and errors,
ended in the words, "I am the resurrection and the life."

Mr. Lorry was already out when he got back, and it was easy to surmise
where the good old man was gone. Sydney Carton drank nothing but a
little coffee, ate some bread, and, having washed and changed to refresh
himself, went out to the place of trial.

The court was all astir and a-buzz, when the black sheep--whom many fell
away from in dread--pressed him into an obscure corner among the crowd.
Mr. Lorry was there, and Doctor Manette was there. She was there,
sitting beside her father.

When her husband was brought in, she turned a look upon him, so
sustaining, so encouraging, so full of admiring love and pitying
tenderness, yet so courageous for his sake, that it called the healthy
blood into his face, brightened his glance, and animated his heart. If
there had been any eyes to notice the influence of her look, on Sydney
Carton, it would have been seen to be the same influence exactly.

Before that unjust Tribunal, there was little or no order of procedure,
ensuring to any accused person any reasonable hearing. There could have
been no such Revolution, if all laws, forms, and ceremonies, had not
first been so monstrously abused, that the suicidal vengeance of the
Revolution was to scatter them all to the winds.

Every eye was turned to the jury. The same determined patriots and good
republicans as yesterday and the day before, and to-morrow and the day
after. Eager and prominent among them, one man with a craving face, and
his fingers perpetually hovering about his lips, whose appearance
gave great satisfaction to the spectators. A life-thirsting,
cannibal-looking, bloody-minded juryman, the Jacques Three of St.
Antoine. The whole jury, as a jury of dogs empannelled to try the deer.

Every eye then turned to the five judges and the public prosecutor.
No favourable leaning in that quarter to-day. A fell, uncompromising,
murderous business-meaning there. Every eye then sought some other eye
in the crowd, and gleamed at it approvingly; and heads nodded at one
another, before bending forward with a strained attention.

Charles Evremonde, called Darnay. Released yesterday. Reaccused and
retaken yesterday. Indictment delivered to him last night. Suspected and
Denounced enemy of the Republic, Aristocrat, one of a family of tyrants,
one of a race proscribed, for that they had used their abolished
privileges to the infamous oppression of the people. Charles Evremonde,
called Darnay, in right of such proscription, absolutely Dead in Law.

To this effect, in as few or fewer words, the Public Prosecutor.

The President asked, was the Accused openly denounced or secretly?

"Openly, President."

"By whom?"

"Three voices. Ernest Defarge, wine-vendor of St. Antoine."

"Good."

"Therese Defarge, his wife."

"Good."

"Alexandre Manette, physician."

A great uproar took place in the court, and in the midst of it, Doctor
Manette was seen, pale and trembling, standing where he had been seated.

"President, I indignantly protest to you that this is a forgery and
a fraud. You know the accused to be the husband of my daughter. My
daughter, and those dear to her, are far dearer to me than my life. Who
and where is the false conspirator who says that I denounce the husband
of my child!"

"Citizen Manette, be tranquil. To fail in submission to the authority of
the Tribunal would be to put yourself out of Law. As to what is dearer
to you than life, nothing can be so dear to a good citizen as the
Republic."

Loud acclamations hailed this rebuke. The President rang his bell, and
with warmth resumed.

"If the Republic should demand of you the sacrifice of your child
herself, you would have no duty but to sacrifice her. Listen to what is
to follow. In the meanwhile, be silent!"

Frantic acclamations were again raised. Doctor Manette sat down, with
his eyes looking around, and his lips trembling; his daughter drew
closer to him. The craving man on the jury rubbed his hands together,
and restored the usual hand to his mouth.

Defarge was produced, when the court was quiet enough to admit of his
being heard, and rapidly expounded the story of the imprisonment, and of
his having been a mere boy in the Doctor's service, and of the release,
and of the state of the prisoner when released and delivered to him.
This short examination followed, for the court was quick with its work.

"You did good service at the taking of the Bastille, citizen?"

"I believe so."

Here, an excited woman screeched from the crowd: "You were one of the
best patriots there. Why not say so? You were a cannonier that day
there, and you were among the first to enter the accursed fortress when
it fell. Patriots, I speak the truth!"

It was The Vengeance who, amidst the warm commendations of the audience,
thus assisted the proceedings. The President rang his bell; but, The
Vengeance, warming with encouragement, shrieked, "I defy that bell!"
wherein she was likewise much commended.

"Inform the Tribunal of what you did that day within the Bastille,
citizen."

"I knew," said Defarge, looking down at his wife, who stood at the
bottom of the steps on which he was raised, looking steadily up at him;
"I knew that this prisoner, of whom I speak, had been confined in a cell
known as One Hundred and Five, North Tower. I knew it from himself. He
knew himself by no other name than One Hundred and Five, North Tower,
when he made shoes under my care. As I serve my gun that day, I resolve,
when the place shall fall, to examine that cell. It falls. I mount to
the cell, with a fellow-citizen who is one of the Jury, directed by a
gaoler. I examine it, very closely. In a hole in the chimney, where a
stone has been worked out and replaced, I find a written paper. This is
that written paper. I have made it my business to examine some specimens
of the writing of Doctor Manette. This is the writing of Doctor Manette.
I confide this paper, in the writing of Doctor Manette, to the hands of
the President."

"Let it be read."

In a dead silence and stillness--the prisoner under trial looking
lovingly at his wife, his wife only looking from him to look with
solicitude at her father, Doctor Manette keeping his eyes fixed on the
reader, Madame Defarge never taking hers from the prisoner, Defarge
never taking his from his feasting wife, and all the other eyes there
intent upon the Doctor, who saw none of them--the paper was read, as
follows.





X. The Substance of the Shadow


"I, Alexandre Manette, unfortunate physician, native of Beauvais, and
afterwards resident in Paris, write this melancholy paper in my doleful
cell in the Bastille, during the last month of the year, 1767. I write
it at stolen intervals, under every difficulty. I design to secrete it
in the wall of the chimney, where I have slowly and laboriously made a
place of concealment for it. Some pitying hand may find it there, when I
and my sorrows are dust.

"These words are formed by the rusty iron point with which I write with
difficulty in scrapings of soot and charcoal from the chimney, mixed
with blood, in the last month of the tenth year of my captivity. Hope
has quite departed from my breast. I know from terrible warnings I have
noted in myself that my reason will not long remain unimpaired, but I
solemnly declare that I am at this time in the possession of my right
mind--that my memory is exact and circumstantial--and that I write the
truth as I shall answer for these my last recorded words, whether they
be ever read by men or not, at the Eternal Judgment-seat.

"One cloudy moonlight night, in the third week of December (I think the
twenty-second of the month) in the year 1757, I was walking on a retired
part of the quay by the Seine for the refreshment of the frosty air,
at an hour's distance from my place of residence in the Street of the
School of Medicine, when a carriage came along behind me, driven very
fast. As I stood aside to let that carriage pass, apprehensive that it
might otherwise run me down, a head was put out at the window, and a
voice called to the driver to stop.

"The carriage stopped as soon as the driver could rein in his horses,
and the same voice called to me by my name. I answered. The carriage
was then so far in advance of me that two gentlemen had time to open the
door and alight before I came up with it.

"I observed that they were both wrapped in cloaks, and appeared to
conceal themselves. As they stood side by side near the carriage door,
I also observed that they both looked of about my own age, or rather
younger, and that they were greatly alike, in stature, manner, voice,
and (as far as I could see) face too.

"'You are Doctor Manette?' said one.

"I am."

"'Doctor Manette, formerly of Beauvais,' said the other; 'the young
physician, originally an expert surgeon, who within the last year or two
has made a rising reputation in Paris?'

"'Gentlemen,' I returned, 'I am that Doctor Manette of whom you speak so
graciously.'

"'We have been to your residence,' said the first, 'and not being
so fortunate as to find you there, and being informed that you were
probably walking in this direction, we followed, in the hope of
overtaking you. Will you please to enter the carriage?'

"The manner of both was imperious, and they both moved, as these words
were spoken, so as to place me between themselves and the carriage door.
They were armed. I was not.

"'Gentlemen,' said I, 'pardon me; but I usually inquire who does me
the honour to seek my assistance, and what is the nature of the case to
which I am summoned.'

"The reply to this was made by him who had spoken second. 'Doctor,
your clients are people of condition. As to the nature of the case,
our confidence in your skill assures us that you will ascertain it for
yourself better than we can describe it. Enough. Will you please to
enter the carriage?'

"I could do nothing but comply, and I entered it in silence. They both
entered after me--the last springing in, after putting up the steps. The
carriage turned about, and drove on at its former speed.

"I repeat this conversation exactly as it occurred. I have no doubt that
it is, word for word, the same. I describe everything exactly as it took
place, constraining my mind not to wander from the task. Where I make
the broken marks that follow here, I leave off for the time, and put my
paper in its hiding-place.

        *****

"The carriage left the streets behind, passed the North Barrier, and
emerged upon the country road. At two-thirds of a league from the
Barrier--I did not estimate the distance at that time, but afterwards
when I traversed it--it struck out of the main avenue, and presently
stopped at a solitary house, We all three alighted, and walked, by
a damp soft footpath in a garden where a neglected fountain had
overflowed, to the door of the house. It was not opened immediately, in
answer to the ringing of the bell, and one of my two conductors struck
the man who opened it, with his heavy riding glove, across the face.

"There was nothing in this action to attract my particular attention,
for I had seen common people struck more commonly than dogs. But, the
other of the two, being angry likewise, struck the man in like manner
with his arm; the look and bearing of the brothers were then so exactly
alike, that I then first perceived them to be twin brothers.

"From the time of our alighting at the outer gate (which we found
locked, and which one of the brothers had opened to admit us, and had
relocked), I had heard cries proceeding from an upper chamber. I was
conducted to this chamber straight, the cries growing louder as we
ascended the stairs, and I found a patient in a high fever of the brain,
lying on a bed.

"The patient was a woman of great beauty, and young; assuredly not much
past twenty. Her hair was torn and ragged, and her arms were bound to
her sides with sashes and handkerchiefs. I noticed that these bonds were
all portions of a gentleman's dress. On one of them, which was a fringed
scarf for a dress of ceremony, I saw the armorial bearings of a Noble,
and the letter E.

"I saw this, within the first minute of my contemplation of the patient;
for, in her restless strivings she had turned over on her face on the
edge of the bed, had drawn the end of the scarf into her mouth, and was
in danger of suffocation. My first act was to put out my hand to relieve
her breathing; and in moving the scarf aside, the embroidery in the
corner caught my sight.

"I turned her gently over, placed my hands upon her breast to calm her
and keep her down, and looked into her face. Her eyes were dilated and
wild, and she constantly uttered piercing shrieks, and repeated the
words, 'My husband, my father, and my brother!' and then counted up to
twelve, and said, 'Hush!' For an instant, and no more, she would pause
to listen, and then the piercing shrieks would begin again, and she
would repeat the cry, 'My husband, my father, and my brother!' and
would count up to twelve, and say, 'Hush!' There was no variation in the
order, or the manner. There was no cessation, but the regular moment's
pause, in the utterance of these sounds.

"'How long,' I asked, 'has this lasted?'

"To distinguish the brothers, I will call them the elder and the
younger; by the elder, I mean him who exercised the most authority. It
was the elder who replied, 'Since about this hour last night.'

"'She has a husband, a father, and a brother?'

"'A brother.'

"'I do not address her brother?'

"He answered with great contempt, 'No.'

"'She has some recent association with the number twelve?'

"The younger brother impatiently rejoined, 'With twelve o'clock?'

"'See, gentlemen,' said I, still keeping my hands upon her breast, 'how
useless I am, as you have brought me! If I had known what I was coming
to see, I could have come provided. As it is, time must be lost. There
are no medicines to be obtained in this lonely place.'

"The elder brother looked to the younger, who said haughtily, 'There is
a case of medicines here;' and brought it from a closet, and put it on
the table.

        *****

"I opened some of the bottles, smelt them, and put the stoppers to my
lips. If I had wanted to use anything save narcotic medicines that were
poisons in themselves, I would not have administered any of those.

"'Do you doubt them?' asked the younger brother.

"'You see, monsieur, I am going to use them,' I replied, and said no
more.

"I made the patient swallow, with great difficulty, and after many
efforts, the dose that I desired to give. As I intended to repeat it
after a while, and as it was necessary to watch its influence, I then
sat down by the side of the bed. There was a timid and suppressed woman
in attendance (wife of the man down-stairs), who had retreated into
a corner. The house was damp and decayed, indifferently
furnished--evidently, recently occupied and temporarily used. Some thick
old hangings had been nailed up before the windows, to deaden the
sound of the shrieks. They continued to be uttered in their regular
succession, with the cry, 'My husband, my father, and my brother!' the
counting up to twelve, and 'Hush!' The frenzy was so violent, that I had
not unfastened the bandages restraining the arms; but, I had looked to
them, to see that they were not painful. The only spark of encouragement
in the case, was, that my hand upon the sufferer's breast had this much
soothing influence, that for minutes at a time it tranquillised the
figure. It had no effect upon the cries; no pendulum could be more
regular.

"For the reason that my hand had this effect (I assume), I had sat by
the side of the bed for half an hour, with the two brothers looking on,
before the elder said:

"'There is another patient.'

"I was startled, and asked, 'Is it a pressing case?'

"'You had better see,' he carelessly answered; and took up a light.

        *****

"The other patient lay in a back room across a second staircase, which
was a species of loft over a stable. There was a low plastered ceiling
to a part of it; the rest was open, to the ridge of the tiled roof, and
there were beams across. Hay and straw were stored in that portion of
the place, fagots for firing, and a heap of apples in sand. I had to
pass through that part, to get at the other. My memory is circumstantial
and unshaken. I try it with these details, and I see them all, in
this my cell in the Bastille, near the close of the tenth year of my
captivity, as I saw them all that night.

"On some hay on the ground, with a cushion thrown under his head, lay a
handsome peasant boy--a boy of not more than seventeen at the most.
He lay on his back, with his teeth set, his right hand clenched on his
breast, and his glaring eyes looking straight upward. I could not see
where his wound was, as I kneeled on one knee over him; but, I could see
that he was dying of a wound from a sharp point.

"'I am a doctor, my poor fellow,' said I. 'Let me examine it.'

"'I do not want it examined,' he answered; 'let it be.'

"It was under his hand, and I soothed him to let me move his hand away.
The wound was a sword-thrust, received from twenty to twenty-four hours
before, but no skill could have saved him if it had been looked to
without delay. He was then dying fast. As I turned my eyes to the elder
brother, I saw him looking down at this handsome boy whose life was
ebbing out, as if he were a wounded bird, or hare, or rabbit; not at all
as if he were a fellow-creature.

"'How has this been done, monsieur?' said I.

"'A crazed young common dog! A serf! Forced my brother to draw upon him,
and has fallen by my brother's sword--like a gentleman.'

"There was no touch of pity, sorrow, or kindred humanity, in this
answer. The speaker seemed to acknowledge that it was inconvenient to
have that different order of creature dying there, and that it would
have been better if he had died in the usual obscure routine of his
vermin kind. He was quite incapable of any compassionate feeling about
the boy, or about his fate.

"The boy's eyes had slowly moved to him as he had spoken, and they now
slowly moved to me.

"'Doctor, they are very proud, these Nobles; but we common dogs are
proud too, sometimes. They plunder us, outrage us, beat us, kill us; but
we have a little pride left, sometimes. She--have you seen her, Doctor?'

"The shrieks and the cries were audible there, though subdued by the
distance. He referred to them, as if she were lying in our presence.

"I said, 'I have seen her.'

"'She is my sister, Doctor. They have had their shameful rights, these
Nobles, in the modesty and virtue of our sisters, many years, but we
have had good girls among us. I know it, and have heard my father say
so. She was a good girl. She was betrothed to a good young man, too: a
tenant of his. We were all tenants of his--that man's who stands there.
The other is his brother, the worst of a bad race.'

"It was with the greatest difficulty that the boy gathered bodily force
to speak; but, his spirit spoke with a dreadful emphasis.

"'We were so robbed by that man who stands there, as all we common dogs
are by those superior Beings--taxed by him without mercy, obliged to
work for him without pay, obliged to grind our corn at his mill, obliged
to feed scores of his tame birds on our wretched crops, and forbidden
for our lives to keep a single tame bird of our own, pillaged and
plundered to that degree that when we chanced to have a bit of meat, we
ate it in fear, with the door barred and the shutters closed, that his
people should not see it and take it from us--I say, we were so robbed,
and hunted, and were made so poor, that our father told us it was a
dreadful thing to bring a child into the world, and that what we should
most pray for, was, that our women might be barren and our miserable
race die out!'

"I had never before seen the sense of being oppressed, bursting forth
like a fire. I had supposed that it must be latent in the people
somewhere; but, I had never seen it break out, until I saw it in the
dying boy.

"'Nevertheless, Doctor, my sister married. He was ailing at that time,
poor fellow, and she married her lover, that she might tend and comfort
him in our cottage--our dog-hut, as that man would call it. She had not
been married many weeks, when that man's brother saw her and admired
her, and asked that man to lend her to him--for what are husbands among
us! He was willing enough, but my sister was good and virtuous, and
hated his brother with a hatred as strong as mine. What did the two
then, to persuade her husband to use his influence with her, to make her
willing?'

"The boy's eyes, which had been fixed on mine, slowly turned to the
looker-on, and I saw in the two faces that all he said was true. The two
opposing kinds of pride confronting one another, I can see, even in this
Bastille; the gentleman's, all negligent indifference; the peasant's, all
trodden-down sentiment, and passionate revenge.

"'You know, Doctor, that it is among the Rights of these Nobles to
harness us common dogs to carts, and drive us. They so harnessed him and
drove him. You know that it is among their Rights to keep us in their
grounds all night, quieting the frogs, in order that their noble sleep
may not be disturbed. They kept him out in the unwholesome mists at
night, and ordered him back into his harness in the day. But he was
not persuaded. No! Taken out of harness one day at noon, to feed--if he
could find food--he sobbed twelve times, once for every stroke of the
bell, and died on her bosom.'

"Nothing human could have held life in the boy but his determination to
tell all his wrong. He forced back the gathering shadows of death, as
he forced his clenched right hand to remain clenched, and to cover his
wound.

"'Then, with that man's permission and even with his aid, his
brother took her away; in spite of what I know she must have told his
brother--and what that is, will not be long unknown to you, Doctor, if
it is now--his brother took her away--for his pleasure and diversion,
for a little while. I saw her pass me on the road. When I took the
tidings home, our father's heart burst; he never spoke one of the words
that filled it. I took my young sister (for I have another) to a place
beyond the reach of this man, and where, at least, she will never be
_his_ vassal. Then, I tracked the brother here, and last night climbed
in--a common dog, but sword in hand.--Where is the loft window? It was
somewhere here?'

"The room was darkening to his sight; the world was narrowing around
him. I glanced about me, and saw that the hay and straw were trampled
over the floor, as if there had been a struggle.

"'She heard me, and ran in. I told her not to come near us till he was
dead. He came in and first tossed me some pieces of money; then struck
at me with a whip. But I, though a common dog, so struck at him as to
make him draw. Let him break into as many pieces as he will, the sword
that he stained with my common blood; he drew to defend himself--thrust
at me with all his skill for his life.'

"My glance had fallen, but a few moments before, on the fragments of
a broken sword, lying among the hay. That weapon was a gentleman's. In
another place, lay an old sword that seemed to have been a soldier's.

"'Now, lift me up, Doctor; lift me up. Where is he?'

"'He is not here,' I said, supporting the boy, and thinking that he
referred to the brother.

"'He! Proud as these nobles are, he is afraid to see me. Where is the
man who was here? Turn my face to him.'

"I did so, raising the boy's head against my knee. But, invested for the
moment with extraordinary power, he raised himself completely: obliging
me to rise too, or I could not have still supported him.

"'Marquis,' said the boy, turned to him with his eyes opened wide, and
his right hand raised, 'in the days when all these things are to be
answered for, I summon you and yours, to the last of your bad race, to
answer for them. I mark this cross of blood upon you, as a sign that
I do it. In the days when all these things are to be answered for,
I summon your brother, the worst of the bad race, to answer for them
separately. I mark this cross of blood upon him, as a sign that I do
it.'

"Twice, he put his hand to the wound in his breast, and with his
forefinger drew a cross in the air. He stood for an instant with the
finger yet raised, and as it dropped, he dropped with it, and I laid him
down dead.

        *****

"When I returned to the bedside of the young woman, I found her raving
in precisely the same order of continuity. I knew that this might last
for many hours, and that it would probably end in the silence of the
grave.

"I repeated the medicines I had given her, and I sat at the side of
the bed until the night was far advanced. She never abated the piercing
quality of her shrieks, never stumbled in the distinctness or the order
of her words. They were always 'My husband, my father, and my brother!
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven,
twelve. Hush!'

"This lasted twenty-six hours from the time when I first saw her. I had
come and gone twice, and was again sitting by her, when she began to
falter. I did what little could be done to assist that opportunity, and
by-and-bye she sank into a lethargy, and lay like the dead.

"It was as if the wind and rain had lulled at last, after a long and
fearful storm. I released her arms, and called the woman to assist me to
compose her figure and the dress she had torn. It was then that I knew
her condition to be that of one in whom the first expectations of being
a mother have arisen; and it was then that I lost the little hope I had
had of her.

"'Is she dead?' asked the Marquis, whom I will still describe as the
elder brother, coming booted into the room from his horse.

"'Not dead,' said I; 'but like to die.'

"'What strength there is in these common bodies!' he said, looking down
at her with some curiosity.

"'There is prodigious strength,' I answered him, 'in sorrow and
despair.'

"He first laughed at my words, and then frowned at them. He moved a
chair with his foot near to mine, ordered the woman away, and said in a
subdued voice,

"'Doctor, finding my brother in this difficulty with these hinds, I
recommended that your aid should be invited. Your reputation is high,
and, as a young man with your fortune to make, you are probably mindful
of your interest. The things that you see here, are things to be seen,
and not spoken of.'

"I listened to the patient's breathing, and avoided answering.

"'Do you honour me with your attention, Doctor?'

"'Monsieur,' said I, 'in my profession, the communications of patients
are always received in confidence.' I was guarded in my answer, for I
was troubled in my mind with what I had heard and seen.

"Her breathing was so difficult to trace, that I carefully tried the
pulse and the heart. There was life, and no more. Looking round as I
resumed my seat, I found both the brothers intent upon me.

        *****

"I write with so much difficulty, the cold is so severe, I am so
fearful of being detected and consigned to an underground cell and total
darkness, that I must abridge this narrative. There is no confusion or
failure in my memory; it can recall, and could detail, every word that
was ever spoken between me and those brothers.

"She lingered for a week. Towards the last, I could understand some few
syllables that she said to me, by placing my ear close to her lips. She
asked me where she was, and I told her; who I was, and I told her. It
was in vain that I asked her for her family name. She faintly shook her
head upon the pillow, and kept her secret, as the boy had done.

"I had no opportunity of asking her any question, until I had told the
brothers she was sinking fast, and could not live another day. Until
then, though no one was ever presented to her consciousness save the
woman and myself, one or other of them had always jealously sat behind
the curtain at the head of the bed when I was there. But when it came to
that, they seemed careless what communication I might hold with her; as
if--the thought passed through my mind--I were dying too.

"I always observed that their pride bitterly resented the younger
brother's (as I call him) having crossed swords with a peasant, and that
peasant a boy. The only consideration that appeared to affect the mind
of either of them was the consideration that this was highly degrading
to the family, and was ridiculous. As often as I caught the younger
brother's eyes, their expression reminded me that he disliked me deeply,
for knowing what I knew from the boy. He was smoother and more polite to
me than the elder; but I saw this. I also saw that I was an incumbrance
in the mind of the elder, too.

"My patient died, two hours before midnight--at a time, by my watch,
answering almost to the minute when I had first seen her. I was alone
with her, when her forlorn young head drooped gently on one side, and
all her earthly wrongs and sorrows ended.

"The brothers were waiting in a room down-stairs, impatient to ride
away. I had heard them, alone at the bedside, striking their boots with
their riding-whips, and loitering up and down.

"'At last she is dead?' said the elder, when I went in.

"'She is dead,' said I.

"'I congratulate you, my brother,' were his words as he turned round.

"He had before offered me money, which I had postponed taking. He now
gave me a rouleau of gold. I took it from his hand, but laid it on
the table. I had considered the question, and had resolved to accept
nothing.

"'Pray excuse me,' said I. 'Under the circumstances, no.'

"They exchanged looks, but bent their heads to me as I bent mine to
them, and we parted without another word on either side.

        *****

"I am weary, weary, weary--worn down by misery. I cannot read what I
have written with this gaunt hand.

"Early in the morning, the rouleau of gold was left at my door in a
little box, with my name on the outside. From the first, I had anxiously
considered what I ought to do. I decided, that day, to write privately
to the Minister, stating the nature of the two cases to which I had been
summoned, and the place to which I had gone: in effect, stating all the
circumstances. I knew what Court influence was, and what the immunities
of the Nobles were, and I expected that the matter would never be
heard of; but, I wished to relieve my own mind. I had kept the matter a
profound secret, even from my wife; and this, too, I resolved to state
in my letter. I had no apprehension whatever of my real danger; but
I was conscious that there might be danger for others, if others were
compromised by possessing the knowledge that I possessed.

"I was much engaged that day, and could not complete my letter that
night. I rose long before my usual time next morning to finish it.
It was the last day of the year. The letter was lying before me just
completed, when I was told that a lady waited, who wished to see me.

        *****

"I am growing more and more unequal to the task I have set myself. It is
so cold, so dark, my senses are so benumbed, and the gloom upon me is so
dreadful.

"The lady was young, engaging, and handsome, but not marked for long
life. She was in great agitation. She presented herself to me as the
wife of the Marquis St. Evremonde. I connected the title by which the
boy had addressed the elder brother, with the initial letter embroidered
on the scarf, and had no difficulty in arriving at the conclusion that I
had seen that nobleman very lately.

"My memory is still accurate, but I cannot write the words of our
conversation. I suspect that I am watched more closely than I was, and I
know not at what times I may be watched. She had in part suspected, and
in part discovered, the main facts of the cruel story, of her husband's
share in it, and my being resorted to. She did not know that the girl
was dead. Her hope had been, she said in great distress, to show her,
in secret, a woman's sympathy. Her hope had been to avert the wrath of
Heaven from a House that had long been hateful to the suffering many.

"She had reasons for believing that there was a young sister living, and
her greatest desire was, to help that sister. I could tell her nothing
but that there was such a sister; beyond that, I knew nothing. Her
inducement to come to me, relying on my confidence, had been the hope
that I could tell her the name and place of abode. Whereas, to this
wretched hour I am ignorant of both.

        *****

"These scraps of paper fail me. One was taken from me, with a warning,
yesterday. I must finish my record to-day.

"She was a good, compassionate lady, and not happy in her marriage. How
could she be! The brother distrusted and disliked her, and his influence
was all opposed to her; she stood in dread of him, and in dread of her
husband too. When I handed her down to the door, there was a child, a
pretty boy from two to three years old, in her carriage.

"'For his sake, Doctor,' she said, pointing to him in tears, 'I would do
all I can to make what poor amends I can. He will never prosper in his
inheritance otherwise. I have a presentiment that if no other innocent
atonement is made for this, it will one day be required of him. What
I have left to call my own--it is little beyond the worth of a few
jewels--I will make it the first charge of his life to bestow, with the
compassion and lamenting of his dead mother, on this injured family, if
the sister can be discovered.'

"She kissed the boy, and said, caressing him, 'It is for thine own dear
sake. Thou wilt be faithful, little Charles?' The child answered her
bravely, 'Yes!' I kissed her hand, and she took him in her arms, and
went away caressing him. I never saw her more.

"As she had mentioned her husband's name in the faith that I knew it,
I added no mention of it to my letter. I sealed my letter, and, not
trusting it out of my own hands, delivered it myself that day.

"That night, the last night of the year, towards nine o'clock, a man in
a black dress rang at my gate, demanded to see me, and softly followed
my servant, Ernest Defarge, a youth, up-stairs. When my servant came
into the room where I sat with my wife--O my wife, beloved of my heart!
My fair young English wife!--we saw the man, who was supposed to be at
the gate, standing silent behind him.

"An urgent case in the Rue St. Honore, he said. It would not detain me,
he had a coach in waiting.

"It brought me here, it brought me to my grave. When I was clear of the
house, a black muffler was drawn tightly over my mouth from behind, and
my arms were pinioned. The two brothers crossed the road from a dark
corner, and identified me with a single gesture. The Marquis took from
his pocket the letter I had written, showed it me, burnt it in the light
of a lantern that was held, and extinguished the ashes with his foot.
Not a word was spoken. I was brought here, I was brought to my living
grave.

"If it had pleased _God_ to put it in the hard heart of either of the
brothers, in all these frightful years, to grant me any tidings of
my dearest wife--so much as to let me know by a word whether alive or
dead--I might have thought that He had not quite abandoned them. But,
now I believe that the mark of the red cross is fatal to them, and that
they have no part in His mercies. And them and their descendants, to the
last of their race, I, Alexandre Manette, unhappy prisoner, do this last
night of the year 1767, in my unbearable agony, denounce to the times
when all these things shall be answered for. I denounce them to Heaven
and to earth."

A terrible sound arose when the reading of this document was done. A
sound of craving and eagerness that had nothing articulate in it but
blood. The narrative called up the most revengeful passions of the time,
and there was not a head in the nation but must have dropped before it.

Little need, in presence of that tribunal and that auditory, to show
how the Defarges had not made the paper public, with the other captured
Bastille memorials borne in procession, and had kept it, biding their
time. Little need to show that this detested family name had long been
anathematised by Saint Antoine, and was wrought into the fatal register.
The man never trod ground whose virtues and services would have
sustained him in that place that day, against such denunciation.

And all the worse for the doomed man, that the denouncer was a
well-known citizen, his own attached friend, the father of his wife. One
of the frenzied aspirations of the populace was, for imitations of
the questionable public virtues of antiquity, and for sacrifices and
self-immolations on the people's altar. Therefore when the President
said (else had his own head quivered on his shoulders), that the good
physician of the Republic would deserve better still of the Republic by
rooting out an obnoxious family of Aristocrats, and would doubtless feel
a sacred glow and joy in making his daughter a widow and her child an
orphan, there was wild excitement, patriotic fervour, not a touch of
human sympathy.

"Much influence around him, has that Doctor?" murmured Madame Defarge,
smiling to The Vengeance. "Save him now, my Doctor, save him!"

At every juryman's vote, there was a roar. Another and another. Roar and
roar.

Unanimously voted. At heart and by descent an Aristocrat, an enemy
of the Republic, a notorious oppressor of the People. Back to the
Conciergerie, and Death within four-and-twenty hours!





XI. Dusk


The wretched wife of the innocent man thus doomed to die, fell under
the sentence, as if she had been mortally stricken. But, she uttered no
sound; and so strong was the voice within her, representing that it was
she of all the world who must uphold him in his misery and not augment
it, that it quickly raised her, even from that shock.

The Judges having to take part in a public demonstration out of doors,
the Tribunal adjourned. The quick noise and movement of the court's
emptying itself by many passages had not ceased, when Lucie stood
stretching out her arms towards her husband, with nothing in her face
but love and consolation.

"If I might touch him! If I might embrace him once! O, good citizens, if
you would have so much compassion for us!"

There was but a gaoler left, along with two of the four men who had
taken him last night, and Barsad. The people had all poured out to the
show in the streets. Barsad proposed to the rest, "Let her embrace
him then; it is but a moment." It was silently acquiesced in, and they
passed her over the seats in the hall to a raised place, where he, by
leaning over the dock, could fold her in his arms.

"Farewell, dear darling of my soul. My parting blessing on my love. We
shall meet again, where the weary are at rest!"

They were her husband's words, as he held her to his bosom.

"I can bear it, dear Charles. I am supported from above: don't suffer
for me. A parting blessing for our child."

"I send it to her by you. I kiss her by you. I say farewell to her by
you."

"My husband. No! A moment!" He was tearing himself apart from her.
"We shall not be separated long. I feel that this will break my heart
by-and-bye; but I will do my duty while I can, and when I leave her, God
will raise up friends for her, as He did for me."

Her father had followed her, and would have fallen on his knees to both
of them, but that Darnay put out a hand and seized him, crying:

"No, no! What have you done, what have you done, that you should kneel
to us! We know now, what a struggle you made of old. We know, now what
you underwent when you suspected my descent, and when you knew it. We
know now, the natural antipathy you strove against, and conquered, for
her dear sake. We thank you with all our hearts, and all our love and
duty. Heaven be with you!"

Her father's only answer was to draw his hands through his white hair,
and wring them with a shriek of anguish.

"It could not be otherwise," said the prisoner. "All things have worked
together as they have fallen out. It was the always-vain endeavour to
discharge my poor mother's trust that first brought my fatal presence
near you. Good could never come of such evil, a happier end was not in
nature to so unhappy a beginning. Be comforted, and forgive me. Heaven
bless you!"

As he was drawn away, his wife released him, and stood looking after him
with her hands touching one another in the attitude of prayer, and
with a radiant look upon her face, in which there was even a comforting
smile. As he went out at the prisoners' door, she turned, laid her head
lovingly on her father's breast, tried to speak to him, and fell at his
feet.

Then, issuing from the obscure corner from which he had never moved,
Sydney Carton came and took her up. Only her father and Mr. Lorry were
with her. His arm trembled as it raised her, and supported her head.
Yet, there was an air about him that was not all of pity--that had a
flush of pride in it.

"Shall I take her to a coach? I shall never feel her weight."

He carried her lightly to the door, and laid her tenderly down in a
coach. Her father and their old friend got into it, and he took his seat
beside the driver.

When they arrived at the gateway where he had paused in the dark not
many hours before, to picture to himself on which of the rough stones of
the street her feet had trodden, he lifted her again, and carried her up
the staircase to their rooms. There, he laid her down on a couch, where
her child and Miss Pross wept over her.

"Don't recall her to herself," he said, softly, to the latter, "she is
better so. Don't revive her to consciousness, while she only faints."

"Oh, Carton, Carton, dear Carton!" cried little Lucie, springing up and
throwing her arms passionately round him, in a burst of grief. "Now that
you have come, I think you will do something to help mamma, something to
save papa! O, look at her, dear Carton! Can you, of all the people who
love her, bear to see her so?"

He bent over the child, and laid her blooming cheek against his face. He
put her gently from him, and looked at her unconscious mother.

"Before I go," he said, and paused--"I may kiss her?"

It was remembered afterwards that when he bent down and touched her face
with his lips, he murmured some words. The child, who was nearest to
him, told them afterwards, and told her grandchildren when she was a
handsome old lady, that she heard him say, "A life you love."

When he had gone out into the next room, he turned suddenly on Mr. Lorry
and her father, who were following, and said to the latter:

"You had great influence but yesterday, Doctor Manette; let it at least
be tried. These judges, and all the men in power, are very friendly to
you, and very recognisant of your services; are they not?"

"Nothing connected with Charles was concealed from me. I had the
strongest assurances that I should save him; and I did." He returned the
answer in great trouble, and very slowly.

"Try them again. The hours between this and to-morrow afternoon are few
and short, but try."

"I intend to try. I will not rest a moment."

"That's well. I have known such energy as yours do great things before
now--though never," he added, with a smile and a sigh together, "such
great things as this. But try! Of little worth as life is when we misuse
it, it is worth that effort. It would cost nothing to lay down if it
were not."

"I will go," said Doctor Manette, "to the Prosecutor and the President
straight, and I will go to others whom it is better not to name. I will
write too, and--But stay! There is a Celebration in the streets, and no
one will be accessible until dark."

"That's true. Well! It is a forlorn hope at the best, and not much the
forlorner for being delayed till dark. I should like to know how you
speed; though, mind! I expect nothing! When are you likely to have seen
these dread powers, Doctor Manette?"

"Immediately after dark, I should hope. Within an hour or two from
this."

"It will be dark soon after four. Let us stretch the hour or two. If I
go to Mr. Lorry's at nine, shall I hear what you have done, either from
our friend or from yourself?"

"Yes."

"May you prosper!"

Mr. Lorry followed Sydney to the outer door, and, touching him on the
shoulder as he was going away, caused him to turn.

"I have no hope," said Mr. Lorry, in a low and sorrowful whisper.

"Nor have I."

"If any one of these men, or all of these men, were disposed to spare
him--which is a large supposition; for what is his life, or any man's
to them!--I doubt if they durst spare him after the demonstration in the
court."

"And so do I. I heard the fall of the axe in that sound."

Mr. Lorry leaned his arm upon the door-post, and bowed his face upon it.

"Don't despond," said Carton, very gently; "don't grieve. I encouraged
Doctor Manette in this idea, because I felt that it might one day be
consolatory to her. Otherwise, she might think 'his life was wantonly
thrown away or wasted,' and that might trouble her."

"Yes, yes, yes," returned Mr. Lorry, drying his eyes, "you are right.
But he will perish; there is no real hope."

"Yes. He will perish: there is no real hope," echoed Carton.

And walked with a settled step, down-stairs.





XII. Darkness


Sydney Carton paused in the street, not quite decided where to go. "At
Tellson's banking-house at nine," he said, with a musing face. "Shall I
do well, in the mean time, to show myself? I think so. It is best that
these people should know there is such a man as I here; it is a sound
precaution, and may be a necessary preparation. But care, care, care!
Let me think it out!"

Checking his steps which had begun to tend towards an object, he took a
turn or two in the already darkening street, and traced the thought
in his mind to its possible consequences. His first impression was
confirmed. "It is best," he said, finally resolved, "that these people
should know there is such a man as I here." And he turned his face
towards Saint Antoine.

Defarge had described himself, that day, as the keeper of a wine-shop in
the Saint Antoine suburb. It was not difficult for one who knew the city
well, to find his house without asking any question. Having ascertained
its situation, Carton came out of those closer streets again, and dined
at a place of refreshment and fell sound asleep after dinner. For the
first time in many years, he had no strong drink. Since last night he
had taken nothing but a little light thin wine, and last night he had
dropped the brandy slowly down on Mr. Lorry's hearth like a man who had
done with it.

It was as late as seven o'clock when he awoke refreshed, and went out
into the streets again. As he passed along towards Saint Antoine, he
stopped at a shop-window where there was a mirror, and slightly altered
the disordered arrangement of his loose cravat, and his coat-collar, and
his wild hair. This done, he went on direct to Defarge's, and went in.

There happened to be no customer in the shop but Jacques Three, of the
restless fingers and the croaking voice. This man, whom he had seen upon
the Jury, stood drinking at the little counter, in conversation with the
Defarges, man and wife. The Vengeance assisted in the conversation, like
a regular member of the establishment.

As Carton walked in, took his seat and asked (in very indifferent
French) for a small measure of wine, Madame Defarge cast a careless
glance at him, and then a keener, and then a keener, and then advanced
to him herself, and asked him what it was he had ordered.

He repeated what he had already said.

"English?" asked Madame Defarge, inquisitively raising her dark
eyebrows.

After looking at her, as if the sound of even a single French word were
slow to express itself to him, he answered, in his former strong foreign
accent. "Yes, madame, yes. I am English!"

Madame Defarge returned to her counter to get the wine, and, as he
took up a Jacobin journal and feigned to pore over it puzzling out its
meaning, he heard her say, "I swear to you, like Evremonde!"

Defarge brought him the wine, and gave him Good Evening.

"How?"

"Good evening."

"Oh! Good evening, citizen," filling his glass. "Ah! and good wine. I
drink to the Republic."

Defarge went back to the counter, and said, "Certainly, a little like."
Madame sternly retorted, "I tell you a good deal like." Jacques Three
pacifically remarked, "He is so much in your mind, see you, madame."
The amiable Vengeance added, with a laugh, "Yes, my faith! And you
are looking forward with so much pleasure to seeing him once more
to-morrow!"

Carton followed the lines and words of his paper, with a slow
forefinger, and with a studious and absorbed face. They were all leaning
their arms on the counter close together, speaking low. After a silence
of a few moments, during which they all looked towards him without
disturbing his outward attention from the Jacobin editor, they resumed
their conversation.

"It is true what madame says," observed Jacques Three. "Why stop? There
is great force in that. Why stop?"

"Well, well," reasoned Defarge, "but one must stop somewhere. After all,
the question is still where?"

"At extermination," said madame.

"Magnificent!" croaked Jacques Three. The Vengeance, also, highly
approved.

"Extermination is good doctrine, my wife," said Defarge, rather
troubled; "in general, I say nothing against it. But this Doctor has
suffered much; you have seen him to-day; you have observed his face when
the paper was read."

"I have observed his face!" repeated madame, contemptuously and angrily.
"Yes. I have observed his face. I have observed his face to be not the
face of a true friend of the Republic. Let him take care of his face!"

"And you have observed, my wife," said Defarge, in a deprecatory manner,
"the anguish of his daughter, which must be a dreadful anguish to him!"

"I have observed his daughter," repeated madame; "yes, I have observed
his daughter, more times than one. I have observed her to-day, and I
have observed her other days. I have observed her in the court, and
I have observed her in the street by the prison. Let me but lift my
finger--!" She seemed to raise it (the listener's eyes were always on
his paper), and to let it fall with a rattle on the ledge before her, as
if the axe had dropped.

"The citizeness is superb!" croaked the Juryman.

"She is an Angel!" said The Vengeance, and embraced her.

"As to thee," pursued madame, implacably, addressing her husband, "if it
depended on thee--which, happily, it does not--thou wouldst rescue this
man even now."

"No!" protested Defarge. "Not if to lift this glass would do it! But I
would leave the matter there. I say, stop there."

"See you then, Jacques," said Madame Defarge, wrathfully; "and see you,
too, my little Vengeance; see you both! Listen! For other crimes as
tyrants and oppressors, I have this race a long time on my register,
doomed to destruction and extermination. Ask my husband, is that so."

"It is so," assented Defarge, without being asked.

"In the beginning of the great days, when the Bastille falls, he finds
this paper of to-day, and he brings it home, and in the middle of the
night when this place is clear and shut, we read it, here on this spot,
by the light of this lamp. Ask him, is that so."

"It is so," assented Defarge.

"That night, I tell him, when the paper is read through, and the lamp is
burnt out, and the day is gleaming in above those shutters and between
those iron bars, that I have now a secret to communicate. Ask him, is
that so."

"It is so," assented Defarge again.

"I communicate to him that secret. I smite this bosom with these two
hands as I smite it now, and I tell him, 'Defarge, I was brought up
among the fishermen of the sea-shore, and that peasant family so injured
by the two Evremonde brothers, as that Bastille paper describes, is my
family. Defarge, that sister of the mortally wounded boy upon the ground
was my sister, that husband was my sister's husband, that unborn child
was their child, that brother was my brother, that father was my father,
those dead are my dead, and that summons to answer for those things
descends to me!' Ask him, is that so."

"It is so," assented Defarge once more.

"Then tell Wind and Fire where to stop," returned madame; "but don't
tell me."

Both her hearers derived a horrible enjoyment from the deadly nature
of her wrath--the listener could feel how white she was, without seeing
her--and both highly commended it. Defarge, a weak minority, interposed
a few words for the memory of the compassionate wife of the Marquis; but
only elicited from his own wife a repetition of her last reply. "Tell
the Wind and the Fire where to stop; not me!"

Customers entered, and the group was broken up. The English customer
paid for what he had had, perplexedly counted his change, and asked, as
a stranger, to be directed towards the National Palace. Madame Defarge
took him to the door, and put her arm on his, in pointing out the road.
The English customer was not without his reflections then, that it might
be a good deed to seize that arm, lift it, and strike under it sharp and
deep.

But, he went his way, and was soon swallowed up in the shadow of the
prison wall. At the appointed hour, he emerged from it to present
himself in Mr. Lorry's room again, where he found the old gentleman
walking to and fro in restless anxiety. He said he had been with Lucie
until just now, and had only left her for a few minutes, to come and
keep his appointment. Her father had not been seen, since he quitted the
banking-house towards four o'clock. She had some faint hopes that his
mediation might save Charles, but they were very slight. He had been
more than five hours gone: where could he be?

Mr. Lorry waited until ten; but, Doctor Manette not returning, and
he being unwilling to leave Lucie any longer, it was arranged that he
should go back to her, and come to the banking-house again at midnight.
In the meanwhile, Carton would wait alone by the fire for the Doctor.

He waited and waited, and the clock struck twelve; but Doctor Manette
did not come back. Mr. Lorry returned, and found no tidings of him, and
brought none. Where could he be?

They were discussing this question, and were almost building up some
weak structure of hope on his prolonged absence, when they heard him on
the stairs. The instant he entered the room, it was plain that all was
lost.

Whether he had really been to any one, or whether he had been all that
time traversing the streets, was never known. As he stood staring at
them, they asked him no question, for his face told them everything.

"I cannot find it," said he, "and I must have it. Where is it?"

His head and throat were bare, and, as he spoke with a helpless look
straying all around, he took his coat off, and let it drop on the floor.

"Where is my bench? I have been looking everywhere for my bench, and I
can't find it. What have they done with my work? Time presses: I must
finish those shoes."

They looked at one another, and their hearts died within them.

"Come, come!" said he, in a whimpering miserable way; "let me get to
work. Give me my work."

Receiving no answer, he tore his hair, and beat his feet upon the
ground, like a distracted child.

"Don't torture a poor forlorn wretch," he implored them, with a dreadful
cry; "but give me my work! What is to become of us, if those shoes are
not done to-night?"

Lost, utterly lost!

It was so clearly beyond hope to reason with him, or try to restore him,
that--as if by agreement--they each put a hand upon his shoulder, and
soothed him to sit down before the fire, with a promise that he should
have his work presently. He sank into the chair, and brooded over the
embers, and shed tears. As if all that had happened since the garret
time were a momentary fancy, or a dream, Mr. Lorry saw him shrink into
the exact figure that Defarge had had in keeping.

Affected, and impressed with terror as they both were, by this spectacle
of ruin, it was not a time to yield to such emotions. His lonely
daughter, bereft of her final hope and reliance, appealed to them both
too strongly. Again, as if by agreement, they looked at one another with
one meaning in their faces. Carton was the first to speak:

"The last chance is gone: it was not much. Yes; he had better be taken
to her. But, before you go, will you, for a moment, steadily attend to
me? Don't ask me why I make the stipulations I am going to make, and
exact the promise I am going to exact; I have a reason--a good one."

"I do not doubt it," answered Mr. Lorry. "Say on."

The figure in the chair between them, was all the time monotonously
rocking itself to and fro, and moaning. They spoke in such a tone as
they would have used if they had been watching by a sick-bed in the
night.

Carton stooped to pick up the coat, which lay almost entangling his
feet. As he did so, a small case in which the Doctor was accustomed to
carry the lists of his day's duties, fell lightly on the floor. Carton
took it up, and there was a folded paper in it. "We should look
at this!" he said. Mr. Lorry nodded his consent. He opened it, and
exclaimed, "Thank _God!_"

"What is it?" asked Mr. Lorry, eagerly.

"A moment! Let me speak of it in its place. First," he put his hand in
his coat, and took another paper from it, "that is the certificate which
enables me to pass out of this city. Look at it. You see--Sydney Carton,
an Englishman?"

Mr. Lorry held it open in his hand, gazing in his earnest face.

"Keep it for me until to-morrow. I shall see him to-morrow, you
remember, and I had better not take it into the prison."

"Why not?"

"I don't know; I prefer not to do so. Now, take this paper that Doctor
Manette has carried about him. It is a similar certificate, enabling him
and his daughter and her child, at any time, to pass the barrier and the
frontier! You see?"

"Yes!"

"Perhaps he obtained it as his last and utmost precaution against evil,
yesterday. When is it dated? But no matter; don't stay to look; put it
up carefully with mine and your own. Now, observe! I never doubted until
within this hour or two, that he had, or could have such a paper. It is
good, until recalled. But it may be soon recalled, and, I have reason to
think, will be."

"They are not in danger?"

"They are in great danger. They are in danger of denunciation by Madame
Defarge. I know it from her own lips. I have overheard words of that
woman's, to-night, which have presented their danger to me in strong
colours. I have lost no time, and since then, I have seen the spy. He
confirms me. He knows that a wood-sawyer, living by the prison wall,
is under the control of the Defarges, and has been rehearsed by
Madame Defarge as to his having seen Her"--he never mentioned Lucie's
name--"making signs and signals to prisoners. It is easy to foresee that
the pretence will be the common one, a prison plot, and that it will
involve her life--and perhaps her child's--and perhaps her father's--for
both have been seen with her at that place. Don't look so horrified. You
will save them all."

"Heaven grant I may, Carton! But how?"

"I am going to tell you how. It will depend on you, and it could depend
on no better man. This new denunciation will certainly not take place
until after to-morrow; probably not until two or three days afterwards;
more probably a week afterwards. You know it is a capital crime, to
mourn for, or sympathise with, a victim of the Guillotine. She and her
father would unquestionably be guilty of this crime, and this woman (the
inveteracy of whose pursuit cannot be described) would wait to add that
strength to her case, and make herself doubly sure. You follow me?"

"So attentively, and with so much confidence in what you say, that for
the moment I lose sight," touching the back of the Doctor's chair, "even
of this distress."

"You have money, and can buy the means of travelling to the seacoast
as quickly as the journey can be made. Your preparations have been
completed for some days, to return to England. Early to-morrow have your
horses ready, so that they may be in starting trim at two o'clock in the
afternoon."

"It shall be done!"

His manner was so fervent and inspiring, that Mr. Lorry caught the
flame, and was as quick as youth.

"You are a noble heart. Did I say we could depend upon no better man?
Tell her, to-night, what you know of her danger as involving her child
and her father. Dwell upon that, for she would lay her own fair head
beside her husband's cheerfully." He faltered for an instant; then went
on as before. "For the sake of her child and her father, press upon her
the necessity of leaving Paris, with them and you, at that hour. Tell
her that it was her husband's last arrangement. Tell her that more
depends upon it than she dare believe, or hope. You think that her
father, even in this sad state, will submit himself to her; do you not?"

"I am sure of it."

"I thought so. Quietly and steadily have all these arrangements made in
the courtyard here, even to the taking of your own seat in the carriage.
The moment I come to you, take me in, and drive away."

"I understand that I wait for you under all circumstances?"

"You have my certificate in your hand with the rest, you know, and will
reserve my place. Wait for nothing but to have my place occupied, and
then for England!"

"Why, then," said Mr. Lorry, grasping his eager but so firm and steady
hand, "it does not all depend on one old man, but I shall have a young
and ardent man at my side."

"By the help of Heaven you shall! Promise me solemnly that nothing will
influence you to alter the course on which we now stand pledged to one
another."

"Nothing, Carton."

"Remember these words to-morrow: change the course, or delay in it--for
any reason--and no life can possibly be saved, and many lives must
inevitably be sacrificed."

"I will remember them. I hope to do my part faithfully."

"And I hope to do mine. Now, good bye!"

Though he said it with a grave smile of earnestness, and though he even
put the old man's hand to his lips, he did not part from him then. He
helped him so far to arouse the rocking figure before the dying embers,
as to get a cloak and hat put upon it, and to tempt it forth to find
where the bench and work were hidden that it still moaningly besought
to have. He walked on the other side of it and protected it to the
courtyard of the house where the afflicted heart--so happy in
the memorable time when he had revealed his own desolate heart to
it--outwatched the awful night. He entered the courtyard and remained
there for a few moments alone, looking up at the light in the window of
her room. Before he went away, he breathed a blessing towards it, and a
Farewell.





XIII. Fifty-two


In the black prison of the Conciergerie, the doomed of the day awaited
their fate. They were in number as the weeks of the year. Fifty-two were
to roll that afternoon on the life-tide of the city to the boundless
everlasting sea. Before their cells were quit of them, new occupants
were appointed; before their blood ran into the blood spilled yesterday,
the blood that was to mingle with theirs to-morrow was already set
apart.

Two score and twelve were told off. From the farmer-general of seventy,
whose riches could not buy his life, to the seamstress of twenty, whose
poverty and obscurity could not save her. Physical diseases, engendered
in the vices and neglects of men, will seize on victims of all degrees;
and the frightful moral disorder, born of unspeakable suffering,
intolerable oppression, and heartless indifference, smote equally
without distinction.

Charles Darnay, alone in a cell, had sustained himself with no
flattering delusion since he came to it from the Tribunal. In every line
of the narrative he had heard, he had heard his condemnation. He had
fully comprehended that no personal influence could possibly save him,
that he was virtually sentenced by the millions, and that units could
avail him nothing.

Nevertheless, it was not easy, with the face of his beloved wife fresh
before him, to compose his mind to what it must bear. His hold on life
was strong, and it was very, very hard, to loosen; by gradual efforts
and degrees unclosed a little here, it clenched the tighter there; and
when he brought his strength to bear on that hand and it yielded,
this was closed again. There was a hurry, too, in all his thoughts,
a turbulent and heated working of his heart, that contended against
resignation. If, for a moment, he did feel resigned, then his wife and
child who had to live after him, seemed to protest and to make it a
selfish thing.

But, all this was at first. Before long, the consideration that there
was no disgrace in the fate he must meet, and that numbers went the same
road wrongfully, and trod it firmly every day, sprang up to stimulate
him. Next followed the thought that much of the future peace of mind
enjoyable by the dear ones, depended on his quiet fortitude. So,
by degrees he calmed into the better state, when he could raise his
thoughts much higher, and draw comfort down.

Before it had set in dark on the night of his condemnation, he had
travelled thus far on his last way. Being allowed to purchase the means
of writing, and a light, he sat down to write until such time as the
prison lamps should be extinguished.

He wrote a long letter to Lucie, showing her that he had known nothing
of her father's imprisonment, until he had heard of it from herself,
and that he had been as ignorant as she of his father's and uncle's
responsibility for that misery, until the paper had been read. He had
already explained to her that his concealment from herself of the name
he had relinquished, was the one condition--fully intelligible now--that
her father had attached to their betrothal, and was the one promise he
had still exacted on the morning of their marriage. He entreated her,
for her father's sake, never to seek to know whether her father had
become oblivious of the existence of the paper, or had had it recalled
to him (for the moment, or for good), by the story of the Tower, on
that old Sunday under the dear old plane-tree in the garden. If he had
preserved any definite remembrance of it, there could be no doubt that
he had supposed it destroyed with the Bastille, when he had found no
mention of it among the relics of prisoners which the populace had
discovered there, and which had been described to all the world. He
besought her--though he added that he knew it was needless--to console
her father, by impressing him through every tender means she could think
of, with the truth that he had done nothing for which he could justly
reproach himself, but had uniformly forgotten himself for their joint
sakes. Next to her preservation of his own last grateful love and
blessing, and her overcoming of her sorrow, to devote herself to their
dear child, he adjured her, as they would meet in Heaven, to comfort her
father.

To her father himself, he wrote in the same strain; but, he told her
father that he expressly confided his wife and child to his care. And
he told him this, very strongly, with the hope of rousing him from any
despondency or dangerous retrospect towards which he foresaw he might be
tending.

To Mr. Lorry, he commended them all, and explained his worldly affairs.
That done, with many added sentences of grateful friendship and warm
attachment, all was done. He never thought of Carton. His mind was so
full of the others, that he never once thought of him.

He had time to finish these letters before the lights were put out. When
he lay down on his straw bed, he thought he had done with this world.

But, it beckoned him back in his sleep, and showed itself in shining
forms. Free and happy, back in the old house in Soho (though it had
nothing in it like the real house), unaccountably released and light of
heart, he was with Lucie again, and she told him it was all a dream, and
he had never gone away. A pause of forgetfulness, and then he had even
suffered, and had come back to her, dead and at peace, and yet there
was no difference in him. Another pause of oblivion, and he awoke in the
sombre morning, unconscious where he was or what had happened, until it
flashed upon his mind, "this is the day of my death!"

Thus, had he come through the hours, to the day when the fifty-two heads
were to fall. And now, while he was composed, and hoped that he could
meet the end with quiet heroism, a new action began in his waking
thoughts, which was very difficult to master.

He had never seen the instrument that was to terminate his life. How
high it was from the ground, how many steps it had, where he would be
stood, how he would be touched, whether the touching hands would be dyed
red, which way his face would be turned, whether he would be the first,
or might be the last: these and many similar questions, in nowise
directed by his will, obtruded themselves over and over again, countless
times. Neither were they connected with fear: he was conscious of no
fear. Rather, they originated in a strange besetting desire to know what
to do when the time came; a desire gigantically disproportionate to the
few swift moments to which it referred; a wondering that was more like
the wondering of some other spirit within his, than his own.

The hours went on as he walked to and fro, and the clocks struck the
numbers he would never hear again. Nine gone for ever, ten gone for
ever, eleven gone for ever, twelve coming on to pass away. After a hard
contest with that eccentric action of thought which had last perplexed
him, he had got the better of it. He walked up and down, softly
repeating their names to himself. The worst of the strife was over.
He could walk up and down, free from distracting fancies, praying for
himself and for them.

Twelve gone for ever.

He had been apprised that the final hour was Three, and he knew he would
be summoned some time earlier, inasmuch as the tumbrils jolted heavily
and slowly through the streets. Therefore, he resolved to keep Two
before his mind, as the hour, and so to strengthen himself in the
interval that he might be able, after that time, to strengthen others.

Walking regularly to and fro with his arms folded on his breast, a very
different man from the prisoner, who had walked to and fro at La Force,
he heard One struck away from him, without surprise. The hour had
measured like most other hours. Devoutly thankful to Heaven for his
recovered self-possession, he thought, "There is but another now," and
turned to walk again.

Footsteps in the stone passage outside the door. He stopped.

The key was put in the lock, and turned. Before the door was opened, or
as it opened, a man said in a low voice, in English: "He has never seen
me here; I have kept out of his way. Go you in alone; I wait near. Lose
no time!"

The door was quickly opened and closed, and there stood before him
face to face, quiet, intent upon him, with the light of a smile on his
features, and a cautionary finger on his lip, Sydney Carton.

There was something so bright and remarkable in his look, that, for the
first moment, the prisoner misdoubted him to be an apparition of his own
imagining. But, he spoke, and it was his voice; he took the prisoner's
hand, and it was his real grasp.

"Of all the people upon earth, you least expected to see me?" he said.

"I could not believe it to be you. I can scarcely believe it now. You
are not"--the apprehension came suddenly into his mind--"a prisoner?"

"No. I am accidentally possessed of a power over one of the keepers
here, and in virtue of it I stand before you. I come from her--your
wife, dear Darnay."

The prisoner wrung his hand.

"I bring you a request from her."

"What is it?"

"A most earnest, pressing, and emphatic entreaty, addressed to you
in the most pathetic tones of the voice so dear to you, that you well
remember."

The prisoner turned his face partly aside.

"You have no time to ask me why I bring it, or what it means; I have
no time to tell you. You must comply with it--take off those boots you
wear, and draw on these of mine."

There was a chair against the wall of the cell, behind the prisoner.
Carton, pressing forward, had already, with the speed of lightning, got
him down into it, and stood over him, barefoot.

"Draw on these boots of mine. Put your hands to them; put your will to
them. Quick!"

"Carton, there is no escaping from this place; it never can be done. You
will only die with me. It is madness."

"It would be madness if I asked you to escape; but do I? When I ask you
to pass out at that door, tell me it is madness and remain here. Change
that cravat for this of mine, that coat for this of mine. While you do
it, let me take this ribbon from your hair, and shake out your hair like
this of mine!"

With wonderful quickness, and with a strength both of will and action,
that appeared quite supernatural, he forced all these changes upon him.
The prisoner was like a young child in his hands.

"Carton! Dear Carton! It is madness. It cannot be accomplished, it never
can be done, it has been attempted, and has always failed. I implore you
not to add your death to the bitterness of mine."

"Do I ask you, my dear Darnay, to pass the door? When I ask that,
refuse. There are pen and ink and paper on this table. Is your hand
steady enough to write?"

"It was when you came in."

"Steady it again, and write what I shall dictate. Quick, friend, quick!"

Pressing his hand to his bewildered head, Darnay sat down at the table.
Carton, with his right hand in his breast, stood close beside him.

"Write exactly as I speak."

"To whom do I address it?"

"To no one." Carton still had his hand in his breast.

"Do I date it?"

"No."

The prisoner looked up, at each question. Carton, standing over him with
his hand in his breast, looked down.

"'If you remember,'" said Carton, dictating, "'the words that passed
between us, long ago, you will readily comprehend this when you see it.
You do remember them, I know. It is not in your nature to forget them.'"

He was drawing his hand from his breast; the prisoner chancing to look
up in his hurried wonder as he wrote, the hand stopped, closing upon
something.

"Have you written 'forget them'?" Carton asked.

"I have. Is that a weapon in your hand?"

"No; I am not armed."

"What is it in your hand?"

"You shall know directly. Write on; there are but a few words more." He
dictated again. "'I am thankful that the time has come, when I can prove
them. That I do so is no subject for regret or grief.'" As he said these
words with his eyes fixed on the writer, his hand slowly and softly
moved down close to the writer's face.

The pen dropped from Darnay's fingers on the table, and he looked about
him vacantly.

"What vapour is that?" he asked.

"Vapour?"

"Something that crossed me?"

"I am conscious of nothing; there can be nothing here. Take up the pen
and finish. Hurry, hurry!"

As if his memory were impaired, or his faculties disordered, the
prisoner made an effort to rally his attention. As he looked at Carton
with clouded eyes and with an altered manner of breathing, Carton--his
hand again in his breast--looked steadily at him.

"Hurry, hurry!"

The prisoner bent over the paper, once more.

"'If it had been otherwise;'" Carton's hand was again watchfully and
softly stealing down; "'I never should have used the longer opportunity.
If it had been otherwise;'" the hand was at the prisoner's face; "'I
should but have had so much the more to answer for. If it had been
otherwise--'" Carton looked at the pen and saw it was trailing off into
unintelligible signs.

Carton's hand moved back to his breast no more. The prisoner sprang up
with a reproachful look, but Carton's hand was close and firm at his
nostrils, and Carton's left arm caught him round the waist. For a few
seconds he faintly struggled with the man who had come to lay down his
life for him; but, within a minute or so, he was stretched insensible on
the ground.

Quickly, but with hands as true to the purpose as his heart was, Carton
dressed himself in the clothes the prisoner had laid aside, combed back
his hair, and tied it with the ribbon the prisoner had worn. Then, he
softly called, "Enter there! Come in!" and the Spy presented himself.

"You see?" said Carton, looking up, as he kneeled on one knee beside the
insensible figure, putting the paper in the breast: "is your hazard very
great?"

"Mr. Carton," the Spy answered, with a timid snap of his fingers, "my
hazard is not _that_, in the thick of business here, if you are true to
the whole of your bargain."

"Don't fear me. I will be true to the death."

"You must be, Mr. Carton, if the tale of fifty-two is to be right. Being
made right by you in that dress, I shall have no fear."

"Have no fear! I shall soon be out of the way of harming you, and the
rest will soon be far from here, please God! Now, get assistance and
take me to the coach."

"You?" said the Spy nervously.

"Him, man, with whom I have exchanged. You go out at the gate by which
you brought me in?"

"Of course."

"I was weak and faint when you brought me in, and I am fainter now you
take me out. The parting interview has overpowered me. Such a thing has
happened here, often, and too often. Your life is in your own hands.
Quick! Call assistance!"

"You swear not to betray me?" said the trembling Spy, as he paused for a
last moment.

"Man, man!" returned Carton, stamping his foot; "have I sworn by no
solemn vow already, to go through with this, that you waste the precious
moments now? Take him yourself to the courtyard you know of, place
him yourself in the carriage, show him yourself to Mr. Lorry, tell him
yourself to give him no restorative but air, and to remember my words of
last night, and his promise of last night, and drive away!"

The Spy withdrew, and Carton seated himself at the table, resting his
forehead on his hands. The Spy returned immediately, with two men.

"How, then?" said one of them, contemplating the fallen figure. "So
afflicted to find that his friend has drawn a prize in the lottery of
Sainte Guillotine?"

"A good patriot," said the other, "could hardly have been more afflicted
if the Aristocrat had drawn a blank."

They raised the unconscious figure, placed it on a litter they had
brought to the door, and bent to carry it away.

"The time is short, Evremonde," said the Spy, in a warning voice.

"I know it well," answered Carton. "Be careful of my friend, I entreat
you, and leave me."

"Come, then, my children," said Barsad. "Lift him, and come away!"

The door closed, and Carton was left alone. Straining his powers of
listening to the utmost, he listened for any sound that might denote
suspicion or alarm. There was none. Keys turned, doors clashed,
footsteps passed along distant passages: no cry was raised, or hurry
made, that seemed unusual. Breathing more freely in a little while, he
sat down at the table, and listened again until the clock struck Two.

Sounds that he was not afraid of, for he divined their meaning, then
began to be audible. Several doors were opened in succession, and
finally his own. A gaoler, with a list in his hand, looked in, merely
saying, "Follow me, Evremonde!" and he followed into a large dark room,
at a distance. It was a dark winter day, and what with the shadows
within, and what with the shadows without, he could but dimly discern
the others who were brought there to have their arms bound. Some were
standing; some seated. Some were lamenting, and in restless motion;
but, these were few. The great majority were silent and still, looking
fixedly at the ground.

As he stood by the wall in a dim corner, while some of the fifty-two
were brought in after him, one man stopped in passing, to embrace him,
as having a knowledge of him. It thrilled him with a great dread of
discovery; but the man went on. A very few moments after that, a young
woman, with a slight girlish form, a sweet spare face in which there was
no vestige of colour, and large widely opened patient eyes, rose from
the seat where he had observed her sitting, and came to speak to him.

"Citizen Evremonde," she said, touching him with her cold hand. "I am a
poor little seamstress, who was with you in La Force."

He murmured for answer: "True. I forget what you were accused of?"

"Plots. Though the just Heaven knows that I am innocent of any. Is it
likely? Who would think of plotting with a poor little weak creature
like me?"

The forlorn smile with which she said it, so touched him, that tears
started from his eyes.

"I am not afraid to die, Citizen Evremonde, but I have done nothing. I
am not unwilling to die, if the Republic which is to do so much good
to us poor, will profit by my death; but I do not know how that can be,
Citizen Evremonde. Such a poor weak little creature!"

As the last thing on earth that his heart was to warm and soften to, it
warmed and softened to this pitiable girl.

"I heard you were released, Citizen Evremonde. I hoped it was true?"

"It was. But, I was again taken and condemned."

"If I may ride with you, Citizen Evremonde, will you let me hold your
hand? I am not afraid, but I am little and weak, and it will give me
more courage."

As the patient eyes were lifted to his face, he saw a sudden doubt in
them, and then astonishment. He pressed the work-worn, hunger-worn young
fingers, and touched his lips.

"Are you dying for him?" she whispered.

"And his wife and child. Hush! Yes."

"O you will let me hold your brave hand, stranger?"

"Hush! Yes, my poor sister; to the last."

        *****

The same shadows that are falling on the prison, are falling, in that
same hour of the early afternoon, on the Barrier with the crowd about
it, when a coach going out of Paris drives up to be examined.

"Who goes here? Whom have we within? Papers!"

The papers are handed out, and read.

"Alexandre Manette. Physician. French. Which is he?"

This is he; this helpless, inarticulately murmuring, wandering old man
pointed out.

"Apparently the Citizen-Doctor is not in his right mind? The
Revolution-fever will have been too much for him?"

Greatly too much for him.

"Hah! Many suffer with it. Lucie. His daughter. French. Which is she?"

This is she.

"Apparently it must be. Lucie, the wife of Evremonde; is it not?"

It is.

"Hah! Evremonde has an assignation elsewhere. Lucie, her child. English.
This is she?"

She and no other.

"Kiss me, child of Evremonde. Now, thou hast kissed a good Republican;
something new in thy family; remember it! Sydney Carton. Advocate.
English. Which is he?"

He lies here, in this corner of the carriage. He, too, is pointed out.

"Apparently the English advocate is in a swoon?"

It is hoped he will recover in the fresher air. It is represented that
he is not in strong health, and has separated sadly from a friend who is
under the displeasure of the Republic.

"Is that all? It is not a great deal, that! Many are under the
displeasure of the Republic, and must look out at the little window.
Jarvis Lorry. Banker. English. Which is he?"

"I am he. Necessarily, being the last."

It is Jarvis Lorry who has replied to all the previous questions. It
is Jarvis Lorry who has alighted and stands with his hand on the coach
door, replying to a group of officials. They leisurely walk round the
carriage and leisurely mount the box, to look at what little luggage it
carries on the roof; the country-people hanging about, press nearer to
the coach doors and greedily stare in; a little child, carried by its
mother, has its short arm held out for it, that it may touch the wife of
an aristocrat who has gone to the Guillotine.

"Behold your papers, Jarvis Lorry, countersigned."

"One can depart, citizen?"

"One can depart. Forward, my postilions! A good journey!"

"I salute you, citizens.--And the first danger passed!"

These are again the words of Jarvis Lorry, as he clasps his hands, and
looks upward. There is terror in the carriage, there is weeping, there
is the heavy breathing of the insensible traveller.

"Are we not going too slowly? Can they not be induced to go faster?"
asks Lucie, clinging to the old man.

"It would seem like flight, my darling. I must not urge them too much;
it would rouse suspicion."

"Look back, look back, and see if we are pursued!"

"The road is clear, my dearest. So far, we are not pursued."

Houses in twos and threes pass by us, solitary farms, ruinous buildings,
dye-works, tanneries, and the like, open country, avenues of leafless
trees. The hard uneven pavement is under us, the soft deep mud is on
either side. Sometimes, we strike into the skirting mud, to avoid the
stones that clatter us and shake us; sometimes, we stick in ruts and
sloughs there. The agony of our impatience is then so great, that in our
wild alarm and hurry we are for getting out and running--hiding--doing
anything but stopping.

Out of the open country, in again among ruinous buildings, solitary
farms, dye-works, tanneries, and the like, cottages in twos and threes,
avenues of leafless trees. Have these men deceived us, and taken us back
by another road? Is not this the same place twice over? Thank Heaven,
no. A village. Look back, look back, and see if we are pursued! Hush!
the posting-house.

Leisurely, our four horses are taken out; leisurely, the coach stands in
the little street, bereft of horses, and with no likelihood upon it
of ever moving again; leisurely, the new horses come into visible
existence, one by one; leisurely, the new postilions follow, sucking and
plaiting the lashes of their whips; leisurely, the old postilions count
their money, make wrong additions, and arrive at dissatisfied results.
All the time, our overfraught hearts are beating at a rate that would
far outstrip the fastest gallop of the fastest horses ever foaled.

At length the new postilions are in their saddles, and the old are left
behind. We are through the village, up the hill, and down the hill, and
on the low watery grounds. Suddenly, the postilions exchange speech with
animated gesticulation, and the horses are pulled up, almost on their
haunches. We are pursued?

"Ho! Within the carriage there. Speak then!"

"What is it?" asks Mr. Lorry, looking out at window.

"How many did they say?"

"I do not understand you."

"--At the last post. How many to the Guillotine to-day?"

"Fifty-two."

"I said so! A brave number! My fellow-citizen here would have it
forty-two; ten more heads are worth having. The Guillotine goes
handsomely. I love it. Hi forward. Whoop!"

The night comes on dark. He moves more; he is beginning to revive, and
to speak intelligibly; he thinks they are still together; he asks him,
by his name, what he has in his hand. O pity us, kind Heaven, and help
us! Look out, look out, and see if we are pursued.

The wind is rushing after us, and the clouds are flying after us, and
the moon is plunging after us, and the whole wild night is in pursuit of
us; but, so far, we are pursued by nothing else.





XIV. The Knitting Done


In that same juncture of time when the Fifty-Two awaited their fate
Madame Defarge held darkly ominous council with The Vengeance and
Jacques Three of the Revolutionary Jury. Not in the wine-shop did Madame
Defarge confer with these ministers, but in the shed of the wood-sawyer,
erst a mender of roads. The sawyer himself did not participate in the
conference, but abided at a little distance, like an outer satellite who
was not to speak until required, or to offer an opinion until invited.

"But our Defarge," said Jacques Three, "is undoubtedly a good
Republican? Eh?"

"There is no better," the voluble Vengeance protested in her shrill
notes, "in France."

"Peace, little Vengeance," said Madame Defarge, laying her hand with
a slight frown on her lieutenant's lips, "hear me speak. My husband,
fellow-citizen, is a good Republican and a bold man; he has deserved
well of the Republic, and possesses its confidence. But my husband has
his weaknesses, and he is so weak as to relent towards this Doctor."

"It is a great pity," croaked Jacques Three, dubiously shaking his head,
with his cruel fingers at his hungry mouth; "it is not quite like a good
citizen; it is a thing to regret."

"See you," said madame, "I care nothing for this Doctor, I. He may wear
his head or lose it, for any interest I have in him; it is all one to
me. But, the Evremonde people are to be exterminated, and the wife and
child must follow the husband and father."

"She has a fine head for it," croaked Jacques Three. "I have seen blue
eyes and golden hair there, and they looked charming when Samson held
them up." Ogre that he was, he spoke like an epicure.

Madame Defarge cast down her eyes, and reflected a little.

"The child also," observed Jacques Three, with a meditative enjoyment
of his words, "has golden hair and blue eyes. And we seldom have a child
there. It is a pretty sight!"

"In a word," said Madame Defarge, coming out of her short abstraction,
"I cannot trust my husband in this matter. Not only do I feel, since
last night, that I dare not confide to him the details of my projects;
but also I feel that if I delay, there is danger of his giving warning,
and then they might escape."

"That must never be," croaked Jacques Three; "no one must escape. We
have not half enough as it is. We ought to have six score a day."

"In a word," Madame Defarge went on, "my husband has not my reason for
pursuing this family to annihilation, and I have not his reason for
regarding this Doctor with any sensibility. I must act for myself,
therefore. Come hither, little citizen."

The wood-sawyer, who held her in the respect, and himself in the
submission, of mortal fear, advanced with his hand to his red cap.

"Touching those signals, little citizen," said Madame Defarge, sternly,
"that she made to the prisoners; you are ready to bear witness to them
this very day?"

"Ay, ay, why not!" cried the sawyer. "Every day, in all weathers, from
two to four, always signalling, sometimes with the little one, sometimes
without. I know what I know. I have seen with my eyes."

He made all manner of gestures while he spoke, as if in incidental
imitation of some few of the great diversity of signals that he had
never seen.

"Clearly plots," said Jacques Three. "Transparently!"

"There is no doubt of the Jury?" inquired Madame Defarge, letting her
eyes turn to him with a gloomy smile.

"Rely upon the patriotic Jury, dear citizeness. I answer for my
fellow-Jurymen."

"Now, let me see," said Madame Defarge, pondering again. "Yet once more!
Can I spare this Doctor to my husband? I have no feeling either way. Can
I spare him?"

"He would count as one head," observed Jacques Three, in a low voice.
"We really have not heads enough; it would be a pity, I think."

"He was signalling with her when I saw her," argued Madame Defarge; "I
cannot speak of one without the other; and I must not be silent, and
trust the case wholly to him, this little citizen here. For, I am not a
bad witness."

The Vengeance and Jacques Three vied with each other in their fervent
protestations that she was the most admirable and marvellous of
witnesses. The little citizen, not to be outdone, declared her to be a
celestial witness.

"He must take his chance," said Madame Defarge. "No, I cannot spare
him! You are engaged at three o'clock; you are going to see the batch of
to-day executed.--You?"

The question was addressed to the wood-sawyer, who hurriedly replied in
the affirmative: seizing the occasion to add that he was the most ardent
of Republicans, and that he would be in effect the most desolate of
Republicans, if anything prevented him from enjoying the pleasure of
smoking his afternoon pipe in the contemplation of the droll national
barber. He was so very demonstrative herein, that he might have been
suspected (perhaps was, by the dark eyes that looked contemptuously at
him out of Madame Defarge's head) of having his small individual fears
for his own personal safety, every hour in the day.

"I," said madame, "am equally engaged at the same place. After it is
over--say at eight to-night--come you to me, in Saint Antoine, and we
will give information against these people at my Section."

The wood-sawyer said he would be proud and flattered to attend the
citizeness. The citizeness looking at him, he became embarrassed, evaded
her glance as a small dog would have done, retreated among his wood, and
hid his confusion over the handle of his saw.

Madame Defarge beckoned the Juryman and The Vengeance a little nearer to
the door, and there expounded her further views to them thus:

"She will now be at home, awaiting the moment of his death. She will
be mourning and grieving. She will be in a state of mind to impeach the
justice of the Republic. She will be full of sympathy with its enemies.
I will go to her."

"What an admirable woman; what an adorable woman!" exclaimed Jacques
Three, rapturously. "Ah, my cherished!" cried The Vengeance; and
embraced her.

"Take you my knitting," said Madame Defarge, placing it in her
lieutenant's hands, "and have it ready for me in my usual seat. Keep
me my usual chair. Go you there, straight, for there will probably be a
greater concourse than usual, to-day."

"I willingly obey the orders of my Chief," said The Vengeance with
alacrity, and kissing her cheek. "You will not be late?"

"I shall be there before the commencement."

"And before the tumbrils arrive. Be sure you are there, my soul," said
The Vengeance, calling after her, for she had already turned into the
street, "before the tumbrils arrive!"

Madame Defarge slightly waved her hand, to imply that she heard, and
might be relied upon to arrive in good time, and so went through the
mud, and round the corner of the prison wall. The Vengeance and the
Juryman, looking after her as she walked away, were highly appreciative
of her fine figure, and her superb moral endowments.

There were many women at that time, upon whom the time laid a dreadfully
disfiguring hand; but, there was not one among them more to be dreaded
than this ruthless woman, now taking her way along the streets. Of a
strong and fearless character, of shrewd sense and readiness, of great
determination, of that kind of beauty which not only seems to impart
to its possessor firmness and animosity, but to strike into others an
instinctive recognition of those qualities; the troubled time would have
heaved her up, under any circumstances. But, imbued from her childhood
with a brooding sense of wrong, and an inveterate hatred of a class,
opportunity had developed her into a tigress. She was absolutely without
pity. If she had ever had the virtue in her, it had quite gone out of
her.

It was nothing to her, that an innocent man was to die for the sins of
his forefathers; she saw, not him, but them. It was nothing to her, that
his wife was to be made a widow and his daughter an orphan; that was
insufficient punishment, because they were her natural enemies and
her prey, and as such had no right to live. To appeal to her, was made
hopeless by her having no sense of pity, even for herself. If she had
been laid low in the streets, in any of the many encounters in which
she had been engaged, she would not have pitied herself; nor, if she had
been ordered to the axe to-morrow, would she have gone to it with any
softer feeling than a fierce desire to change places with the man who
sent her there.

Such a heart Madame Defarge carried under her rough robe. Carelessly
worn, it was a becoming robe enough, in a certain weird way, and her
dark hair looked rich under her coarse red cap. Lying hidden in her
bosom, was a loaded pistol. Lying hidden at her waist, was a sharpened
dagger. Thus accoutred, and walking with the confident tread of such
a character, and with the supple freedom of a woman who had habitually
walked in her girlhood, bare-foot and bare-legged, on the brown
sea-sand, Madame Defarge took her way along the streets.

Now, when the journey of the travelling coach, at that very moment
waiting for the completion of its load, had been planned out last night,
the difficulty of taking Miss Pross in it had much engaged Mr. Lorry's
attention. It was not merely desirable to avoid overloading the coach,
but it was of the highest importance that the time occupied in examining
it and its passengers, should be reduced to the utmost; since their
escape might depend on the saving of only a few seconds here and there.
Finally, he had proposed, after anxious consideration, that Miss Pross
and Jerry, who were at liberty to leave the city, should leave it at
three o'clock in the lightest-wheeled conveyance known to that period.
Unencumbered with luggage, they would soon overtake the coach, and,
passing it and preceding it on the road, would order its horses in
advance, and greatly facilitate its progress during the precious hours
of the night, when delay was the most to be dreaded.

Seeing in this arrangement the hope of rendering real service in that
pressing emergency, Miss Pross hailed it with joy. She and Jerry had
beheld the coach start, had known who it was that Solomon brought, had
passed some ten minutes in tortures of suspense, and were now concluding
their arrangements to follow the coach, even as Madame Defarge,
taking her way through the streets, now drew nearer and nearer to the
else-deserted lodging in which they held their consultation.

"Now what do you think, Mr. Cruncher," said Miss Pross, whose agitation
was so great that she could hardly speak, or stand, or move, or live:
"what do you think of our not starting from this courtyard? Another
carriage having already gone from here to-day, it might awaken
suspicion."

"My opinion, miss," returned Mr. Cruncher, "is as you're right. Likewise
wot I'll stand by you, right or wrong."

"I am so distracted with fear and hope for our precious creatures," said
Miss Pross, wildly crying, "that I am incapable of forming any plan. Are
_you_ capable of forming any plan, my dear good Mr. Cruncher?"

"Respectin' a future spear o' life, miss," returned Mr. Cruncher, "I
hope so. Respectin' any present use o' this here blessed old head o'
mine, I think not. Would you do me the favour, miss, to take notice o'
two promises and wows wot it is my wishes fur to record in this here
crisis?"

"Oh, for gracious sake!" cried Miss Pross, still wildly crying, "record
them at once, and get them out of the way, like an excellent man."

"First," said Mr. Cruncher, who was all in a tremble, and who spoke with
an ashy and solemn visage, "them poor things well out o' this, never no
more will I do it, never no more!"

"I am quite sure, Mr. Cruncher," returned Miss Pross, "that you
never will do it again, whatever it is, and I beg you not to think it
necessary to mention more particularly what it is."

"No, miss," returned Jerry, "it shall not be named to you. Second: them
poor things well out o' this, and never no more will I interfere with
Mrs. Cruncher's flopping, never no more!"

"Whatever housekeeping arrangement that may be," said Miss Pross,
striving to dry her eyes and compose herself, "I have no doubt it
is best that Mrs. Cruncher should have it entirely under her own
superintendence.--O my poor darlings!"

"I go so far as to say, miss, moreover," proceeded Mr. Cruncher, with a
most alarming tendency to hold forth as from a pulpit--"and let my words
be took down and took to Mrs. Cruncher through yourself--that wot my
opinions respectin' flopping has undergone a change, and that wot I only
hope with all my heart as Mrs. Cruncher may be a flopping at the present
time."

"There, there, there! I hope she is, my dear man," cried the distracted
Miss Pross, "and I hope she finds it answering her expectations."

"Forbid it," proceeded Mr. Cruncher, with additional solemnity,
additional slowness, and additional tendency to hold forth and hold
out, "as anything wot I have ever said or done should be wisited on my
earnest wishes for them poor creeturs now! Forbid it as we shouldn't all
flop (if it was anyways conwenient) to get 'em out o' this here dismal
risk! Forbid it, miss! Wot I say, for-_bid_ it!" This was Mr. Cruncher's
conclusion after a protracted but vain endeavour to find a better one.

And still Madame Defarge, pursuing her way along the streets, came
nearer and nearer.

"If we ever get back to our native land," said Miss Pross, "you may rely
upon my telling Mrs. Cruncher as much as I may be able to remember and
understand of what you have so impressively said; and at all events
you may be sure that I shall bear witness to your being thoroughly in
earnest at this dreadful time. Now, pray let us think! My esteemed Mr.
Cruncher, let us think!"

Still, Madame Defarge, pursuing her way along the streets, came nearer
and nearer.

"If you were to go before," said Miss Pross, "and stop the vehicle and
horses from coming here, and were to wait somewhere for me; wouldn't
that be best?"

Mr. Cruncher thought it might be best.

"Where could you wait for me?" asked Miss Pross.

Mr. Cruncher was so bewildered that he could think of no locality but
Temple Bar. Alas! Temple Bar was hundreds of miles away, and Madame
Defarge was drawing very near indeed.

"By the cathedral door," said Miss Pross. "Would it be much out of
the way, to take me in, near the great cathedral door between the two
towers?"

"No, miss," answered Mr. Cruncher.

"Then, like the best of men," said Miss Pross, "go to the posting-house
straight, and make that change."

"I am doubtful," said Mr. Cruncher, hesitating and shaking his head,
"about leaving of you, you see. We don't know what may happen."

"Heaven knows we don't," returned Miss Pross, "but have no fear for me.
Take me in at the cathedral, at Three o'Clock, or as near it as you can,
and I am sure it will be better than our going from here. I feel certain
of it. There! Bless you, Mr. Cruncher! Think-not of me, but of the lives
that may depend on both of us!"

This exordium, and Miss Pross's two hands in quite agonised entreaty
clasping his, decided Mr. Cruncher. With an encouraging nod or two, he
immediately went out to alter the arrangements, and left her by herself
to follow as she had proposed.

The having originated a precaution which was already in course of
execution, was a great relief to Miss Pross. The necessity of composing
her appearance so that it should attract no special notice in the
streets, was another relief. She looked at her watch, and it was twenty
minutes past two. She had no time to lose, but must get ready at once.

Afraid, in her extreme perturbation, of the loneliness of the deserted
rooms, and of half-imagined faces peeping from behind every open door
in them, Miss Pross got a basin of cold water and began laving her eyes,
which were swollen and red. Haunted by her feverish apprehensions, she
could not bear to have her sight obscured for a minute at a time by the
dripping water, but constantly paused and looked round to see that there
was no one watching her. In one of those pauses she recoiled and cried
out, for she saw a figure standing in the room.

The basin fell to the ground broken, and the water flowed to the feet of
Madame Defarge. By strange stern ways, and through much staining blood,
those feet had come to meet that water.

Madame Defarge looked coldly at her, and said, "The wife of Evremonde;
where is she?"

It flashed upon Miss Pross's mind that the doors were all standing open,
and would suggest the flight. Her first act was to shut them. There were
four in the room, and she shut them all. She then placed herself before
the door of the chamber which Lucie had occupied.

Madame Defarge's dark eyes followed her through this rapid movement,
and rested on her when it was finished. Miss Pross had nothing beautiful
about her; years had not tamed the wildness, or softened the grimness,
of her appearance; but, she too was a determined woman in her different
way, and she measured Madame Defarge with her eyes, every inch.

"You might, from your appearance, be the wife of Lucifer," said Miss
Pross, in her breathing. "Nevertheless, you shall not get the better of
me. I am an Englishwoman."

Madame Defarge looked at her scornfully, but still with something of
Miss Pross's own perception that they two were at bay. She saw a tight,
hard, wiry woman before her, as Mr. Lorry had seen in the same figure a
woman with a strong hand, in the years gone by. She knew full well that
Miss Pross was the family's devoted friend; Miss Pross knew full well
that Madame Defarge was the family's malevolent enemy.

"On my way yonder," said Madame Defarge, with a slight movement of
her hand towards the fatal spot, "where they reserve my chair and my
knitting for me, I am come to make my compliments to her in passing. I
wish to see her."

"I know that your intentions are evil," said Miss Pross, "and you may
depend upon it, I'll hold my own against them."

Each spoke in her own language; neither understood the other's words;
both were very watchful, and intent to deduce from look and manner, what
the unintelligible words meant.

"It will do her no good to keep herself concealed from me at this
moment," said Madame Defarge. "Good patriots will know what that means.
Let me see her. Go tell her that I wish to see her. Do you hear?"

"If those eyes of yours were bed-winches," returned Miss Pross, "and I
was an English four-poster, they shouldn't loose a splinter of me. No,
you wicked foreign woman; I am your match."

Madame Defarge was not likely to follow these idiomatic remarks in
detail; but, she so far understood them as to perceive that she was set
at naught.

"Woman imbecile and pig-like!" said Madame Defarge, frowning. "I take no
answer from you. I demand to see her. Either tell her that I demand
to see her, or stand out of the way of the door and let me go to her!"
This, with an angry explanatory wave of her right arm.

"I little thought," said Miss Pross, "that I should ever want to
understand your nonsensical language; but I would give all I have,
except the clothes I wear, to know whether you suspect the truth, or any
part of it."

Neither of them for a single moment released the other's eyes. Madame
Defarge had not moved from the spot where she stood when Miss Pross
first became aware of her; but, she now advanced one step.

"I am a Briton," said Miss Pross, "I am desperate. I don't care an
English Twopence for myself. I know that the longer I keep you here, the
greater hope there is for my Ladybird. I'll not leave a handful of that
dark hair upon your head, if you lay a finger on me!"

Thus Miss Pross, with a shake of her head and a flash of her eyes
between every rapid sentence, and every rapid sentence a whole breath.
Thus Miss Pross, who had never struck a blow in her life.

But, her courage was of that emotional nature that it brought the
irrepressible tears into her eyes. This was a courage that Madame
Defarge so little comprehended as to mistake for weakness. "Ha, ha!" she
laughed, "you poor wretch! What are you worth! I address myself to that
Doctor." Then she raised her voice and called out, "Citizen Doctor! Wife
of Evremonde! Child of Evremonde! Any person but this miserable fool,
answer the Citizeness Defarge!"

Perhaps the following silence, perhaps some latent disclosure in the
expression of Miss Pross's face, perhaps a sudden misgiving apart from
either suggestion, whispered to Madame Defarge that they were gone.
Three of the doors she opened swiftly, and looked in.

"Those rooms are all in disorder, there has been hurried packing, there
are odds and ends upon the ground. There is no one in that room behind
you! Let me look."

"Never!" said Miss Pross, who understood the request as perfectly as
Madame Defarge understood the answer.

"If they are not in that room, they are gone, and can be pursued and
brought back," said Madame Defarge to herself.

"As long as you don't know whether they are in that room or not, you are
uncertain what to do," said Miss Pross to herself; "and you shall not
know that, if I can prevent your knowing it; and know that, or not know
that, you shall not leave here while I can hold you."

"I have been in the streets from the first, nothing has stopped me,
I will tear you to pieces, but I will have you from that door," said
Madame Defarge.

"We are alone at the top of a high house in a solitary courtyard, we are
not likely to be heard, and I pray for bodily strength to keep you here,
while every minute you are here is worth a hundred thousand guineas to
my darling," said Miss Pross.

Madame Defarge made at the door. Miss Pross, on the instinct of the
moment, seized her round the waist in both her arms, and held her tight.
It was in vain for Madame Defarge to struggle and to strike; Miss Pross,
with the vigorous tenacity of love, always so much stronger than hate,
clasped her tight, and even lifted her from the floor in the struggle
that they had. The two hands of Madame Defarge buffeted and tore her
face; but, Miss Pross, with her head down, held her round the waist, and
clung to her with more than the hold of a drowning woman.

Soon, Madame Defarge's hands ceased to strike, and felt at her encircled
waist. "It is under my arm," said Miss Pross, in smothered tones, "you
shall not draw it. I am stronger than you, I bless Heaven for it. I hold
you till one or other of us faints or dies!"

Madame Defarge's hands were at her bosom. Miss Pross looked up, saw
what it was, struck at it, struck out a flash and a crash, and stood
alone--blinded with smoke.

All this was in a second. As the smoke cleared, leaving an awful
stillness, it passed out on the air, like the soul of the furious woman
whose body lay lifeless on the ground.

In the first fright and horror of her situation, Miss Pross passed the
body as far from it as she could, and ran down the stairs to call for
fruitless help. Happily, she bethought herself of the consequences of
what she did, in time to check herself and go back. It was dreadful to
go in at the door again; but, she did go in, and even went near it, to
get the bonnet and other things that she must wear. These she put on,
out on the staircase, first shutting and locking the door and taking
away the key. She then sat down on the stairs a few moments to breathe
and to cry, and then got up and hurried away.

By good fortune she had a veil on her bonnet, or she could hardly have
gone along the streets without being stopped. By good fortune, too, she
was naturally so peculiar in appearance as not to show disfigurement
like any other woman. She needed both advantages, for the marks of
gripping fingers were deep in her face, and her hair was torn, and her
dress (hastily composed with unsteady hands) was clutched and dragged a
hundred ways.

In crossing the bridge, she dropped the door key in the river. Arriving
at the cathedral some few minutes before her escort, and waiting there,
she thought, what if the key were already taken in a net, what if
it were identified, what if the door were opened and the remains
discovered, what if she were stopped at the gate, sent to prison, and
charged with murder! In the midst of these fluttering thoughts, the
escort appeared, took her in, and took her away.

"Is there any noise in the streets?" she asked him.

"The usual noises," Mr. Cruncher replied; and looked surprised by the
question and by her aspect.

"I don't hear you," said Miss Pross. "What do you say?"

It was in vain for Mr. Cruncher to repeat what he said; Miss Pross could
not hear him. "So I'll nod my head," thought Mr. Cruncher, amazed, "at
all events she'll see that." And she did.

"Is there any noise in the streets now?" asked Miss Pross again,
presently.

Again Mr. Cruncher nodded his head.

"I don't hear it."

"Gone deaf in an hour?" said Mr. Cruncher, ruminating, with his mind
much disturbed; "wot's come to her?"

"I feel," said Miss Pross, "as if there had been a flash and a crash,
and that crash was the last thing I should ever hear in this life."

"Blest if she ain't in a queer condition!" said Mr. Cruncher, more and
more disturbed. "Wot can she have been a takin', to keep her courage up?
Hark! There's the roll of them dreadful carts! You can hear that, miss?"

"I can hear," said Miss Pross, seeing that he spoke to her, "nothing. O,
my good man, there was first a great crash, and then a great stillness,
and that stillness seems to be fixed and unchangeable, never to be
broken any more as long as my life lasts."

"If she don't hear the roll of those dreadful carts, now very nigh their
journey's end," said Mr. Cruncher, glancing over his shoulder, "it's my
opinion that indeed she never will hear anything else in this world."

And indeed she never did.





XV. The Footsteps Die Out For Ever


Along the Paris streets, the death-carts rumble, hollow and harsh. Six
tumbrils carry the day's wine to La Guillotine. All the devouring and
insatiate Monsters imagined since imagination could record itself,
are fused in the one realisation, Guillotine. And yet there is not in
France, with its rich variety of soil and climate, a blade, a leaf,
a root, a sprig, a peppercorn, which will grow to maturity under
conditions more certain than those that have produced this horror. Crush
humanity out of shape once more, under similar hammers, and it will
twist itself into the same tortured forms. Sow the same seed of
rapacious license and oppression over again, and it will surely yield
the same fruit according to its kind.

Six tumbrils roll along the streets. Change these back again to what
they were, thou powerful enchanter, Time, and they shall be seen to be
the carriages of absolute monarchs, the equipages of feudal nobles, the
toilettes of flaring Jezebels, the churches that are not my father's
house but dens of thieves, the huts of millions of starving peasants!
No; the great magician who majestically works out the appointed order
of the Creator, never reverses his transformations. "If thou be changed
into this shape by the will of God," say the seers to the enchanted, in
the wise Arabian stories, "then remain so! But, if thou wear this
form through mere passing conjuration, then resume thy former aspect!"
Changeless and hopeless, the tumbrils roll along.

As the sombre wheels of the six carts go round, they seem to plough up
a long crooked furrow among the populace in the streets. Ridges of faces
are thrown to this side and to that, and the ploughs go steadily onward.
So used are the regular inhabitants of the houses to the spectacle, that
in many windows there are no people, and in some the occupation of the
hands is not so much as suspended, while the eyes survey the faces in
the tumbrils. Here and there, the inmate has visitors to see the sight;
then he points his finger, with something of the complacency of a
curator or authorised exponent, to this cart and to this, and seems to
tell who sat here yesterday, and who there the day before.

Of the riders in the tumbrils, some observe these things, and all
things on their last roadside, with an impassive stare; others, with
a lingering interest in the ways of life and men. Some, seated with
drooping heads, are sunk in silent despair; again, there are some so
heedful of their looks that they cast upon the multitude such glances as
they have seen in theatres, and in pictures. Several close their eyes,
and think, or try to get their straying thoughts together. Only one, and
he a miserable creature, of a crazed aspect, is so shattered and made
drunk by horror, that he sings, and tries to dance. Not one of the whole
number appeals by look or gesture, to the pity of the people.

There is a guard of sundry horsemen riding abreast of the tumbrils,
and faces are often turned up to some of them, and they are asked some
question. It would seem to be always the same question, for, it is
always followed by a press of people towards the third cart. The
horsemen abreast of that cart, frequently point out one man in it with
their swords. The leading curiosity is, to know which is he; he stands
at the back of the tumbril with his head bent down, to converse with a
mere girl who sits on the side of the cart, and holds his hand. He has
no curiosity or care for the scene about him, and always speaks to the
girl. Here and there in the long street of St. Honore, cries are raised
against him. If they move him at all, it is only to a quiet smile, as he
shakes his hair a little more loosely about his face. He cannot easily
touch his face, his arms being bound.

On the steps of a church, awaiting the coming-up of the tumbrils, stands
the Spy and prison-sheep. He looks into the first of them: not there.
He looks into the second: not there. He already asks himself, "Has he
sacrificed me?" when his face clears, as he looks into the third.

"Which is Evremonde?" says a man behind him.

"That. At the back there."

"With his hand in the girl's?"

"Yes."

The man cries, "Down, Evremonde! To the Guillotine all aristocrats!
Down, Evremonde!"

"Hush, hush!" the Spy entreats him, timidly.

"And why not, citizen?"

"He is going to pay the forfeit: it will be paid in five minutes more.
Let him be at peace."

But the man continuing to exclaim, "Down, Evremonde!" the face of
Evremonde is for a moment turned towards him. Evremonde then sees the
Spy, and looks attentively at him, and goes his way.

The clocks are on the stroke of three, and the furrow ploughed among the
populace is turning round, to come on into the place of execution, and
end. The ridges thrown to this side and to that, now crumble in and
close behind the last plough as it passes on, for all are following
to the Guillotine. In front of it, seated in chairs, as in a garden of
public diversion, are a number of women, busily knitting. On one of the
fore-most chairs, stands The Vengeance, looking about for her friend.

"Therese!" she cries, in her shrill tones. "Who has seen her? Therese
Defarge!"

"She never missed before," says a knitting-woman of the sisterhood.

"No; nor will she miss now," cries The Vengeance, petulantly. "Therese."

"Louder," the woman recommends.

Ay! Louder, Vengeance, much louder, and still she will scarcely hear
thee. Louder yet, Vengeance, with a little oath or so added, and yet
it will hardly bring her. Send other women up and down to seek her,
lingering somewhere; and yet, although the messengers have done dread
deeds, it is questionable whether of their own wills they will go far
enough to find her!

"Bad Fortune!" cries The Vengeance, stamping her foot in the chair, "and
here are the tumbrils! And Evremonde will be despatched in a wink, and
she not here! See her knitting in my hand, and her empty chair ready for
her. I cry with vexation and disappointment!"

As The Vengeance descends from her elevation to do it, the tumbrils
begin to discharge their loads. The ministers of Sainte Guillotine are
robed and ready. Crash!--A head is held up, and the knitting-women who
scarcely lifted their eyes to look at it a moment ago when it could
think and speak, count One.

The second tumbril empties and moves on; the third comes up. Crash!--And
the knitting-women, never faltering or pausing in their Work, count Two.

The supposed Evremonde descends, and the seamstress is lifted out next
after him. He has not relinquished her patient hand in getting out, but
still holds it as he promised. He gently places her with her back to the
crashing engine that constantly whirrs up and falls, and she looks into
his face and thanks him.

"But for you, dear stranger, I should not be so composed, for I am
naturally a poor little thing, faint of heart; nor should I have been
able to raise my thoughts to Him who was put to death, that we might
have hope and comfort here to-day. I think you were sent to me by
Heaven."

"Or you to me," says Sydney Carton. "Keep your eyes upon me, dear child,
and mind no other object."

"I mind nothing while I hold your hand. I shall mind nothing when I let
it go, if they are rapid."

"They will be rapid. Fear not!"

The two stand in the fast-thinning throng of victims, but they speak as
if they were alone. Eye to eye, voice to voice, hand to hand, heart to
heart, these two children of the Universal Mother, else so wide apart
and differing, have come together on the dark highway, to repair home
together, and to rest in her bosom.

"Brave and generous friend, will you let me ask you one last question? I
am very ignorant, and it troubles me--just a little."

"Tell me what it is."

"I have a cousin, an only relative and an orphan, like myself, whom I
love very dearly. She is five years younger than I, and she lives in a
farmer's house in the south country. Poverty parted us, and she knows
nothing of my fate--for I cannot write--and if I could, how should I
tell her! It is better as it is."

"Yes, yes: better as it is."

"What I have been thinking as we came along, and what I am still
thinking now, as I look into your kind strong face which gives me so
much support, is this:--If the Republic really does good to the poor,
and they come to be less hungry, and in all ways to suffer less, she may
live a long time: she may even live to be old."

"What then, my gentle sister?"

"Do you think:" the uncomplaining eyes in which there is so much
endurance, fill with tears, and the lips part a little more and tremble:
"that it will seem long to me, while I wait for her in the better land
where I trust both you and I will be mercifully sheltered?"

"It cannot be, my child; there is no Time there, and no trouble there."

"You comfort me so much! I am so ignorant. Am I to kiss you now? Is the
moment come?"

"Yes."

She kisses his lips; he kisses hers; they solemnly bless each other.
The spare hand does not tremble as he releases it; nothing worse than
a sweet, bright constancy is in the patient face. She goes next before
him--is gone; the knitting-women count Twenty-Two.

"I am the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord: he that believeth
in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and
believeth in me shall never die."

The murmuring of many voices, the upturning of many faces, the pressing
on of many footsteps in the outskirts of the crowd, so that it swells
forward in a mass, like one great heave of water, all flashes away.
Twenty-Three.

        *****

They said of him, about the city that night, that it was the
peacefullest man's face ever beheld there. Many added that he looked
sublime and prophetic.

One of the most remarkable sufferers by the same axe--a woman--had asked
at the foot of the same scaffold, not long before, to be allowed to
write down the thoughts that were inspiring her. If he had given any
utterance to his, and they were prophetic, they would have been these:

"I see Barsad, and Cly, Defarge, The Vengeance, the Juryman, the Judge,
long ranks of the new oppressors who have risen on the destruction of
the old, perishing by this retributive instrument, before it shall cease
out of its present use. I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people
rising from this abyss, and, in their struggles to be truly free, in
their triumphs and defeats, through long years to come, I see the evil
of this time and of the previous time of which this is the natural
birth, gradually making expiation for itself and wearing out.

"I see the lives for which I lay down my life, peaceful, useful,
prosperous and happy, in that England which I shall see no more. I see
Her with a child upon her bosom, who bears my name. I see her father,
aged and bent, but otherwise restored, and faithful to all men in his
healing office, and at peace. I see the good old man, so long their
friend, in ten years' time enriching them with all he has, and passing
tranquilly to his reward.

"I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in the hearts of
their descendants, generations hence. I see her, an old woman, weeping
for me on the anniversary of this day. I see her and her husband, their
course done, lying side by side in their last earthly bed, and I know
that each was not more honoured and held sacred in the other's soul,
than I was in the souls of both.

"I see that child who lay upon her bosom and who bore my name, a man
winning his way up in that path of life which once was mine. I see him
winning it so well, that my name is made illustrious there by the
light of his. I see the blots I threw upon it, faded away. I see him,
fore-most of just judges and honoured men, bringing a boy of my name,
with a forehead that I know and golden hair, to this place--then fair to
look upon, with not a trace of this day's disfigurement--and I hear him
tell the child my story, with a tender and a faltering voice.

"It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a
far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known."

 A Hand at Cards Miss Pross and Jerry Cruncher continue shopping, unaware that Darnay has been arrested again. They coincidentally enter the Defarges' shop looking to purchase wine. Miss Pross sees a man in the shop and screams, because she recognizes him as her brother, Solomon Pross, who is now an officer of the French Republic. Jerry Cruncher is equally shocked because he recognizes the man as John Barsad, the English spy. He is trying to think of this name aloud, when Sydney Carton passes by and supplies the name for him. Carton asks to speak to Barsad alone and reveals that he is a turnkey in the Conciergerie. This is where Carton recognized his face. He followed him back to the wine-shop and now asks him to accompany him to Tellson's Bank for a talk. There he meets Mr. Lorry, who also recognizes him as having been a witness at Darnay's trial. Carton tries to use what he knows about Barsad to help free Darnay. He threatens to denounce Barsad, adding that he recognizes the man with whom Barsad was talking as Roger Cly. Barsad tries to claim that Cly is dead and had a funeral back in London, but Jerry Cruncher interjects, saying that he looked in that coffin, and there was no body in it. Despite the fact that he grows defensive when asked why he knows this, Cruncher sticks by his assertion, and Barsad gives up and agrees to help Carton. Carton asks to have a final word alone with Barsad. Chapter 9: The Game Made Mr. Lorry asks Mr. Cruncher how he knows that Roger Cly was not in his grave. Cruncher hints at his profession and defends himself, saying that he has to make a profit somehow. Barsad leaves and Carton explains that all he could get out of him was a promise to see him before he died. He surprises Mr. Lorry with his warmth and sympathy by asking him not to worry. Mr. Lorry's duties are done in Paris, and he has permission to leave the city. Carton wistfully asks Mr. Lorry if he felt his life was wasted, which it clearly was not, and envies the fact that the seventy-eight-year-old would have someone to mourn him if he died. Carton leaves the house and goes to look at La Force Prison. The wood-sawyer speaks to him, recommending that he see people being guillotined if he has never seen it before. Carton resists the desire to hit him, and instead finds his way to a chemist's shop where he orders some drugs. He recalls a prayer that he learned when he was younger, and he stops to help a child across the muddy street. All night he walks the streets, and without having slept he attends the trial in the morning. When Darnay is brought in, Lucie gives him a loving look which warms both her husband's and Carton's hearts. The jury, which includes Jacques Three, is bloodthirsty. The tribunal names the three who denounced him and they include Monsieur and Madame Defarge and, surprisingly, Doctor Manette. He protests that this is impossible, but Monsieur Defarge produces the document from Doctor Manette's cell in the Bastille. Chapter 10: The Substance of the Shadow Dr. Manette's document, written in his cell in the Bastille and hidden in its chimney in 1767, explains why he was imprisoned. When he was a young and successful doctor, he was accosted in the street by what he perceived to be a pair of twins. They asked him to enter the carriage and showed him that they were armed. They refused to give him details about the patient. In the narrative of the document, Manette enters the carriage and they drive him to a solitary house, where he hears the cries of a woman. She is a beautiful young woman, whose surname Dr. Manette never learns, tied up on a bed, and she is raving with brain fever. She repeats the phrase "my husband, my father, and my brother!" and counts to twelve obsessively. The other patient in the house is a young peasant, her brother, who is dying of a knife wound. He explains that the noblemen had tried to exercise their feudal "right" to have sex with their serfs, but his sister was a virtuous girl and would not let them. The lord then tied her husband to a cart like a horse and drove him to death. He died in his wife's arms, sobbing once every stroke of the clock at noon, explaining her fixation on the number twelve. He then took the girl to rape her. The boy took his other sister to a safe place and then attacked the noblemen, who gave him the fatal stab wound. As he dies, the boy curses the nobleman and his family. The doctor is disturbed by this story and even more worried when he sees that the girl has recently become pregnant. The noblemen ask him to keep everything he has seen and heard a secret, but they grow alarmed when he refuses to accept their payment for his medical services. The girl dies, and the noblemen seem unconcerned. The doctor is returned to his lodgings. Knowing full well that any letter he writes will be ineffective because of noble influence on the court, he finishes a letter to the Minister, and the wife of the Marquis St. EvrAmonde calls on him, clarifying the mystery of the nobleman's last name. She is the wife of the man who raped the peasant and wants to do penance by finding her living sister and doing well by her, but she doesn't know where to find her. Neither does Dr. Manette, so the Marquess leaves with her son, Charles Darnay, musing that he will eventually have to pay for the sins of the family if she cannot expiate them herself. The same night, a man demands to see Dr. Manette, captures him, and the two brothers burn the protesting letter that he had written in front of his face. He is thrown in the Bastille on their authority, and Dr. Manette denounces them and their family members. The crowd and jury's reaction to this testimony is immediate. Charles Darnay is sentenced to death within twenty-four hours. Chapter 11: Dusk Lucie embraces her husband for what she thinks is the last time after he is condemned. Dr. Manette tries to kneel to both of them to apologize, but he is stopped by Darnay, who apologizes again for what his family did to the Doctor. Darnay is taken away and Lucie faints. Carton carries her to the carriage and orders that she not be revived so that she may suffer minimally. He kisses her before he leaves, whispering the words, "A life you love." Doctor Manette goes out to try to use his influence to save Darnay again, but everyone doubts he will be successful. Carton agrees with the rest that there is no hope. Chapter 12: Darkness Carton walks to the Defarges' wine-shop and asks for a drink in a poor accent. This accent is faked, because Carton was a student in France and can speak like a Frenchman, but it allows him to eavesdrop on the Defarges. They are discussing the Darnay case, and Madame Defarge says that the Revolution should stop at nothing but extermination, while her husband seems more moderate. Carton also learns that Madame Defarge was the sister whisked away to safety away from the EvrAmonde brothers by the brother who Dr. Manette saw die of a stab wound, so she has a strong personal vendetta against Darnay. Carton rejoins Mr. Lorry and Dr. Manette, who is showing signs of his old affliction and is asking for his shoemaking tools. Carton asks Mr. Lorry to blindly follow his directions, which Mr. Lorry agrees to do. Carton finds a certificate allowing him to leave the city in Doctor Manette's jacket and exclaims "Thank God!" He gives it to Mr. Lorry, and explains to him Madame Defarge's intention to denounce the whole family using the testimony of the wood-sawyer, who will swear they were signaling to the prisoners. He urges Mr. Lorry to ready Lucie and her daughter to leave the city the next day at two p.m. and to leave as soon as Carton appears to get in the carriage. Carton leaves but lingers in the courtyard, saying a goodbye to Lucie's window. Chapter 13: Fifty-Two Fifty men and women of all ages and walks of life wait to die at the Conciergerie, and Charles Darnay tries to resign himself to death. He writes a letter to Lucie apologizing for keeping his French identity secret from her and explaining that he did not know of his family's connection to Doctor Manette's imprisonment until the document was read out. He also writes letters to Doctor Manette and Mr. Lorry, but not to Carton. Let into the prison by John Barsad, Carton visits Darnay an hour before his execution. He convinces Darnay to swap clothes with him and drugs him to put him to sleep. John Barsad enters the cell to drag Darnay to safety, and Carton remains in the cell to die in his place. A gaoler takes him to a waiting room, where various other prisoners mistake him for Darnay and greet him. A young woman accused of plotting recognizes that it is not Darnay but keeps his secret and asks to hold his "brave hand" on the way to the guillotine. A coach holding Doctor Manette, Lucie, little Lucie, Mr. Lorry and an unconscious Charles Darnay disguised as Sydney Carton pass safely out of Paris. They are stopped and fear that they are caught, but it is merely a man inquiring the number guillotined that day. When they respond that it was fifty-two, he responds positively, saying that he loves the guillotine. Chapter 14: The Knitting Done The Vengeance, Madame Defarge, and Jacques Three hold a secret meeting in the wood-sawyer's shed. Defarge criticizes her husband for having pity on the Doctor, whereas she wishes to guillotine the whole family including the child. She wishes to have the wood-sawyer denounce the family by saying that all of them have stood outside the La Force prison and signaled without her husband's knowledge so that he could not undermine their plans. Madame Defarge sets out to visit Lucie, whose husband she assumes has recently been guillotined; Lucie will undoubtedly be in a state of mind to condemn the Republic, providing Madame Defarge with further evidence. She arrives at the Manettes' apartment armed with a pistol and a dagger. Mr. Cruncher and Miss Pross are still occupying the apartment and have intended to leave that afternoon. They are both greatly excited and distressed by the day's events, and Mr. Cruncher vows to allow his wife to play and not to work as a resurrection-man again. Mr. Cruncher leaves to ready the horses, so only Miss Pross remains to confront Madame Defarge. They argue and engage in a scuffle in which Miss Pross accidentally kills Madame Defarge with her own gun and is permanently deafened by the noise it makes. She runs out of the apartment and escapes Paris with Jerry Cruncher. Chapter 15: The Footsteps Die Out Forever The tumbrils continue to rumble along the streets of Paris, and because time never reverses itself, the changes wrought by the Revolution cannot be undone. Carton rides in one of the tumbrils, ignoring everyone but the girl whose hand he holds. The Vengeance looks for Madame Defarge at the guillotine in vain. Carton holds the girl's hand to the end, and she thanks him for his support. Carton goes to the guillotine with a peaceful, philosophical face. If he could have spoken prophetically he would have foreseen the future of the people whom he knows. He would have seen Barsad, Cly, Defarge, the Vengeance, the Jury, and the Judge all dying on the guillotine which they helped raise. He would see a peaceful life for Lucie and Charles Darnay back in England, with each generation of her family, including a son named after him, blessing his name and visiting his grave. He dies with the conclusion that "It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known." Chapter 8 is the first in which the threads of the story are drawn together towards a possible conclusion. The fashion in nineteenth-century novels was to introduce a large number of characters in different walks of life and, in the case of A Tale of Two Cities, in different countries, then to introduce a crisis, and finally to interconnect all of the characters to create a solution. One of the reasons that this novel is considered a masterpiece is that no chapter, no detail is wasted. Even a character like Solomon Pross, who was introduced long ago as a comical alternative to Darnay as a groom for Lucie, now becomes crucial to the resolution of the novel. Chapter 8 also reinforces the importance of the individuality of faces. Carton repeats again and again, with great satisfaction, that Barsad has a quite remarkable face, a fact which allowed him to recognize him at the Conciergerie. This individuality is only broken down by the extraordinary resemblance of Carton to Darnay, but the uniqueness of this resemblance is what renders believable the idea that they are interchangeable. Other than this pair, and the small exception of the family expressions shared by Lucie and her father, the faces in the novel are exceptional. This runs counter to the ideal of equality of the French revolution, and Dickens seems to undermine the conformity of dressing the same to dance the Carmagnole by making Barsad's features recognizable even though he wears revolutionary garb. Chapter 10 also touches on the nerves that caused the French Revolution more thoroughly than any other part of the novel. Cruelty to the peasant class was illustrated by Monseigneur's behavior in previous chapters, but nowhere is the brute anger that caused the revolution literalized more than in the rape of a peasant girl by a cruel aristocrat who thought that it was his right. Every interaction of one of the St. Evremonde brothers with the peasant siblings embodies their belief in the nonhuman nature of the lower classes. For instance, they call the boy a "crazed young common dog" for having the presumption to attack a nobleman with a sword. The Evremondes consider it shameful to their family to have fought with a commoner. As the girl lies dying, her rapist comments on the "strength there is in these common bodies," with a detachment like he would display watching a strong animal die. Chapter 11 also makes heavy use of foreshadowing the resolution of the novel. After Darnay leaves the scene, Carton immediately becomes the forceful protagonist, carrying Lucie to her carriage and setting her up in her home. Little Lucie, with the insight of a child, says that she is sure that Carton can do something to help her mother. Carton is the last to lament that nothing can be done for Darnay, suggesting that he thinks quite the opposite. Chapter 14 is dominated by the fall of Madame Defarge, the tragic villain. Dickens's attitude toward Madame Defarge continues to exemplify his stance on the French Revolution. Her rage is justified, but it has always exceeded its proper bounds. Dickens describes Madame Defarge as she crosses the streets towards the Manettes' house as a tigress circling in on her prey. Moreover, "If she ever had virtue in her, it had quite gone out of her." Here Dickens echoes the biblical verse in which a crowd all move to touch Jesus and he says, "Somebody hath touched me for I perceive that virtue is gone out of me." Madame Defarge's virtue of mercy and the ability to pity others have been forever stunted by the cold hand of experience, the injustices that she suffered under aristocratic French rule.

