Chapter: I. In Secret


The traveller fared slowly on his way, who fared towards Paris from
England in the autumn of the year one thousand seven hundred and
ninety-two. More than enough of bad roads, bad equipages, and bad
horses, he would have encountered to delay him, though the fallen and
unfortunate King of France had been upon his throne in all his glory;
but, the changed times were fraught with other obstacles than
these. Every town-gate and village taxing-house had its band of
citizen-patriots, with their national muskets in a most explosive state
of readiness, who stopped all comers and goers, cross-questioned them,
inspected their papers, looked for their names in lists of their own,
turned them back, or sent them on, or stopped them and laid them in
hold, as their capricious judgment or fancy deemed best for the dawning
Republic One and Indivisible, of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or
Death.

A very few French leagues of his journey were accomplished, when Charles
Darnay began to perceive that for him along these country roads there
was no hope of return until he should have been declared a good citizen
at Paris. Whatever might befall now, he must on to his journey's end.
Not a mean village closed upon him, not a common barrier dropped across
the road behind him, but he knew it to be another iron door in
the series that was barred between him and England. The universal
watchfulness so encompassed him, that if he had been taken in a net,
or were being forwarded to his destination in a cage, he could not have
felt his freedom more completely gone.

This universal watchfulness not only stopped him on the highway twenty
times in a stage, but retarded his progress twenty times in a day, by
riding after him and taking him back, riding before him and stopping him
by anticipation, riding with him and keeping him in charge. He had been
days upon his journey in France alone, when he went to bed tired out, in
a little town on the high road, still a long way from Paris.

Nothing but the production of the afflicted Gabelle's letter from his
prison of the Abbaye would have got him on so far. His difficulty at the
guard-house in this small place had been such, that he felt his journey
to have come to a crisis. And he was, therefore, as little surprised as
a man could be, to find himself awakened at the small inn to which he
had been remitted until morning, in the middle of the night.

Awakened by a timid local functionary and three armed patriots in rough
red caps and with pipes in their mouths, who sat down on the bed.

"Emigrant," said the functionary, "I am going to send you on to Paris,
under an escort."

"Citizen, I desire nothing more than to get to Paris, though I could
dispense with the escort."

"Silence!" growled a red-cap, striking at the coverlet with the butt-end
of his musket. "Peace, aristocrat!"

"It is as the good patriot says," observed the timid functionary. "You
are an aristocrat, and must have an escort--and must pay for it."

"I have no choice," said Charles Darnay.

"Choice! Listen to him!" cried the same scowling red-cap. "As if it was
not a favour to be protected from the lamp-iron!"

"It is always as the good patriot says," observed the functionary. "Rise
and dress yourself, emigrant."

Darnay complied, and was taken back to the guard-house, where other
patriots in rough red caps were smoking, drinking, and sleeping, by
a watch-fire. Here he paid a heavy price for his escort, and hence he
started with it on the wet, wet roads at three o'clock in the morning.

The escort were two mounted patriots in red caps and tri-coloured
cockades, armed with national muskets and sabres, who rode one on either
side of him.

The escorted governed his own horse, but a loose line was attached to
his bridle, the end of which one of the patriots kept girded round his
wrist. In this state they set forth with the sharp rain driving in their
faces: clattering at a heavy dragoon trot over the uneven town pavement,
and out upon the mire-deep roads. In this state they traversed without
change, except of horses and pace, all the mire-deep leagues that lay
between them and the capital.

They travelled in the night, halting an hour or two after daybreak, and
lying by until the twilight fell. The escort were so wretchedly clothed,
that they twisted straw round their bare legs, and thatched their ragged
shoulders to keep the wet off. Apart from the personal discomfort of
being so attended, and apart from such considerations of present danger
as arose from one of the patriots being chronically drunk, and carrying
his musket very recklessly, Charles Darnay did not allow the restraint
that was laid upon him to awaken any serious fears in his breast; for,
he reasoned with himself that it could have no reference to the merits
of an individual case that was not yet stated, and of representations,
confirmable by the prisoner in the Abbaye, that were not yet made.

But when they came to the town of Beauvais--which they did at eventide,
when the streets were filled with people--he could not conceal from
himself that the aspect of affairs was very alarming. An ominous crowd
gathered to see him dismount of the posting-yard, and many voices called
out loudly, "Down with the emigrant!"

He stopped in the act of swinging himself out of his saddle, and,
resuming it as his safest place, said:

"Emigrant, my friends! Do you not see me here, in France, of my own
will?"

"You are a cursed emigrant," cried a farrier, making at him in a
furious manner through the press, hammer in hand; "and you are a cursed
aristocrat!"

The postmaster interposed himself between this man and the rider's
bridle (at which he was evidently making), and soothingly said, "Let him
be; let him be! He will be judged at Paris."

"Judged!" repeated the farrier, swinging his hammer. "Ay! and condemned
as a traitor." At this the crowd roared approval.

Checking the postmaster, who was for turning his horse's head to the
yard (the drunken patriot sat composedly in his saddle looking on, with
the line round his wrist), Darnay said, as soon as he could make his
voice heard:

"Friends, you deceive yourselves, or you are deceived. I am not a
traitor."

"He lies!" cried the smith. "He is a traitor since the decree. His life
is forfeit to the people. His cursed life is not his own!"

At the instant when Darnay saw a rush in the eyes of the crowd, which
another instant would have brought upon him, the postmaster turned his
horse into the yard, the escort rode in close upon his horse's flanks,
and the postmaster shut and barred the crazy double gates. The farrier
struck a blow upon them with his hammer, and the crowd groaned; but, no
more was done.

"What is this decree that the smith spoke of?" Darnay asked the
postmaster, when he had thanked him, and stood beside him in the yard.

"Truly, a decree for selling the property of emigrants."

"When passed?"

"On the fourteenth."

"The day I left England!"

"Everybody says it is but one of several, and that there will be
others--if there are not already--banishing all emigrants, and
condemning all to death who return. That is what he meant when he said
your life was not your own."

"But there are no such decrees yet?"

"What do I know!" said the postmaster, shrugging his shoulders; "there
may be, or there will be. It is all the same. What would you have?"

They rested on some straw in a loft until the middle of the night, and
then rode forward again when all the town was asleep. Among the many
wild changes observable on familiar things which made this wild ride
unreal, not the least was the seeming rarity of sleep. After long and
lonely spurring over dreary roads, they would come to a cluster of poor
cottages, not steeped in darkness, but all glittering with lights, and
would find the people, in a ghostly manner in the dead of the night,
circling hand in hand round a shrivelled tree of Liberty, or all drawn
up together singing a Liberty song. Happily, however, there was sleep in
Beauvais that night to help them out of it and they passed on once more
into solitude and loneliness: jingling through the untimely cold and
wet, among impoverished fields that had yielded no fruits of the earth
that year, diversified by the blackened remains of burnt houses, and by
the sudden emergence from ambuscade, and sharp reining up across their
way, of patriot patrols on the watch on all the roads.

Daylight at last found them before the wall of Paris. The barrier was
closed and strongly guarded when they rode up to it.

"Where are the papers of this prisoner?" demanded a resolute-looking man
in authority, who was summoned out by the guard.

Naturally struck by the disagreeable word, Charles Darnay requested the
speaker to take notice that he was a free traveller and French citizen,
in charge of an escort which the disturbed state of the country had
imposed upon him, and which he had paid for.

"Where," repeated the same personage, without taking any heed of him
whatever, "are the papers of this prisoner?"

The drunken patriot had them in his cap, and produced them. Casting his
eyes over Gabelle's letter, the same personage in authority showed some
disorder and surprise, and looked at Darnay with a close attention.

He left escort and escorted without saying a word, however, and went
into the guard-room; meanwhile, they sat upon their horses outside the
gate. Looking about him while in this state of suspense, Charles
Darnay observed that the gate was held by a mixed guard of soldiers and
patriots, the latter far outnumbering the former; and that while ingress
into the city for peasants' carts bringing in supplies, and for similar
traffic and traffickers, was easy enough, egress, even for the homeliest
people, was very difficult. A numerous medley of men and women, not
to mention beasts and vehicles of various sorts, was waiting to issue
forth; but, the previous identification was so strict, that they
filtered through the barrier very slowly. Some of these people knew
their turn for examination to be so far off, that they lay down on the
ground to sleep or smoke, while others talked together, or loitered
about. The red cap and tri-colour cockade were universal, both among men
and women.

When he had sat in his saddle some half-hour, taking note of these
things, Darnay found himself confronted by the same man in authority,
who directed the guard to open the barrier. Then he delivered to the
escort, drunk and sober, a receipt for the escorted, and requested him
to dismount. He did so, and the two patriots, leading his tired horse,
turned and rode away without entering the city.

He accompanied his conductor into a guard-room, smelling of common wine
and tobacco, where certain soldiers and patriots, asleep and awake,
drunk and sober, and in various neutral states between sleeping and
waking, drunkenness and sobriety, were standing and lying about. The
light in the guard-house, half derived from the waning oil-lamps of
the night, and half from the overcast day, was in a correspondingly
uncertain condition. Some registers were lying open on a desk, and an
officer of a coarse, dark aspect, presided over these.

"Citizen Defarge," said he to Darnay's conductor, as he took a slip of
paper to write on. "Is this the emigrant Evremonde?"

"This is the man."

"Your age, Evremonde?"

"Thirty-seven."

"Married, Evremonde?"

"Yes."

"Where married?"

"In England."

"Without doubt. Where is your wife, Evremonde?"

"In England."

"Without doubt. You are consigned, Evremonde, to the prison of La
Force."

"Just Heaven!" exclaimed Darnay. "Under what law, and for what offence?"

The officer looked up from his slip of paper for a moment.

"We have new laws, Evremonde, and new offences, since you were here." He
said it with a hard smile, and went on writing.

"I entreat you to observe that I have come here voluntarily, in response
to that written appeal of a fellow-countryman which lies before you. I
demand no more than the opportunity to do so without delay. Is not that
my right?"

"Emigrants have no rights, Evremonde," was the stolid reply. The officer
wrote until he had finished, read over to himself what he had written,
sanded it, and handed it to Defarge, with the words "In secret."

Defarge motioned with the paper to the prisoner that he must accompany
him. The prisoner obeyed, and a guard of two armed patriots attended
them.

"Is it you," said Defarge, in a low voice, as they went down the
guardhouse steps and turned into Paris, "who married the daughter of
Doctor Manette, once a prisoner in the Bastille that is no more?"

"Yes," replied Darnay, looking at him with surprise.

"My name is Defarge, and I keep a wine-shop in the Quarter Saint
Antoine. Possibly you have heard of me."

"My wife came to your house to reclaim her father? Yes!"

The word "wife" seemed to serve as a gloomy reminder to Defarge, to say
with sudden impatience, "In the name of that sharp female newly-born,
and called La Guillotine, why did you come to France?"

"You heard me say why, a minute ago. Do you not believe it is the
truth?"

"A bad truth for you," said Defarge, speaking with knitted brows, and
looking straight before him.

"Indeed I am lost here. All here is so unprecedented, so changed, so
sudden and unfair, that I am absolutely lost. Will you render me a
little help?"

"None." Defarge spoke, always looking straight before him.

"Will you answer me a single question?"

"Perhaps. According to its nature. You can say what it is."

"In this prison that I am going to so unjustly, shall I have some free
communication with the world outside?"

"You will see."

"I am not to be buried there, prejudged, and without any means of
presenting my case?"

"You will see. But, what then? Other people have been similarly buried
in worse prisons, before now."

"But never by me, Citizen Defarge."

Defarge glanced darkly at him for answer, and walked on in a steady
and set silence. The deeper he sank into this silence, the fainter hope
there was--or so Darnay thought--of his softening in any slight degree.
He, therefore, made haste to say:

"It is of the utmost importance to me (you know, Citizen, even better
than I, of how much importance), that I should be able to communicate to
Mr. Lorry of Tellson's Bank, an English gentleman who is now in Paris,
the simple fact, without comment, that I have been thrown into the
prison of La Force. Will you cause that to be done for me?"

"I will do," Defarge doggedly rejoined, "nothing for you. My duty is to
my country and the People. I am the sworn servant of both, against you.
I will do nothing for you."

Charles Darnay felt it hopeless to entreat him further, and his pride
was touched besides. As they walked on in silence, he could not but see
how used the people were to the spectacle of prisoners passing along the
streets. The very children scarcely noticed him. A few passers turned
their heads, and a few shook their fingers at him as an aristocrat;
otherwise, that a man in good clothes should be going to prison, was no
more remarkable than that a labourer in working clothes should be
going to work. In one narrow, dark, and dirty street through which they
passed, an excited orator, mounted on a stool, was addressing an excited
audience on the crimes against the people, of the king and the royal
family. The few words that he caught from this man's lips, first made
it known to Charles Darnay that the king was in prison, and that the
foreign ambassadors had one and all left Paris. On the road (except at
Beauvais) he had heard absolutely nothing. The escort and the universal
watchfulness had completely isolated him.

That he had fallen among far greater dangers than those which had
developed themselves when he left England, he of course knew now. That
perils had thickened about him fast, and might thicken faster and faster
yet, he of course knew now. He could not but admit to himself that he
might not have made this journey, if he could have foreseen the events
of a few days. And yet his misgivings were not so dark as, imagined by
the light of this later time, they would appear. Troubled as the future
was, it was the unknown future, and in its obscurity there was ignorant
hope. The horrible massacre, days and nights long, which, within a few
rounds of the clock, was to set a great mark of blood upon the blessed
garnering time of harvest, was as far out of his knowledge as if it had
been a hundred thousand years away. The "sharp female newly-born, and
called La Guillotine," was hardly known to him, or to the generality
of people, by name. The frightful deeds that were to be soon done, were
probably unimagined at that time in the brains of the doers. How could
they have a place in the shadowy conceptions of a gentle mind?

Of unjust treatment in detention and hardship, and in cruel separation
from his wife and child, he foreshadowed the likelihood, or the
certainty; but, beyond this, he dreaded nothing distinctly. With this on
his mind, which was enough to carry into a dreary prison courtyard, he
arrived at the prison of La Force.

A man with a bloated face opened the strong wicket, to whom Defarge
presented "The Emigrant Evremonde."

"What the Devil! How many more of them!" exclaimed the man with the
bloated face.

Defarge took his receipt without noticing the exclamation, and withdrew,
with his two fellow-patriots.

"What the Devil, I say again!" exclaimed the gaoler, left with his wife.
"How many more!"

The gaoler's wife, being provided with no answer to the question, merely
replied, "One must have patience, my dear!" Three turnkeys who entered
responsive to a bell she rang, echoed the sentiment, and one added, "For
the love of Liberty;" which sounded in that place like an inappropriate
conclusion.

The prison of La Force was a gloomy prison, dark and filthy, and with a
horrible smell of foul sleep in it. Extraordinary how soon the noisome
flavour of imprisoned sleep, becomes manifest in all such places that
are ill cared for!

"In secret, too," grumbled the gaoler, looking at the written paper. "As
if I was not already full to bursting!"

He stuck the paper on a file, in an ill-humour, and Charles Darnay
awaited his further pleasure for half an hour: sometimes, pacing to and
fro in the strong arched room: sometimes, resting on a stone seat: in
either case detained to be imprinted on the memory of the chief and his
subordinates.

"Come!" said the chief, at length taking up his keys, "come with me,
emigrant."

Through the dismal prison twilight, his new charge accompanied him by
corridor and staircase, many doors clanging and locking behind them,
until they came into a large, low, vaulted chamber, crowded with
prisoners of both sexes. The women were seated at a long table, reading
and writing, knitting, sewing, and embroidering; the men were for the
most part standing behind their chairs, or lingering up and down the
room.

In the instinctive association of prisoners with shameful crime and
disgrace, the new-comer recoiled from this company. But the crowning
unreality of his long unreal ride, was, their all at once rising to
receive him, with every refinement of manner known to the time, and with
all the engaging graces and courtesies of life.

So strangely clouded were these refinements by the prison manners and
gloom, so spectral did they become in the inappropriate squalor and
misery through which they were seen, that Charles Darnay seemed to stand
in a company of the dead. Ghosts all! The ghost of beauty, the ghost
of stateliness, the ghost of elegance, the ghost of pride, the ghost of
frivolity, the ghost of wit, the ghost of youth, the ghost of age, all
waiting their dismissal from the desolate shore, all turning on him eyes
that were changed by the death they had died in coming there.

It struck him motionless. The gaoler standing at his side, and the other
gaolers moving about, who would have been well enough as to appearance
in the ordinary exercise of their functions, looked so extravagantly
coarse contrasted with sorrowing mothers and blooming daughters who were
there--with the apparitions of the coquette, the young beauty, and the
mature woman delicately bred--that the inversion of all experience and
likelihood which the scene of shadows presented, was heightened to its
utmost. Surely, ghosts all. Surely, the long unreal ride some progress
of disease that had brought him to these gloomy shades!

"In the name of the assembled companions in misfortune," said a
gentleman of courtly appearance and address, coming forward, "I have the
honour of giving you welcome to La Force, and of condoling with you
on the calamity that has brought you among us. May it soon terminate
happily! It would be an impertinence elsewhere, but it is not so here,
to ask your name and condition?"

Charles Darnay roused himself, and gave the required information, in
words as suitable as he could find.

"But I hope," said the gentleman, following the chief gaoler with his
eyes, who moved across the room, "that you are not in secret?"

"I do not understand the meaning of the term, but I have heard them say
so."

"Ah, what a pity! We so much regret it! But take courage; several
members of our society have been in secret, at first, and it has lasted
but a short time." Then he added, raising his voice, "I grieve to inform
the society--in secret."

There was a murmur of commiseration as Charles Darnay crossed the room
to a grated door where the gaoler awaited him, and many voices--among
which, the soft and compassionate voices of women were conspicuous--gave
him good wishes and encouragement. He turned at the grated door, to
render the thanks of his heart; it closed under the gaoler's hand; and
the apparitions vanished from his sight forever.

The wicket opened on a stone staircase, leading upward. When they had
ascended forty steps (the prisoner of half an hour already counted
them), the gaoler opened a low black door, and they passed into a
solitary cell. It struck cold and damp, but was not dark.

"Yours," said the gaoler.

"Why am I confined alone?"

"How do I know!"

"I can buy pen, ink, and paper?"

"Such are not my orders. You will be visited, and can ask then. At
present, you may buy your food, and nothing more."

There were in the cell, a chair, a table, and a straw mattress. As
the gaoler made a general inspection of these objects, and of the four
walls, before going out, a wandering fancy wandered through the mind of
the prisoner leaning against the wall opposite to him, that this gaoler
was so unwholesomely bloated, both in face and person, as to look like
a man who had been drowned and filled with water. When the gaoler was
gone, he thought in the same wandering way, "Now am I left, as if I were
dead." Stopping then, to look down at the mattress, he turned from it
with a sick feeling, and thought, "And here in these crawling creatures
is the first condition of the body after death."

"Five paces by four and a half, five paces by four and a half, five
paces by four and a half." The prisoner walked to and fro in his cell,
counting its measurement, and the roar of the city arose like muffled
drums with a wild swell of voices added to them. "He made shoes, he made
shoes, he made shoes." The prisoner counted the measurement again, and
paced faster, to draw his mind with him from that latter repetition.
"The ghosts that vanished when the wicket closed. There was one among
them, the appearance of a lady dressed in black, who was leaning in the
embrasure of a window, and she had a light shining upon her golden
hair, and she looked like * * * * Let us ride on again, for God's sake,
through the illuminated villages with the people all awake! * * * * He
made shoes, he made shoes, he made shoes. * * * * Five paces by four and
a half." With such scraps tossing and rolling upward from the depths of
his mind, the prisoner walked faster and faster, obstinately counting
and counting; and the roar of the city changed to this extent--that it
still rolled in like muffled drums, but with the wail of voices that he
knew, in the swell that rose above them.





II. The Grindstone

Tellson's Bank, established in the Saint Germain Quarter of Paris, was
in a wing of a large house, approached by a courtyard and shut off from
the street by a high wall and a strong gate. The house belonged to
a great nobleman who had lived in it until he made a flight from the
troubles, in his own cook's dress, and got across the borders. A
mere beast of the chase flying from hunters, he was still in his
metempsychosis no other than the same Monseigneur, the preparation
of whose chocolate for whose lips had once occupied three strong men
besides the cook in question.

Monseigneur gone, and the three strong men absolving themselves from the
sin of having drawn his high wages, by being more than ready and
willing to cut his throat on the altar of the dawning Republic one and
indivisible of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death, Monseigneur's
house had been first sequestrated, and then confiscated. For, all
things moved so fast, and decree followed decree with that fierce
precipitation, that now upon the third night of the autumn month
of September, patriot emissaries of the law were in possession of
Monseigneur's house, and had marked it with the tri-colour, and were
drinking brandy in its state apartments.

A place of business in London like Tellson's place of business in Paris,
would soon have driven the House out of its mind and into the Gazette.
For, what would staid British responsibility and respectability have
said to orange-trees in boxes in a Bank courtyard, and even to a Cupid
over the counter? Yet such things were. Tellson's had whitewashed the
Cupid, but he was still to be seen on the ceiling, in the coolest
linen, aiming (as he very often does) at money from morning to
night. Bankruptcy must inevitably have come of this young Pagan, in
Lombard-street, London, and also of a curtained alcove in the rear of
the immortal boy, and also of a looking-glass let into the wall, and
also of clerks not at all old, who danced in public on the slightest
provocation. Yet, a French Tellson's could get on with these things
exceedingly well, and, as long as the times held together, no man had
taken fright at them, and drawn out his money.

What money would be drawn out of Tellson's henceforth, and what would
lie there, lost and forgotten; what plate and jewels would tarnish in
Tellson's hiding-places, while the depositors rusted in prisons,
and when they should have violently perished; how many accounts with
Tellson's never to be balanced in this world, must be carried over into
the next; no man could have said, that night, any more than Mr. Jarvis
Lorry could, though he thought heavily of these questions. He sat by
a newly-lighted wood fire (the blighted and unfruitful year was
prematurely cold), and on his honest and courageous face there was a
deeper shade than the pendent lamp could throw, or any object in the
room distortedly reflect--a shade of horror.

He occupied rooms in the Bank, in his fidelity to the House of which
he had grown to be a part, like strong root-ivy. It chanced that they
derived a kind of security from the patriotic occupation of the main
building, but the true-hearted old gentleman never calculated about
that. All such circumstances were indifferent to him, so that he did
his duty. On the opposite side of the courtyard, under a colonnade,
was extensive standing--for carriages--where, indeed, some carriages
of Monseigneur yet stood. Against two of the pillars were fastened two
great flaring flambeaux, and in the light of these, standing out in the
open air, was a large grindstone: a roughly mounted thing which appeared
to have hurriedly been brought there from some neighbouring smithy,
or other workshop. Rising and looking out of window at these harmless
objects, Mr. Lorry shivered, and retired to his seat by the fire. He had
opened, not only the glass window, but the lattice blind outside it, and
he had closed both again, and he shivered through his frame.

From the streets beyond the high wall and the strong gate, there came
the usual night hum of the city, with now and then an indescribable ring
in it, weird and unearthly, as if some unwonted sounds of a terrible
nature were going up to Heaven.

"Thank God," said Mr. Lorry, clasping his hands, "that no one near and
dear to me is in this dreadful town to-night. May He have mercy on all
who are in danger!"

Soon afterwards, the bell at the great gate sounded, and he thought,
"They have come back!" and sat listening. But, there was no loud
irruption into the courtyard, as he had expected, and he heard the gate
clash again, and all was quiet.

The nervousness and dread that were upon him inspired that vague
uneasiness respecting the Bank, which a great change would naturally
awaken, with such feelings roused. It was well guarded, and he got up to
go among the trusty people who were watching it, when his door suddenly
opened, and two figures rushed in, at sight of which he fell back in
amazement.

Lucie and her father! Lucie with her arms stretched out to him, and with
that old look of earnestness so concentrated and intensified, that it
seemed as though it had been stamped upon her face expressly to give
force and power to it in this one passage of her life.

"What is this?" cried Mr. Lorry, breathless and confused. "What is the
matter? Lucie! Manette! What has happened? What has brought you here?
What is it?"

With the look fixed upon him, in her paleness and wildness, she panted
out in his arms, imploringly, "O my dear friend! My husband!"

"Your husband, Lucie?"

"Charles."

"What of Charles?"

"Here.

"Here, in Paris?"

"Has been here some days--three or four--I don't know how many--I can't
collect my thoughts. An errand of generosity brought him here unknown to
us; he was stopped at the barrier, and sent to prison."

The old man uttered an irrepressible cry. Almost at the same moment, the
bell of the great gate rang again, and a loud noise of feet and voices
came pouring into the courtyard.

"What is that noise?" said the Doctor, turning towards the window.

"Don't look!" cried Mr. Lorry. "Don't look out! Manette, for your life,
don't touch the blind!"

The Doctor turned, with his hand upon the fastening of the window, and
said, with a cool, bold smile:

"My dear friend, I have a charmed life in this city. I have been
a Bastille prisoner. There is no patriot in Paris--in Paris? In
France--who, knowing me to have been a prisoner in the Bastille, would
touch me, except to overwhelm me with embraces, or carry me in triumph.
My old pain has given me a power that has brought us through the
barrier, and gained us news of Charles there, and brought us here. I
knew it would be so; I knew I could help Charles out of all danger; I
told Lucie so.--What is that noise?" His hand was again upon the window.

"Don't look!" cried Mr. Lorry, absolutely desperate. "No, Lucie, my
dear, nor you!" He got his arm round her, and held her. "Don't be so
terrified, my love. I solemnly swear to you that I know of no harm
having happened to Charles; that I had no suspicion even of his being in
this fatal place. What prison is he in?"

"La Force!"

"La Force! Lucie, my child, if ever you were brave and serviceable in
your life--and you were always both--you will compose yourself now, to
do exactly as I bid you; for more depends upon it than you can think, or
I can say. There is no help for you in any action on your part to-night;
you cannot possibly stir out. I say this, because what I must bid you
to do for Charles's sake, is the hardest thing to do of all. You must
instantly be obedient, still, and quiet. You must let me put you in a
room at the back here. You must leave your father and me alone for
two minutes, and as there are Life and Death in the world you must not
delay."

"I will be submissive to you. I see in your face that you know I can do
nothing else than this. I know you are true."

The old man kissed her, and hurried her into his room, and turned the
key; then, came hurrying back to the Doctor, and opened the window and
partly opened the blind, and put his hand upon the Doctor's arm, and
looked out with him into the courtyard.

Looked out upon a throng of men and women: not enough in number, or near
enough, to fill the courtyard: not more than forty or fifty in all. The
people in possession of the house had let them in at the gate, and they
had rushed in to work at the grindstone; it had evidently been set up
there for their purpose, as in a convenient and retired spot.

But, such awful workers, and such awful work!

The grindstone had a double handle, and, turning at it madly were two
men, whose faces, as their long hair flapped back when the whirlings of
the grindstone brought their faces up, were more horrible and cruel than
the visages of the wildest savages in their most barbarous disguise.
False eyebrows and false moustaches were stuck upon them, and their
hideous countenances were all bloody and sweaty, and all awry with
howling, and all staring and glaring with beastly excitement and want of
sleep. As these ruffians turned and turned, their matted locks now flung
forward over their eyes, now flung backward over their necks, some women
held wine to their mouths that they might drink; and what with dropping
blood, and what with dropping wine, and what with the stream of sparks
struck out of the stone, all their wicked atmosphere seemed gore and
fire. The eye could not detect one creature in the group free from
the smear of blood. Shouldering one another to get next at the
sharpening-stone, were men stripped to the waist, with the stain all
over their limbs and bodies; men in all sorts of rags, with the stain
upon those rags; men devilishly set off with spoils of women's lace
and silk and ribbon, with the stain dyeing those trifles through
and through. Hatchets, knives, bayonets, swords, all brought to be
sharpened, were all red with it. Some of the hacked swords were tied to
the wrists of those who carried them, with strips of linen and fragments
of dress: ligatures various in kind, but all deep of the one colour. And
as the frantic wielders of these weapons snatched them from the stream
of sparks and tore away into the streets, the same red hue was red in
their frenzied eyes;--eyes which any unbrutalised beholder would have
given twenty years of life, to petrify with a well-directed gun.

All this was seen in a moment, as the vision of a drowning man, or of
any human creature at any very great pass, could see a world if it
were there. They drew back from the window, and the Doctor looked for
explanation in his friend's ashy face.

"They are," Mr. Lorry whispered the words, glancing fearfully round at
the locked room, "murdering the prisoners. If you are sure of what you
say; if you really have the power you think you have--as I believe you
have--make yourself known to these devils, and get taken to La Force. It
may be too late, I don't know, but let it not be a minute later!"

Doctor Manette pressed his hand, hastened bareheaded out of the room,
and was in the courtyard when Mr. Lorry regained the blind.

His streaming white hair, his remarkable face, and the impetuous
confidence of his manner, as he put the weapons aside like water,
carried him in an instant to the heart of the concourse at the stone.
For a few moments there was a pause, and a hurry, and a murmur, and
the unintelligible sound of his voice; and then Mr. Lorry saw him,
surrounded by all, and in the midst of a line of twenty men long, all
linked shoulder to shoulder, and hand to shoulder, hurried out with
cries of--"Live the Bastille prisoner! Help for the Bastille prisoner's
kindred in La Force! Room for the Bastille prisoner in front there! Save
the prisoner Evremonde at La Force!" and a thousand answering shouts.

He closed the lattice again with a fluttering heart, closed the window
and the curtain, hastened to Lucie, and told her that her father was
assisted by the people, and gone in search of her husband. He found
her child and Miss Pross with her; but, it never occurred to him to be
surprised by their appearance until a long time afterwards, when he sat
watching them in such quiet as the night knew.

Lucie had, by that time, fallen into a stupor on the floor at his feet,
clinging to his hand. Miss Pross had laid the child down on his own
bed, and her head had gradually fallen on the pillow beside her pretty
charge. O the long, long night, with the moans of the poor wife! And O
the long, long night, with no return of her father and no tidings!

Twice more in the darkness the bell at the great gate sounded, and the
irruption was repeated, and the grindstone whirled and spluttered.
"What is it?" cried Lucie, affrighted. "Hush! The soldiers' swords are
sharpened there," said Mr. Lorry. "The place is national property now,
and used as a kind of armoury, my love."

Twice more in all; but, the last spell of work was feeble and fitful.
Soon afterwards the day began to dawn, and he softly detached himself
from the clasping hand, and cautiously looked out again. A man, so
besmeared that he might have been a sorely wounded soldier creeping back
to consciousness on a field of slain, was rising from the pavement by
the side of the grindstone, and looking about him with a vacant air.
Shortly, this worn-out murderer descried in the imperfect light one of
the carriages of Monseigneur, and, staggering to that gorgeous vehicle,
climbed in at the door, and shut himself up to take his rest on its
dainty cushions.

The great grindstone, Earth, had turned when Mr. Lorry looked out again,
and the sun was red on the courtyard. But, the lesser grindstone stood
alone there in the calm morning air, with a red upon it that the sun had
never given, and would never take away.





III. The Shadow


One of the first considerations which arose in the business mind of Mr.
Lorry when business hours came round, was this:--that he had no right to
imperil Tellson's by sheltering the wife of an emigrant prisoner under
the Bank roof. His own possessions, safety, life, he would have hazarded
for Lucie and her child, without a moment's demur; but the great trust
he held was not his own, and as to that business charge he was a strict
man of business.

At first, his mind reverted to Defarge, and he thought of finding out
the wine-shop again and taking counsel with its master in reference to
the safest dwelling-place in the distracted state of the city. But, the
same consideration that suggested him, repudiated him; he lived in the
most violent Quarter, and doubtless was influential there, and deep in
its dangerous workings.

Noon coming, and the Doctor not returning, and every minute's delay
tending to compromise Tellson's, Mr. Lorry advised with Lucie. She said
that her father had spoken of hiring a lodging for a short term, in that
Quarter, near the Banking-house. As there was no business objection to
this, and as he foresaw that even if it were all well with Charles, and
he were to be released, he could not hope to leave the city, Mr. Lorry
went out in quest of such a lodging, and found a suitable one, high up
in a removed by-street where the closed blinds in all the other windows
of a high melancholy square of buildings marked deserted homes.

To this lodging he at once removed Lucie and her child, and Miss Pross:
giving them what comfort he could, and much more than he had himself.
He left Jerry with them, as a figure to fill a doorway that would bear
considerable knocking on the head, and returned to his own occupations.
A disturbed and doleful mind he brought to bear upon them, and slowly
and heavily the day lagged on with him.

It wore itself out, and wore him out with it, until the Bank closed. He
was again alone in his room of the previous night, considering what to
do next, when he heard a foot upon the stair. In a few moments, a
man stood in his presence, who, with a keenly observant look at him,
addressed him by his name.

"Your servant," said Mr. Lorry. "Do you know me?"

He was a strongly made man with dark curling hair, from forty-five
to fifty years of age. For answer he repeated, without any change of
emphasis, the words:

"Do you know me?"

"I have seen you somewhere."

"Perhaps at my wine-shop?"

Much interested and agitated, Mr. Lorry said: "You come from Doctor
Manette?"

"Yes. I come from Doctor Manette."

"And what says he? What does he send me?"

Defarge gave into his anxious hand, an open scrap of paper. It bore the
words in the Doctor's writing:

    "Charles is safe, but I cannot safely leave this place yet.
     I have obtained the favour that the bearer has a short note
     from Charles to his wife.  Let the bearer see his wife."

It was dated from La Force, within an hour.

"Will you accompany me," said Mr. Lorry, joyfully relieved after reading
this note aloud, "to where his wife resides?"

"Yes," returned Defarge.

Scarcely noticing as yet, in what a curiously reserved and mechanical
way Defarge spoke, Mr. Lorry put on his hat and they went down into the
courtyard. There, they found two women; one, knitting.

"Madame Defarge, surely!" said Mr. Lorry, who had left her in exactly
the same attitude some seventeen years ago.

"It is she," observed her husband.

"Does Madame go with us?" inquired Mr. Lorry, seeing that she moved as
they moved.

"Yes. That she may be able to recognise the faces and know the persons.
It is for their safety."

Beginning to be struck by Defarge's manner, Mr. Lorry looked dubiously
at him, and led the way. Both the women followed; the second woman being
The Vengeance.

They passed through the intervening streets as quickly as they might,
ascended the staircase of the new domicile, were admitted by Jerry,
and found Lucie weeping, alone. She was thrown into a transport by the
tidings Mr. Lorry gave her of her husband, and clasped the hand that
delivered his note--little thinking what it had been doing near him in
the night, and might, but for a chance, have done to him.

     "DEAREST,--Take courage.  I am well, and your father has
      influence around me.  You cannot answer this.
      Kiss our child for me."

That was all the writing. It was so much, however, to her who received
it, that she turned from Defarge to his wife, and kissed one of the
hands that knitted. It was a passionate, loving, thankful, womanly
action, but the hand made no response--dropped cold and heavy, and took
to its knitting again.

There was something in its touch that gave Lucie a check. She stopped in
the act of putting the note in her bosom, and, with her hands yet at her
neck, looked terrified at Madame Defarge. Madame Defarge met the lifted
eyebrows and forehead with a cold, impassive stare.

"My dear," said Mr. Lorry, striking in to explain; "there are frequent
risings in the streets; and, although it is not likely they will ever
trouble you, Madame Defarge wishes to see those whom she has the power
to protect at such times, to the end that she may know them--that she
may identify them. I believe," said Mr. Lorry, rather halting in his
reassuring words, as the stony manner of all the three impressed itself
upon him more and more, "I state the case, Citizen Defarge?"

Defarge looked gloomily at his wife, and gave no other answer than a
gruff sound of acquiescence.

"You had better, Lucie," said Mr. Lorry, doing all he could to
propitiate, by tone and manner, "have the dear child here, and our
good Pross. Our good Pross, Defarge, is an English lady, and knows no
French."

The lady in question, whose rooted conviction that she was more than a
match for any foreigner, was not to be shaken by distress and, danger,
appeared with folded arms, and observed in English to The Vengeance,
whom her eyes first encountered, "Well, I am sure, Boldface! I hope
_you_ are pretty well!" She also bestowed a British cough on Madame
Defarge; but, neither of the two took much heed of her.

"Is that his child?" said Madame Defarge, stopping in her work for the
first time, and pointing her knitting-needle at little Lucie as if it
were the finger of Fate.

"Yes, madame," answered Mr. Lorry; "this is our poor prisoner's darling
daughter, and only child."

The shadow attendant on Madame Defarge and her party seemed to fall so
threatening and dark on the child, that her mother instinctively
kneeled on the ground beside her, and held her to her breast. The
shadow attendant on Madame Defarge and her party seemed then to fall,
threatening and dark, on both the mother and the child.

"It is enough, my husband," said Madame Defarge. "I have seen them. We
may go."

But, the suppressed manner had enough of menace in it--not visible and
presented, but indistinct and withheld--to alarm Lucie into saying, as
she laid her appealing hand on Madame Defarge's dress:

"You will be good to my poor husband. You will do him no harm. You will
help me to see him if you can?"

"Your husband is not my business here," returned Madame Defarge, looking
down at her with perfect composure. "It is the daughter of your father
who is my business here."

"For my sake, then, be merciful to my husband. For my child's sake! She
will put her hands together and pray you to be merciful. We are more
afraid of you than of these others."

Madame Defarge received it as a compliment, and looked at her husband.
Defarge, who had been uneasily biting his thumb-nail and looking at her,
collected his face into a sterner expression.

"What is it that your husband says in that little letter?" asked Madame
Defarge, with a lowering smile. "Influence; he says something touching
influence?"

"That my father," said Lucie, hurriedly taking the paper from her
breast, but with her alarmed eyes on her questioner and not on it, "has
much influence around him."

"Surely it will release him!" said Madame Defarge. "Let it do so."

"As a wife and mother," cried Lucie, most earnestly, "I implore you to
have pity on me and not to exercise any power that you possess, against
my innocent husband, but to use it in his behalf. O sister-woman, think
of me. As a wife and mother!"

Madame Defarge looked, coldly as ever, at the suppliant, and said,
turning to her friend The Vengeance:

"The wives and mothers we have been used to see, since we were as little
as this child, and much less, have not been greatly considered? We have
known _their_ husbands and fathers laid in prison and kept from them,
often enough? All our lives, we have seen our sister-women suffer, in
themselves and in their children, poverty, nakedness, hunger, thirst,
sickness, misery, oppression and neglect of all kinds?"

"We have seen nothing else," returned The Vengeance.

"We have borne this a long time," said Madame Defarge, turning her eyes
again upon Lucie. "Judge you! Is it likely that the trouble of one wife
and mother would be much to us now?"

She resumed her knitting and went out. The Vengeance followed. Defarge
went last, and closed the door.

"Courage, my dear Lucie," said Mr. Lorry, as he raised her. "Courage,
courage! So far all goes well with us--much, much better than it has of
late gone with many poor souls. Cheer up, and have a thankful heart."

"I am not thankless, I hope, but that dreadful woman seems to throw a
shadow on me and on all my hopes."

"Tut, tut!" said Mr. Lorry; "what is this despondency in the brave
little breast? A shadow indeed! No substance in it, Lucie."

But the shadow of the manner of these Defarges was dark upon himself,
for all that, and in his secret mind it troubled him greatly.





IV. Calm in Storm


Doctor Manette did not return until the morning of the fourth day of his
absence. So much of what had happened in that dreadful time as could be
kept from the knowledge of Lucie was so well concealed from her, that
not until long afterwards, when France and she were far apart, did she
know that eleven hundred defenceless prisoners of both sexes and all
ages had been killed by the populace; that four days and nights had been
darkened by this deed of horror; and that the air around her had been
tainted by the slain. She only knew that there had been an attack upon
the prisons, that all political prisoners had been in danger, and that
some had been dragged out by the crowd and murdered.

To Mr. Lorry, the Doctor communicated under an injunction of secrecy on
which he had no need to dwell, that the crowd had taken him through a
scene of carnage to the prison of La Force. That, in the prison he had
found a self-appointed Tribunal sitting, before which the prisoners were
brought singly, and by which they were rapidly ordered to be put forth
to be massacred, or to be released, or (in a few cases) to be sent back
to their cells. That, presented by his conductors to this Tribunal, he
had announced himself by name and profession as having been for eighteen
years a secret and unaccused prisoner in the Bastille; that, one of the
body so sitting in judgment had risen and identified him, and that this
man was Defarge.

That, hereupon he had ascertained, through the registers on the table,
that his son-in-law was among the living prisoners, and had pleaded hard
to the Tribunal--of whom some members were asleep and some awake, some
dirty with murder and some clean, some sober and some not--for his life
and liberty. That, in the first frantic greetings lavished on himself as
a notable sufferer under the overthrown system, it had been accorded
to him to have Charles Darnay brought before the lawless Court, and
examined. That, he seemed on the point of being at once released, when
the tide in his favour met with some unexplained check (not intelligible
to the Doctor), which led to a few words of secret conference. That,
the man sitting as President had then informed Doctor Manette that
the prisoner must remain in custody, but should, for his sake, be held
inviolate in safe custody. That, immediately, on a signal, the prisoner
was removed to the interior of the prison again; but, that he, the
Doctor, had then so strongly pleaded for permission to remain and
assure himself that his son-in-law was, through no malice or mischance,
delivered to the concourse whose murderous yells outside the gate had
often drowned the proceedings, that he had obtained the permission, and
had remained in that Hall of Blood until the danger was over.

The sights he had seen there, with brief snatches of food and sleep by
intervals, shall remain untold. The mad joy over the prisoners who were
saved, had astounded him scarcely less than the mad ferocity against
those who were cut to pieces. One prisoner there was, he said, who had
been discharged into the street free, but at whom a mistaken savage had
thrust a pike as he passed out. Being besought to go to him and dress
the wound, the Doctor had passed out at the same gate, and had found him
in the arms of a company of Samaritans, who were seated on the bodies
of their victims. With an inconsistency as monstrous as anything in this
awful nightmare, they had helped the healer, and tended the wounded man
with the gentlest solicitude--had made a litter for him and escorted him
carefully from the spot--had then caught up their weapons and plunged
anew into a butchery so dreadful, that the Doctor had covered his eyes
with his hands, and swooned away in the midst of it.

As Mr. Lorry received these confidences, and as he watched the face of
his friend now sixty-two years of age, a misgiving arose within him that
such dread experiences would revive the old danger.

But, he had never seen his friend in his present aspect: he had never
at all known him in his present character. For the first time the Doctor
felt, now, that his suffering was strength and power. For the first time
he felt that in that sharp fire, he had slowly forged the iron which
could break the prison door of his daughter's husband, and deliver him.
"It all tended to a good end, my friend; it was not mere waste and ruin.
As my beloved child was helpful in restoring me to myself, I will be
helpful now in restoring the dearest part of herself to her; by the aid
of Heaven I will do it!" Thus, Doctor Manette. And when Jarvis Lorry saw
the kindled eyes, the resolute face, the calm strong look and bearing
of the man whose life always seemed to him to have been stopped, like a
clock, for so many years, and then set going again with an energy which
had lain dormant during the cessation of its usefulness, he believed.

Greater things than the Doctor had at that time to contend with, would
have yielded before his persevering purpose. While he kept himself
in his place, as a physician, whose business was with all degrees
of mankind, bond and free, rich and poor, bad and good, he used his
personal influence so wisely, that he was soon the inspecting physician
of three prisons, and among them of La Force. He could now assure Lucie
that her husband was no longer confined alone, but was mixed with the
general body of prisoners; he saw her husband weekly, and brought sweet
messages to her, straight from his lips; sometimes her husband himself
sent a letter to her (though never by the Doctor's hand), but she was
not permitted to write to him: for, among the many wild suspicions of
plots in the prisons, the wildest of all pointed at emigrants who were
known to have made friends or permanent connections abroad.

This new life of the Doctor's was an anxious life, no doubt; still, the
sagacious Mr. Lorry saw that there was a new sustaining pride in it.
Nothing unbecoming tinged the pride; it was a natural and worthy one;
but he observed it as a curiosity. The Doctor knew, that up to that
time, his imprisonment had been associated in the minds of his daughter
and his friend, with his personal affliction, deprivation, and weakness.
Now that this was changed, and he knew himself to be invested through
that old trial with forces to which they both looked for Charles's
ultimate safety and deliverance, he became so far exalted by the change,
that he took the lead and direction, and required them as the weak, to
trust to him as the strong. The preceding relative positions of himself
and Lucie were reversed, yet only as the liveliest gratitude and
affection could reverse them, for he could have had no pride but in
rendering some service to her who had rendered so much to him. "All
curious to see," thought Mr. Lorry, in his amiably shrewd way, "but all
natural and right; so, take the lead, my dear friend, and keep it; it
couldn't be in better hands."

But, though the Doctor tried hard, and never ceased trying, to get
Charles Darnay set at liberty, or at least to get him brought to trial,
the public current of the time set too strong and fast for him. The new
era began; the king was tried, doomed, and beheaded; the Republic of
Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death, declared for victory or death
against the world in arms; the black flag waved night and day from the
great towers of Notre Dame; three hundred thousand men, summoned to rise
against the tyrants of the earth, rose from all the varying soils
of France, as if the dragon's teeth had been sown broadcast, and
had yielded fruit equally on hill and plain, on rock, in gravel, and
alluvial mud, under the bright sky of the South and under the clouds of
the North, in fell and forest, in the vineyards and the olive-grounds
and among the cropped grass and the stubble of the corn, along the
fruitful banks of the broad rivers, and in the sand of the sea-shore.
What private solicitude could rear itself against the deluge of the Year
One of Liberty--the deluge rising from below, not falling from above,
and with the windows of Heaven shut, not opened!

There was no pause, no pity, no peace, no interval of relenting rest, no
measurement of time. Though days and nights circled as regularly as when
time was young, and the evening and morning were the first day, other
count of time there was none. Hold of it was lost in the raging fever
of a nation, as it is in the fever of one patient. Now, breaking the
unnatural silence of a whole city, the executioner showed the people the
head of the king--and now, it seemed almost in the same breath, the
head of his fair wife which had had eight weary months of imprisoned
widowhood and misery, to turn it grey.

And yet, observing the strange law of contradiction which obtains in
all such cases, the time was long, while it flamed by so fast. A
revolutionary tribunal in the capital, and forty or fifty thousand
revolutionary committees all over the land; a law of the Suspected,
which struck away all security for liberty or life, and delivered over
any good and innocent person to any bad and guilty one; prisons gorged
with people who had committed no offence, and could obtain no hearing;
these things became the established order and nature of appointed
things, and seemed to be ancient usage before they were many weeks old.
Above all, one hideous figure grew as familiar as if it had been before
the general gaze from the foundations of the world--the figure of the
sharp female called La Guillotine.

It was the popular theme for jests; it was the best cure for headache,
it infallibly prevented the hair from turning grey, it imparted a
peculiar delicacy to the complexion, it was the National Razor which
shaved close: who kissed La Guillotine, looked through the little window
and sneezed into the sack. It was the sign of the regeneration of the
human race. It superseded the Cross. Models of it were worn on breasts
from which the Cross was discarded, and it was bowed down to and
believed in where the Cross was denied.

It sheared off heads so many, that it, and the ground it most polluted,
were a rotten red. It was taken to pieces, like a toy-puzzle for a young
Devil, and was put together again when the occasion wanted it. It hushed
the eloquent, struck down the powerful, abolished the beautiful and
good. Twenty-two friends of high public mark, twenty-one living and one
dead, it had lopped the heads off, in one morning, in as many minutes.
The name of the strong man of Old Scripture had descended to the chief
functionary who worked it; but, so armed, he was stronger than his
namesake, and blinder, and tore away the gates of God's own Temple every
day.

Among these terrors, and the brood belonging to them, the Doctor walked
with a steady head: confident in his power, cautiously persistent in his
end, never doubting that he would save Lucie's husband at last. Yet the
current of the time swept by, so strong and deep, and carried the time
away so fiercely, that Charles had lain in prison one year and three
months when the Doctor was thus steady and confident. So much more
wicked and distracted had the Revolution grown in that December month,
that the rivers of the South were encumbered with the bodies of the
violently drowned by night, and prisoners were shot in lines and squares
under the southern wintry sun. Still, the Doctor walked among the
terrors with a steady head. No man better known than he, in Paris at
that day; no man in a stranger situation. Silent, humane, indispensable
in hospital and prison, using his art equally among assassins and
victims, he was a man apart. In the exercise of his skill, the
appearance and the story of the Bastille Captive removed him from all
other men. He was not suspected or brought in question, any more than if
he had indeed been recalled to life some eighteen years before, or were
a Spirit moving among mortals.





V. The Wood-Sawyer


One year and three months. During all that time Lucie was never
sure, from hour to hour, but that the Guillotine would strike off her
husband's head next day. Every day, through the stony streets, the
tumbrils now jolted heavily, filled with Condemned. Lovely girls; bright
women, brown-haired, black-haired, and grey; youths; stalwart men and
old; gentle born and peasant born; all red wine for La Guillotine, all
daily brought into light from the dark cellars of the loathsome prisons,
and carried to her through the streets to slake her devouring thirst.
Liberty, equality, fraternity, or death;--the last, much the easiest to
bestow, O Guillotine!

If the suddenness of her calamity, and the whirling wheels of the time,
had stunned the Doctor's daughter into awaiting the result in idle
despair, it would but have been with her as it was with many. But, from
the hour when she had taken the white head to her fresh young bosom in
the garret of Saint Antoine, she had been true to her duties. She was
truest to them in the season of trial, as all the quietly loyal and good
will always be.

As soon as they were established in their new residence, and her father
had entered on the routine of his avocations, she arranged the little
household as exactly as if her husband had been there. Everything had
its appointed place and its appointed time. Little Lucie she taught,
as regularly, as if they had all been united in their English home. The
slight devices with which she cheated herself into the show of a belief
that they would soon be reunited--the little preparations for his speedy
return, the setting aside of his chair and his books--these, and the
solemn prayer at night for one dear prisoner especially, among the many
unhappy souls in prison and the shadow of death--were almost the only
outspoken reliefs of her heavy mind.

She did not greatly alter in appearance. The plain dark dresses, akin to
mourning dresses, which she and her child wore, were as neat and as well
attended to as the brighter clothes of happy days. She lost her colour,
and the old and intent expression was a constant, not an occasional,
thing; otherwise, she remained very pretty and comely. Sometimes, at
night on kissing her father, she would burst into the grief she had
repressed all day, and would say that her sole reliance, under Heaven,
was on him. He always resolutely answered: "Nothing can happen to him
without my knowledge, and I know that I can save him, Lucie."

They had not made the round of their changed life many weeks, when her
father said to her, on coming home one evening:

"My dear, there is an upper window in the prison, to which Charles can
sometimes gain access at three in the afternoon. When he can get to
it--which depends on many uncertainties and incidents--he might see you
in the street, he thinks, if you stood in a certain place that I can
show you. But you will not be able to see him, my poor child, and even
if you could, it would be unsafe for you to make a sign of recognition."

"O show me the place, my father, and I will go there every day."

From that time, in all weathers, she waited there two hours. As the
clock struck two, she was there, and at four she turned resignedly away.
When it was not too wet or inclement for her child to be with her, they
went together; at other times she was alone; but, she never missed a
single day.

It was the dark and dirty corner of a small winding street. The hovel
of a cutter of wood into lengths for burning, was the only house at that
end; all else was wall. On the third day of her being there, he noticed
her.

"Good day, citizeness."

"Good day, citizen."

This mode of address was now prescribed by decree. It had been
established voluntarily some time ago, among the more thorough patriots;
but, was now law for everybody.

"Walking here again, citizeness?"

"You see me, citizen!"

The wood-sawyer, who was a little man with a redundancy of gesture (he
had once been a mender of roads), cast a glance at the prison, pointed
at the prison, and putting his ten fingers before his face to represent
bars, peeped through them jocosely.

"But it's not my business," said he. And went on sawing his wood.

Next day he was looking out for her, and accosted her the moment she
appeared.

"What? Walking here again, citizeness?"

"Yes, citizen."

"Ah! A child too! Your mother, is it not, my little citizeness?"

"Do I say yes, mamma?" whispered little Lucie, drawing close to her.

"Yes, dearest."

"Yes, citizen."

"Ah! But it's not my business. My work is my business. See my saw! I
call it my Little Guillotine. La, la, la; La, la, la! And off his head
comes!"

The billet fell as he spoke, and he threw it into a basket.

"I call myself the Samson of the firewood guillotine. See here again!
Loo, loo, loo; Loo, loo, loo! And off _her_ head comes! Now, a child.
Tickle, tickle; Pickle, pickle! And off _its_ head comes. All the
family!"

Lucie shuddered as he threw two more billets into his basket, but it was
impossible to be there while the wood-sawyer was at work, and not be in
his sight. Thenceforth, to secure his good will, she always spoke to him
first, and often gave him drink-money, which he readily received.

He was an inquisitive fellow, and sometimes when she had quite forgotten
him in gazing at the prison roof and grates, and in lifting her heart
up to her husband, she would come to herself to find him looking at her,
with his knee on his bench and his saw stopped in its work. "But it's
not my business!" he would generally say at those times, and would
briskly fall to his sawing again.

In all weathers, in the snow and frost of winter, in the bitter winds of
spring, in the hot sunshine of summer, in the rains of autumn, and again
in the snow and frost of winter, Lucie passed two hours of every day at
this place; and every day on leaving it, she kissed the prison wall.
Her husband saw her (so she learned from her father) it might be once in
five or six times: it might be twice or thrice running: it might be, not
for a week or a fortnight together. It was enough that he could and did
see her when the chances served, and on that possibility she would have
waited out the day, seven days a week.

These occupations brought her round to the December month, wherein her
father walked among the terrors with a steady head. On a lightly-snowing
afternoon she arrived at the usual corner. It was a day of some wild
rejoicing, and a festival. She had seen the houses, as she came along,
decorated with little pikes, and with little red caps stuck upon them;
also, with tricoloured ribbons; also, with the standard inscription
(tricoloured letters were the favourite), Republic One and Indivisible.
Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death!

The miserable shop of the wood-sawyer was so small, that its whole
surface furnished very indifferent space for this legend. He had got
somebody to scrawl it up for him, however, who had squeezed Death in
with most inappropriate difficulty. On his house-top, he displayed pike
and cap, as a good citizen must, and in a window he had stationed his
saw inscribed as his "Little Sainte Guillotine"--for the great sharp
female was by that time popularly canonised. His shop was shut and he
was not there, which was a relief to Lucie, and left her quite alone.

But, he was not far off, for presently she heard a troubled movement
and a shouting coming along, which filled her with fear. A moment
afterwards, and a throng of people came pouring round the corner by the
prison wall, in the midst of whom was the wood-sawyer hand in hand with
The Vengeance. There could not be fewer than five hundred people, and
they were dancing like five thousand demons. There was no other music
than their own singing. They danced to the popular Revolution song,
keeping a ferocious time that was like a gnashing of teeth in unison.
Men and women danced together, women danced together, men danced
together, as hazard had brought them together. At first, they were a
mere storm of coarse red caps and coarse woollen rags; but, as they
filled the place, and stopped to dance about Lucie, some ghastly
apparition of a dance-figure gone raving mad arose among them. They
advanced, retreated, struck at one another's hands, clutched at one
another's heads, spun round alone, caught one another and spun round
in pairs, until many of them dropped. While those were down, the rest
linked hand in hand, and all spun round together: then the ring broke,
and in separate rings of two and four they turned and turned until they
all stopped at once, began again, struck, clutched, and tore, and then
reversed the spin, and all spun round another way. Suddenly they stopped
again, paused, struck out the time afresh, formed into lines the width
of the public way, and, with their heads low down and their hands high
up, swooped screaming off. No fight could have been half so terrible
as this dance. It was so emphatically a fallen sport--a something, once
innocent, delivered over to all devilry--a healthy pastime changed into
a means of angering the blood, bewildering the senses, and steeling the
heart. Such grace as was visible in it, made it the uglier, showing how
warped and perverted all things good by nature were become. The maidenly
bosom bared to this, the pretty almost-child's head thus distracted, the
delicate foot mincing in this slough of blood and dirt, were types of
the disjointed time.

This was the Carmagnole. As it passed, leaving Lucie frightened and
bewildered in the doorway of the wood-sawyer's house, the feathery snow
fell as quietly and lay as white and soft, as if it had never been.

"O my father!" for he stood before her when she lifted up the eyes she
had momentarily darkened with her hand; "such a cruel, bad sight."

"I know, my dear, I know. I have seen it many times. Don't be
frightened! Not one of them would harm you."

"I am not frightened for myself, my father. But when I think of my
husband, and the mercies of these people--"

"We will set him above their mercies very soon. I left him climbing to
the window, and I came to tell you. There is no one here to see. You may
kiss your hand towards that highest shelving roof."

"I do so, father, and I send him my Soul with it!"

"You cannot see him, my poor dear?"

"No, father," said Lucie, yearning and weeping as she kissed her hand,
"no."

A footstep in the snow. Madame Defarge. "I salute you, citizeness,"
from the Doctor. "I salute you, citizen." This in passing. Nothing more.
Madame Defarge gone, like a shadow over the white road.

"Give me your arm, my love. Pass from here with an air of cheerfulness
and courage, for his sake. That was well done;" they had left the spot;
"it shall not be in vain. Charles is summoned for to-morrow."

"For to-morrow!"

"There is no time to lose. I am well prepared, but there are precautions
to be taken, that could not be taken until he was actually summoned
before the Tribunal. He has not received the notice yet, but I know
that he will presently be summoned for to-morrow, and removed to the
Conciergerie; I have timely information. You are not afraid?"

She could scarcely answer, "I trust in you."

"Do so, implicitly. Your suspense is nearly ended, my darling; he shall
be restored to you within a few hours; I have encompassed him with every
protection. I must see Lorry."

He stopped. There was a heavy lumbering of wheels within hearing. They
both knew too well what it meant. One. Two. Three. Three tumbrils faring
away with their dread loads over the hushing snow.

"I must see Lorry," the Doctor repeated, turning her another way.

The staunch old gentleman was still in his trust; had never left it. He
and his books were in frequent requisition as to property confiscated
and made national. What he could save for the owners, he saved. No
better man living to hold fast by what Tellson's had in keeping, and to
hold his peace.

A murky red and yellow sky, and a rising mist from the Seine, denoted
the approach of darkness. It was almost dark when they arrived at the
Bank. The stately residence of Monseigneur was altogether blighted and
deserted. Above a heap of dust and ashes in the court, ran the letters:
National Property. Republic One and Indivisible. Liberty, Equality,
Fraternity, or Death!

Who could that be with Mr. Lorry--the owner of the riding-coat upon the
chair--who must not be seen? From whom newly arrived, did he come out,
agitated and surprised, to take his favourite in his arms? To whom did
he appear to repeat her faltering words, when, raising his voice and
turning his head towards the door of the room from which he had issued,
he said: "Removed to the Conciergerie, and summoned for to-morrow?"

 Upon arriving in France, Charles Darnay's progress to Paris is retarded by numerous inspections by each small village's group of red-capped patriots. At one such village, still a far distance from Paris, he is awakened in the middle of the night and is told that as an aristocrat he must be escorted to Paris under guard, that he must leave immediately and that he must pay for the escort. At the small town of Beauvias he is told that new decrees have seized all the property of emigres and aristocrats and that more decrees are expected soon that will condemn all such persons as himself to death. Nevertheless, Darnay and his escort reach Paris the following day where at the Barrier none other than Monsieur Defarge inspects his papers, especially the letter from Gabelle. The officer in charge consigns Darnay, or Evremonde, as he is known in France, to the prison of La Force. On the way to the prison, Defarge relates his connection to Darnay's family but refuses to help him in any way. Darnay hears a crier in the streets announcing that the royal family has been taken to prison and that all foreign ambassadors have fled the country. He then realizes that the situation in his native country is much more serious and deadly than he had previously imagined. The narrator notes that in a few days the mass executions by Guillotine would begin. Although the orders for Darnay's imprisonment call for him to be held "in secret" or solitary confinement he briefly mingles with some of the other prisoners and is amazed to find that the prisoners are full of manners and refinement while the guards are uncouth and uncultured. Once in his cell he is told that he may not purchase any writing utensils or paper but may purchase food. Alone he paces his cell and thinks about Doctor Manette making shoes. The Paris branch of Tellson's is located in a wing of a large house that has been seized from its aristocrat owner. Unlike the London branch, it is lavishly furnished and separated from the street by a high wall. In its courtyard there is a grindstone that the revolutionaries used to sharpen their weapons. After a busy day of trying to reconcile utterly chaotic accounts and take inventory of what documents remain, Mr. Lorry is sitting by the fire, listening to the chaos in the streets and giving thanks that, so he believes, no one dear to him is in the city. Shortly thereafter he is surprised when Lucie and Doctor Manette appear at his door and, in a state of high emotion, inform him that Charles has been in the city several days as a prisoner. They are interrupted by the sound of a large crowd in the courtyard and Mr. Lorry, who knows that it is the sound of weapons being sharpened at the grindstone, begs them not to open the blinds. Doctor Manette explains that his past suffering as a prisoner of the Bastille has made him a hero and person whose character is beyond reproach in the new Republic. Fearing that the sight of the mob might overwhelm Lucie, however, Mr. Lorry sequesters her in another room while he and Doctor Manette look upon the grisly sight of the angry mob savagely sharpening its bloody instruments of death in the yard below. Mr. Lorry informs Doctor Manette that the mob is murdering the prisoners and begs him to use what influence he has immediately to spare Charles' life. Doctor Manette converts the mob to his cause and departs with them to La Force. Mr. Lorry goes to Lucie and finds her with Miss Pross and her daughter. Lucie has collapsed under the emotional strain and Mr. Lorry spends a sleepless night waiting for word from the Doctor. The next day Mr. Lorry, knowing that he cannot endanger Tellson's by sheltering Lucie and her family and also aware that Charles will not be able to leave the city for some time even if he is released, engages an apartment near the bank for the family and leaves Jerry to look after them. Later in the day, Monsieur Defarge arrives with a note from the doctor to the effect that Charles is saved for the moment but will not be released. In the note the doctor asks that the messenger be permitted to see Lucie. Only after Madame Defarge and The Vengeance join them on the way to the apartment does Mr. Lorry notice Defarge's affected, mechanical manner. At the apartment Lucie is initially grateful for her husband's note and his observation that her father has "influence" in Paris. Madame Defarge's cold manner and relentless knitting make Lucie apprehensive. After Madame Defarge has seen little Lucie she leaves. Before she leaves Lucie begs her to help her family and Madame Defarge's impersonal reply brings despair to them all. Four days later Doctor Manette returns and describes to Mr. Lorry the horror of the hundreds of executions. He relates how he used his influence to stay Charles' execution but could not get him released or his case brought to trial. Over time, Doctor Manette becomes well known and liked among the revolutionaries and practices his trade as the chief surgeon for three prisons including La Force. Mr. Lorry notices that whereas the Doctor's imprisonment was once a source of weakness and fear in revolutionary Paris it has become his strength and solace. He vows to save Charles. Nevertheless, fifteen months pass and Charles remains a prisoner while the Doctor builds his reputation among the bloody horrors of the revolution. During the long months of Charles' imprisonment Lucie does her best to repress her grief and attend to her father and daughter. One day her father informs her that on some days at 3pm Charles is able to gain access to window that looks down upon a street corner near a woodsawyers shop. Every day afterward she waits from 2pm to 4pm. Over time the woodsawyer, an ardent revolutionary, engages her in conversation. Occasionally she gives him drink money but is fearful of him. The woodsawyer notices that she is constantly looking at the prison but claims, ominously, that it is none of his business. One day while she waits, Lucie is horrified to witness several hundred people including The Vengeance and the woodsawyer doing a demonic dance called the Carmagnole in the street. Later her father joins her and reassures his daughter that he can save Charles who has been summoned before the Tribunal the next day. When Doctor Manette visits Mr. Lorry that evening the narrator comments that Mr. Lorry has a visitor who chooses to remain unknown to the doctor.

