A Tale of Two Citiesbad sight.”“I know, my dear, I know. I have seen it many times. Don’t befrightened. Not one of them would harm you.”“I am not frightened for myself, my father. But when I think ofmy husband, and the mercies of these people—” “We will set himabove 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. You maykiss your hand towards the 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 kissedher hand, “no.”A footstep in the snow. Madame Defarge. “I salute you,citizeness,” from the Doctor. “I salute you, citizen.” This inpassing. Nothing more. Madame Defarge gone, like a shadow overthe white road.“Give me your arm, my love. Pass from here with an air ofcheerfulness and courage, for his sake. That was well done”; theyhad left the spot; “it shall not be in vain. Charles is summoned fortomorrow.”“For tomorrow!”“There is no time to lose. I am well prepared, but there areprecautions to be taken, that could not be taken until he wasactually summoned before the Tribunal. He has not received thenotice yet, but I know that he will presently be summoned fortomorrow, and removed to the Conciergerie; I have timelyinformation. You are not afraid?”She could scarcely answer, “I trust in you.”“Do so implicitly. Your suspense is nearly ended, my darling; heCharles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Citiesshall be restored to you within a few hours; I have encompassedhim with every protection. I must see Lorry.”He stopped. There was a heavy lumbering of wheels withinhearing. They both knew too well what it meant. One. Two. Three.Three tumbrils faring away with their dread loads over thehushing snow.“I must see Lorry,” the Doctor repeated, turning her anotherway.The staunch old gentleman was still in his trust; had never leftit. He and his books were in frequent requisition as to propertyconfiscated and made national. What he could save for the owners,he saved. No better man living to hold fast by what Tellson’s hadin 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 theyarrived at the Bank. The stately residence of Monseigneur wasaltogether blighted and deserted. Above a heap of dust and ashesin the court, ran the letters: National Property. Republic One andIndivisible. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death!Who could that be with Mr. Lorry—the owner of the riding-coatupon the chair—who must not be seen? From whom newlyarrived, did he come out, agitated and surprised, to take hisfavourite in his arms? To whom did he appear to repeat herfaltering words, when, raising his voice and turning his headtowards the door of the room from which he had issued, he said:“Removed to the Conciergerie, and summoned for tomorrow?”Charles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two CitiesChapter XXXVITRIUMPHT he dread Tribunal of five Judges, Public Prosecutor, anddetermined Jury, sat every day. Their lists went forthevery evening, and were read out by the gaolers of thevarious prisons to their prisoners. The standard gaoler-joke was“Come out and listen to the Evening Paper, you inside there!”“Charles Evremonde, called Darnay!”So at last began the Evening Paper at La Force.When a name was called, its owner stepped apart into a spotreserved for those who were announced as being thus fatallyrecorded. Charles Evremonde, called Darnay, had reason to knowthe usage; he had seen hundreds pass away so.His bloated gaoler, who wore spectacles to read with, glancedover them to assure himself that he had taken his place, and wentthrough the list, making a similar short pause at each name. Therewere twenty-three names, but only twenty were responded to; forone of the prisoners so summoned had died in gaol and beenforgotten, and two had already been guillotined and forgotten. Thelist was read, in the vaulted chamber where Darnay had seen theassociated prisoners on the night of his arrival. Every one of thosehad perished in the massacre; every human creature he had sincecared for and parted with, had died on the scaffold.There were hurried words of farewell and kindness, but theparting was soon over. It was the incident of every day, and thesociety of La Force were engaged in the preparation of someCharles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Citiesgames of forfeits and a little concert, for that evening. Theycrowded to the grates and shed tears there; but, twenty places inthe projected entertainments had to be refilled, and the time was,at best, short to the lockup hour, when the common rooms andcorridors would be delivered over to the great dogs who keptwatch there through the night. The prisoners were far frominsensible or unfeeling; their ways arose out of the condition of thetime. Similarly, though with a subtle difference, a species offervour or intoxication, known, without doubt, to have led somepersons to brave the guillotine unnecessarily, and to die by it, wasnot mere boastfulness, but a wild infection of the wildly shakenpublic mind. In seasons of pestilence, some of us will have a secretattraction to the disease—a terrible passing inclination to die of it.And all of us have like wonders hidden in our breasts, onlyneeding circumstances to evoke them.The passage to the Conciergerie was short and dark; the nightin its vermin-haunted cells was long and cold. Next day, fifteenprisoners were put to the bar before Charles Darnay’s name wascalled. All the fifteen were condemned, and the trials of the wholeoccupied an hour and a half.“Charles Evremonde, called Darnay,” was at length arraigned.His judges sat upon the Bench in feathered hats; but the roughred cap and tricoloured cockade was the head-dress otherwiseprevailing. Looking at the Jury and the turbulent audience, hemight have thought that the usual order of things was reversed,and that the felons were trying the honest men. The lowest,cruelest, and worst populace of a city, never without its quantity oflow, cruel, and bad, were the directing spirits of the scene: noisilycommenting, applauding, disapproving, anticipating, andCharles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Citiesprecipitating the result, without a check. Of the men, the greaterpart were armed in various ways; of the women, some woreknives, some daggers, some ate and drank as they looked on, manyknitted. Among these last, was one, with a spare piece of knittingunder her arm as she worked. She was in a front row, by the sideof a man whom he had never seen since his arrival at the Barrier,but whom he directly remembered as Defarge. He noticed that sheonce or twice whispered in his ear, and that she seemed to be hiswife; but, what he most noticed in the two figures was, thatalthough they were posted as close to himself as they could be,they never looked towards him. They seemed to be waiting forsomething with a dogged determination and they looked at theJury, but at nothing else. Under the President sat Doctor Manette,in his usual quiet dress. As well as the prisoner could see, he andMr. Lorry were the only two men there, unconnected with theTribunal, who wore their usual clothes, and had not assumed thecoarse garb of the Carmagnole.Charles Evremonde, called Darnay, was accused by the publicprosecutor as an emigrant, whose life was forfeit to the Republic,under the decree which banished all emigrants on pain of Death.It was nothing that the decree bore date since his return toFrance. There he was, and there was the decree; he had beentaken in France, and his head was demanded.“Take off his head!” cried the audience. “An enemy to theRepublic!”The President rang his bell to silence those cries, and asked theprisoner whether it was not true that he had lived many years inEngland?Undoubtedly it was.Charles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two CitiesWas he not an emigrant then? What did he call himself?Not an emigrant, he hoped, within the sense and spirit of thelaw.Why not? the President desired to know.Because he had voluntarily relinquished a title that wasdistasteful to him, and a station that was distasteful to him, andhad left his country—he submitted before the word emigrant inthe present acceptation by the Tribunal was in use—to live by hisown industry in England, rather than on the industry of theoverladen people of France.What proof had he of this?He handed in the name of two witness; Theophile Gabelle, andAlexandre Manette.But he had married in England? the President reminded him.True, but not an English woman.A citizeness of France?Yes. By birth.Her name and family?“Lucie Manette, only daughter of Doctor Manette, the goodphysician who sits there” This answer had a happy effect upon theaudience. Cries in exaltation of the well-known good physicianrent the hall. So capriciously were the people moved, that tearsimmediately rolled down several ferocious countenances whichhad been glaring at the prisoner a moment before, as if withimpatience to pluck him out into the streets and kill him.On these few steps of his dangerous way, Charles Darnay hadset his foot according to Doctor Manette’s reiterated instructions.The same cautious counsel directed every step that lay before him,and had prepared every inch of his road.Charles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two CitiesThe President asked, why had he returned to France when hedid, and not sooner?He had not returned sooner, he replied, simply because he hadno means of living in France, save those he had resigned; whereas,in England, he lived by giving instruction in the French languageand literature He had returned when he did, on the pressing andwritten entreaty of a French citizen, who represented that his lifewas endangered by his absence. He had come back, to save acitizen’s life, and to bear his testimony, at whatever personalhazard, to the truth. Was that criminal in the eyes of the Republic?The populace cried enthusiastically, “No!” and the Presidentrang his bell to quiet them. Which it did not, for they continued tocry “No!” until they left off, of their own will.The President required the name of that citizen? The accusedexplained that the citizen was his first witness. He also referredwith confidence to the citizen’s letter, which had been taken fromhim at the Barrier, but which he did not doubt would be foundamong the papers then before the President.The doctor had taken care that it should be there—had assuredhim that it would be there—and at this stage of the proceedings itwas produced and read Citizen Gabelle was called to confirm it,and did so. Citizen Gabelle hinted, with infinite delicacy andpoliteness, that in the pressure of business imposed on theTribunal by the multitude of enemies of the Republic with which ithad to deal, he had been slightly overlooked in his prison of theAbbaye—in fact, had rather passed out of the Tribunal’s patrioticremembrance—until three days ago; when he had beensummoned before it, and had been set at liberty on the Jury’sdeclaring themselves satisfied that the accusation against him wasCharles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Citiesanswered, as to himself, by the surrender of the citizenEvremonde, called Darnay.Doctor Manette was next questioned. His high personalpopularity, and the clearness of his answers, made a greatimpression: but, as he proceeded, as he showed that the accusedwas his first friend on his release from his long imprisonment;that, the accused had remained in England, always faithful anddevoted to his daughter and himself in their exile; that, so far frombeing in favour with the Aristocrat government there, he hadactually been tried for his life by it, as the foe of England andfriend of the United States—as he brought these circumstancesinto view, with the greatest discretion and with thestraightforward force of truth and earnestness, the Jury and thepopulace became one At last, when he appealed by name toMonsieur Lorry, an English gentleman then and there present,who, like himself, had been a witness on that English trial andcould corroborate his account of it, the Jury declared that they hadheard enough, and that they were ready with their votes if thePresident were content to receive them.At every vote (the Jurymen voted aloud and individually), thepopulace set up a shout of applause. All the voices were in theprisoner’s favour, and the President declared him free.Then, began one of those extraordinary scenes with which thepopulace sometimes gratified their fickleness, or their betterimpulses towards generosity and mercy, or which they regardedas some set-off against their swollen account of cruel rage. No mancan decide now to which of these motives such extraordinaryscenes were referable; it is probable, to a blending of all three,with the second predominating. No sooner was the acquittalCharles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Citiespronounced, than tears were shed as freely as blood at anothertime, and such fraternal embraces were bestowed upon theprisoner by as many of both sexes as could rush at him, that afterhis long and unwholesome confinement he was in danger offainting from exhaustion; none the less because he knew very well,that the very same people, carried by another current, would haverushed at him with the very same intensity, to rend him to piecesand strew him over the streets.His removal, to make way for other accused persons who wereto be tried, rescued him from these caresses for the moment. Fivewere to be tried together, next, as enemies of the Republic,forasmuch as they had not assisted it by word or deed. So quickwas the Tribunal to compensate itself and the nation for a chancelost, that these five came down to him before he left the place,condemned to die within twenty-four hours. The first of them toldhim so, with the customary prison sign of Death—a raised finger—and they all added in words, “Long live the Republic!”The five had had, it is true, no audience to lengthen theirproceedings, for when he and Doctor Manette emerged from thegate, there was a great crowd about it, in which there seemed to beevery face he had seen in Court, except two, for which he looked invain. On his coming out, the concourse made at him anew,weeping, embracing, and shouting, all by turns and all together,until the very tide of the river on the bank of which the mad scenewas acted, seemed to run mad, like the people on the shore.They put him into a great chair they had among them, andwhich they had taken either out of the Court itself, or one of itsrooms or passages. Over the chair they had thrown a red flag, andto the back of it they had bound a pike with a red cap on its top. InCharles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Citiesthis car of triumph, not even the Doctor’s entreaties could preventhis being carried to his home on men’s shoulders, with a confusedsea of red caps heaving about him, and casting up to sight fromthe stormy deep such wrecks of faces, that he more than oncemisdoubted his mind being in confusion, and that he was in thetumbril on his way to the Guillotine.In wild dreamlike procession, embracing whom they met andpointing him out, they carried him on. Reddening the snowystreets with the prevailing Republican colour, in winding andtramping through them, as they had reddened them below thesnow with a deeper dye, they carried him thus into the court-yardof the building where he lived. Her father had gone on before, toprepare her, and when her husband stood upon his feet, shedropped insensible in his arms.As he held her to his heart and turned her beautiful headbetween his face and the brawling crowd, so that his tears and herlips might come together unseen, a few of the people fell todancing. Instantly, all the rest fell to dancing, and the court-yardoverflowed with the Carmagnole. Then, they elevated into thevacant chair a young woman from the crowd to be carried as theGoddess of Liberty, and then swelling and overflowing out into theadjacent streets, and along the river’s bank, and over the bridge,the Carmagnole absorbed them every one and whirled them away.After grasping the Doctor’s hand, as he stood victorious andproud before him; after grasping the hand of Mr. Lorry, who camepanting in breathless from his struggle against the waterspout ofthe Carmagnole; after kissing little Lucie, who was lifted up toclasp her hands round his neck; and after embracing the everzealous and faithful Pross who lifted her; he took his wife in hisCharles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Cities