a tale of two cities(双城记)-36

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 childwas helpful in restoring me to myself, I will be helpful now inrestoring the dearest part of herself to her; by the aid of Heaven Iwill do it!” Thus, Doctor Manette. And when Jarvis Lorry saw thekindled eyes, the resolute face, the calm strong look and bearing ofthe man whose life always seemed to him to have been stopped,like a clock, for so many years, and then set going again with anenergy which had lain dormant during the cessation of itsusefulness, he believed.Greater things than the Doctor had at that time to contendwith, would have yielded before his persevering purpose. While hekept himself in his place, as a physician, whose business was withCharles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Citiesall degrees of mankind, bond and free, rich and poor, bad andgood, he used his personal influence so wisely, that he was soonthe inspecting physician of three prisons, and among them of LaForce. He could now assure Lucie that her husband was no longerconfined 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 letterto her (though never by the Doctor’s hand), but she was notpermitted to write to him: for, among the many wild suspicions ofplots in the prisons, the wildest of all pointed at emigrants whowere known to have made friends or permanent connectionsabroad.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 pridein it. Nothing unbecoming tinged the pride; it was a natural andworthy one; but he observed it as a curiosity. The Doctor knew,that up to that time, his imprisonment had been associated in theminds of his daughter and his friend, with his personal affliction,deprivation, and weakness. Now that this was changed, and heknew himself to be invested through that old trial with forces towhich they both looked for Charles’s ultimate safety anddeliverance, he became so far exalted by the change, that he tookthe lead and direction, and required them as the weak, to trust tohim as the strong. The preceding relative positions of himself andLucie were reversed, yet only as the liveliest gratitude andaffection could reverse them, for he could have had no pride but inrendering some service to her who had rendered so much to him.“All curious to see,” thought Mr. Lorry, in his amiably shrewdway, “but all natural and right; so, take the lead, my dear friend,Charles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Citiesand keep it; it couldn’t be in better hands.”But, though the Doctor tried hard, and never ceased trying, toget Charles Darnay set at liberty, or at least to get him brought totrial, the public current of the time set too strong and fast for him.The new era began; the king was tried, doomed and beheaded; theRepublic of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death, declared forvictory or death against the world in arms; the black flag wavednight and day from the great towers of Notre Dame; threehundred thousand men, summoned to rise against the tyrants ofthe earth, rose from all the varying soils of France, as if thedragon’s teeth had been sown broadcast, and had yielded fruitequally on hill and plain, on rock, in gravel, and alluvial mud,under the bright sky of the South and under the clouds of theNorth, in fell and forest, in the vineyards and the olive-groundsand among the cropped grass and the stubble of the corn, alongthe fruitful banks of the broad rivers, and in the sand of theseashore. What private solicitude could rear itself against thedeluge of the Year One of Liberty—the deluge rising from below,not falling from above, and with the windows of Heaven shut, notopened!There was no pause, no pity, no peace, no interval of relentingrest, no measurement of time. Though days and nights circled asregularly as when time was young, and the evening and morningwere the first day, other count of time there was none. Hold of itwas lost in the raging fever of a nation, as it is in the fever of onepatient. Now, breaking the unnatural silence of a whole city, theexecutioner showed the people the head of the king—and now, itseemed almost in the same breath, the head of his fair wife whichhad had eight weary months of imprisoned widowhood andCharles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Citiesmisery, to turn it grey.And yet, observing the strange law of contradiction whichobtains in all such cases, the time was long, while it flamed by sofast. A revolutionary tribunal in the capital, and forty or fiftythousand revolutionary committees all over the land; a law of theSuspected, which struck away all security for liberty or life, anddelivered over any good and innocent person to any bad and guiltyone; prisons gorged with people who had committed no offence,and could obtain no hearing; these things became the establishedorder and nature of appointed things, and seemed to be ancientusage before they were many weeks old. Above all, one hideousfigure grew as familiar as if it had been before the general gazefrom the foundations of the world—the figure of the sharp femalecalled La Guillotine.It was the popular theme for jests; it was the best cure forheadache, it infallibly prevented the hair from turning grey, itimparted a peculiar delicacy to the complexion, it was the NationalRazor which shaved close: who kissed La Guillotine, lookedthrough the window and sneezed into the sack. It was the sign ofthe regeneration of the human race. It superseded the Cross.Models of it were worn on breasts from which the Cross wasdiscarded, and it was bowed down to and believed in where theCross was denied.It sheared off heads so many, that it, and the ground it mostpolluted, were a rotten red. It was taken to pieces, like a toy-puzzlefor a young Devil, and was put together again when the occasionwanted it. It hushed the eloquent, struck down the powerful,abolished the beautiful and good. Twenty-two friends of highpublic mark, twenty-one living and one dead, it had lopped theCharles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Citiesheads off, in one morning, in as many minutes. The name of thestrong man of Old Scripture had descended to the chieffunctionary who worked it; but, so armed, he was stronger thanhis namesake, and blinder, and tore away the gates of God’s ownTemple every day.Among these terrors, and the brood belonging to them, theDoctor walked with a steady head; confident in his power,cautiously persistent in his end, never doubting that he wouldhave Lucie’s husband at last. Yet the current of the time swept by,so strong and deep, and carried the time away so fiercely, thatCharles had lain in prison one year and three months when theDoctor was thus steady and confident. So much more wicked anddistracted had the Revolution grown in that December month,that the rivers of the South were encumbered with the bodies ofthe violently drowned by night, and prisoners were shot in linesand squares under the southern wintry sun. Still, the Doctorwalked among the terrors with a steady head. No man betterknown than he, in Paris at that day; no man in a strangersituation. Silent, humane, indispensable in hospital and prison,using his art equally among assassins and victim, he was a manapart. In the exercise of his skill, the appearance and the story ofthe Bastille Captive removed him from all other men. He was notsuspected or brought in question, any more than if he had indeedbeen recalled to life some eighteen years before, or were a spiritmoving among mortals.Charles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two CitiesChapter XXXVTHE WOOD-SAWYERO ne year and three months. During all that time Lucie wasnever sure, from hour to hour, but that the Guillotinewould strike off her husband’s head next day. Every day,through the stony streets, the tumbrils now jolted heavily, filledwith Condemned. Lovely girls; bright women, brown-haired,black-haired, and grey; youths; stalwart men and old; gentle bornand peasant born; all red wine for La Guillotine, all daily broughtinto light from the dark cellars of the loathsome prisons, andcarried to her through the streets to slake her devouring thirst.Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death;—the last, much the easiestto bestow, O Guillotine!If the suddenness of her calamity, and the whirling wheels ofthe time, had stunned the Doctor’s daughter into awaiting theresult in idle despair, it would but have been with her as it waswith many. But, from the hour when she had taken the white headto her fresh young bosom in the garret of Saint Antoine, she hadbeen true to her duties. She was truest to them in the season oftrial, as all the quietly loyal and good will always be.As soon as they were established in their new residence, andher father had entered on the routine of his avocations, shearranged the little household as exactly as if her husband hadbeen there. Everything had its appointed place and its appointedtime. Little Lucie she taught, as regularly, as if they had all beenunited in their English home. The slight devices with which sheCharles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Citiescheated herself into the show of a belief that they would soon bereunited—the little preparations for his speedy return, the settingaside of his chair and his books—these, and the solemn prayer atnight for one dear prisoner especially, among the many unhappysouls in prison and the shadow of death—were almost the onlyoutspoken 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 asneat and as well attended to as the brighter clothes of happy days.She lost her colour, and the old and intent expression was aconstant, not an occasional, thing; otherwise, she remained verypretty and comely. Sometimes, at night on kissing her father, shewould burst into the grief she had repressed all day, and would saythat her sole reliance, under Heaven, was on him. He alwaysresolutely answered: “Nothing can happen to him without myknowledge, 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 whichCharles can sometimes gain access at three in the afternoon.When he can get to it—which depends on many uncertainties andincidents—he might see you in the street, he thinks, if you stood ina certain place that I can show you. But you will not be able to seehim, my poor child, and even if you could, it would be unsafe foryou to make a sign of recognition.”“Oh show me the place, my father, and I will go there everyday.”From that time, in all weathers, she waited there two hours. Asthe clock struck two, she was there, and at four she turnedCharles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Citiesresignedly away. When it was not too wet or inclement for herchild to be with her, they went together; at other times she wasalone; but, she never missed a single day.It was the dark and dirty corner of a small winding street. Thehovel of a cutter of wood into lengths for burning was the onlyhouse at that end; all else was wall. On the third day of her beingthere, he noticed her.“Good day, citizeness.”“Good day, citizen.”This mode of address was now prescribed by decree. It hadbeen established voluntarily some time ago, among the morethorough 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 ofgesture (he had once been a mender of roads), cast a glance at theprison, pointed at the prison, and putting his ten fingers before hisface to represent bars, peeped through them jocosely.“But it’s not my business,” said he. And went on sawing hiswood.Next day he was looking out for her, and accosted her themoment 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 closeto her.“Yes, dearest.”“Yes, citizen.”Charles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Cities“Ah, But it’s not my business. My work is my business. See mysaw! I call it my Little Guillotine. La, la, la; La, la, la! And off hishead comes!”The billet fell as he spoke, and he threw it into a basket.“I call myself the Samson of the firewood guillotine. See hereagain! Loo, loo, loo; Loo, loo, loo! And off her head comes! Now, achild. Tickle, tickle; Pickle, pickle! And off its head comes. All thefamily!”Lucie shuddered as he threw two more billets into his basket,but it was impossible to be there while the wood-sawyer was atwork, 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 hadquite forgotten him in gazing at the prison roof and grates, and inlifting her heart up to her husband, she would come to herself tofind him looking at her, with his knee on his bench and his sawstopped in its work. “But it’s not my business!” he would generallysay at those times, and would briskly fall to his sawing again.In all weathers, in the snow and frost of winter, in the bitterwinds of spring, in the hot sunshine of summer, in the rains ofautumn, and again in the snow and frost of winter, Lucie passedtwo hours of every day at this place; and every day on leaving it,she kissed the prison wall. Her husband saw her (so she learnedfrom her father) it might be once in five or six times: it might betwice or thrice running: it might be, not for a week or a fortnighttogether. It was enough that he could and did see her when thechances served, and on that possibility she would have waited outthe day, seven days a week.Charles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two CitiesThese 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. Itwas a day of some wild rejoicing, and a festival. She had seen thehouses, as she came along, decorated with little pikes, and withlittle red caps stuck upon them; also, with tricoloured ribbons;also, with the standard inscription (tricoloured letters were thefavourite), Republic One and Indivisible. Liberty, Equality,Fraternity, or Death!The miserable shop of the wood-sawyer was so small, that itswhole surface furnished very indifferent space for this legend. Hehad got somebody to scrawl it up for him, however, who hadsqueezed Death in with most inappropriate difficulty. On hishouse-top, he displayed pike and cap, as a good citizen must, andin a window he had stationed his saw inscribed as his “LittleSainte Guillotine”—for the great sharp female was by that timepopularly 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 troubledmovement and a shouting coming along, which filled her with fear.A moment afterwards, and a throng of people came pouring roundthe corner by the prison wall, in the midst of which was the wood-sawyer hand in hand with The Vengeance. There could not befewer than five hundred people, and they were dancing like fivethousand demons. There was no other music than their ownsinging. They danced to the popular Revolution song, keeping aferocious time that was like a gnashing of teeth in unison. Men andwomen danced together, women danced together, men dancedtogether, as hazard had brought them together. At first, they wereCharles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Citiesa mere storm of coarse red caps and coarse woollen rags; but, asthey filled the place, and stopped to dance about Lucie, someghastly apparition of a dance-figure gone raving mad arose amongthem. They advanced, retreated, struck at one another’s hands,clutched at one another’s heads, spun round alone, caught oneanother and spun round in pairs, until many of them dropped.While those were down, the rest linked hand in hand, and all spunround together: then the ring broke, and in separate rings of twoand four they turned and turned until they all stopped at once,began again, struck, clutched, and tore, and then reversed thespin, and all spun round another way. Suddenly they stoppedagain, paused, struck out the time afresh, formed into lines thewidth of the public way, and, with their heads low down and theirhands high up, swooped screaming off. No fight could have beenhalf so terrible as this dance. It was so emphatically a fallensport—a something, once innocent, delivered over to all devilry—ahealthy pastime changed into a means of angering the blood,bewildering the senses, and stealing the heart. Such grace as wasvisible in it, made it the uglier, showing how warped andperverted all things good by nature were become. The maidenlybosom bared to this, the pretty almost-child’s head thus distracted,the delicate foot mincing in this slough of blood and dirt, weretypes of the disjointed time.This was the Carmagnole. As it passed, leaving Luciefrightened and bewildered in the doorway of the wood-sawyer’shouse, 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 he lifted up theeyes she had momentarily darkened with her hand; “such a cruel,Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics