A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens [A story of the French Revolution]

Part 8 out of 9

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

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

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

"`She is dead,' said I.

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

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

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

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

* * * *

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

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

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

* * * *

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

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

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

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

* * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

XI

Dusk

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes."

"May you prosper!"

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

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

"Nor have I."

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

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

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

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

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

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

And walked with a settled step, down-stairs.

XII

Darkness

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

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

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

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

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

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

He repeated what he had already said.

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

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

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

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

"How?"

"Good evening."

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

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

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

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

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

"At extermination," said madame.

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

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

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

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

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

"The citizeness is superb!" croaked the Juryman.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"It is so," assented Defarge.

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

"It is so," assented Defarge again.

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

"It is so," assented Defarge once more.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lost, utterly lost!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Why not?"

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

"Yes!"

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

"They are not in danger?"

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

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

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

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

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

"It shall be done!"

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

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

"I am sure of it."

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

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

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

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

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

"Nothing, Carton."

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

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

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

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

XIII

Fifty-two

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Twelve gone for ever.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The prisoner wrung his hand.

"I bring you a request from her."

"What is it?"

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

The prisoner turned his face partly aside.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"It was when you came in."

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

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

"Write exactly as I speak."

"To whom do I address it?"

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

"Do I date it?"

"No."

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

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

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

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

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

"No; I am not armed."

"What is it in your hand?"

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

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

"What vapour is that?" he asked.

"Vapour?"

"Something that crossed me?"

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

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

"Hurry, hurry!"

The prisoner bent over the paper, once more.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You?" said the Spy nervously.

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

"Of course."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Are you dying for him?" she whispered.

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

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

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

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

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

The papers are handed out, and read.

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

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

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

Greatly too much for him.

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

This is she.

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

It is.

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

She and no other.

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

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

"Apparently the English advocate is in a swoon?"

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

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

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

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

"Behold your papers, Jarvis Lorry, countersigned."

"One can depart, citizen?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"How many did they say?"

"I do not understand you."

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

"Fifty-two."

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

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

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

XIV

The Knitting Done

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I shall be there before the commencement."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mr. Cruncher thought it might be best.

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

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

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

"No, miss," answered Mr. Cruncher.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Again Mr. Cruncher nodded his head.

"I don't hear it."

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

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

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

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

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

And indeed she never did.

XV

The Footsteps Die Out For Ever

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"That. At the back there."

"With his hand in the girl's?"

"Yes."

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

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

"And why not, citizen?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Louder," the woman recommends.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"They will be rapid. Fear not!"

The two stand in the fast-thinning throng of victims, but they speak

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