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Mr. Cruncher knuckled his forehead, as Sydney Carton
and the spy returned from the dark room. ‘Adieu, Mr.
Barsad,’ said the former; ‘our arrangement thus made, you
have nothing to fear from me.’
He sat down in a chair on the hearth, over against Mr.
Lorry. When they were alone, Mr. Lorry asked him what
he had done?
‘Not much. If it should go ill with the prisoner, I have
ensured access to him, once.’
Mr. Lorry’s countenance fell.
‘It is all I could do,’ said Carton. ‘To propose too
much, would be to put this man’s head under the axe,
and, as he himself said, nothing worse could happen to
him if he were denounced. It was obviously the weakness
of the position. There is no help for it.’
‘But access to him,’ said Mr. Lorry, ‘if it should go ill
before the Tribunal, will not save him.’
‘I never said it would.’
Mr. Lorry’s eyes gradually sought the fire; his sympathy
with his darling, and the heavy disappointment of his
second arrest, gradually weakened them; he was an old
man now, overborne with anxiety of late, and his tears
fell.
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‘You are a good man and a true friend,’ said Carton, in
an altered voice. ‘Forgive me if I notice that you are
affected. I could not see my father weep, and sit by,
careless. And I could not respect your sorrow more, if you
were my father. You are free from that misfortune,
however.’
Though he said the last words, with a slip into his usual
manner, there was a true feeling and respect both in his
tone and in his touch, that Mr. Lorry, who had never seen
the better side of him, was wholly unprepared for. He
gave him his hand, and Carton gently pressed it.
‘To return to poor Darnay,’ said Carton. ‘Don’t tell
Her of this interview, or this arrangement. It would not
enable Her to go to see him. She might think it was
contrived, in case of the worse, to convey to him the
means of anticipating the sentence.’
Mr. Lorry had not thought of that, and he looked
quickly at Carton to see if it were in his mind. It seemed
to be; he returned the look, and evidently understood it.
‘She might think a thousand things,’ Carton said, ‘and
any of them would only add to her trouble. Don’t speak
of me to her. As I said to you when I first came, I had
better not see her. I can put my hand out, to do any little
helpful work for her that my hand can find to do, without
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that. You are going to her, I hope? She must be very
desolate to-night.’
‘I am going now, directly.’
‘I am glad of that. She has such a strong attachment to
you and reliance on you. How does she look?’
‘Anxious and unhappy, but very beautiful.’
‘Ah!’
It was a long, grieving sound, like a sigh—almost like a
sob. It attracted Mr. Lorry’s eyes to Carton’s face, which
was turned to the fire. A light, or a shade (the old
gentleman could not have said which), passed from it as
swiftly as a change will sweep over a hill-side on a wild
bright day, and he lifted his foot to put back one of the
little flaming logs, which was tumbling forward. He wore
the white riding-coat and top-boots, then in vogue, and
the light of the fire touching their light surfaces made him
look very pale, with his long brown hair, all untrimmed,
hanging loose about him. His indifference to fire was
sufficiently remarkable to elicit a word of remonstrance
from Mr. Lorry; his boot was still upon the hot embers of
the flaming log, when it had broken under the weight of
his foot.
‘I forgot it,’ he said.
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Mr. Lorry’s eyes were again attracted to his face.
Taking note of the wasted air which clouded the naturally
handsome features, and having the expression of prisoners’
faces fresh in his mind, he was strongly reminded of that
expression.
‘And your duties here have drawn to an end, sir?’ said
Carton, turning to him.
‘Yes. As I was telling you last night when Lucie came
in so unexpectedly, I have at length done all that I can do
here. I hoped to have left them in perfect safety, and then
to have quitted Paris. I have my Leave to Pass. I was ready
to go.’
They were both silent.
‘Yours is a long life to look back upon, sir?’ said
Carton, wistfully.
‘I am in my seventy-eighth year.’
‘You have been useful all your life; steadily and
constantly occupied; trusted, respected, and looked up to?’
‘I have been a man of business, ever since I have been a
man. indeed, I may say that I was a man of business when
a boy.’
‘See what a place you fill at seventy-eight. How many
people will miss you when you leave it empty!’
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‘A solitary old bachelor,’ answered Mr. Lorry, shaking
his head. ‘There is nobody to weep for me.’
‘How can you say that? Wouldn’t She weep for you?
Wouldn’t her child?’
‘Yes, yes, thank God. I didn’t quite mean what I said.’
‘It IS a thing to thank God for; is it not?’
‘Surely, surely.’
‘If you could say, with truth, to your own solitary
heart, to-night, ‘I have secured to myself the love and
attachment, the gratitude or respect, of no human
creature; I have won myself a tender place in no regard; I
have done nothing good or serviceable to be remembered
by!’ your seventy-eight years would be seventy-eight
heavy curses; would they not?’
‘You say truly, Mr. Carton; I think they would be.’
Sydney turned his eyes again upon the fire, and, after a
silence of a few moments, said:
‘I should like to ask you:—Does your childhood seem
far off? Do the days when you sat at your mother’s knee,
seem days of very long ago?’
Responding to his softened manner, Mr. Lorry
answered:
‘Twenty years back, yes; at this time of my life, no.
For, as I draw closer and closer to the end, I travel in the
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circle, nearer and nearer to the beginning. It seems to be
one of the kind smoothings and preparings of the way. My
heart is touched now, by many remembrances that had
long fallen asleep, of my pretty young mother (and I so
old!), and by many associations of the days when what we
call the World was not so real with me, and my faults
were not confirmed in me.’
‘I understand the feeling!’ exclaimed Carton, with a
bright flush. ‘And you are the better for it?’
‘I hope so.’
Carton terminated the conversation here, by rising to
help him on with his outer coat; ‘But you,’ said Mr.
Lorry, reverting to the theme, ‘you are young.’
‘Yes,’ said Carton. ‘I am not old, but my young way
was never the way to age. Enough of me.’
‘And of me, I am sure,’ said Mr. Lorry. ‘Are you going
out?’
‘I’ll walk with you to her gate. You know my
vagabond and restless habits. If I should prowl about the
streets a long time, don’t be uneasy; I shall reappear in the
morning. You go to the Court to-morrow?’
‘Yes, unhappily.’
‘I shall be there, but only as one of the crowd. My Spy
will find a place for me. Take my arm, sir.’
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Mr. Lorry did so, and they went down-stairs and out in
the streets. A few minutes brought them to Mr. Lorry’s
destination. Carton left him there; but lingered at a little
distance, and turned back to the gate again when it was
shut, and touched it. He had heard of her going to the
prison every day. ‘She came out here,’ he said, looking
about him, ‘turned this way, must have trod on these
stones often. Let me follow in her steps.’
It was ten o’clock at night when he stood before the
prison of La Force, where she had stood hundreds of
times. A little wood-sawyer, having closed his shop, was
smoking his pipe at his shop-door.
‘Good night, citizen,’ said Sydney Carton, pausing in
going by; for, the man eyed him inquisitively.
‘Good night, citizen.’
‘How goes the Republic?’
‘You mean the Guillotine. Not ill. Sixty-three to-day.
We shall mount to a hundred soon. Samson and his men
complain sometimes, of being exhausted. Ha, ha, ha! He is
so droll, that Samson. Such a Barber!’
‘Do you often go to see him—‘
‘Shave? Always. Every day. What a barber! You have
seen him at work?’
‘Never.’
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‘Go and see him when he has a good batch. Figure this
to yourself, citizen; he shaved the sixty-three to-day, in
less than two pipes! Less than two pipes. Word of honour!’
As the grinning little man held out the pipe he was
smoking, to explain how he timed the executioner,
Carton was so sensible of a rising desire to strike the life
out of him, that he turned away.
‘But you are not English,’ said the wood-sawyer,
‘though you wear English dress?’
‘Yes,’ said Carton, pausing again, and answering over
his shoulder.
‘You speak like a Frenchman.’
‘I am an old student here.’
‘Aha, a perfect Frenchman! Good night, Englishman.’
‘Good night, citizen.’
‘But go and see that droll dog,’ the little man persisted,
calling after him. ‘And take a pipe with you!’
Sydney had not gone far out of sight, when he stopped
in the middle of the street under a glimmering lamp, and
wrote with his pencil on a scrap of paper. Then, traversing
with the decided step of one who remembered the way
well, several dark and dirty streets—much dirtier than
usual, for the best public thoroughfares remained
uncleansed in those times of terror—he stopped at a
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chemist’s shop, which the owner was closing with his own
hands. A small, dim, crooked shop, kept in a tortuous, uphill
thoroughfare, by a small, dim, crooked man.
Giving this citizen, too, good night, as he confronted
him at his counter, he laid the scrap of paper before him.
‘Whew!’ the chemist whistled softly, as he read it. ‘Hi! hi!
hi!’
Sydney Carton took no heed, and the chemist said:
‘For you, citizen?’
‘For me.’
‘You will be careful to keep them separate, citizen?
You know the consequences of mixing them?’
‘Perfectly.’
Certain small packets were made and given to him. He
put them, one by one, in the breast of his inner coat,
counted out the money for them, and deliberately left the
shop. ‘There is nothing more to do,’ said he, glancing
upward at the moon, ‘until to-morrow. I can’t sleep.’
It was not a reckless manner, the manner in which he
said these words aloud under the fast-sailing clouds, nor
was it more expressive of negligence than defiance. It was
the settled manner of a tired man, who had wandered and
struggled and got lost, but who at length struck into his
road and saw its end.
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Long ago, when he had been famous among his earliest
competitors as a youth of great promise, he had followed
his father to the grave. His mother had died, years before.
These solemn words, which had been read at his father’s
grave, arose in his mind as he went down the dark streets,
among the heavy shadows, with the moon and the clouds
sailing on high above him. ‘I am the resurrection and the
life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he
were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and
believeth in me, shall never die.’
In a city dominated by the axe, alone at night, with
natural sorrow rising in him for the sixty-three who had
been that day put to death, and for to-morrow’s victims
then awaiting their doom in the prisons, and still of tomorrow’s
and to-morrow’s, the chain of association that
brought the words home, like a rusty old ship’s anchor
from the deep, might have been easily found. He did not
seek it, but repeated them and went on.
With a solemn interest in the lighted windows where
the people were going to rest, forgetful through a few
calm hours of the horrors surrounding them; in the towers
of the churches, where no prayers were said, for the
popular revulsion had even travelled that length of selfdestruction
from years of priestly impostors, plunderers,
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and profligates; in the distant burial-places, reserved, as
they wrote upon the gates, for Eternal Sleep; in the
abounding gaols; and in the streets along which the sixties
rolled to a death which had become so common and
material, that no sorrowful story of a haunting Spirit ever
arose among the people out of all the working of the
Guillotine; with a solemn interest in the whole life and
death of the city settling down to its short nightly pause in
fury; Sydney Carton crossed the Seine again for the lighter
streets.
Few coaches were abroad, for riders in coaches were
liable to be suspected, and gentility hid its head in red
nightcaps, and put on heavy shoes, and trudged. But, the
theatres were all well filled, and the people poured
cheerfully out as he passed, and went chatting home. At
one of the theatre doors, there was a little girl with a
mother, looking for a way across the street through the
mud. He carried the child over, and before, the timid arm
was loosed from his neck asked her for a kiss.
‘I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he
that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he
live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never
die.’
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Now, that the streets were quiet, and the night wore
on, the words were in the echoes of his feet, and were in
the air. Perfectly calm and steady, he sometimes repeated
them to himself as he walked; but, he heard them always.
The night wore out, and, as he stood upon the bridge
listening to the water as it splashed the river-walls of the
Island of Paris, where the picturesque confusion of houses
and cathedral shone bright in the light of the moon, the
day came coldly, looking like a dead face out of the sky.
Then, the night, with the moon and the stars, turned pale
and died, and for a little while it seemed as if Creation
were delivered over to Death’s dominion.
But, the glorious sun, rising, seemed to strike those
words, that burden of the night, straight and warm to his
heart in its long bright rays. And looking along them, with
reverently shaded eyes, a bridge of light appeared to span
the air between him and the sun, while the river sparkled
under it.
The strong tide, so swift, so deep, and certain, was like
a congenial friend, in the morning stillness. He walked by
the stream, far from the houses, and in the light and
warmth of the sun fell asleep on the bank. When he
awoke and was afoot again, he lingered there yet a little
longer, watching an eddy that turned and turned
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purposeless, until the stream absorbed it, and carried it on
to the sea.—‘Like me.’
A trading-boat, with a sail of the softened colour of a
dead leaf, then glided into his view, floated by him, and
died away. As its silent track in the water disappeared, the
prayer that had broken up out of his heart for a merciful
consideration of all his poor blindnesses and errors, ended
in the words, ‘I am the resurrection and the life.’
Mr. Lorry was already out when he got back, and it
was easy to surmise where the good old man was gone.
Sydney Carton drank nothing but a little coffee, ate some
bread, and, having washed and changed to refresh himself,
went out to the place of trial.
The court was all astir and a-buzz, when the black
sheep—whom many fell away from in dread—pressed him
into an obscure corner among the crowd. Mr. Lorry was
there, and Doctor Manette was there. She was there,
sitting beside her father.
When her husband was brought in, she turned a look
upon him, so sustaining, so encouraging, so full of
admiring love and pitying tenderness, yet so courageous
for his sake, that it called the healthy blood into his face,
brightened his glance, and animated his heart. If there had
been any eyes to notice the influence of her look, on
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Sydney Carton, it would have been seen to be the same
influence exactly.
Before that unjust Tribunal, there was little or no order
of procedure, ensuring to any accused person any
reasonable hearing. There could have been no such
Revolution, if all laws, forms, and ceremonies, had not
first been so monstrously abused, that the suicidal
vengeance of the Revolution was to scatter them all to the
winds.
Every eye was turned to the jury. The same determined
patriots and good republicans as yesterday and the day
before, and to-morrow and the day after. Eager and
prominent among them, one man with a craving face, and
his fingers perpetually hovering about his lips, whose
appearance gave great satisfaction to the spectators. A lifethirsting,
cannibal-looking, bloody-minded juryman, the
Jacques Three of St. Antoine. The whole jury, as a jury of
dogs empannelled to try the deer.
Every eye then turned to the five judges and the public
prosecutor. No favourable leaning in that quarter to-day.
A fell, uncompromising, murderous business-meaning
there. Every eye then sought some other eye in the
crowd, and gleamed at it approvingly; and heads nodded
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at one another, before bending forward with a strained
attention.
Charles Evremonde, called Darnay. Released yesterday.
Reaccused and retaken yesterday. Indictment delivered to
him last night. Suspected and Denounced enemy of the
Republic, Aristocrat, one of a family of tyrants, one of a
race proscribed, for that they had used their abolished
privileges to the infamous oppression of the people.
Charles Evremonde, called Darnay, in right of such
proscription, absolutely Dead in Law.
To this effect, in as few or fewer words, the Public
Prosecutor.
The President asked, was the Accused openly
denounced or secretly?
‘Openly, President.’
‘By whom?’
‘Three voices. Ernest Defarge, wine-vendor of St.
Antoine.’
‘Good.’
‘Therese Defarge, his wife.’
‘Good.’
‘Alexandre Manette, physician.’
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A great uproar took place in the court, and in the midst
of it, Doctor Manette was seen, pale and trembling,
standing where he had been seated.
‘President, I indignantly protest to you that this is a
forgery and a fraud. You know the accused to be the
husband of my daughter. My daughter, and those dear to
her, are far dearer to me than my life. Who and where is
the false conspirator who says that I denounce the husband
of my child!’
‘Citizen Manette, be tranquil. To fail in submission to
the authority of the Tribunal would be to put yourself out
of Law. As to what is dearer to you than life, nothing can
be so dear to a good citizen as the Republic.’
Loud acclamations hailed this rebuke. The President
rang his bell, and with warmth resumed.
‘If the Republic should demand of you the sacrifice of
your child herself, you would have no duty but to sacrifice
her. Listen to what is to follow. In the meanwhile, be
silent!’
Frantic acclamations were again raised. Doctor Manette
sat down, with his eyes looking around, and his lips
trembling; his daughter drew closer to him. The craving
man on the jury rubbed his hands together, and restored
the usual hand to his mouth.
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Defarge was produced, when the court was quiet
enough to admit of his being heard, and rapidly
expounded the story of the imprisonment, and of his
having been a mere boy in the Doctor’s service, and of the
release, and of the state of the prisoner when released and
delivered to him. This short examination followed, for the
court was quick with its work.
‘You did good service at the taking of the Bastille,
citizen?’
‘I believe so.’
Here, an excited woman screeched from the crowd:
‘You were one of the best patriots there. Why not say so?
You were a cannoneer that day there, and you were
among the first to enter the accursed fortress when it fell.
Patriots, I speak the truth!’
It was The Vengeance who, amidst the warm
commendations of the audience, thus assisted the
proceedings. The President rang his bell; but, The
Vengeance, warming with encouragement, shrieked, ‘I
defy that bell!’ wherein she was likewise much
commended.
‘Inform the Tribunal of what you did that day within
the Bastille, citizen.’
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‘I knew,’ said Defarge, looking down at his wife, who
stood at the bottom of the steps on which he was raised,
looking steadily up at him; ‘I knew that this prisoner, of
whom I speak, had been confined in a cell known as One
Hundred and Five, North Tower. I knew it from himself.
He knew himself by no other name than One Hundred
and Five, North Tower, when he made shoes under my
care. As I serve my gun that day, I resolve, when the place
shall fall, to examine that cell. It falls. I mount to the cell,
with a fellow-citizen who is one of the Jury, directed by a
gaoler. I examine it, very closely. In a hole in the
chimney, where a stone has been worked out and
replaced, I find a written paper. This is that written paper.
I have made it my business to examine some specimens of
the writing of Doctor Manette. This is the writing of
Doctor Manette. I confide this paper, in the writing of
Doctor Manette, to the hands of the President.’
‘Let it be read.’
In a dead silence and stillness—the prisoner under trial
looking lovingly at his wife, his wife only looking from
him to look with solicitude at her father, Doctor Manette
keeping his eyes fixed on the reader, Madame Defarge
never taking hers from the prisoner, Defarge never taking
his from his feasting wife, and all the other eyes there
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intent upon the Doctor, who saw none of them—the
paper was read, as follows.
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X
The Substance of the Shadow
‘I, Alexandre Manette, unfortunate physician, native of
Beauvais, and afterwards resident in Paris, write this
melancholy paper in my doleful cell in the Bastille, during
the last month of the year, 1767. I write it at stolen
intervals, under every difficulty. I design to secrete it in
the wall of the chimney, where I have slowly and
laboriously made a place of concealment for it. Some
pitying hand may find it there, when I and my sorrows are
dust.
‘These words are formed by the rusty iron point with
which I write with difficulty in scrapings of soot and
charcoal from the chimney, mixed with blood, in the last
month of the tenth year of my captivity. Hope has quite
departed from my breast. I know from terrible warnings I
have noted in myself that my reason will not long remain
unimpaired, but I solemnly declare that I am at this time
in the possession of my right mind—that my memory is
exact and circumstantial—and that I write the truth as I
shall answer for these my last recorded words, whether
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they be ever read by men or not, at the Eternal Judgmentseat.
‘One cloudy moonlight night, in the third week of
December (I think the twenty-second of the month) in
the year 1757, I was walking on a retired part of the quay
by the Seine for the refreshment of the frosty air, at an
hour’s distance from my place of residence in the Street of
the School of Medicine, when a carriage came along
behind me, driven very fast. As I stood aside to let that
carriage pass, apprehensive that it might otherwise run me
down, a head was put out at the window, and a voice
called to the driver to stop.
‘The carriage stopped as soon as the driver could rein in
his horses, and the same voice called to me by my name. I
answered. The carriage was then so far in advance of me
that two gentlemen had time to open the door and alight
before I came up with it.
I observed that they were both wrapped in cloaks, and
appeared to conceal themselves. As they stood side by side
near the carriage door, I also observed that they both
looked of about my own age, or rather younger, and that
they were greatly alike, in stature, manner, voice, and (as
far as I could see) face too.
‘‘You are Doctor Manette?’ said one.
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‘I am.’
‘‘Doctor Manette, formerly of Beauvais,’ said the other;
‘the young physician, originally an expert surgeon, who
within the last year or two has made a rising reputation in
Paris?’
‘‘Gentlemen,’ I returned, ‘I am that Doctor Manette of
whom you speak so graciously.’
‘‘We have been to your residence,’ said the first, ‘and
not being so fortunate as to find you there, and being
informed that you were probably walking in this direction,
we followed, in the hope of overtaking you. Will you
please to enter the carriage?’
‘The manner of both was imperious, and they both
moved, as these words were spoken, so as to place me
between themselves and the carriage door. They were
armed. I was not.
‘‘Gentlemen,’ said I, ‘pardon me; but I usually inquire
who does me the honour to seek my assistance, and what
is the nature of the case to which I am summoned.’
‘The reply to this was made by him who had spoken
second. ‘Doctor, your clients are people of condition. As
to the nature of the case, our confidence in your skill
assures us that you will ascertain it for yourself better than
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we can describe it. Enough. Will you please to enter the
carriage?’
‘I could do nothing but comply, and I entered it in
silence. They both entered after me—the last springing in,
after putting up the steps. The carriage turned about, and
drove on at its former speed.
‘I repeat this conversation exactly as it occurred. I have
no doubt that it is, word for word, the same. I describe
everything exactly as it took place, constraining my mind
not to wander from the task. Where I make the broken
marks that follow here, I leave off for the time, and put
my paper in its hiding-place.
* * * *
‘The carriage left the streets behind, passed the North
Barrier, and emerged upon the country road. At twothirds
of a league from the Barrier—I did not estimate the
distance at that time, but afterwards when I traversed it—it
struck out of the main avenue, and presently stopped at a
solitary house, We all three alighted, and walked, by a
damp soft footpath in a garden where a neglected fountain
had overflowed, to the door of the house. It was not
opened immediately, in answer to the ringing of the bell,
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and one of my two conductors struck the man who
opened it, with his heavy riding glove, across the face.
‘There was nothing in this action to attract my
particular attention, for I had seen common people struck
more commonly than dogs. But, the other of the two,
being angry likewise, struck the man in like manner with
his arm; the look and bearing of the brothers were then so
exactly alike, that I then first perceived them to be twin
brothers.
‘From the time of our alighting at the outer gate
(which we found locked, and which one of the brothers
had opened to admit us, and had relocked), I had heard
cries proceeding from an upper chamber. I was conducted
to this chamber straight, the cries growing louder as we
ascended the stairs, and I found a patient in a high fever of
the brain, lying on a bed.
‘The patient was a woman of great beauty, and young;
assuredly not much past twenty. Her hair was torn and
ragged, and her arms were bound to her sides with sashes
and handkerchiefs. I noticed that these bonds were all
portions of a gentleman’s dress. On one of them, which
was a fringed scarf for a dress of ceremony, I saw the
armorial bearings of a Noble, and the letter E.
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‘I saw this, within the first minute of my contemplation
of the patient; for, in her restless strivings she had turned
over on her face on the edge of the bed, had drawn the
end of the scarf into her mouth, and was in danger of
suffocation. My first act was to put out my hand to relieve
her breathing; and in moving the scarf aside, the
embroidery in the corner caught my sight.
‘I turned her gently over, placed my hands upon her
breast to calm her and keep her down, and looked into
her face. Her eyes were dilated and wild, and she
constantly uttered piercing shrieks, and repeated the
words, ‘My husband, my father, and my brother!’ and
then counted up to twelve, and said, ‘Hush!’ For an
instant, and no more, she would pause to listen, and then
the piercing shrieks would begin again, and she would
repeat the cry, ‘My husband, my father, and my brother!’
and would count up to twelve, and say, ‘Hush!’ There was
no variation in the order, or the manner. There was no
cessation, but the regular moment’s pause, in the utterance
of these sounds.
‘‘How long,’ I asked, ‘has this lasted?’
‘To distinguish the brothers, I will call them the elder
and the younger; by the elder, I mean him who exercised
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the most authority. It was the elder who replied, ‘Since
about this hour last night.’
‘‘She has a husband, a father, and a brother?’
‘‘A brother.’
‘‘I do not address her brother?’
‘He answered with great contempt, ‘No.’
‘‘She has some recent association with the number
twelve?’
‘The younger brother impatiently rejoined, ‘With
twelve o’clock?’
‘‘See, gentlemen,’ said I, still keeping my hands upon
her breast, ‘how useless I am, as you have brought me! If I
had known what I was coming to see, I could have come
provided. As it is, time must be lost. There are no
medicines to be obtained in this lonely place.’
‘The elder brother looked to the younger, who said
haughtily, ‘There is a case of medicines here;’ and brought
it from a closet, and put it on the table.
* * * *
‘I opened some of the bottles, smelt them, and put the
stoppers to my lips. If I had wanted to use anything save
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narcotic medicines that were poisons in themselves, I
would not have administered any of those.
‘‘Do you doubt them?’ asked the younger brother.
‘‘You see, monsieur, I am going to use them,’ I replied,
and said no more.
‘I made the patient swallow, with great difficulty, and
after many efforts, the dose that I desired to give. As I
intended to repeat it after a while, and as it was necessary
to watch its influence, I then sat down by the side of the
bed. There was a timid and suppressed woman in
attendance (wife of the man down-stairs), who had
retreated into a corner. The house was damp and decayed,
indifferently furnished—evidently, recently occupied and
temporarily used. Some thick old hangings had been
nailed up before the windows, to deaden the sound of the
shrieks. They continued to be uttered in their regular
succession, with the cry, ‘My husband, my father, and my
brother!’ the counting up to twelve, and ‘Hush!’ The
frenzy was so violent, that I had not unfastened the
bandages restraining the arms; but, I had looked to them,
to see that they were not painful. The only spark of
encouragement in the case, was, that my hand upon the
sufferer’s breast had this much soothing influence, that for
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minutes at a time it tranquillised the figure. It had no
effect upon the cries; no pendulum could be more regular.
‘For the reason that my hand had this effect (I assume),
I had sat by the side of the bed for half an hour, with the
two brothers looking on, before the elder said:
‘‘There is another patient.’
‘I was startled, and asked, ‘Is it a pressing case?’
‘‘You had better see,’ he carelessly answered; and took
up a light.
* * * *
‘The other patient lay in a back room across a second
staircase, which was a species of loft over a stable. There
was a low plastered ceiling to a part of it; the rest was
open, to the ridge of the tiled roof, and there were beams
across. Hay and straw were stored in that portion of the
place, fagots for firing, and a heap of apples in sand. I had
to pass through that part, to get at the other. My memory
is circumstantial and unshaken. I try it with these details,
and I see them all, in this my cell in the Bastille, near the
close of the tenth year of my captivity, as I saw them all
that night.
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‘On some hay on the ground, with a cushion thrown
under his head, lay a handsome peasant boy—a boy of not
more than seventeen at the most. He lay on his back, with
his teeth set, his right hand clenched on his breast, and his
glaring eyes looking straight upward. I could not see
where his wound was, as I kneeled on one knee over him;
but, I could see that he was dying of a wound from a sharp
point.
‘‘I am a doctor, my poor fellow,’ said I. ‘Let me
examine it.’
‘‘I do not want it examined,’ he answered; ‘let it be.’
‘It was under his hand, and I soothed him to let me
move his hand away. The wound was a sword-thrust,
received from twenty to twenty- four hours before, but
no skill could have saved him if it had been looked to
without delay. He was then dying fast. As I turned my
eyes to the elder brother, I saw him looking down at this
handsome boy whose life was ebbing out, as if he were a
wounded bird, or hare, or rabbit; not at all as if he were a
fellow-creature.
‘‘How has this been done, monsieur?’ said I.
‘‘A crazed young common dog! A serf! Forced my
brother to draw upon him, and has fallen by my brother’s
sword—like a gentleman.’
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‘There was no touch of pity, sorrow, or kindred
humanity, in this answer. The speaker seemed to
acknowledge that it was inconvenient to have that
different order of creature dying there, and that it would
have been better if he had died in the usual obscure
routine of his vermin kind. He was quite incapable of any
compassionate feeling about the boy, or about his fate.
‘The boy’s eyes had slowly moved to him as he had
spoken, and they now slowly moved to me.
‘‘Doctor, they are very proud, these Nobles; but we
common dogs are proud too, sometimes. They plunder us,
outrage us, beat us, kill us; but we have a little pride left,
sometimes. She—have you seen her, Doctor?’
‘The shrieks and the cries were audible there, though
subdued by the distance. He referred to them, as if she
were lying in our presence.
‘I said, ‘I have seen her.’
‘‘She is my sister, Doctor. They have had their
shameful rights, these Nobles, in the modesty and virtue of
our sisters, many years, but we have had good girls among
us. I know it, and have heard my father say so. She was a
good girl. She was betrothed to a good young man, too: a
tenant of his. We were all tenants of his—that man’s who
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stands there. The other is his brother, the worst of a bad
race.’
‘It was with the greatest difficulty that the boy gathered
bodily force to speak; but, his spirit spoke with a dreadful
emphasis.
‘‘We were so robbed by that man who stands there, as
all we common dogs are by those superior Beings—taxed
by him without mercy, obliged to work for him without
pay, obliged to grind our corn at his mill, obliged to feed
scores of his tame birds on our wretched crops, and
forbidden for our lives to keep a single tame bird of our
own, pillaged and plundered to that degree that when we
chanced to have a bit of meat, we ate it in fear, with the
door barred and the shutters closed, that his people should
not see it and take it from us—I say, we were so robbed,
and hunted, and were made so poor, that our father told
us it was a dreadful thing to bring a child into the world,
and that what we should most pray for, was, that our
women might be barren and our miserable race die out!’
‘I had never before seen the sense of being oppressed,
bursting forth like a fire. I had supposed that it must be
latent in the people somewhere; but, I had never seen it
break out, until I saw it in the dying boy.
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‘‘Nevertheless, Doctor, my sister married. He was ailing
at that time, poor fellow, and she married her lover, that
she might tend and comfort him in our cottage—our doghut,
as that man would call it. She had not been married
many weeks, when that man’s brother saw her and
admired her, and asked that man to lend her to him—for
what are husbands among us! He was willing enough, but
my sister was good and virtuous, and hated his brother
with a hatred as strong as mine. What did the two then, to
persuade her husband to use his influence with her, to
make her willing?’
‘The boy’s eyes, which had been fixed on mine, slowly
turned to the looker-on, and I saw in the two faces that all
he said was true. The two opposing kinds of pride
confronting one another, I can see, even in this Bastille;
the gentleman’s, all negligent indifference; the peasants, all
trodden-down sentiment, and passionate revenge.
‘‘You know, Doctor, that it is among the Rights of
these Nobles to harness us common dogs to carts, and
drive us. They so harnessed him and drove him. You
know that it is among their Rights to keep us in their
grounds all night, quieting the frogs, in order that their
noble sleep may not be disturbed. They kept him out in
the unwholesome mists at night, and ordered him back
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into his harness in the day. But he was not persuaded. No!
Taken out of harness one day at noon, to feed—if he
could find food—he sobbed twelve times, once for every
stroke of the bell, and died on her bosom.’
‘Nothing human could have held life in the boy but his
determination to tell all his wrong. He forced back the
gathering shadows of death, as he forced his clenched right
hand to remain clenched, and to cover his wound.
‘‘Then, with that man’s permission and even with his
aid, his brother took her away; in spite of what I know she
must have told his brother—and what that is, will not be
long unknown to you, Doctor, if it is now—his brother
took her away—for his pleasure and diversion, for a little
while. I saw her pass me on the road. When I took the
tidings home, our father’s heart burst; he never spoke one
of the words that filled it. I took my young sister (for I
have another) to a place beyond the reach of this man, and
where, at least, she will never be HIS vassal. Then, I
tracked the brother here, and last night climbed in—a
common dog, but sword in hand.—Where is the loft
window? It was somewhere here?’
‘The room was darkening to his sight; the world was
narrowing around him. I glanced about me, and saw that
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the hay and straw were trampled over the floor, as if there
had been a struggle.
‘‘She heard me, and ran in. I told her not to come near
us till he was dead. He came in and first tossed me some
pieces of money; then struck at me with a whip. But I,
though a common dog, so struck at him as to make him
draw. Let him break into as many pieces as he will, the
sword that he stained with my common blood; he drew to
defend himself—thrust at me with all his skill for his life.’
‘My glance had fallen, but a few moments before, on
the fragments of a broken sword, lying among the hay.
That weapon was a gentleman’s. In another place, lay an
old sword that seemed to have been a soldier’s.
‘‘Now, lift me up, Doctor; lift me up. Where is he?’
‘‘He is not here,’ I said, supporting the boy, and
thinking that he referred to the brother.
‘‘He! Proud as these nobles are, he is afraid to see me.
Where is the man who was here? turn my face to him.’
‘I did so, raising the boy’s head against my knee. But,
invested for the moment with extraordinary power, he
raised himself completely: obliging me to rise too, or I
could not have still supported him.
‘‘Marquis,’ said the boy, turned to him with his eyes
opened wide, and his right hand raised, ‘in the days when
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all these things are to be answered for, I summon you and
yours, to the last of your bad race, to answer for them. I
mark this cross of blood upon you, as a sign that I do it. In
the days when all these things are to be answered for, I
summon your brother, the worst of the bad race, to
answer for them separately. I mark this cross of blood
upon him, as a sign that I do it.’
‘Twice, he put his hand to the wound in his breast, and
with his forefinger drew a cross in the air. He stood for an
instant with the finger yet raised, and as it dropped, he
dropped with it, and I laid him down dead.
* * * *
‘When I returned to the bedside of the young woman,
I found her raving in precisely the same order of
continuity. I knew that this might last for many hours, and
that it would probably end in the silence of the grave.
‘I repeated the medicines I had given her, and I sat at
the side of the bed until the night was far advanced. She
never abated the piercing quality of her shrieks, never
stumbled in the distinctness or the order of her words.
They were always ‘My husband, my father, and my
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brother! One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight,
nine, ten, eleven, twelve. Hush!’
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