‘At that time—I may ask, at what time, sir?’
‘I speak, miss, of twenty years ago. He married—an
English lady—and I was one of the trustees. His affairs,
like the affairs of many other French gentlemen and
French families, were entirely in Tellson’s hands. In a
similar way I am, or I have been, trustee of one kind or
other for scores of our customers. These are mere business
relations, miss; there is no friendship in them, no particular
interest, nothing like sentiment. I have passed from one to
another, in the course of my business life, just as I pass
from one of our customers to another in the course of my
business day; in short, I have no feelings; I am a mere
machine. To go on—‘
A Tale of Two Cities
38 of 670
‘But this is my father’s story, sir; and I begin to think’
—the curiously roughened forehead was very intent upon
him—‘that when I was left an orphan through my
mother’s surviving my father only two years, it was you
who brought me to England. I am almost sure it was you.’
Mr. Lorry took the hesitating little hand that
confidingly advanced to take his, and he put it with some
ceremony to his lips. He then conducted the young lady
straightway to her chair again, and, holding the chair-back
with his left hand, and using his right by turns to rub his
chin, pull his wig at the ears, or point what he said, stood
looking down into her face while she sat looking up into
his.
‘Miss Manette, it WAS I. And you will see how truly I
spoke of myself just now, in saying I had no feelings, and
that all the relations I hold with my fellow-creatures are
mere business relations, when you reflect that I have never
seen you since. No; you have been the ward of Tellson’s
House since, and I have been busy with the other business
of Tellson’s House since. Feelings! I have no time for
them, no chance of them. I pass my whole life, miss, in
turning an immense pecuniary Mangle.’
After this odd description of his daily routine of
employment, Mr. Lorry flattened his flaxen wig upon his
A Tale of Two Cities
39 of 670
head with both hands (which was most unnecessary, for
nothing could be flatter than its shining surface was
before), and resumed his former attitude.
‘So far, miss (as you have remarked), this is the story of
your regretted father. Now comes the difference. If your
father had not died when he did—Don’t be frightened!
How you start!’
She did, indeed, start. And she caught his wrist with
both her hands.
‘Pray,’ said Mr. Lorry, in a soothing tone, bringing his
left hand from the back of the chair to lay it on the
supplicatory fingers that clasped him in so violent a
tremble: ‘pray control your agitation— a matter of
business. As I was saying—‘
Her look so discomposed him that he stopped,
wandered, and began anew:
‘As I was saying; if Monsieur Manette had not died; if
he had suddenly and silently disappeared; if he had been
spirited away; if it had not been difficult to guess to what
dreadful place, though no art could trace him; if he had an
enemy in some compatriot who could exercise a privilege
that I in my own time have known the boldest people
afraid to speak of in a whisper, across the water there; for
instance, the privilege of filling up blank forms for the
eBook brought to you by
Create, view, and edit PDF. Download the free trial version.
A Tale of Two Cities
40 of 670
consignment of any one to the oblivion of a prison for any
length of time; if his wife had implored the king, the
queen, the court, the clergy, for any tidings of him, and all
quite in vain;—then the history of your father would have
been the history of this unfortunate gentleman, the Doctor
of Beauvais.’
‘I entreat you to tell me more, sir.’
‘I will. I am going to. You can bear it?’
‘I can bear anything but the uncertainty you leave me
in at this moment.’
‘You speak collectedly, and you—ARE collected.
That’s good!’ (Though his manner was less satisfied than
his words.) ‘A matter of business. Regard it as a matter of
business-business that must be done. Now if this doctor’s
wife, though a lady of great courage and spirit, had
suffered so intensely from this cause before her little child
was born—‘
‘The little child was a daughter, sir.’
‘A daughter. A-a-matter of business—don’t be
distressed. Miss, if the poor lady had suffered so intensely
before her little child was born, that she came to the
determination of sparing the poor child the inheritance of
any part of the agony she had known the pains of, by
rearing her in the belief that her father was dead— No,
A Tale of Two Cities
41 of 670
don’t kneel! In Heaven’s name why should you kneel to
me!’
‘For the truth. O dear, good, compassionate sir, for the
truth!’
‘A-a matter of business. You confuse me, and how can
I transact business if I am confused? Let us be clearheaded.
If you could kindly mention now, for instance,
what nine times ninepence are, or how many shillings in
twenty guineas, it would be so encouraging. I should be so
much more at my ease about your state of mind.’
Without directly answering to this appeal, she sat so still
when he had very gently raised her, and the hands that
had not ceased to clasp his wrists were so much more
steady than they had been, that she communicated some
reassurance to Mr. Jarvis Lorry.
‘That’s right, that’s right. Courage! Business! You have
business before you; useful business. Miss Manette, your
mother took this course with you. And when she died—I
believe broken-hearted— having never slackened her
unavailing search for your father, she left you, at two years
old, to grow to be blooming, beautiful, and happy,
without the dark cloud upon you of living in uncertainty
whether your father soon wore his heart out in prison, or
wasted there through many lingering years.’
A Tale of Two Cities
42 of 670
As he said the words he looked down, with an
admiring pity, on the flowing golden hair; as if he pictured
to himself that it might have been already tinged with
grey.
‘You know that your parents had no great possession,
and that what they had was secured to your mother and to
you. There has been no new discovery, of money, or of
any other property; but—‘
He felt his wrist held closer, and he stopped. The
expression in the forehead, which had so particularly
attracted his notice, and which was now immovable, had
deepened into one of pain and horror.
‘But he has been—been found. He is alive. Greatly
changed, it is too probable; almost a wreck, it is possible;
though we will hope the best. Still, alive. Your father has
been taken to the house of an old servant in Paris, and we
are going there: I, to identify him if I can: you, to restore
him to life, love, duty, rest, comfort.’
A shiver ran through her frame, and from it through
his. She said, in a low, distinct, awe-stricken voice, as if
she were saying it in a dream,
‘I am going to see his Ghost! It will be his Ghost—not
him!’
A Tale of Two Cities
43 of 670
Mr. Lorry quietly chafed the hands that held his arm.
‘There, there, there! See now, see now! The best and the
worst are known to you, now. You are well on your way
to the poor wronged gentleman, and, with a fair sea
voyage, and a fair land journey, you will be soon at his
dear side.’
She repeated in the same tone, sunk to a whisper, ‘I
have been free, I have been happy, yet his Ghost has never
haunted me!’
‘Only one thing more,’ said Mr. Lorry, laying stress
upon it as a wholesome means of enforcing her attention:
‘he has been found under another name; his own, long
forgotten or long concealed. It would be worse than
useless now to inquire which; worse than useless to seek to
know whether he has been for years overlooked, or always
designedly held prisoner. It would be worse than useless
now to make any inquiries, because it would be
dangerous. Better not to mention the subject, anywhere or
in any way, and to remove him—for a while at all
events— out of France. Even I, safe as an Englishman, and
even Tellson’s, important as they are to French credit,
avoid all naming of the matter. I carry about me, not a
scrap of writing openly referring to it. This is a secret
service altogether. My credentials, entries, and
A Tale of Two Cities
44 of 670
memoranda, are all comprehended in the one line,
‘Recalled to Life;’ which may mean anything. But what is
the matter! She doesn’t notice a word! Miss Manette!’
Perfectly still and silent, and not even fallen back in her
chair, she sat under his hand, utterly insensible; with her
eyes open and fixed upon him, and with that last
expression looking as if it were carved or branded into her
forehead. So close was her hold upon his arm, that he
feared to detach himself lest he should hurt her; therefore
he called out loudly for assistance without moving.
A wild-looking woman, whom even in his agitation,
Mr. Lorry observed to be all of a red colour, and to have
red hair, and to be dressed in some extraordinary tightfitting
fashion, and to have on her head a most wonderful
bonnet like a Grenadier wooden measure, and good
measure too, or a great Stilton cheese, came running into
the room in advance of the inn servants, and soon settled
the question of his detachment from the poor young lady,
by laying a brawny hand upon his chest, and sending him
flying back against the nearest wall.
("I really think this must be a man!’ was Mr. Lorry’s
breathless reflection, simultaneously with his coming
against the wall.)
A Tale of Two Cities
45 of 670
‘Why, look at you all!’ bawled this figure, addressing
the inn servants. ‘Why don’t you go and fetch things,
instead of standing there staring at me? I am not so much
to look at, am I? Why don’t you go and fetch things? I’ll
let you know, if you don’t bring smelling-salts, cold water,
and vinegar, quick, I will.’
There was an immediate dispersal for these restoratives,
and she softly laid the patient on a sofa, and tended her
with great skill and gentleness: calling her ‘my precious!’
and ‘my bird!’ and spreading her golden hair aside over
her shoulders with great pride and care.
‘And you in brown!’ she said, indignantly turning to
Mr. Lorry; couldn’t you tell her what you had to tell her,
without frightening her to death? Look at her, with her
pretty pale face and her cold hands. Do you call THAT
being a Banker?’
Mr. Lorry was so exceedingly disconcerted by a
question so hard to answer, that he could only look on, at
a distance, with much feebler sympathy and humility,
while the strong woman, having banished the inn servants
under the mysterious penalty of ‘letting them know’
something not mentioned if they stayed there, staring,
recovered her charge by a regular series of gradations, and
coaxed her to lay her drooping head upon her shoulder.
A Tale of Two Cities
46 of 670
‘I hope she will do well now,’ said Mr. Lorry.
‘No thanks to you in brown, if she does. My darling
pretty!’
‘I hope,’ said Mr. Lorry, after another pause of feeble
sympathy and humility, ‘that you accompany Miss
Manette to France?’
‘A likely thing, too!’ replied the strong woman. ‘If it
was ever intended that I should go across salt water, do
you suppose Providence would have cast my lot in an
island?’
This being another question hard to answer, Mr. Jarvis
Lorry withdrew to consider it.
A Tale of Two Cities
47 of 670
V
The Wine-shop
A large cask of wine had been dropped and broken, in
the street. The accident had happened in getting it out of a
cart; the cask had tumbled out with a run, the hoops had
burst, and it lay on the stones just outside the door of the
wine-shop, shattered like a walnut-shell.
All the people within reach had suspended their
business, or their idleness, to run to the spot and drink the
wine. The rough, irregular stones of the street, pointing
every way, and designed, one might have thought,
expressly to lame all living creatures that approached them,
had dammed it into little pools; these were surrounded,
each by its own jostling group or crowd, according to its
size. Some men kneeled down, made scoops of their two
hands joined, and sipped, or tried to help women, who
bent over their shoulders, to sip, before the wine had all
run out between their fingers. Others, men and women,
dipped in the puddles with little mugs of mutilated
earthenware, or even with handkerchiefs from women’s
heads, which were squeezed dry into infants’ mouths;
others made small mud- embankments, to stem the wine
A Tale of Two Cities
48 of 670
as it ran; others, directed by lookers-on up at high
windows, darted here and there, to cut off little streams of
wine that started away in new directions; others devoted
themselves to the sodden and lee-dyed pieces of the cask,
licking, and even champing the moister wine-rotted
fragments with eager relish. There was no drainage to
carry off the wine, and not only did it all get taken up, but
so much mud got taken up along with it, that there might
have been a scavenger in the street, if anybody acquainted
with it could have believed in such a miraculous presence.
A shrill sound of laughter and of amused voices—voices
of men, women, and children—resounded in the street
while this wine game lasted. There was little roughness in
the sport, and much playfulness. There was a special
companionship in it, an observable inclination on the part
of every one to join some other one, which led, especially
among the luckier or lighter-hearted, to frolicsome
embraces, drinking of healths, shaking of hands, and even
joining of hands and dancing, a dozen together. When the
wine was gone, and the places where it had been most
abundant were raked into a gridiron-pattern by fingers,
these demonstrations ceased, as suddenly as they had
broken out. The man who had left his saw sticking in the
firewood he was cutting, set it in motion again; the
A Tale of Two Cities
49 of 670
women who had left on a door-step the little pot of hot
ashes, at which she had been trying to soften the pain in
her own starved fingers and toes, or in those of her child,
returned to it; men with bare arms, matted locks, and
cadaverous faces, who had emerged into the winter light
from cellars, moved away, to descend again; and a gloom
gathered on the scene that appeared more natural to it
than sunshine.
The wine was red wine, and had stained the ground of
the narrow street in the suburb of Saint Antoine, in Paris,
where it was spilled. It had stained many hands, too, and
many faces, and many naked feet, and many wooden
shoes. The hands of the man who sawed the wood, left
red marks on the billets; and the forehead of the woman
who nursed her baby, was stained with the stain of the old
rag she wound about her head again. Those who had been
greedy with the staves of the cask, had acquired a tigerish
smear about the mouth; and one tall joker so besmirched,
his head more out of a long squalid bag of a nightcap than
in it, scrawled upon a wall with his finger dipped in
muddy wine-lees—BLOOD.
The time was to come, when that wine too would be
spilled on the street-stones, and when the stain of it would
be red upon many there.
A Tale of Two Cities
50 of 670
And now that the cloud settled on Saint Antoine,
which a momentary gleam had driven from his sacred
countenance, the darkness of it was heavy-cold, dirt,
sickness, ignorance, and want, were the lords in waiting
on the saintly presence-nobles of great power all of them;
but, most especially the last. Samples of a people that had
undergone a terrible grinding and regrinding in the mill,
and certainly not in the fabulous mill which ground old
people young, shivered at every corner, passed in and out
at every doorway, looked from every window, fluttered in
every vestige of a garment that the wind shook. The mill
which had worked them down, was the mill that grinds
young people old; the children had ancient faces and grave
voices; and upon them, and upon the grown faces, and
ploughed into every furrow of age and coming up afresh,
was the sigh, Hunger. It was prevalent everywhere.
Hunger was pushed out of the tall houses, in the wretched
clothing that hung upon poles and lines; Hunger was
patched into them with straw and rag and wood and
paper; Hunger was repeated in every fragment of the small
modicum of firewood that the man sawed off; Hunger
stared down from the smokeless chimneys, and started up
from the filthy street that had no offal, among its refuse, of
anything to eat. Hunger was the inscription on the baker’s
A Tale of Two Cities
51 of 670
shelves, written in every small loaf of his scanty stock of
bad bread; at the sausage-shop, in every dead-dog
preparation that was offered for sale. Hunger rattled its dry
bones among the roasting chestnuts in the turned cylinder;
Hunger was shred into atomics in every farthing porringer
of husky chips of potato, fried with some reluctant drops
of oil.
Its abiding place was in all things fitted to it. A narrow
winding street, full of offence and stench, with other
narrow winding streets diverging, all peopled by rags and
nightcaps, and all smelling of rags and nightcaps, and all
visible things with a brooding look upon them that looked
ill. In the hunted air of the people there was yet some
wild-beast thought of the possibility of turning at bay.
Depressed and slinking though they were, eyes of fire
were not wanting among them; nor compressed lips,
white with what they suppressed; nor foreheads knitted
into the likeness of the gallows-rope they mused about
enduring, or inflicting. The trade signs (and they were
almost as many as the shops) were, all, grim illustrations of
Want. The butcher and the porkman painted up, only the
leanest scrags of meat; the baker, the coarsest of meagre
loaves. The people rudely pictured as drinking in the
wine-shops, croaked over their scanty measures of thin
eBook brought to you by
Create, view, and edit PDF. Download the free trial version.
A Tale of Two Cities
52 of 670
wine and beer, and were gloweringly confidential
together. Nothing was represented in a flourishing
condition, save tools and weapons; but, the cutler’s knives
and axes were sharp and bright, the smith’s hammers were
heavy, and the gunmaker’s stock was murderous. The
crippling stones of the pavement, with their many little
reservoirs of mud and water, had no footways, but broke
off abruptly at the doors. The kennel, to make amends,
ran down the middle of the street—when it ran at all:
which was only after heavy rains, and then it ran, by many
eccentric fits, into the houses. Across the streets, at wide
intervals, one clumsy lamp was slung by a rope and pulley;
at night, when the lamplighter had let these down, and
lighted, and hoisted them again, a feeble grove of dim
wicks swung in a sickly manner overhead, as if they were
at sea. Indeed they were at sea, and the ship and crew
were in peril of tempest.
For, the time was to come, when the gaunt scarecrows
of that region should have watched the lamplighter, in
their idleness and hunger, so long, as to conceive the idea
of improving on his method, and hauling up men by those
ropes and pulleys, to flare upon the darkness of their
condition. But, the time was not come yet; and every
wind that blew over France shook the rags of the
A Tale of Two Cities
53 of 670
scarecrows in vain, for the birds, fine of song and feather,
took no warning.
The wine-shop was a corner shop, better than most
others in its appearance and degree, and the master of the
wine-shop had stood outside it, in a yellow waistcoat and
green breeches, looking on at the struggle for the lost
wine. ‘It’s not my affair,’ said he, with a final shrug of the
shoulders. ‘The people from the market did it. Let them
bring another.’
There, his eyes happening to catch the tall joker
writing up his joke, he called to him across the way:
‘Say, then, my Gaspard, what do you do there?’
The fellow pointed to his joke with immense
significance, as is often the way with his tribe. It missed its
mark, and completely failed, as is often the way with his
tribe too.
‘What now? Are you a subject for the mad hospital?’
said the wine-shop keeper, crossing the road, and
obliterating the jest with a handful of mud, picked up for
the purpose, and smeared over it. ‘Why do you write in
the public streets? Is there—tell me thou—is there no
other place to write such words in?’
In his expostulation he dropped his cleaner hand
(perhaps accidentally, perhaps not) upon the joker’s heart.
A Tale of Two Cities
54 of 670
The joker rapped it with his own, took a nimble spring
upward, and came down in a fantastic dancing attitude,
with one of his stained shoes jerked off his foot into his
hand, and held out. A joker of an extremely, not to say
wolfishly practical character, he looked, under those
circumstances.
‘Put it on, put it on,’ said the other. ‘Call wine, wine;
and finish there.’ With that advice, he wiped his soiled
hand upon the joker’s dress, such as it was—quite
deliberately, as having dirtied the hand on his account; and
then recrossed the road and entered the wine-shop.
This wine-shop keeper was a bull-necked, martiallooking
man of thirty, and he should have been of a hot
temperament, for, although it was a bitter day, he wore no
coat, but carried one slung over his shoulder. His shirtsleeves
were rolled up, too, and his brown arms were bare
to the elbows. Neither did he wear anything more on his
head than his own crisply-curling short dark hair. He was
a dark man altogether, with good eyes and a good bold
breadth between them. Good-humoured looking on the
whole, but implacable-looking, too; evidently a man of a
strong resolution and a set purpose; a man not desirable to
be met, rushing down a narrow pass with a gulf on either
side, for nothing would turn the man.
A Tale of Two Cities
55 of 670
Madame Defarge, his wife, sat in the shop behind the
counter as he came in. Madame Defarge was a stout
woman of about his own age, with a watchful eye that
seldom seemed to look at anything, a large hand heavily
ringed, a steady face, strong features, and great composure
of manner. There was a character about Madame Defarge,
from which one might have predicated that she did not
often make mistakes against herself in any of the
reckonings over which she presided. Madame Defarge
being sensitive to cold, was wrapped in fur, and had a
quantity of bright shawl twined about her head, though
not to the concealment of her large earrings. Her knitting
was before her, but she had laid it down to pick her teeth
with a toothpick. Thus engaged, with her right elbow
supported by her left hand, Madame Defarge said nothing
when her lord came in, but coughed just one grain of
cough. This, in combination with the lifting of her darkly
defined eyebrows over her toothpick by the breadth of a
line, suggested to her husband that he would do well to
look round the shop among the customers, for any new
customer who had dropped in while he stepped over the
way.
The wine-shop keeper accordingly rolled his eyes
about, until they rested upon an elderly gentleman and a
A Tale of Two Cities
56 of 670
young lady, who were seated in a corner. Other company
were there: two playing cards, two playing dominoes,
three standing by the counter lengthening out a short
supply of wine. As he passed behind the counter, he took
notice that the elderly gentleman said in a look to the
young lady, ‘This is our man.’
‘What the devil do YOU do in that galley there?’ said
Monsieur Defarge to himself; ‘I don’t know you.’
But, he feigned not to notice the two strangers, and fell
into discourse with the triumvirate of customers who were
drinking at the counter.
‘How goes it, Jacques?’ said one of these three to
Monsieur Defarge. ‘Is all the spilt wine swallowed?’
‘Every drop, Jacques,’ answered Monsieur Defarge.
When this interchange of Christian name was effected,
Madame Defarge, picking her teeth with her toothpick,
coughed another grain of cough, and raised her eyebrows
by the breadth of another line.
‘It is not often,’ said the second of the three, addressing
Monsieur Defarge, ‘that many of these miserable beasts
know the taste of wine, or of anything but black bread and
death. Is it not so, Jacques?’
‘It is so, Jacques,’ Monsieur Defarge returned.
A Tale of Two Cities
57 of 670
At this second interchange of the Christian name,
Madame Defarge, still using her toothpick with profound
composure, coughed another grain of cough, and raised
her eyebrows by the breadth of another line.
The last of the three now said his say, as he put down
his empty drinking vessel and smacked his lips.
‘Ah! So much the worse! A bitter taste it is that such
poor cattle always have in their mouths, and hard lives
they live, Jacques. Am I right, Jacques?’
‘You are right, Jacques,’ was the response of Monsieur
Defarge.
This third interchange of the Christian name was
completed at the moment when Madame Defarge put her
toothpick by, kept her eyebrows up, and slightly rustled in
her seat.
‘Hold then! True!’ muttered her husband.
‘Gentlemen—my wife!’
The three customers pulled off their hats to Madame
Defarge, with three flourishes. She acknowledged their
homage by bending her head, and giving them a quick
look. Then she glanced in a casual manner round the
wine-shop, took up her knitting with great apparent
calmness and repose of spirit, and became absorbed in it.
A Tale of Two Cities
58 of 670
‘Gentlemen,’ said her husband, who had kept his bright
eye observantly upon her, ‘good day. The chamber,
furnished bachelor- fashion, that you wished to see, and
were inquiring for when I stepped out, is on the fifth
floor. The doorway of the staircase gives on the little
courtyard close to the left here,’ pointing with his hand,
‘near to the window of my establishment. But, now that I
remember, one of you has already been there, and can
show the way. Gentlemen, adieu!’
They paid for their wine, and left the place. The eyes
of Monsieur Defarge were studying his wife at her knitting
when the elderly gentleman advanced from his corner, and
begged the favour of a word.
‘Willingly, sir,’ said Monsieur Defarge, and quietly
stepped with him to the door.
Their conference was very short, but very decided.
Almost at the first word, Monsieur Defarge started and
became deeply attentive. It had not lasted a minute, when
he nodded and went out. The gentleman then beckoned
to the young lady, and they, too, went out. Madame
Defarge knitted with nimble fingers and steady eyebrows,
and saw nothing.
Mr. Jarvis Lorry and Miss Manette, emerging from the
wine-shop thus, joined Monsieur Defarge in the doorway
A Tale of Two Cities
59 of 670
to which he had directed his own company just before. It
opened from a stinking little black courtyard, and was the
general public entrance to a great pile of houses, inhabited
by a great number of people. In the gloomy tile- paved
entry to the gloomy tile-paved staircase, Monsieur Defarge
bent down on one knee to the child of his old master, and
put her hand to his lips. It was a gentle action, but not at
all gently done; a very remarkable transformation had
come over him in a few seconds. He had no goodhumour
in his face, nor any openness of aspect left, but
had become a secret, angry, dangerous man.
‘It is very high; it is a little difficult. Better to begin
slowly.’ Thus, Monsieur Defarge, in a stern voice, to Mr.
Lorry, as they began ascending the stairs.
‘Is he alone?’ the latter whispered.
‘Alone! God help him, who should be with him!’ said
the other, in the same low voice.
‘Is he always alone, then?’
‘Yes.’
‘Of his own desire?’
‘Of his own necessity. As he was, when I first saw him
after they found me and demanded to know if I would
take him, and, at my peril be discreet—as he was then, so
he is now.’
A Tale of Two Cities
60 of 670
‘He is greatly changed?’
‘Changed!’
The keeper of the wine-shop stopped to strike the wall
with his hand, and mutter a tremendous curse. No direct
answer could have been half so forcible. Mr. Lorry’s spirits
grew heavier and heavier, as he and his two companions
ascended higher and higher.
Such a staircase, with its accessories, in the older and
more crowded parts of Paris, would be bad enough now;
but, at that time, it was vile indeed to unaccustomed and
unhardened senses. Every little habitation within the great
foul nest of one high building—that is to say, the room or
rooms within every door that opened on the general
staircase—left its own heap of refuse on its own landing,
besides flinging other refuse from its own windows. The
uncontrollable and hopeless mass of decomposition so
engendered, would have polluted the air, even if poverty
and deprivation had not loaded it with their intangible
impurities; the two bad sources combined made it almost
insupportable. Through such an atmosphere, by a steep
dark shaft of dirt and poison, the way lay. Yielding to his
own disturbance of mind, and to his young companion’s
agitation, which became greater every instant, Mr. Jarvis
Lorry twice stopped to rest. Each of these stoppages was
A Tale of Two Cities
61 of 670
made at a doleful grating, by which any languishing good
airs that were left uncorrupted, seemed to escape, and all
spoilt and sickly vapours seemed to crawl in. Through the
rusted bars, tastes, rather than glimpses, were caught of the
jumbled neighbourhood; and nothing within range, nearer
or lower than the summits of the two great towers of
Notre-Dame, had any promise on it of healthy life or
wholesome aspirations.
At last, the top of the staircase was gained, and they
stopped for the third time. There was yet an upper
staircase, of a steeper inclination and of contracted
dimensions, to be ascended, before the garret story was
reached. The keeper of the wine-shop, always going a
little in advance, and always going on the side which Mr.
Lorry took, as though he dreaded to be asked any question
by the young lady, turned himself about here, and,
carefully feeling in the pockets of the coat he carried over
his shoulder, took out a key.
‘The door is locked then, my friend?’ said Mr. Lorry,
surprised.
‘Ay. Yes,’ was the grim reply of Monsieur Defarge.
‘You think it necessary to keep the unfortunate
gentleman so retired?’
A Tale of Two Cities
62 of 670
‘I think it necessary to turn the key.’ Monsieur Defarge
whispered it closer in his ear, and frowned heavily.
‘Why?’
‘Why! Because he has lived so long, locked up, that he
would be frightened-rave-tear himself to pieces-die-come
to I know not what harm—if his door was left open.’
‘Is it possible!’ exclaimed Mr. Lorry.
‘Is it possible!’ repeated Defarge, bitterly. ‘Yes. And a
beautiful world we live in, when it IS possible, and when
many other such things are possible, and not only possible,
but done—done, see you!—under that sky there, every
day. Long live the Devil. Let us go on.’
This dialogue had been held in so very low a whisper,
that not a word of it had reached the young lady’s ears.
But, by this time she trembled under such strong emotion,
and her face expressed such deep anxiety, and, above all,
such dread and terror, that Mr. Lorry felt it incumbent on
him to speak a word or two of reassurance.
‘Courage, dear miss! Courage! Business! The worst will
be over in a moment; it is but passing the room-door, and
the worst is over. Then, all the good you bring to him, all
the relief, all the happiness you bring to him, begin. Let
our good friend here, assist you on that side. That’s well,
friend Defarge. Come, now. Business, business!’
A Tale of Two Cities
63 of 670
They went up slowly and softly. The staircase was
short, and they were soon at the top. There, as it had an
abrupt turn in it, they came all at once in sight of three
men, whose heads were bent down close together at the
side of a door, and who were intently looking into the
room to which the door belonged, through some chinks
or holes in the wall. On hearing footsteps close at hand,
these three turned, and rose, and showed themselves to be
the three of one name who had been drinking in the
wine-shop.
‘I forgot them in the surprise of your visit,’ explained
Monsieur Defarge. ‘Leave us, good boys; we have business
here.’
The three glided by, and went silently down.
There appearing to be no other door on that floor, and
the keeper of the wine-shop going straight to this one
when they were left alone, Mr. Lorry asked him in a
whisper, with a little anger:
‘Do you make a show of Monsieur Manette?’
‘I show him, in the way you have seen, to a chosen
few.’
‘Is that well?’
‘I think it is well.’
‘Who are the few? How do you choose them?’
eBook brought to you by
Create, view, and edit PDF. Download the free trial version.
A Tale of Two Cities
64 of 670
‘I choose them as real men, of my name—Jacques is my
name—to whom the sight is likely to do good. Enough;
you are English; that is another thing. Stay there, if you
please, a little moment.’
With an admonitory gesture to keep them back, he
stooped, and looked in through the crevice in the wall.
Soon raising his head again, he struck twice or thrice upon
the door—evidently with no other object than to make a
noise there. With the same intention, he drew the key
across it, three or four times, before he put it clumsily into
the lock, and turned it as heavily as he could.
The door slowly opened inward under his hand, and he
looked into the room and said something. A faint voice
answered something. Little more than a single syllable
could have been spoken on either side.
He looked back over his shoulder, and beckoned them
to enter. Mr. Lorry got his arm securely round the
daughter’s waist, and held her; for he felt that she was
sinking.
‘A-a-a-business, business!’ he urged, with a moisture
that was not of business shining on his cheek. ‘Come in,
come in!’
‘I am afraid of it,’ she answered, shuddering.
‘Of it? What?’
A Tale of Two Cities
65 of 670
‘I mean of him. Of my father.’
Rendered in a manner desperate, by her state and by
the beckoning of their conductor, he drew over his neck
the arm that shook upon his shoulder, lifted her a little,
and hurried her into the room. He sat her down just
within the door, and held her, clinging to him.
Defarge drew out the key, closed the door, locked it on
the inside, took out the key again, and held it in his hand.
All this he did, methodically, and with as loud and harsh
an accompaniment of noise as he could make. Finally, he
walked across the room with a measured tread to where
the window was. He stopped there, and faced round.
The garret, built to be a depository for firewood and
the like, was dim and dark: for, the window of dormer
shape, was in truth a door in the roof, with a little crane
over it for the hoisting up of stores from the street:
unglazed, and closing up the middle in two pieces, like
any other door of French construction. To exclude the
cold, one half of this door was fast closed, and the other
was opened but a very little way. Such a scanty portion of
light was admitted through these means, that it was
difficult, on first coming in, to see anything; and long
habit alone could have slowly formed in any one, the
ability to do any work requiring nicety in such obscurity.
A Tale of Two Cities
66 of 670
Yet, work of that kind was being done in the garret; for,
with his back towards the door, and his face towards the
window where the keeper of the wine-shop stood looking
at him, a white-haired man sat on a low bench, stooping
forward and very busy, making shoes.
A Tale of Two Cities
67 of 670
VI
The Shoemaker
‘Good day!’ said Monsieur Defarge, looking down at
the white head that bent low over the shoemaking.
It was raised for a moment, and a very faint voice
responded to the salutation, as if it were at a distance:
‘Good day!’
‘You are still hard at work, I see?’
After a long silence, the head was lifted for another
moment, and the voice replied, ‘Yes—I am working.’
This time, a pair of haggard eyes had looked at the
questioner, before the face had dropped again.
The faintness of the voice was pitiable and dreadful. It
was not the faintness of physical weakness, though
confinement and hard fare no doubt had their part in it. Its
deplorable peculiarity was, that it was the faintness of
solitude and disuse. It was like the last feeble echo of a
sound made long and long ago. So entirely had it lost the
life and resonance of the human voice, that it affected the
senses like a once beautiful colour faded away into a poor
weak stain. So sunken and suppressed it was, that it was
like a voice underground. So expressive it was, of a
A Tale of Two Cities
68 of 670
hopeless and lost creature, that a famished traveller,
wearied out by lonely wandering in a wilderness, would
have remembered home and friends in such a tone before
lying down to die.
Some minutes of silent work had passed: and the
haggard eyes had looked up again: not with any interest or
curiosity, but with a dull mechanical perception,
beforehand, that the spot where the only visitor they were
aware of had stood, was not yet empty.
‘I want,’ said Defarge, who had not removed his gaze
from the shoemaker, ‘to let in a little more light here. You
can bear a little more?’
The shoemaker stopped his work; looked with a vacant
air of listening, at the floor on one side of him; then
similarly, at the floor on the other side of him; then,
upward at the speaker.
‘What did you say?’
‘You can bear a little more light?’
‘I must bear it, if you let it in.’ (Laying the palest
shadow of a stress upon the second word.)
The opened half-door was opened a little further, and
secured at that angle for the time. A broad ray of light fell
into the garret, and showed the workman with an
unfinished shoe upon his lap, pausing in his labour. His
A Tale of Two Cities
69 of 670
few common tools and various scraps of leather were at his
feet and on his bench. He had a white beard, raggedly cut,
but not very long, a hollow face, and exceedingly bright
eyes. The hollowness and thinness of his face would have
caused them to look large, under his yet dark eyebrows
and his confused white hair, though they had been really
otherwise; but, they were naturally large, and looked
unnaturally so. His yellow rags of shirt lay open at the
throat, and showed his body to be withered and worn.
He, and his old canvas frock, and his loose stockings, and
all his poor tatters of clothes, had, in a long seclusion from
direct light and air, faded down to such a dull uniformity
of parchment-yellow, that it would have been hard to say
which was which.
No comments:
Post a Comment