A Tale Of Two Cities E-Book

Charles Dickens.

• Herausgeber: Charles Fred
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

A Tale of Two Cities is an 1859 historical novel by Charles Dickens, set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution. The novel tells the story of the French Doctor Manette, his 18-year-long imprisonment in the Bastille in Paris and his release to live in London with his daughter Lucie, whom he had never met. The story is set against the conditions that led up to the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror.

Dickens' best-known work of historical fiction, A Tale of Two Cities is regularly cited as the best-selling novel of all time. In 2003, the novel was ranked 63rd on the BBC's The Big Read poll. The novel has been adapted for film, television, radio, and the stage, and has continued to have an influence on popular culture.

Leseprobe

A TALE OF TWO CITIES

Charles Dickens

I. The Period

It was the best of times,

it was the worst of times,

it was the age of wisdom,

it was the age of foolishness,

it was the epoch of belief,

it was the epoch of incredulity,

it was the season of Light,

it was the season of Darkness,

it was the spring of hope,

it was the winter of despair,

we had everything before us,

we had nothing before us,

we were all going direct to Heaven,

we were all going direct the other way--

in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of

its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for

evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

There were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a plain face, on the

throne of England; there were a king with a large jaw and a queen with

a fair face, on the throne of France. In both countries it was clearer

than crystal to the lords of the State preserves of loaves and fishes,

that things in general were settled for ever.

It was the year of Our Lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five.

Spiritual revelations were conceded to England at that favoured period,

as at this. Mrs. Southcott had recently attained her five-and-twentieth

blessed birthday, of whom a prophetic private in the Life Guards had

heralded the sublime appearance by announcing that arrangements were

made for the swallowing up of London and Westminster. Even the Cock-lane

ghost had been laid only a round dozen of years, after rapping out its

messages, as the spirits of this very year last past (supernaturally

deficient in originality) rapped out theirs. Mere messages in the

earthly order of events had lately come to the English Crown and People,

from a congress of British subjects in America: which, strange

to relate, have proved more important to the human race than any

communications yet received through any of the chickens of the Cock-lane

brood.

France, less favoured on the whole as to matters spiritual than her

sister of the shield and trident, rolled with exceeding smoothness down

hill, making paper money and spending it. Under the guidance of her

Christian pastors, she entertained herself, besides, with such humane

achievements as sentencing a youth to have his hands cut off, his tongue

torn out with pincers, and his body burned alive, because he had not

kneeled down in the rain to do honour to a dirty procession of monks

which passed within his view, at a distance of some fifty or sixty

yards. It is likely enough that, rooted in the woods of France and

Norway, there were growing trees, when that sufferer was put to death,

already marked by the Woodman, Fate, to come down and be sawn into

boards, to make a certain movable framework with a sack and a knife in

it, terrible in history. It is likely enough that in the rough outhouses

of some tillers of the heavy lands adjacent to Paris, there were

sheltered from the weather that very day, rude carts, bespattered with

rustic mire, snuffed about by pigs, and roosted in by poultry, which

the Farmer, Death, had already set apart to be his tumbrils of

the Revolution. But that Woodman and that Farmer, though they work

unceasingly, work silently, and no one heard them as they went about

with muffled tread: the rather, forasmuch as to entertain any suspicion

that they were awake, was to be atheistical and traitorous.

In England, there was scarcely an amount of order and protection to

justify much national boasting. Daring burglaries by armed men, and

highway robberies, took place in the capital itself every night;

families were publicly cautioned not to go out of town without removing

their furniture to upholsterers’ warehouses for security; the highwayman

in the dark was a City tradesman in the light, and, being recognised and

challenged by his fellow-tradesman whom he stopped in his character of

“the Captain,” gallantly shot him through the head and rode away; the

mail was waylaid by seven robbers, and the guard shot three dead, and

then got shot dead himself by the other four, “in consequence of the

failure of his ammunition:” after which the mail was robbed in peace;

that magnificent potentate, the Lord Mayor of London, was made to stand

and deliver on Turnham Green, by one highwayman, who despoiled the

illustrious creature in sight of all his retinue; prisoners in London

gaols fought battles with their turnkeys, and the majesty of the law

fired blunderbusses in among them, loaded with rounds of shot and ball;

thieves snipped off diamond crosses from the necks of noble lords at

Court drawing-rooms; musketeers went into St. Giles’s, to search

for contraband goods, and the mob fired on the musketeers, and the

musketeers fired on the mob, and nobody thought any of these occurrences

much out of the common way. In the midst of them, the hangman, ever busy

and ever worse than useless, was in constant requisition; now, stringing

up long rows of miscellaneous criminals; now, hanging a housebreaker on

Saturday who had been taken on Tuesday; now, burning people in the

hand at Newgate by the dozen, and now burning pamphlets at the door of

Westminster Hall; to-day, taking the life of an atrocious murderer,

and to-morrow of a wretched pilferer who had robbed a farmer’s boy of

sixpence.

All these things, and a thousand like them, came to pass in and close

upon the dear old year one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five.

Environed by them, while the Woodman and the Farmer worked unheeded,

those two of the large jaws, and those other two of the plain and the

fair faces, trod with stir enough, and carried their divine rights

with a high hand. Thus did the year one thousand seven hundred

and seventy-five conduct their Greatnesses, and myriads of small

creatures--the creatures of this chronicle among the rest--along the

roads that lay before them.

II. The Mail

It was the Dover road that lay, on a Friday night late in November,

before the first of the persons with whom this history has business.

The Dover road lay, as to him, beyond the Dover mail, as it lumbered up

Shooter’s Hill. He walked up hill in the mire by the side of the mail,

as the rest of the passengers did; not because they had the least relish

for walking exercise, under the circumstances, but because the hill,

and the harness, and the mud, and the mail, were all so heavy, that the

horses had three times already come to a stop, besides once drawing the

coach across the road, with the mutinous intent of taking it back

to Blackheath. Reins and whip and coachman and guard, however, in

combination, had read that article of war which forbade a purpose

otherwise strongly in favour of the argument, that some brute animals

are endued with Reason; and the team had capitulated and returned to

their duty.

With drooping heads and tremulous tails, they mashed their way through

the thick mud, floundering and stumbling between whiles, as if they were

falling to pieces at the larger joints. As often as the driver rested

them and brought them to a stand, with a wary “Wo-ho! so-ho-then!” the

near leader violently shook his head and everything upon it--like an

unusually emphatic horse, denying that the coach could be got up the

hill. Whenever the leader made this rattle, the passenger started, as a

nervous passenger might, and was disturbed in mind.

There was a steaming mist in all the hollows, and it had roamed in its

forlornness up the hill, like an evil spirit, seeking rest and finding

none. A clammy and intensely cold mist, it made its slow way through the

air in ripples that visibly followed and overspread one another, as the

waves of an unwholesome sea might do. It was dense enough to shut out

everything from the light of the coach-lamps but these its own workings,

and a few yards of road; and the reek of the labouring horses steamed

into it, as if they had made it all.

Two other passengers, besides the one, were plodding up the hill by the

side of the mail. All three were wrapped to the cheekbones and over the

ears, and wore jack-boots. Not one of the three could have said, from

anything he saw, what either of the other two was like; and each was

hidden under almost as many wrappers from the eyes of the mind, as from

the eyes of the body, of his two companions. In those days, travellers

were very shy of being confidential on a short notice, for anybody on

the road might be a robber or in league with robbers. As to the latter,

when every posting-house and ale-house could produce somebody in

“the Captain’s” pay, ranging from the landlord to the lowest stable

non-descript, it was the likeliest thing upon the cards. So the guard

of the Dover mail thought to himself, that Friday night in November, one

thousand seven hundred and seventy-five, lumbering up Shooter’s Hill, as

he stood on his own particular perch behind the mail, beating his feet,

and keeping an eye and a hand on the arm-chest before him, where a

loaded blunderbuss lay at the top of six or eight loaded horse-pistols,

deposited on a substratum of cutlass.

The Dover mail was in its usual genial position that the guard suspected

the passengers, the passengers suspected one another and the guard, they

all suspected everybody else, and the coachman was sure of nothing but

the horses; as to which cattle he could with a clear conscience have

taken his oath on the two Testaments that they were not fit for the

journey.

“Wo-ho!” said the coachman. “So, then! One more pull and you’re at the

top and be damned to you, for I have had trouble enough to get you to

it!--Joe!”

“Halloa!” the guard replied.

“What o’clock do you make it, Joe?”

“Ten minutes, good, past eleven.”

“My blood!” ejaculated the vexed coachman, “and not atop of Shooter’s

yet! Tst! Yah! Get on with you!”

The emphatic horse, cut short by the whip in a most decided negative,

made a decided scramble for it, and the three other horses followed

suit. Once more, the Dover mail struggled on, with the jack-boots of its

passengers squashing along by its side. They had stopped when the coach

stopped, and they kept close company with it. If any one of the three

had had the hardihood to propose to another to walk on a little ahead

into the mist and darkness, he would have put himself in a fair way of

getting shot instantly as a highwayman.

The last burst carried the mail to the summit of the hill. The horses

stopped to breathe again, and the guard got down to skid the wheel for

the descent, and open the coach-door to let the passengers in.

“Tst! Joe!” cried the coachman in a warning voice, looking down from his

box.

“What do you say, Tom?”

They both listened.

“I say a horse at a canter coming up, Joe.”

“_I_ say a horse at a gallop, Tom,” returned the guard, leaving his hold

of the door, and mounting nimbly to his place. “Gentlemen! In the king’s

name, all of you!”

With this hurried adjuration, he cocked his blunderbuss, and stood on

the offensive.

The passenger booked by this history, was on the coach-step, getting in;

the two other passengers were close behind him, and about to follow. He

remained on the step, half in the coach and half out of; they remained

in the road below him. They all looked from the coachman to the guard,

and from the guard to the coachman, and listened. The coachman looked

back and the guard looked back, and even the emphatic leader pricked up

his ears and looked back, without contradicting.

The stillness consequent on the cessation of the rumbling and labouring

of the coach, added to the stillness of the night, made it very quiet

indeed. The panting of the horses communicated a tremulous motion to

the coach, as if it were in a state of agitation. The hearts of the

passengers beat loud enough perhaps to be heard; but at any rate, the

quiet pause was audibly expressive of people out of breath, and holding

the breath, and having the pulses quickened by expectation.

The sound of a horse at a gallop came fast and furiously up the hill.

“So-ho!” the guard sang out, as loud as he could roar. “Yo there! Stand!

I shall fire!”

The pace was suddenly checked, and, with much splashing and floundering,

a man’s voice called from the mist, “Is that the Dover mail?”

“Never you mind what it is!” the guard retorted. “What are you?”

“_Is_ that the Dover mail?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“I want a passenger, if it is.”

“What passenger?”

“Mr. Jarvis Lorry.”

Our booked passenger showed in a moment that it was his name. The guard,

the coachman, and the two other passengers eyed him distrustfully.

“Keep where you are,” the guard called to the voice in the mist,

“because, if I should make a mistake, it could never be set right in

your lifetime. Gentleman of the name of Lorry answer straight.”

“What is the matter?” asked the passenger, then, with mildly quavering

speech. “Who wants me? Is it Jerry?”

(“I don’t like Jerry’s voice, if it is Jerry,” growled the guard to

himself. “He’s hoarser than suits me, is Jerry.”)

“Yes, Mr. Lorry.”

“What is the matter?”

“A despatch sent after you from over yonder. T. and Co.”

“I know this messenger, guard,” said Mr. Lorry, getting down into the

road--assisted from behind more swiftly than politely by the other two

passengers, who immediately scrambled into the coach, shut the door, and

pulled up the window. “He may come close; there’s nothing wrong.”

“I hope there ain’t, but I can’t make so ‘Nation sure of that,” said the

guard, in gruff soliloquy. “Hallo you!”

“Well! And hallo you!” said Jerry, more hoarsely than before.

“Come on at a footpace! d’ye mind me? And if you’ve got holsters to that

saddle o’ yourn, don’t let me see your hand go nigh ‘em. For I’m a devil

at a quick mistake, and when I make one it takes the form of Lead. So

now let’s look at you.”

The figures of a horse and rider came slowly through the eddying mist,

and came to the side of the mail, where the passenger stood. The rider

stooped, and, casting up his eyes at the guard, handed the passenger

a small folded paper. The rider’s horse was blown, and both horse and

rider were covered with mud, from the hoofs of the horse to the hat of

the man.

“Guard!” said the passenger, in a tone of quiet business confidence.

The watchful guard, with his right hand at the stock of his raised

blunderbuss, his left at the barrel, and his eye on the horseman,

answered curtly, “Sir.”

“There is nothing to apprehend. I belong to Tellson’s Bank. You must

know Tellson’s Bank in London. I am going to Paris on business. A crown

to drink. I may read this?”

“If so be as you’re quick, sir.”

He opened it in the light of the coach-lamp on that side, and

read--first to himself and then aloud: “‘Wait at Dover for Mam’selle.’

It’s not long, you see, guard. Jerry, say that my answer was, RECALLED

TO LIFE.”

Jerry started in his saddle. “That’s a Blazing strange answer, too,”

 said he, at his hoarsest.

“Take that message back, and they will know that I received this, as

well as if I wrote. Make the best of your way. Good night.”

With those words the passenger opened the coach-door and got in; not at

all assisted by his fellow-passengers, who had expeditiously secreted

their watches and purses in their boots, and were now making a general

pretence of being asleep. With no more definite purpose than to escape

the hazard of originating any other kind of action.

The coach lumbered on again, with heavier wreaths of mist closing round

it as it began the descent. The guard soon replaced his blunderbuss

in his arm-chest, and, having looked to the rest of its contents, and

having looked to the supplementary pistols that he wore in his belt,

looked to a smaller chest beneath his seat, in which there were a

few smith’s tools, a couple of torches, and a tinder-box. For he was

furnished with that completeness that if the coach-lamps had been blown

and stormed out, which did occasionally happen, he had only to shut

himself up inside, keep the flint and steel sparks well off the straw,

and get a light with tolerable safety and ease (if he were lucky) in

five minutes.

“Tom!” softly over the coach roof.

“Hallo, Joe.”

“Did you hear the message?”

“I did, Joe.”

“What did you make of it, Tom?”

“Nothing at all, Joe.”

“That’s a coincidence, too,” the guard mused, “for I made the same of it

myself.”

Jerry, left alone in the mist and darkness, dismounted meanwhile, not

only to ease his spent horse, but to wipe the mud from his face, and

shake the wet out of his hat-brim, which might be capable of

holding about half a gallon. After standing with the bridle over his

heavily-splashed arm, until the wheels of the mail were no longer within

hearing and the night was quite still again, he turned to walk down the

hill.

“After that there gallop from Temple Bar, old lady, I won’t trust your

fore-legs till I get you on the level,” said this hoarse messenger,

glancing at his mare. “‘Recalled to life.’ That’s a Blazing strange

message. Much of that wouldn’t do for you, Jerry! I say, Jerry! You’d

be in a Blazing bad way, if recalling to life was to come into fashion,

Jerry!”

III. The Night Shadows

A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is

constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A

solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every

one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every

room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating

heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of

its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it! Something of the

awfulness, even of Death itself, is referable to this. No more can I

turn the leaves of this dear book that I loved, and vainly hope in time

to read it all. No more can I look into the depths of this unfathomable

water, wherein, as momentary lights glanced into it, I have had glimpses

of buried treasure and other things submerged. It was appointed that the

book should shut with a spring, for ever and for ever, when I had read

but a page. It was appointed that the water should be locked in an

eternal frost, when the light was playing on its surface, and I stood

in ignorance on the shore. My friend is dead, my neighbour is dead,

my love, the darling of my soul, is dead; it is the inexorable

consolidation and perpetuation of the secret that was always in that

individuality, and which I shall carry in mine to my life’s end. In

any of the burial-places of this city through which I pass, is there

a sleeper more inscrutable than its busy inhabitants are, in their

innermost personality, to me, or than I am to them?

As to this, his natural and not to be alienated inheritance, the

messenger on horseback had exactly the same possessions as the King, the

first Minister of State, or the richest merchant in London. So with the

three passengers shut up in the narrow compass of one lumbering old mail

coach; they were mysteries to one another, as complete as if each had

been in his own coach and six, or his own coach and sixty, with the

breadth of a county between him and the next.

The messenger rode back at an easy trot, stopping pretty often at

ale-houses by the way to drink, but evincing a tendency to keep his

own counsel, and to keep his hat cocked over his eyes. He had eyes that

assorted very well with that decoration, being of a surface black, with

no depth in the colour or form, and much too near together--as if they

were afraid of being found out in something, singly, if they kept too

far apart. They had a sinister expression, under an old cocked-hat like

a three-cornered spittoon, and over a great muffler for the chin and

throat, which descended nearly to the wearer’s knees. When he stopped

for drink, he moved this muffler with his left hand, only while he

poured his liquor in with his right; as soon as that was done, he

muffled again.

“No, Jerry, no!” said the messenger, harping on one theme as he rode.

“It wouldn’t do for you, Jerry. Jerry, you honest tradesman, it wouldn’t

suit _your_ line of business! Recalled--! Bust me if I don’t think he’d

been a drinking!”

His message perplexed his mind to that degree that he was fain, several

times, to take off his hat to scratch his head. Except on the crown,

which was raggedly bald, he had stiff, black hair, standing jaggedly all

over it, and growing down hill almost to his broad, blunt nose. It was

so like Smith’s work, so much more like the top of a strongly spiked

wall than a head of hair, that the best of players at leap-frog might

have declined him, as the most dangerous man in the world to go over.

While he trotted back with the message he was to deliver to the night

watchman in his box at the door of Tellson’s Bank, by Temple Bar, who

was to deliver it to greater authorities within, the shadows of the

night took such shapes to him as arose out of the message, and took such

shapes to the mare as arose out of _her_ private topics of uneasiness.

They seemed to be numerous, for she shied at every shadow on the road.

What time, the mail-coach lumbered, jolted, rattled, and bumped upon

its tedious way, with its three fellow-inscrutables inside. To whom,

likewise, the shadows of the night revealed themselves, in the forms

their dozing eyes and wandering thoughts suggested.

Tellson’s Bank had a run upon it in the mail. As the bank

passenger--with an arm drawn through the leathern strap, which did what

lay in it to keep him from pounding against the next passenger,

and driving him into his corner, whenever the coach got a special

jolt--nodded in his place, with half-shut eyes, the little

coach-windows, and the coach-lamp dimly gleaming through them, and the

bulky bundle of opposite passenger, became the bank, and did a great

stroke of business. The rattle of the harness was the chink of money,

and more drafts were honoured in five minutes than even Tellson’s, with

all its foreign and home connection, ever paid in thrice the time. Then

the strong-rooms underground, at Tellson’s, with such of their valuable

stores and secrets as were known to the passenger (and it was not a

little that he knew about them), opened before him, and he went in among

them with the great keys and the feebly-burning candle, and found them

safe, and strong, and sound, and still, just as he had last seen them.

But, though the bank was almost always with him, and though the coach

(in a confused way, like the presence of pain under an opiate) was

always with him, there was another current of impression that never

ceased to run, all through the night. He was on his way to dig some one

out of a grave.

Now, which of the multitude of faces that showed themselves before him

was the true face of the buried person, the shadows of the night did

not indicate; but they were all the faces of a man of five-and-forty by

years, and they differed principally in the passions they expressed,

and in the ghastliness of their worn and wasted state. Pride, contempt,

defiance, stubbornness, submission, lamentation, succeeded one another;

so did varieties of sunken cheek, cadaverous colour, emaciated hands

and figures. But the face was in the main one face, and every head was

prematurely white. A hundred times the dozing passenger inquired of this

spectre:

“Buried how long?”

The answer was always the same: “Almost eighteen years.”

“You had abandoned all hope of being dug out?”

“Long ago.”

“You know that you are recalled to life?”

“They tell me so.”

“I hope you care to live?”

“I can’t say.”

“Shall I show her to you? Will you come and see her?”

The answers to this question were various and contradictory. Sometimes

the broken reply was, “Wait! It would kill me if I saw her too soon.”

 Sometimes, it was given in a tender rain of tears, and then it was,

“Take me to her.” Sometimes it was staring and bewildered, and then it

was, “I don’t know her. I don’t understand.”

After such imaginary discourse, the passenger in his fancy would dig,

and dig, dig--now with a spade, now with a great key, now with his

hands--to dig this wretched creature out. Got out at last, with earth

hanging about his face and hair, he would suddenly fan away to dust. The

passenger would then start to himself, and lower the window, to get the

reality of mist and rain on his cheek.

Yet even when his eyes were opened on the mist and rain, on the moving

patch of light from the lamps, and the hedge at the roadside retreating

by jerks, the night shadows outside the coach would fall into the train

of the night shadows within. The real Banking-house by Temple Bar, the

real business of the past day, the real strong rooms, the real express

sent after him, and the real message returned, would all be there. Out

of the midst of them, the ghostly face would rise, and he would accost

it again.

“Buried how long?”

“Almost eighteen years.”

“I hope you care to live?”

“I can’t say.”

Dig--dig--dig--until an impatient movement from one of the two

passengers would admonish him to pull up the window, draw his arm

securely through the leathern strap, and speculate upon the two

slumbering forms, until his mind lost its hold of them, and they again

slid away into the bank and the grave.

“Buried how long?”

“Almost eighteen years.”

“You had abandoned all hope of being dug out?”

“Long ago.”

The words were still in his hearing as just spoken--distinctly in

his hearing as ever spoken words had been in his life--when the weary

passenger started to the consciousness of daylight, and found that the

shadows of the night were gone.

He lowered the window, and looked out at the rising sun. There was a

ridge of ploughed land, with a plough upon it where it had been left

last night when the horses were unyoked; beyond, a quiet coppice-wood,

in which many leaves of burning red and golden yellow still remained

upon the trees. Though the earth was cold and wet, the sky was clear,

and the sun rose bright, placid, and beautiful.

“Eighteen years!” said the passenger, looking at the sun. “Gracious

Creator of day! To be buried alive for eighteen years!”

IV. The Preparation

When the mail got successfully to Dover, in the course of the forenoon,

the head drawer at the Royal George Hotel opened the coach-door as his

custom was. He did it with some flourish of ceremony, for a mail journey

from London in winter was an achievement to congratulate an adventurous

traveller upon.

By that time, there was only one adventurous traveller left be

congratulated: for the two others had been set down at their respective

roadside destinations. The mildewy inside of the coach, with its damp

and dirty straw, its disagreeable smell, and its obscurity, was rather

like a larger dog-kennel. Mr. Lorry, the passenger, shaking himself out

of it in chains of straw, a tangle of shaggy wrapper, flapping hat, and

muddy legs, was rather like a larger sort of dog.

“There will be a packet to Calais, tomorrow, drawer?”

“Yes, sir, if the weather holds and the wind sets tolerable fair. The

tide will serve pretty nicely at about two in the afternoon, sir. Bed,

sir?”

“I shall not go to bed till night; but I want a bedroom, and a barber.”

“And then breakfast, sir? Yes, sir. That way, sir, if you please.

Show Concord! Gentleman’s valise and hot water to Concord. Pull off

gentleman’s boots in Concord. (You will find a fine sea-coal fire, sir.)

Fetch barber to Concord. Stir about there, now, for Concord!”

The Concord bed-chamber being always assigned to a passenger by the

mail, and passengers by the mail being always heavily wrapped up from

head to foot, the room had the odd interest for the establishment of the

Royal George, that although but one kind of man was seen to go into it,

all kinds and varieties of men came out of it. Consequently, another

drawer, and two porters, and several maids and the landlady, were all

loitering by accident at various points of the road between the Concord

and the coffee-room, when a gentleman of sixty, formally dressed in a

brown suit of clothes, pretty well worn, but very well kept, with large

square cuffs and large flaps to the pockets, passed along on his way to

his breakfast.

The coffee-room had no other occupant, that forenoon, than the gentleman

in brown. His breakfast-table was drawn before the fire, and as he sat,

with its light shining on him, waiting for the meal, he sat so still,

that he might have been sitting for his portrait.

Very orderly and methodical he looked, with a hand on each knee, and a

loud watch ticking a sonorous sermon under his flapped waist-coat,

as though it pitted its gravity and longevity against the levity and

evanescence of the brisk fire. He had a good leg, and was a little vain

of it, for his brown stockings fitted sleek and close, and were of a

fine texture; his shoes and buckles, too, though plain, were trim. He

wore an odd little sleek crisp flaxen wig, setting very close to his

head: which wig, it is to be presumed, was made of hair, but which

looked far more as though it were spun from filaments of silk or glass.

His linen, though not of a fineness in accordance with his stockings,

was as white as the tops of the waves that broke upon the neighbouring

beach, or the specks of sail that glinted in the sunlight far at sea. A

face habitually suppressed and quieted, was still lighted up under the

quaint wig by a pair of moist bright eyes that it must have cost

their owner, in years gone by, some pains to drill to the composed and

reserved expression of Tellson’s Bank. He had a healthy colour in his

cheeks, and his face, though lined, bore few traces of anxiety.

But, perhaps the confidential bachelor clerks in Tellson’s Bank were

principally occupied with the cares of other people; and perhaps

second-hand cares, like second-hand clothes, come easily off and on.

Completing his resemblance to a man who was sitting for his portrait,

Mr. Lorry dropped off to sleep. The arrival of his breakfast roused him,

and he said to the drawer, as he moved his chair to it:

“I wish accommodation prepared for a young lady who may come here at any

time to-day. She may ask for Mr. Jarvis Lorry, or she may only ask for a

gentleman from Tellson’s Bank. Please to let me know.”

“Yes, sir. Tellson’s Bank in London, sir?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, sir. We have oftentimes the honour to entertain your gentlemen in

their travelling backwards and forwards betwixt London and Paris, sir. A

vast deal of travelling, sir, in Tellson and Company’s House.”

“Yes. We are quite a French House, as well as an English one.”

“Yes, sir. Not much in the habit of such travelling yourself, I think,

sir?”

“Not of late years. It is fifteen years since we--since I--came last

from France.”

“Indeed, sir? That was before my time here, sir. Before our people’s

time here, sir. The George was in other hands at that time, sir.”

“I believe so.”

“But I would hold a pretty wager, sir, that a House like Tellson and

Company was flourishing, a matter of fifty, not to speak of fifteen

years ago?”

“You might treble that, and say a hundred and fifty, yet not be far from

the truth.”

“Indeed, sir!”

Rounding his mouth and both his eyes, as he stepped backward from the

table, the waiter shifted his napkin from his right arm to his left,

dropped into a comfortable attitude, and stood surveying the guest while

he ate and drank, as from an observatory or watchtower. According to the

immemorial usage of waiters in all ages.

When Mr. Lorry had finished his breakfast, he went out for a stroll on

the beach. The little narrow, crooked town of Dover hid itself away

from the beach, and ran its head into the chalk cliffs, like a marine

ostrich. The beach was a desert of heaps of sea and stones tumbling

wildly about, and the sea did what it liked, and what it liked was

destruction. It thundered at the town, and thundered at the cliffs, and

brought the coast down, madly. The air among the houses was of so strong

a piscatory flavour that one might have supposed sick fish went up to be

dipped in it, as sick people went down to be dipped in the sea. A little

fishing was done in the port, and a quantity of strolling about by

night, and looking seaward: particularly at those times when the tide

made, and was near flood. Small tradesmen, who did no business whatever,

sometimes unaccountably realised large fortunes, and it was remarkable

that nobody in the neighbourhood could endure a lamplighter.

As the day declined into the afternoon, and the air, which had been

at intervals clear enough to allow the French coast to be seen, became

again charged with mist and vapour, Mr. Lorry’s thoughts seemed to cloud

too. When it was dark, and he sat before the coffee-room fire, awaiting

his dinner as he had awaited his breakfast, his mind was busily digging,

digging, digging, in the live red coals.

A bottle of good claret after dinner does a digger in the red coals no

harm, otherwise than as it has a tendency to throw him out of work.

Mr. Lorry had been idle a long time, and had just poured out his last

glassful of wine with as complete an appearance of satisfaction as is

ever to be found in an elderly gentleman of a fresh complexion who has

got to the end of a bottle, when a rattling of wheels came up the narrow

street, and rumbled into the inn-yard.

He set down his glass untouched. “This is Mam’selle!” said he.

In a very few minutes the waiter came in to announce that Miss Manette

had arrived from London, and would be happy to see the gentleman from

Tellson’s.

“So soon?”

Miss Manette had taken some refreshment on the road, and required none

then, and was extremely anxious to see the gentleman from Tellson’s

immediately, if it suited his pleasure and convenience.

The gentleman from Tellson’s had nothing left for it but to empty his

glass with an air of stolid desperation, settle his odd little flaxen

wig at the ears, and follow the waiter to Miss Manette’s apartment.

It was a large, dark room, furnished in a funereal manner with black

horsehair, and loaded with heavy dark tables. These had been oiled and

oiled, until the two tall candles on the table in the middle of the room

were gloomily reflected on every leaf; as if _they_ were buried, in deep

graves of black mahogany, and no light to speak of could be expected

from them until they were dug out.

The obscurity was so difficult to penetrate that Mr. Lorry, picking his

way over the well-worn Turkey carpet, supposed Miss Manette to be, for

the moment, in some adjacent room, until, having got past the two tall

candles, he saw standing to receive him by the table between them and

the fire, a young lady of not more than seventeen, in a riding-cloak,

and still holding her straw travelling-hat by its ribbon in her hand. As

his eyes rested on a short, slight, pretty figure, a quantity of golden

hair, a pair of blue eyes that met his own with an inquiring look, and

a forehead with a singular capacity (remembering how young and smooth

it was), of rifting and knitting itself into an expression that was

not quite one of perplexity, or wonder, or alarm, or merely of a bright

fixed attention, though it included all the four expressions--as his

eyes rested on these things, a sudden vivid likeness passed before him,

of a child whom he had held in his arms on the passage across that very

Channel, one cold time, when the hail drifted heavily and the sea ran

high. The likeness passed away, like a breath along the surface of

the gaunt pier-glass behind her, on the frame of which, a hospital

procession of negro cupids, several headless and all cripples, were

offering black baskets of Dead Sea fruit to black divinities of the

feminine gender--and he made his formal bow to Miss Manette.

“Pray take a seat, sir.” In a very clear and pleasant young voice; a

little foreign in its accent, but a very little indeed.

“I kiss your hand, miss,” said Mr. Lorry, with the manners of an earlier

date, as he made his formal bow again, and took his seat.

“I received a letter from the Bank, sir, yesterday, informing me that

some intelligence--or discovery--”

“The word is not material, miss; either word will do.”

“--respecting the small property of my poor father, whom I never saw--so

long dead--”

Mr. Lorry moved in his chair, and cast a troubled look towards the

hospital procession of negro cupids. As if _they_ had any help for

anybody in their absurd baskets!

“--rendered it necessary that I should go to Paris, there to communicate

with a gentleman of the Bank, so good as to be despatched to Paris for

the purpose.”

“Myself.”

“As I was prepared to hear, sir.”

She curtseyed to him (young ladies made curtseys in those days), with a

pretty desire to convey to him that she felt how much older and wiser he

was than she. He made her another bow.

“I replied to the Bank, sir, that as it was considered necessary, by

those who know, and who are so kind as to advise me, that I should go to

France, and that as I am an orphan and have no friend who could go with

me, I should esteem it highly if I might be permitted to place myself,

during the journey, under that worthy gentleman’s protection. The

gentleman had left London, but I think a messenger was sent after him to

beg the favour of his waiting for me here.”

“I was happy,” said Mr. Lorry, “to be entrusted with the charge. I shall

be more happy to execute it.”

“Sir, I thank you indeed. I thank you very gratefully. It was told me

by the Bank that the gentleman would explain to me the details of the

business, and that I must prepare myself to find them of a surprising

nature. I have done my best to prepare myself, and I naturally have a

strong and eager interest to know what they are.”

“Naturally,” said Mr. Lorry. “Yes--I--”

After a pause, he added, again settling the crisp flaxen wig at the

ears, “It is very difficult to begin.”

He did not begin, but, in his indecision, met her glance. The young

forehead lifted itself into that singular expression--but it was pretty

and characteristic, besides being singular--and she raised her hand,

as if with an involuntary action she caught at, or stayed some passing

shadow.

“Are you quite a stranger to me, sir?”

“Am I not?” Mr. Lorry opened his hands, and extended them outwards with

an argumentative smile.

Between the eyebrows and just over the little feminine nose, the line of

which was as delicate and fine as it was possible to be, the expression

deepened itself as she took her seat thoughtfully in the chair by which

she had hitherto remained standing. He watched her as she mused, and the

moment she raised her eyes again, went on:

“In your adopted country, I presume, I cannot do better than address you

as a young English lady, Miss Manette?”

“If you please, sir.”

“Miss Manette, I am a man of business. I have a business charge to

acquit myself of. In your reception of it, don’t heed me any more than

if I was a speaking machine--truly, I am not much else. I will, with

your leave, relate to you, miss, the story of one of our customers.”

“Story!”

He seemed wilfully to mistake the word she had repeated, when he added,

in a hurry, “Yes, customers; in the banking business we usually call

our connection our customers. He was a French gentleman; a scientific

gentleman; a man of great acquirements--a Doctor.”

“Not of Beauvais?”

“Why, yes, of Beauvais. Like Monsieur Manette, your father, the

gentleman was of Beauvais. Like Monsieur Manette, your father, the

gentleman was of repute in Paris. I had the honour of knowing him there.

Our relations were business relations, but confidential. I was at that

time in our French House, and had been--oh! twenty years.”

“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--”

“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 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 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, 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 clear-headed. 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.”

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!”

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 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 tight-fitting 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.)

“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.

“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.

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 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 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.

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 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