A Tale of Two Cities (Illustrated) E-Book

Bauer Books

• Herausgeber: Bauer Books
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

A Tale of Two Cities (1859) is a novel by Charles Dickens, set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution. With well over 200 million copies sold, it ranks among the most famous works in the history of fictional literature.
The novel depicts the plight of the French peasantry demoralized by the French aristocracy in the years leading up to the revolution, the corresponding brutality demonstrated by the revolutionaries toward the former aristocrats in the early years of the revolution, and many unflattering social parallels with life in London during the same time period. It follows the lives of several protagonists through these events. The most notable are Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton. Darnay is a former French aristocrat who falls victim to the indiscriminate wrath of the revolution despite his virtuous nature, and Carton is a dissipated English barrister who endeavors to redeem his ill-spent life out of his unrequited love for Darnay's wife.

Leseprobe

Charles

A Tale of Two Cities (Illustrated)

UUID: 6bc2805a-cf6b-11e7-a1ac-17532927e555

This ebook was created with StreetLib Writehttp://write.streetlib.com

Table of contents

Preface

When I was acting, with my children and friends, in Mr. Wilkie Collins's drama of The Frozen Deep, I first conceived the main idea of this story. A strong desire was upon me then, to embody it in my own person; and I traced out in my fancy, the state of mind of which it would necessitate the presentation to an observant spectator, with particular care and interest.

As the idea became familiar to me, it gradually shaped itself into its present form. Throughout its execution, it has had complete possession of me; I have so far verified what is done and suffered on these pages, as that I have certainly done and suffered it all myself.

Whenever any reference (however slight) is made here to the condition of the French people before or during the Revolution, it is truly made, on the faith of the most trustworthy witnesses. It has been one of my hopes to add something to the popular and picturesque means of understanding that terrible time, though no one can hope to add anything to the philosophy of Mr. Carlyle's wonderful book.

Tavistock House November 1859 BOOK THE FIRST RECALLED TO LIFE 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.

With this hurried adjuration, he cocked his blunderbuss, and stood on the offensive. it was his name. The guard, the coachman, and the two other passengers eyed him distrustfully. "Yes, Mr. Lorry." "What is the matter?" "Buried how long?" her?" "There will be a packet to Calais, to-morrow, drawer?" "Say, then, my Gaspard, what do you do there?" "Every drop, Jacques," answered Monsieur Defarge. "It is so, Jacques," Monsieur Defarge returned. "You are right, Jacques," was the response of Monsieur Defarge. "Hold then! True!" muttered her husband. "Gentlemen—my wife!" "Good day!" "You are still hard at work, I see?" "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.) "What did you say?" "Do you mean to finish that pair of shoes today?" She held him closer round the neck, and rocked him on her breast like a child. "But, consider. Is he fit for the journey?" asked THE END OF THE FIRST BOOK. BOOK THE SECOND THE GOLDEN THREAD "Bust me, if she ain't at it agin!" "What!" said Mr. Cruncher, looking out of bed for a boot. "You're at it agin, are you?" "I was not praying against you; I was praying for you." "You know the Old Bailey well, no doubt?" said one of the oldest of clerks to Jerry the messenger. to one another, and to interchange the inquiry, "What do you think of this?" "Am I to wait in the court, sir?" he asked, as the result of that conference. "Is that all, sir?" "That's all. He wishes to have a messenger at hand. This is to tell him you are there." "It's the damp, sir, what settles on my chest and voice," said Jerry. "I leave you to judge what a damp way of earning a living mine is." "If he's found Guilty, you mean to say?" Jerry added, by way of proviso. "Oh! they'll find him guilty," said the other. "Don't you be afraid of that." "What's he got to do with the case?" asked the man he had spoken with. "Blest if I know," said Jerry. "What have you got to do with it, then, if a person may inquire?" "Blest if I know that either," said Jerry. The blue-flies buzzed again, and Mr. AttorneyGeneral called Mr. Jarvis Lorry. "Mr. Jarvis Lorry, are you a clerk in Tellson's bank?" those two passengers?" "I cannot undertake to say that he was." "Does he resemble either of these two passengers?" "No." "You will not swear, Mr. Lorry, that he was not one of them?" "No." "So at least you say he may have been one of them?" "Did you ever see a counterfeit of timidity, Mr. Lorry?" "I have." "When?" "At what hour did he come on board?" "At a little after midnight." "He was." The likeness. "You are a little late, Memory," said Stryver. "About the usual time; it may be a quarter of an hour later." "You have had your bottle, I perceive, Sydney." "Two to-night, I think. I have been dining with the day's client; or seeing him dine—it's all one!"