daughter’s husband, and deliver him. “It all tended to a good end,
my friend; it was not mere waste and ruin. As my beloved child
was helpful in restoring me to myself, I will be helpful now in
restoring the dearest part of herself to her; by the aid of Heaven I
will do it!” Thus, Doctor Manette. And when Jarvis Lorry saw the
kindled eyes, the resolute face, the calm strong look and bearing of
the man whose life always seemed to him to have been stopped,
like a clock, for so many years, and then set going again with an
energy which had lain dormant during the cessation of its
usefulness, he believed.
Greater things than the Doctor had at that time to contend
with, would have yielded before his persevering purpose. While he
kept himself in his place, as a physician, whose business was with
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all degrees of mankind, bond and free, rich and poor, bad and
good, he used his personal influence so wisely, that he was soon
the inspecting physician of three prisons, and among them of La
Force. He could now assure Lucie that her husband was no longer
confined alone, but was mixed with the general body of prisoners;
he saw her husband weekly, and brought sweet messages to her,
straight from his lips; sometimes her husband himself sent a letter
to her (though never by the Doctor’s hand), but she was not
permitted to write to him: for, among the many wild suspicions of
plots in the prisons, the wildest of all pointed at emigrants who
were known to have made friends or permanent connections
abroad.
This new life of the Doctor’s was an anxious life, no doubt; still,
the sagacious Mr. Lorry saw that there was a new sustaining pride
in it. Nothing unbecoming tinged the pride; it was a natural and
worthy one; but he observed it as a curiosity. The Doctor knew,
that up to that time, his imprisonment had been associated in the
minds of his daughter and his friend, with his personal affliction,
deprivation, and weakness. Now that this was changed, and he
knew himself to be invested through that old trial with forces to
which they both looked for Charles’s ultimate safety and
deliverance, he became so far exalted by the change, that he took
the lead and direction, and required them as the weak, to trust to
him as the strong. The preceding relative positions of himself and
Lucie were reversed, yet only as the liveliest gratitude and
affection could reverse them, for he could have had no pride but in
rendering some service to her who had rendered so much to him.
“All curious to see,” thought Mr. Lorry, in his amiably shrewd
way, “but all natural and right; so, take the lead, my dear friend,
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and keep it; it couldn’t be in better hands.”
But, though the Doctor tried hard, and never ceased trying, to
get Charles Darnay set at liberty, or at least to get him brought to
trial, the public current of the time set too strong and fast for him.
The new era began; the king was tried, doomed and beheaded; the
Republic of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death, declared for
victory or death against the world in arms; the black flag waved
night and day from the great towers of Notre Dame; three
hundred thousand men, summoned to rise against the tyrants of
the earth, rose from all the varying soils of France, as if the
dragon’s teeth had been sown broadcast, and had yielded fruit
equally on hill and plain, on rock, in gravel, and alluvial mud,
under the bright sky of the South and under the clouds of the
North, in fell and forest, in the vineyards and the olive-grounds
and among the cropped grass and the stubble of the corn, along
the fruitful banks of the broad rivers, and in the sand of the
seashore. What private solicitude could rear itself against the
deluge of the Year One of Liberty—the deluge rising from below,
not falling from above, and with the windows of Heaven shut, not
opened!
There was no pause, no pity, no peace, no interval of relenting
rest, no measurement of time. Though days and nights circled as
regularly as when time was young, and the evening and morning
were the first day, other count of time there was none. Hold of it
was lost in the raging fever of a nation, as it is in the fever of one
patient. Now, breaking the unnatural silence of a whole city, the
executioner showed the people the head of the king—and now, it
seemed almost in the same breath, the head of his fair wife which
had had eight weary months of imprisoned widowhood and
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misery, to turn it grey.
And yet, observing the strange law of contradiction which
obtains in all such cases, the time was long, while it flamed by so
fast. A revolutionary tribunal in the capital, and forty or fifty
thousand revolutionary committees all over the land; a law of the
Suspected, which struck away all security for liberty or life, and
delivered over any good and innocent person to any bad and guilty
one; prisons gorged with people who had committed no offence,
and could obtain no hearing; these things became the established
order and nature of appointed things, and seemed to be ancient
usage before they were many weeks old. Above all, one hideous
figure grew as familiar as if it had been before the general gaze
from the foundations of the world—the figure of the sharp female
called La Guillotine.
It was the popular theme for jests; it was the best cure for
headache, it infallibly prevented the hair from turning grey, it
imparted a peculiar delicacy to the complexion, it was the National
Razor which shaved close: who kissed La Guillotine, looked
through the window and sneezed into the sack. It was the sign of
the regeneration of the human race. It superseded the Cross.
Models of it were worn on breasts from which the Cross was
discarded, and it was bowed down to and believed in where the
Cross was denied.
It sheared off heads so many, that it, and the ground it most
polluted, were a rotten red. It was taken to pieces, like a toy-puzzle
for a young Devil, and was put together again when the occasion
wanted it. It hushed the eloquent, struck down the powerful,
abolished the beautiful and good. Twenty-two friends of high
public mark, twenty-one living and one dead, it had lopped the
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heads off, in one morning, in as many minutes. The name of the
strong man of Old Scripture had descended to the chief
functionary who worked it; but, so armed, he was stronger than
his namesake, and blinder, and tore away the gates of God’s own
Temple every day.
Among these terrors, and the brood belonging to them, the
Doctor walked with a steady head; confident in his power,
cautiously persistent in his end, never doubting that he would
have Lucie’s husband at last. Yet the current of the time swept by,
so strong and deep, and carried the time away so fiercely, that
Charles had lain in prison one year and three months when the
Doctor was thus steady and confident. So much more wicked and
distracted had the Revolution grown in that December month,
that the rivers of the South were encumbered with the bodies of
the violently drowned by night, and prisoners were shot in lines
and squares under the southern wintry sun. Still, the Doctor
walked among the terrors with a steady head. No man better
known than he, in Paris at that day; no man in a stranger
situation. Silent, humane, indispensable in hospital and prison,
using his art equally among assassins and victim, he was a man
apart. In the exercise of his skill, the appearance and the story of
the Bastille Captive removed him from all other men. He was not
suspected or brought in question, any more than if he had indeed
been recalled to life some eighteen years before, or were a spirit
moving among mortals.
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Chapter XXXV
THE WOOD-SAWYER
O ne year and three months. During all that time Lucie was
never sure, from hour to hour, but that the Guillotine
would strike off her husband’s head next day. Every day,
through the stony streets, the tumbrils now jolted heavily, filled
with Condemned. Lovely girls; bright women, brown-haired,
black-haired, and grey; youths; stalwart men and old; gentle born
and peasant born; all red wine for La Guillotine, all daily brought
into light from the dark cellars of the loathsome prisons, and
carried to her through the streets to slake her devouring thirst.
Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death;—the last, much the easiest
to bestow, O Guillotine!
If the suddenness of her calamity, and the whirling wheels of
the time, had stunned the Doctor’s daughter into awaiting the
result in idle despair, it would but have been with her as it was
with many. But, from the hour when she had taken the white head
to her fresh young bosom in the garret of Saint Antoine, she had
been true to her duties. She was truest to them in the season of
trial, as all the quietly loyal and good will always be.
As soon as they were established in their new residence, and
her father had entered on the routine of his avocations, she
arranged the little household as exactly as if her husband had
been there. Everything had its appointed place and its appointed
time. Little Lucie she taught, as regularly, as if they had all been
united in their English home. The slight devices with which she
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cheated herself into the show of a belief that they would soon be
reunited—the little preparations for his speedy return, the setting
aside of his chair and his books—these, and the solemn prayer at
night for one dear prisoner especially, among the many unhappy
souls in prison and the shadow of death—were almost the only
outspoken reliefs of her heavy mind.
She did not greatly alter in appearance. The plain dark dresses,
akin to mourning dresses, which she and her child wore, were as
neat and as well attended to as the brighter clothes of happy days.
She lost her colour, and the old and intent expression was a
constant, not an occasional, thing; otherwise, she remained very
pretty and comely. Sometimes, at night on kissing her father, she
would burst into the grief she had repressed all day, and would say
that her sole reliance, under Heaven, was on him. He always
resolutely answered: “Nothing can happen to him without my
knowledge, and I know that I can save him, Lucie.”
They had not made the round of their changed life many weeks,
when her father said to her, on coming home one evening:
“My dear, there is an upper window in the prison, to which
Charles can sometimes gain access at three in the afternoon.
When he can get to it—which depends on many uncertainties and
incidents—he might see you in the street, he thinks, if you stood in
a certain place that I can show you. But you will not be able to see
him, my poor child, and even if you could, it would be unsafe for
you to make a sign of recognition.”
“Oh show me the place, my father, and I will go there every
day.”
From that time, in all weathers, she waited there two hours. As
the clock struck two, she was there, and at four she turned
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resignedly away. When it was not too wet or inclement for her
child to be with her, they went together; at other times she was
alone; but, she never missed a single day.
It was the dark and dirty corner of a small winding street. The
hovel of a cutter of wood into lengths for burning was the only
house at that end; all else was wall. On the third day of her being
there, he noticed her.
“Good day, citizeness.”
“Good day, citizen.”
This mode of address was now prescribed by decree. It had
been established voluntarily some time ago, among the more
thorough patriots; but, was now law for everybody.
“Walking here again, citizeness?”
“You see me, citizen!”
The wood-sawyer, who was a little man with a redundancy of
gesture (he had once been a mender of roads), cast a glance at the
prison, pointed at the prison, and putting his ten fingers before his
face to represent bars, peeped through them jocosely.
“But it’s not my business,” said he. And went on sawing his
wood.
Next day he was looking out for her, and accosted her the
moment she appeared.
“What! Walking here again, citizeness?”
“Yes, citizen.”
“Ah! A child too! Your mother, is it not, my little citizeness?”
“Do I say yes, mamma?” whispered little Lucie, drawing close
to her.
“Yes, dearest.”
“Yes, citizen.”
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“Ah, But it’s not my business. My work is my business. See my
saw! I call it my Little Guillotine. La, la, la; La, la, la! And off his
head comes!”
The billet fell as he spoke, and he threw it into a basket.
“I call myself the Samson of the firewood guillotine. See here
again! Loo, loo, loo; Loo, loo, loo! And off her head comes! Now, a
child. Tickle, tickle; Pickle, pickle! And off its head comes. All the
family!”
Lucie shuddered as he threw two more billets into his basket,
but it was impossible to be there while the wood-sawyer was at
work, and not be in his sight. Thenceforth, to secure his good will,
she always spoke to him first, and often gave him drink-money,
which he readily received.
He was an inquisitive fellow, and sometimes when she had
quite forgotten him in gazing at the prison roof and grates, and in
lifting her heart up to her husband, she would come to herself to
find him looking at her, with his knee on his bench and his saw
stopped in its work. “But it’s not my business!” he would generally
say at those times, and would briskly fall to his sawing again.
In all weathers, in the snow and frost of winter, in the bitter
winds of spring, in the hot sunshine of summer, in the rains of
autumn, and again in the snow and frost of winter, Lucie passed
two hours of every day at this place; and every day on leaving it,
she kissed the prison wall. Her husband saw her (so she learned
from her father) it might be once in five or six times: it might be
twice or thrice running: it might be, not for a week or a fortnight
together. It was enough that he could and did see her when the
chances served, and on that possibility she would have waited out
the day, seven days a week.
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These occupations brought her round to the December month,
wherein her father walked among the terrors with a steady head.
On a lightly-snowing afternoon she arrived at the usual corner. It
was a day of some wild rejoicing, and a festival. She had seen the
houses, as she came along, decorated with little pikes, and with
little red caps stuck upon them; also, with tricoloured ribbons;
also, with the standard inscription (tricoloured letters were the
favourite), Republic One and Indivisible. Liberty, Equality,
Fraternity, or Death!
The miserable shop of the wood-sawyer was so small, that its
whole surface furnished very indifferent space for this legend. He
had got somebody to scrawl it up for him, however, who had
squeezed Death in with most inappropriate difficulty. On his
house-top, he displayed pike and cap, as a good citizen must, and
in a window he had stationed his saw inscribed as his “Little
Sainte Guillotine”—for the great sharp female was by that time
popularly canonised. His shop was shut and he was not there,
which was a relief to Lucie, and left her quite alone.
But, he was not far off, for presently she heard a troubled
movement and a shouting coming along, which filled her with fear.
A moment afterwards, and a throng of people came pouring round
the corner by the prison wall, in the midst of which was the wood-
sawyer hand in hand with The Vengeance. There could not be
fewer than five hundred people, and they were dancing like five
thousand demons. There was no other music than their own
singing. They danced to the popular Revolution song, keeping a
ferocious time that was like a gnashing of teeth in unison. Men and
women danced together, women danced together, men danced
together, as hazard had brought them together. At first, they were
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a mere storm of coarse red caps and coarse woollen rags; but, as
they filled the place, and stopped to dance about Lucie, some
ghastly apparition of a dance-figure gone raving mad arose among
them. They advanced, retreated, struck at one another’s hands,
clutched at one another’s heads, spun round alone, caught one
another and spun round in pairs, until many of them dropped.
While those were down, the rest linked hand in hand, and all spun
round together: then the ring broke, and in separate rings of two
and four they turned and turned until they all stopped at once,
began again, struck, clutched, and tore, and then reversed the
spin, and all spun round another way. Suddenly they stopped
again, paused, struck out the time afresh, formed into lines the
width of the public way, and, with their heads low down and their
hands high up, swooped screaming off. No fight could have been
half so terrible as this dance. It was so emphatically a fallen
sport—a something, once innocent, delivered over to all devilry—a
healthy pastime changed into a means of angering the blood,
bewildering the senses, and stealing the heart. Such grace as was
visible in it, made it the uglier, showing how warped and
perverted all things good by nature were become. The maidenly
bosom bared to this, the pretty almost-child’s head thus distracted,
the delicate foot mincing in this slough of blood and dirt, were
types of the disjointed time.
This was the Carmagnole. As it passed, leaving Lucie
frightened and bewildered in the doorway of the wood-sawyer’s
house, the feathery snow fell as quietly and lay as white and soft,
as if it had never been.
“O my father!” for he stood before her when he lifted up the
eyes she had momentarily darkened with her hand; “such a cruel,
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