lamp is burnt out, and the day is gleaming in above those shutters
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and between those iron bars, that I have now a secret to
communicate. Ask him, is that so.”
“It is so,” assented Defarge again.
“I communicate to him that secret. I smite this bosom with
these two hands as I smite it now, and I tell him, ‘Defarge, I was
brought up among the fishermen of the seashore, and that peasant
family so injured by the two Evremonde brothers, as that Bastille
paper describes, is my family. Defarge, that sister of the mortally
wounded boy upon the ground was my sister, that husband was
my sister’s husband, that unborn child was their child, that
brother was my brother, that father was my father, those dead are
my dead, and that summons to answer for those things descends
to me!’ Ask him, is that so.”
“It is so,” assented Defarge once more.
“Then tell Wind and Fire where to stop,” returned madame;
“but don’t tell me.”
Both her hearers derived a horrible enjoyment from the deadly
nature of her wrath—the listener could feel how white she was,
without seeing her—and both highly commended it. Defarge, a
weak minority, interposed a few words of the memory of the
compassionate wife of the Marquis; but only elicited from his own
wife a repetition of her last reply. “Tell the Wind and the Fire
where to stop; not me!”
Customers entered, and the group was broken up. The English
customer paid for what he had had, perplexedly counted his
change, and asked, as a stranger, to be directed towards the
National Palace. Madame Defarge took him to the door, and put
her arm on his, in pointing out the road. The English customer
was not without his reflections then, that it might be a good deed
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to seize that arm, lift it, and strike under it sharp and deep.
But, he went his way, and was soon swallowed up in the
shadow of the prison wall. At the appointed hour, he emerged
from it to present himself in Mr. Lorry’s room again, where he
found the old gentleman walking to and fro in restless anxiety. He
said he had been with Lucie until just now, and had only left her
for a few minutes, to come and keep his appointment. Her father
had not been seen, since he quitted the banking-house towards
four o’clock. She had some faint hopes that his mediation might
save Charles, but they were very slight. He had been more than
five hours gone: where could he be?
Mr. Lorry waited until ten; but, Doctor Manette not returning,
and he being unwilling to leave Lucie any longer, it was arranged
that he should go back to her, and come to the banking-house
again at midnight. In the meanwhile, Carton would wait alone by
the fire for the Doctor.
He waited and waited, and the clock struck twelve; but Doctor
Manette did not come back. Mr. Lorry returned, and found no
tidings of him, and brought none. Where could he be?
They were discussing this question, and were almost building
up some weak structure of hope on his prolonged absence, when
they heard him on the stairs. The instant he entered the room, it
was plain that all was lost.
Whether he had really been to any one, or whether he had been
all that time traversing the streets, was never known. As he stood
staring at them, they asked him no questions, for his face told
them everything.
“I cannot find it,” said he, “and I must have it. Where is it?”
His head and throat were bare, and, as he spoke with a helpless
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look straying all around, he took his coat off, and let it drop on the
floor.
“Where is my bench? I have been looking everywhere for my
bench, and I can’t find it. What have they done with my work?
Time presses: I must finish those shoes.”
They looked at one another, and their hearts died within them.
“Come, come!” said he, in a whimpering miserable way; “let me
get to work. Give me my work.”
Receiving no answer, he tore his hair, and beat his feet upon
the ground, like a distracted child.
“Don’t torture a poor forlorn wretch,” he implored them, with a
dreadful cry; “but give me my work! What is to become of us, if
those shoes are not done tonight?”
Lost, utterly lost!
It was so clearly beyond hope to reason with him, or try to
restore him, that—as if by agreement—they each put a hand upon
his shoulder, and soothed him to sit down before the fire, with a
promise that he should have his work presently. He sank into the
chair, and brooded over the embers, and shed tears. As if all that
had happened since the garret time were a momentary fancy, or a
dream, Mr. Lorry saw him shrink into the exact figure that
Defarge had had in keeping.
Affected, and impressed with terror as they both were, by this
spectacle of ruin, it was not a time to yield to such emotions. His
lonely daughter, bereft of her final hope and reliance, appealed to
them both too strongly. Again, as if by agreement, they looked at
one another with one meaning in their faces. Carton was the first
to speak:
“The last chance is gone: it was not much. Yes; he had better be
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taken to her. But, before you go, will you, for a moment, steadily
attend to me? Don’t ask me why I make the stipulations I am
going to make, and exact the promise I am going to exact; I have a
reason—a good one.”
“I do not doubt it,” answered Mr. Lorry. “Say on.”
The figure in the chair between them, was all the time
monotonously rocking itself to and fro, and moaning. They spoke
in such a tone as they would have used if they had been watching
by a sickbed in the night.
Carton stooped to pick up the coat, which lay almost entangling
his feet. As he did so, a small case in which the Doctor was
accustomed to carry the list of his day’s duties, fell lightly on the
floor. Carton took it up, and there was a folded paper in it. “We
should look at this!” he said. Mr. Lorry nodded his consent. He
opened it, and exclaimed, “Thank GoD!”
“What is it?” asked Mr. Lorry, eagerly.
“A moment! Let me speak of it in its place. First,” he put his
hand in his coat, and took another paper from it, “that is the
certificate which enables me to pass out of this city. Look at it. You
see—Sydney Carton, an Englishman?”
Mr. Lorry held it open in his hand, gazing in his earnest face.
“Keep it for me until tomorrow. I shall see him tomorrow, you
remember, and I had better not take it into the prison.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know; I prefer not to do so. Now, take this paper that
Doctor Manette has carried about him. It is a similar certificate,
enabling him and his daughter and her child, at any time, to pass
the barrier and the frontier. You see?”
“Yes!”
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“Perhaps he obtained it as his last and utmost precaution
against evil, yesterday. When is it dated? But no matter; don’t stay
to look; put it up carefully with mine and your own. Now, observe!
I never doubted until within this hour or two, that he had, or could
have such a paper. It is good, until recalled. But it may be soon
recalled, and I have reason to think, will be.”
“They are not in danger?”
“They are in great danger. They are in danger of denunciation
by Madame Defarge. I know it from her own lips. I have overheard
words of that woman’s, tonight, which have presented their
danger to me in strong colours. I have lost no time, and since then,
I have seen the spy. He confirms me. He knows that a wood-
sawyer living by the prison-wall, is under the control of the
Defarges, and has been rehearsed by Madame Defarge as to his
having seen Her”—he never mentioned Lucie’s name—“making
signs and signals to prisoners. It is easy to foresee that the
pretence will be the common one, a prison plot, and that it will
involve her life—and perhaps her child’s—and perhaps her
father’s—for both have been seen with her at that place. Don’t
look so horrified. You will save them all.”
“Heaven grant I may, Carton! But how?”
“I am going to tell you how. It will depend on you, and it could
depend on no better man. This new denunciation will certainly not
take place until after tomorrow; probably not until two or three
days afterwards; more probably a week afterwards. You know it is
a capital crime to mourn for, or sympathise with, a victim of the
Guillotine. She and her father would unquestionably be guilty of
this crime, and this woman (the inveteracy of whose pursuit
cannot be described) would wait to add that strength to her case,
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and make herself doubly sure. You follow me?”
“So attentively, and with so much confidence in what you say,
that for the moment I lose sight,” touching the back of the Doctor’s
chair, “even of this distress.”
“You have money, and can buy the means of travelling to the
seacoast as quickly as the journey can be made. Your preparations
have been completed for some days, to return to England. Early
tomorrow have your horses ready, so that they may be in starting
trim at two o’clock in the afternoon.”
“It shall be done!”
His manner was so fervent and inspiring, that Mr. Lorry caught
the flame, and was quick as youth.
“You are a noble heart. Did I say we could depend upon no
better man? Tell her, tonight, what you know of her danger as
involving her child and her father. Dwell upon that, for she would
lay her own fair head beside her husband’s cheerfully.” He
faltered for an instant; then went on as before. “For the sake of her
child and her father, press upon her the necessity of leaving Paris,
with them and you at that hour. Tell her that it was her husband’s
last arrangement. Tell her that more depends upon it than she
dare believe, or hope. You think that her father, even in this sad
state. will submit himself to her; do you not?”
“I am sure of it.”
“I thought so. Quietly and steadily have all these arrangements
made in the court-yard here, even to the taking of your own seat in
the carriage. The moment I come to you, take me in, and drive
away.”
“I understand that I wait for you under all circumstances?”
“You have my certificate in your hand with the rest, you know,
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and will reserve my place. Wait for nothing but to have my place
occupied, and then for England!”
“Why, then,” said Mr. Lorry, grasping his eager but so firm and
steady hand, “it does not all depend on one old man, but I shall
have a young and ardent man at my side.”
“By the help of Heaven you shall! Promise me solemnly that
nothing will influence you to alter the course on which we now
stand pledged to one another.”
“Nothing, Carton.”
“Remember these words tomorrow: change the course, or delay
in it—for any reason—and no life can possibly be saved, and many
lives must inevitably be sacrificed.”
“I will remember them. I hope to do my part faithfully.”
“And I hope to do mine. Now, good-bye!”
Though he said it with a grave smile of earnestness, and though
he even put the old man’s hand to his lips, he did not part from
him then. He helped him so far to arouse the rocking figure before
the dying embers, as to get a cloak and hat put upon it, and to
tempt it forth to find where the bench and work were hidden that
it still moaningly besought to have. He walked on the other side of
it and protected it to the court-yard of the house where the
afflicted heart—so happy in the memorable time when he had
revealed his own desolate heart to it—outwatched the awful night.
He entered the courtyard and remained there for a few moments
alone, looking up at the light in the window of her room. Before he
went away, he breathed a blessing towards it and a Farewell.
Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
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Chapter XLIII
FIFTY-TWO
In the black prison of the Conciergerie, the doomed of the day
awaited their fate. They were in number as the weeks of the
year. Fifty-two were to roll that afternoon on the life-tide of
the city to the boundless everlasting sea. Before their cells were
quit of them, new occupants were appointed; before their blood
ran into the blood spilled yesterday, the blood that was to mingle
with theirs tomorrow was already set apart.
Two score and twelve were told off. From the farmer-general of
seventy, whose riches could not buy his life, to the seamstress of
twenty, whose poverty and obscurity could not save her. Physical
diseases, engendered in the vices and neglects of men, will seize
on victims of all degrees; and the frightful moral disorder, born of
unspeakable suffering, intolerable oppression, and heartless
indifference, smote equally without distinction.
Charles Darnay, alone in a cell, had sustained himself with no
flattering delusion since he came to it from the Tribunal. In every
line of the narrative he had heard, he had heard his
condemnation. He had fully comprehended that no personal
influence could possibly save him, that he was virtually sentenced
by the millions, and that units could avail him nothing.
Nevertheless, it was not easy, with the face of his beloved wife
fresh before him, to compose his mind to what it must bear. His
hold on life was strong, and it was very, very hard, to loosen; by
gradual efforts and degrees unclosed a little here, it clenched the
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tighter there; and when he brought his strength to bear on that
hand and it yielded, this was closed again. There was a hurry, too,
in all his thoughts, a turbulent and heated working of his heart,
that contended against resignation. If, for a moment, he did feel
resigned, then his wife and child who had to live after him, seemed
to protest and to make it a selfish thing.
But, all this was at first. Before long, the consideration that
there was no disgrace in the fate he must meet, and that numbers
went the same road wrongfully, and trod it firmly every day,
sprang up to stimulate him. Next followed the thought that much
of the future peace of mind enjoyable by the dear ones, depended
on his quiet fortitude. So, by degrees he calmed into the better
state, when he could raise his thoughts much higher and draw
comfort down.
Before it had set in dark on the night of his condemnation, he
had travelled thus far on his last way. Being allowed to purchase
the means of writing, and a light, he sat down to write until such
time as the prison lamps should be extinguished.
He wrote a long letter to Lucie, showing her that he had known
nothing of her father’s imprisonment, until he had heard of it from
herself, and that he had been as ignorant as she of his father’s and
uncle’s responsibility for that misery, until the paper had been
read. He had already explained to her that his concealment from
herself of the name he had relinquished, was the one condition—
fully intelligible now—that her father had attached to their
betrothal, and was the one promise he had still exacted on the
morning of their marriage. He entreated her, for her father’s sake,
never to seek to know whether her father had become oblivious of
the existence of the paper, or had had it recalled to him (for the
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moment or, for good), by the story of the Tower, on that old
Sunday under the dear old plane-tree in the garden. If he had
preserved any definite remembrance of it, there could be no doubt
that he had supposed it destroyed with the Bastille, when he had
found no mention of it among the relics of prisoners which the
populace had discovered there, and which had been described to
all the world. He besought her—though he added that he knew it
was needless—to console her father, by impressing him through
every tender means she could think of , with the truth that he had
done nothing for which he could justly reproach himself, but had
uniformly forgotten himself for their joint sakes. Next to her
preservation of his own last grateful love and blessing, and her
overcoming of her sorrow, to devote herself to their dear child, he
adjured her, as they would meet in Heaven, to comfort her father.
To her father himself, he wrote in the same strain; but, he told
her father that he expressly confided his wife and child to his care.
And he told him this, very strongly, with the hope of rousing him
from any despondency or dangerous retrospect towards which he
foresaw he might be tending.
To Mr. Lorry, he commended them all, and explained his
worldly affairs. That done, with many added sentences of grateful
