A Tale of Two Cities
hinges a very little way, and allowed Mr. Jerry Cruncher to
squeeze himself into court.
“What’s on?” he asked, in a whisper, of the man he found
himself next to.
“Nothing yet.”
“What’s coming on?”
“The Treason case.”
“The quartering one, eh?”
“Ah!” returned the man, with a relish; “he’ll be drawn on a
hurdle to be half hanged, and then he’ll be taken down and sliced
before his own face, and then his inside will be taken out and
burnt while he looks on, and then his head will be chopped off,
and he’ll be cut into quarters. That’s the sentence.”
“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.”
Mr. Cruncher’s attention was here diverted to the door-keeper,
whom he saw making his way to Mr. Lorry, with the note in his
hand. Mr. Lorry sat at a table, among the gentlemen in wigs: not
far from a wigged gentleman, the prisoner’s counsel, who had a
great bundle of papers before him: and nearly opposite another
wigged gentleman with his hands in his pockets, whose whole
attention, when Mr. Cruncher looked at him then or afterwards,
seemed to be concentrated on the ceiling of the court. After some
gruff coughing and rubbing of his chin and signing with his hand,
Jerry attracted the notice of Mr. Lorry, who had stood up to look
for him, and who quietly nodded and sat down again.
“What’s he got to do with the case?” asked the man he had
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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 entrance of the Judge, and a consequent great stir and
settling down in the court, stopped the dialogue. Presently, the
dock became the central point of interest. Two gaolers, who had
been standing there, went out, and the prisoner was brought in,
and put to the bar.
Everybody present, except the one wigged gentleman who
looked at the ceiling, stared at him. All the human breath in the
place, rolled at him, like a sea, or a wind, or a fire. Eager faces
strained round pillars and corners, to get a sight of him; spectators
in back rows stood up, not to miss a hair of him; people on the
floor of the court, laid their hands on the shoulders of the people
before them, to help themselves, at anybody’s cost, to a view of
him, stood a-tiptoe, got upon ledges, stood upon next to nothing, to
see every inch of him. Conspicuous among these latter, like an
animated bit of the spiked wall of Newgate, Jerry stood: aiming at
the prisoner the beery breath of a whet he had taken as he came
along, and discharging it to mingle with the waves of other beer,
and gin, and tea, and coffee, and what not, that flowed at him, and
already broke upon the great windows behind him in an impure
mist and rain.
The object of all this staring and blaring, was a young man of
about five and twenty, well-grown and well-looking, with a
sunburnt cheek and a dark eye. His condition was that of a young
gentleman. He was plainly dressed in black, or very dark grey, and
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his hair, which was long and dark, was gathered in a ribbon at the
back of his neck; more to be out of his way than for ornament. As
an emotion of the mind will express itself through any covering of
the body, so the paleness which his situation engendered came
through the brown upon his cheek, showing the soul to be
stronger than the sun. He was otherwise quite self-possessed,
bowed to the Judge, and stood quiet.
The sort of interest with which this man was stared and
breathed at, was not a sort that elevated humanity. Had he stood
in peril of a less horrible sentence—had there been a chance of
any one of its savage details being spared—by just so much would
he have lost in his fascination. The form that was to be doomed to
be so shamefully mangled, was the sight; the immortal creature
that was to be so butchered and torn asunder, yielded the
sensation. Whatever gloss the various spectators put upon the
interest, according to their several arts and powers of self-deceit,
the interest was, at the root of it, Ogreish.
Silence in the court! Charles Darnay had yesterday pleaded Not
Guilty to an indictment denouncing him (with infinite jingle and
jangle) for that he was a false traitor to our serene, illustrious,
excellent, and so forth, prince, our Lord the King, by reason of his
having, on divers occasions, and by divers means and ways,
assisted Lewis, the French King, in his wars against our said
serene, illustrious, excellent, and so forth; that was to say, by
coming and going, between the dominions of our said serene,
illustrious, excellent, and so forth, and those of the said French
Lewis, and wickedly, falsely, traitorously, and otherwise eviladverbiously, revealing to the said French Lewis what forces our
said serene, illustrious, excellent, and so forth, had in preparation
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to send to Canada and North America. This much, Jerry, with his
head becoming more and more spiky as the law terms bristled it,
made out with huge satisfaction, and so arrived circuitously at the
understanding that the aforesaid, and over and over again
aforesaid, Charles Darnay, stood there before him upon his trial;
that the jury were swearing in; and that Mr. Attorney-General was
making ready to speak.
The accused, who was (and who knew he was) being mentally
hanged, beheaded, and quartered, by everybody there, neither
flinched from the situation, nor assumed any theatrical air in it. He
was quiet and attentive; watched the opening proceedings with a
grave interest; and stood with his hands resting on the slab of
wood before him, so composedly, that they had not displaced a leaf
of the herbs with which it was strewn. The court was all bestrewn
with herbs and sprinkled with vinegar, as a precaution against
gaol air and gaol fever.
Over the prisoner’s head there was a mirror, to throw the light
down upon him. Crowds of the wicked and the wretched had been
reflected in it, and had passed from its surface and this earth’s
together. Haunted in a most ghastly manner that abominable
place would have been, if the glass could ever have rendered back
its reflections, as the ocean is one day to give up its dead. Some
passing thought of the infamy and disgrace for which it had been
reserved, may have struck the prisoner’s mind. Be that as it may, a
change in his position making him conscious of a bar of light
across his face, he looked up; and when he saw the glass his face
flushed, and his right hand pushed the herbs away.
It happened that the action turned his face to that side of the
court which was on his left. About on a level with his eyes, there
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sat, in that corner of the Judge’s bench, two persons upon whom
his look immediately rested; so immediately, and so much to the
changing of his aspect, that all the eyes that were turned upon
him, turned to them.
The spectators saw in the two figures, a young lady of little
more than twenty, and a gentleman who was evidently her father;
a man of a very remarkable appearance in respect of the absolute
whiteness of his hair, and a certain indescribable intensity of face:
not of an active kind, but pondering and self-communing. When
this expression was upon him, he looked as if he were old; but
when it was stirred and broken up—as it was now, in a moment,
on his speaking to his daughter—he became a handsome man, not
past the prime of life.
His daughter had one of her hands drawn through his arm, as
she sat by him, and the other pressed upon it. She had drawn
close to him, in her dread of the scene, and in her pity for the
prisoner. Her forehead had been strikingly expressive of an
engrossing terror and compassion that saw nothing but the peril of
the accused. This had been so very noticeable, so very powerfully
and naturally shown, that starers who had had no pity for him
were touched by her; and the whisper went about, “Who are
they?”
Jerry, the messenger, who had made his own observations, in
his own manner, and who had been sucking the rust off his fingers
in his absorption, stretched his neck to hear who they were. The
crowd about him had pressed and passed the inquiry on to the
nearest attendant, and from him it had been more slowly pressed
and passed back; at last it got to Jerry:
“Witnesses.”
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“For which side?”
“Against.”
“Against what side?”
“The prisoner’s.”
The Judge, whose eyes had gone in the general direction,
recalled them, leaned back in his seat, and looked steadily at the
man whose life was in his hand, as Mr. Attorney-General rose to
spin the rope, grind the axe, and hammer the nails into the
scaffold.
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Chapter IX
A DISSAPOINTMENT
Mr. Attorney-General had to inform the jury, that the
prisoner before them, though young in years, was old in
the treasonable practices which claimed the forfeit of
his life. That this correspondence with the public enemy was not a
correspondence of today, or of yesterday, or even of last year, or of
the year before. That, it was certain the prisoner had, for longer
than that, been in the habit of passing and re-passing between
France and England, on secret business of which he could give no
honest account. That, if it were in the nature of traitorous ways to
thrive (which happily it never was), the real wickedness and guilt
of his business might have remained undiscovered. That
Providence, however, had put it into the heart of a person who
was beyond fear and beyond reproach, to ferret out the nature of
the prisoner’s schemes, and, struck with horror, to disclose them
to his Majesty’s Chief Secretary of State and most honourable
Privy Council. That, this patriot would be produced before them.
That, his position and attitude were, on the whole, sublime. That,
he had been the prisoner’s friend, but, at once in an auspicious
and an evil hour detecting his infamy, had resolved to immolate
the traitor he could no longer cherish in his bosom, on the sacred
altar of his country. That, if statues were decreed in Britain, as in
ancient Greece and Rome, to public benefactors, this shining
citizen would assuredly have had one. That, as they were not so
decreed, he probably would not have one. That, Virtue, as had
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been observed by the poets (in many passages which he well knew
the jury would have, word for word, at the tips of their tongues;
whereat the jury’s countenances displayed a guilty consciousness
that they knew nothing about the passages), was in a manner
contagious; more especially the bright virtue known as patriotism,
or love of country. That, the lofty example of this immaculate and
unimpeachable witness for the Crown to refer to whom however
unworthily was an honour, had communicated itself to the
prisoner’s servant, and had engendered in him a holy
determination to examine his master’s table-drawers and pockets,
and secrete his papers. That, he (Mr. Attorney-General) was
prepared to hear some disparagement attempted of this admirable
servant; but that, in a general way, he preferred him to his (Mr.
Attorney-General’s) brothers and sisters, and honoured him more
than his (Mr. Attorney-General’s) father and mother. That, he
called with confidence on the jury to come and do likewise. That,
the evidence of these two witnesses, coupled with the documents
of their discovering that would be produced, would show the
prisoner to have been furnished with lists of his Majesty’s forces,
and of their disposition and preparation, both by sea and land, and
would leave no doubt that he had habitually conveyed such
information to a hostile power. That, these lists could not be
proved to be in the prisoner’s handwriting; but that it was all the
same; that, indeed, it was rather the better for the prosecution, as
showing the prisoner to be artful in his precautions. That, the
proof would go back five years, and would show the prisoner
already engaged in these pernicious missions within a few weeks
before the date of the very first action fought between the British
troops and the Americans. That, for these reasons, the jury, being
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a loyal jury (as he knew they were), and being a responsible jury
(as they knew they were), must positively find the prisoner Guilty,
and make an end of him, whether they liked it or not. That, they
never could lay their heads upon their pillows; that, they never
could tolerate the idea of their wives laying their heads upon their
pillows; that, they could never endure the notion of their children
laying their heads upon their pillows; in short, that there never
more could be, for them or theirs, any laying of heads upon pillows
at all, unless the prisoner’s head was taken off. That head Mr.
Attorney-General concluded by demanding of them, in the name
of everything he could think of with a round turn in it, and on the
faith of his solemn asseveration that he already considered the
prisoner as good as dead and gone.
When the Attorney-General ceased, a buzz arose in the court as
if a cloud of great blue-flies were swarming about the prisoner, in
anticipation of what he was soon to become. When toned down
again, the unimpeachable patriot appeared in the witness-box.
Mr. Solicitor-General then, following his leader’s lead,
