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A Tale of Two Cities
Chapter XXXIV
CALM IN STORM
Doctor Manette did not return until the morning of the
fourth day of his absence. So much of what had happened
in that dreadful time as could be kept from the
knowledge of Lucie was so well concealed from her, that not until
long afterwards, when France and she were far apart, did she
know that eleven hundred defenceless prisoners of both sexes and
all ages had been killed by the populace; that four days and nights
had been darkened by this deed of horror; and that the air around
her had been tainted by the slain. She only knew that there had
been an attack upon the prisons, that all political prisoners had
been in danger, and that some had been dragged out by the crowd
and murdered.
To Mr. Lorry, the Doctor communicated under an injunction of
secrecy on which he had no need to dwell, that the crowd had
taken him through a scene of carnage to the prison La Force.
That, in the prison he had found a self-appointed Tribunal sitting,
before which the prisoners were brought singly, and by which
they were rapidly ordered to be put forth to be massacred, or to be
released, or (in a few cases) to be sent back to their cells. That,
presented by his conductors to this Tribunal, he had announced
himself by name and profession as having been for eighteen years
a secret and unaccused prisoner in the Bastille; that, one of the
body so sitting in judgment had risen and identified him, and that
this man was Defarge. That, hereupon he had ascertained,
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through the registers on the table, that his son-in-law was among
the living prisoners, and had pleaded hard to the Tribunal—of
whom some members were asleep and some awake, some dirty
with murder and some clean, some sober and some not—for his
life and liberty. That, in the first frantic greetings lavished on
himself as a notable sufferer under the over-thrown system, it had
been accorded to him to have Charles Darnay brought before the
lawless Court, and examined. That, he seemed on the point of
being at once released, when the tide in his favour met with some
unexplained check (not intelligible to the Doctor), which led to a
few words of secret conference. That, the man sitting as President
had then informed Doctor Manette that the prisoner must remain
in custody, but should, for his sake, be held inviolate in safe
custody. That, immediately, on a signal, the prisoner was removed
to the interior of the prison again; but, that he, the Doctor, had
then so strongly pleaded for permission to remain and assure
himself that his son-in-law was, through no malice or mischance,
delivered to the concourse whose murderous yells outside the gate
had often drowned the proceedings, that he had obtained the
permission, and had remained in that Hall of Blood until the
danger was over.
The sights he had seen there, with brief snatches of food and
sleep by intervals, shall remain untold. The mad joy over the
prisoners who were saved, had astounded him scarcely less than
the mad ferocity against those who were cut to pieces. One
prisoner there was, he said, who had been discharged into the
street free, but at whom a mistaken savage had thrust a pike as he
passed out. Being besought to go to him and dress the wound, the
Doctor had passed out at the same gate, and found him in the
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arms of a company of Samaritans, who were seated on the bodies
of their victims. With an inconsistency as monstrous as anything in
this awful nightmare, they had helped the healer, and tended the
wounded man with the gentlest solicitude—had made a litter for
him and escorted him carefully from the spot—had then caught up
their weapons and plunged anew into a butchery so dreadful, that
the Doctor had covered his eyes with his hands, and swooned
away in the midst of it.
As Mr. Lorry received these confidences, and as he watched the
face of his friend now sixty-two years of age, a misgiving arose
within him that such dreadful experiences would revive the old
danger. But, he had never seen his friend in his present aspect: he
had never at all known him in his present character. For the first
time the Doctor felt, now, that his suffering was strength and
power. For the first time he felt that in that sharp fire, he had
slowly forged the iron which could break the prison door of his
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.
Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
A Tale of Two Cities
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
