A TALE OF TWO CITIES A STORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION By Charles Dickens Recalled to Life (1) The 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 ...Read More

A TALE OF TWO CITIES A STORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION By Charles Dickens Recalled to Life (2) The It was the Dover road that lay, on a Friday night late in November, before the first of the persons with whom this history has business. The Dover road lay, as to him, beyond the Dover mail, as it lumbered up Shooter's Hill. He walked up hill in the mire by the side of the mail, as the rest of the passengers did; not because they had the least relish for walking exercise, under the circumstances, but because the hill, ...Read More

A TALE OF TWO CITIES A STORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION By Charles Dickens Recalled to Life (3) The Shadows A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the ...Read More

A TALE OF TWO CITIES A STORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION By Charles Dickens Recalled to Life (4) The When the mail got successfully to Dover, in the course of the forenoon, the head drawer at the Royal George Hotel opened the coach-door as his custom was. He did it with some flourish of ceremony, for a mail journey from London in winter was an achievement to congratulate an adventurous traveller upon. By that time, there was only one adventurous traveller left be congratulated: for the two others had been set down at their respective roadside destinations. The mildewy ...Read More

A TALE OF TWO CITIES A STORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION By Charles Dickens Recalled to Life (5) The A large cask of wine had been dropped and broken, in the street. The accident had happened in getting it out of a cart; the cask had tumbled out with a run, the hoops had burst, and it lay on the stones just outside the door of the wine-shop, shattered like a walnut-shell. All the people within reach had suspended their business, or their idleness, to run to the spot and drink the wine. The rough, irregular stones of the ...Read More

A TALE OF TWO CITIES A STORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION By Charles Dickens Recalled to Life (6) The “Good day!” said Monsieur Defarge, looking down at the white head that bent low over the shoemaking. It was raised for a moment, and a very faint voice responded to the salutation, as if it were at a distance: “Good day!” “You are still hard at work, I see?” After a long silence, the head was lifted for another moment, and the voice replied, “Yes--I am working.” This time, a pair of haggard eyes had looked at the questioner, before ...Read More

A TALE OF TWO CITIES A STORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION By Charles Dickens The Golden Thread (1) Five Later Tellson's Bank by Temple Bar was an old-fashioned place, even in the year one thousand seven hundred and eighty. It was very small, very dark, very ugly, very incommodious. It was an old-fashioned place, moreover, in the moral attribute that the partners in the House were proud of its smallness, proud of its darkness, proud of its ugliness, proud of its incommodiousness. They were even boastful of its eminence in those particulars, and were fired by an express conviction ...Read More

A TALE OF TWO CITIES A STORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION By Charles Dickens The Golden Thread (2) A “You know the Old Bailey well, no doubt?” said one of the oldest of clerks to Jerry the messenger. “Ye-es, sir,” returned Jerry, in something of a dogged manner. “I _do_ know the Bailey.” “Just so. And you know Mr. Lorry.” “I know Mr. Lorry, sir, much better than I know the Bailey. Much better,” said Jerry, not unlike a reluctant witness at the establishment in question, “than I, as a honest tradesman, wish to know the Bailey.” “Very well. ...Read More

A TALE OF TWO CITIES A STORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION By Charles Dickens The Golden Thread (3) A 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 to-day, 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 repassing between France and England, on secret ...Read More

A TALE OF TWO CITIES A STORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION By Charles Dickens The Golden Thread (4) Congratulatory the dimly-lighted passages of the court, the last sediment of the human stew that had been boiling there all day, was straining off, when Doctor Manette, Lucie Manette, his daughter, Mr. Lorry, the solicitor for the defence, and its counsel, Mr. Stryver, stood gathered round Mr. Charles Darnay--just released--congratulating him on his escape from death. It would have been difficult by a far brighter light, to recognise in Doctor Manette, intellectual of face and upright of bearing, the shoemaker of ...Read More

A TALE OF TWO CITIES A STORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION By Charles Dickens The Golden Thread (5) The Those were drinking days, and most men drank hard. So very great is the improvement Time has brought about in such habits, that a moderate statement of the quantity of wine and punch which one man would swallow in the course of a night, without any detriment to his reputation as a perfect gentleman, would seem, in these days, a ridiculous exaggeration. The learned profession of the law was certainly not behind any other learned profession in its Bacchanalian propensities; ...Read More

A TALE OF TWO CITIES A STORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION By Charles Dickens The Golden Thread (6) Hundreds People The quiet lodgings of Doctor Manette were in a quiet street-corner not far from Soho-square. On the afternoon of a certain fine Sunday when the waves of four months had rolled over the trial for treason, and carried it, as to the public interest and memory, far out to sea, Mr. Jarvis Lorry walked along the sunny streets from Clerkenwell where he lived, on his way to dine with the Doctor. After several relapses into business-absorption, Mr. Lorry had ...Read More

A TALE OF TWO CITIES A STORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION By Charles Dickens The Golden Thread (7) Monseigneur Town Monseigneur, one of the great lords in power at the Court, held his fortnightly reception in his grand hotel in Paris. Monseigneur was in his inner room, his sanctuary of sanctuaries, the Holiest of Holiests to the crowd of worshippers in the suite of rooms without. Monseigneur was about to take his chocolate. Monseigneur could swallow a great many things with ease, and was by some few sullen minds supposed to be rather rapidly swallowing France; but, his morning's ...Read More

A TALE OF TWO CITIES A STORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION By Charles Dickens The Golden Thread (8) Monseigneur the Country A beautiful landscape, with the corn bright in it, but not abundant. Patches of poor rye where corn should have been, patches of poor peas and beans, patches of most coarse vegetable substitutes for wheat. On inanimate nature, as on the men and women who cultivated it, a prevalent tendency towards an appearance of vegetating unwillingly--a dejected disposition to give up, and wither away. Monsieur the Marquis in his travelling carriage (which might have been lighter), conducted by ...Read More

A TALE OF TWO CITIES A STORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION By Charles Dickens The Golden Thread (9) The Head It was a heavy mass of building, that chateau of Monsieur the Marquis, with a large stone courtyard before it, and two stone sweeps of staircase meeting in a stone terrace before the principal door. A stony business altogether, with heavy stone balustrades, and stone urns, and stone flowers, and stone faces of men, and stone heads of lions, in all directions. As if the Gorgon's head had surveyed it, when it was finished, two centuries ago. Up the ...Read More

A TALE OF TWO CITIES A STORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION By Charles Dickens The Golden Thread (10) Two More months, to the number of twelve, had come and gone, and Mr. Charles Darnay was established in England as a higher teacher of the French language who was conversant with French literature. In this age, he would have been a Professor; in that age, he was a Tutor. He read with young men who could find any leisure and interest for the study of a living tongue spoken all over the world, and he cultivated a taste for its ...Read More

A TALE OF TWO CITIES A STORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION By Charles Dickens The Golden Thread (11) A Picture “Sydney,” said Mr. Stryver, on that self-same night, or morning, to his jackal “mix another bowl of punch I have something to say to you.” Sydney had been working double tides that night, and the night before, and the night before that, and a good many nights in succession, making a grand clearance among Mr. Stryver's papers before the setting in of the long vacation. The clearance was effected at last the Stryver arrears were handsomely fetched up everything ...Read More

A TALE OF TWO CITIES A STORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION By Charles Dickens The Golden Thread (12) The of Delicacy Mr. Stryver having made up his mind to that magnanimous bestowal of good fortune on the Doctor's daughter, resolved to make her happiness known to her before he left town for the Long Vacation. After some mental debating of the point, he came to the conclusion that it would be as well to get all the preliminaries done with, and they could then arrange at their leisure whether he should give her his hand a week or two ...Read More

A TALE OF TWO CITIES A STORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION By Charles Dickens The Golden Thread (13) The of No Delicacy If Sydney Carton ever shone anywhere, he certainly never shone in the house of Doctor Manette. He had been there often, during a whole year, and had always been the same moody and morose lounger there. When he cared to talk, he talked well; but, the cloud of caring for nothing, which overshadowed him with such a fatal darkness, was very rarely pierced by the light within him. And yet he did care something for the streets ...Read More

A TALE OF TWO CITIES A STORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION By Charles Dickens The Golden Thread (14) The Tradesman To the eyes of Mr. Jeremiah Cruncher, sitting on his stool in Fleet-street with his grisly urchin beside him, a vast number and variety of objects in movement were every day presented. Who could sit upon anything in Fleet-street during the busy hours of the day, and not be dazed and deafened by two immense processions, one ever tending westward with the sun, the other ever tending eastward from the sun, both ever tending to the plains beyond the ...Read More

A TALE OF TWO CITIES A STORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION By Charles Dickens The Golden Thread (15) Knitting had been earlier drinking than usual in the wine-shop of Monsieur Defarge. As early as six o'clock in the morning, sallow faces peeping through its barred windows had descried other faces within, bending over measures of wine. Monsieur Defarge sold a very thin wine at the best of times, but it would seem to have been an unusually thin wine that he sold at this time. A sour wine, moreover, or a souring, for its influence on the mood of ...Read More

A TALE OF TWO CITIES A STORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION By Charles Dickens The Golden Thread (16) Still Madame Defarge and monsieur her husband returned amicably to the bosom of Saint Antoine, while a speck in a blue cap toiled through the darkness, and through the dust, and down the weary miles of avenue by the wayside, slowly tending towards that point of the compass where the chateau of Monsieur the Marquis, now in his grave, listened to the whispering trees. Such ample leisure had the stone faces, now, for listening to the trees and to the fountain, ...Read More

A TALE OF TWO CITIES A STORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION By Charles Dickens The Golden Thread (17) One Never did the sun go down with a brighter glory on the quiet corner in Soho, than one memorable evening when the Doctor and his daughter sat under the plane-tree together. Never did the moon rise with a milder radiance over great London, than on that night when it found them still seated under the tree, and shone upon their faces through its leaves. Lucie was to be married to-morrow. She had reserved this last evening for her father, and ...Read More

A TALE OF TWO CITIES A STORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION By Charles Dickens The Golden Thread (18) Nine The marriage-day was shining brightly, and they were ready outside the closed door of the Doctor's room, where he was speaking with Charles Darnay. They were ready to go to church; the beautiful bride, Mr. Lorry, and Miss Pross--to whom the event, through a gradual process of reconcilement to the inevitable, would have been one of absolute bliss, but for the yet lingering consideration that her brother Solomon should have been the bridegroom. “And so,” said Mr. Lorry, who could ...Read More

A TALE OF TWO CITIES A STORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION By Charles Dickens The Golden Thread (19) An Worn out by anxious watching, Mr. Lorry fell asleep at his post. On the tenth morning of his suspense, he was startled by the shining of the sun into the room where a heavy slumber had overtaken him when it was dark night. He rubbed his eyes and roused himself; but he doubted, when he had done so, whether he was not still asleep. For, going to the door of the Doctor's room and looking in, he perceived that the ...Read More

A TALE OF TWO CITIES A STORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION By Charles Dickens The Golden Thread (20) A When the newly-married pair came home, the first person who appeared, to offer his congratulations, was Sydney Carton. They had not been at home many hours, when he presented himself. He was not improved in habits, or in looks, or in manner; but there was a certain rugged air of fidelity about him, which was new to the observation of Charles Darnay. He watched his opportunity of taking Darnay aside into a window, and of speaking to him when no ...Read More

A TALE OF TWO CITIES A STORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION By Charles Dickens The Golden Thread (21) Echoing A wonderful corner for echoes, it has been remarked, that corner where the Doctor lived. Ever busily winding the golden thread which bound her husband, and her father, and herself, and her old directress and companion, in a life of quiet bliss, Lucie sat in the still house in the tranquilly resounding corner, listening to the echoing footsteps of years. At first, there were times, though she was a perfectly happy young wife, when her work would slowly fall from ...Read More

A TALE OF TWO CITIES A STORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION By Charles Dickens The Golden Thread (22) The Still Rises Haggard Saint Antoine had had only one exultant week, in which to soften his modicum of hard and bitter bread to such extent as he could, with the relish of fraternal embraces and congratulations, when Madame Defarge sat at her counter, as usual, presiding over the customers. Madame Defarge wore no rose in her head, for the great brotherhood of Spies had become, even in one short week, extremely chary of trusting themselves to the saint's mercies. The ...Read More

A TALE OF TWO CITIES A STORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION By Charles Dickens The Golden Thread (23) Fire There was a change on the village where the fountain fell, and where the mender of roads went forth daily to hammer out of the stones on the highway such morsels of bread as might serve for patches to hold his poor ignorant soul and his poor reduced body together. The prison on the crag was not so dominant as of yore; there were soldiers to guard it, but not many; there were officers to guard the soldiers, but not ...Read More

A TALE OF TWO CITIES A STORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION By Charles Dickens The Golden Thread (24) Drawn the Loadstone Rock In such risings of fire and risings of sea--the firm earth shaken by the rushes of an angry ocean which had now no ebb, but was always on the flow, higher and higher, to the terror and wonder of the beholders on the shore--three years of tempest were consumed. Three more birthdays of little Lucie had been woven by the golden thread into the peaceful tissue of the life of her home. Many a night and many ...Read More

A TALE OF TWO CITIES A STORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION By Charles Dickens The Track of a Storm In Secret The traveller fared slowly on his way, who fared towards Paris from England in the autumn of the year one thousand seven hundred and ninety-two. More than enough of bad roads, bad equipages, and bad horses, he would have encountered to delay him, though the fallen and unfortunate King of France had been upon his throne in all his glory; but, the changed times were fraught with other obstacles than these. Every town-gate and village taxing-house had its ...Read More

A TALE OF TWO CITIES A STORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION By Charles Dickens The Track of a Storm The Grindstone Tellson's Bank, established in the Saint Germain Quarter of Paris, was in a wing of a large house, approached by a courtyard and shut off from the street by a high wall and a strong gate. The house belonged to a great nobleman who had lived in it until he made a flight from the troubles, in his own cook's dress, and got across the borders. A mere beast of the chase flying from hunters, he was still ...Read More

A TALE OF TWO CITIES A STORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION By Charles Dickens The Track of a Storm The Shadow One of the first considerations which arose in the business mind of Mr. Lorry when business hours came round, was this:--that he had no right to imperil Tellson's by sheltering the wife of an emigrant prisoner under the Bank roof. His own possessions, safety, life, he would have hazarded for Lucie and her child, without a moment's demur; but the great trust he held was not his own, and as to that business charge he was a strict ...Read More

A TALE OF TWO CITIES A STORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION By Charles Dickens The Track of a Storm 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 ...Read More

A TALE OF TWO CITIES A STORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION By Charles Dickens The Track of a Storm The Wood-Sawyer One 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 ...Read More

A TALE OF TWO CITIES A STORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION By Charles Dickens The Track of a Storm Triumph The dread tribunal of five Judges, Public Prosecutor, and determined Jury, sat every day. Their lists went forth every evening, and were read out by the gaolers of the various prisons to their prisoners. The standard gaoler-joke was, “Come out and listen to the Evening Paper, you inside there!” “Charles Evremonde, called Darnay!” So at last began the Evening Paper at La Force. When a name was called, its owner stepped apart into a spot reserved for those who ...Read More

A TALE OF TWO CITIES A STORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION By Charles Dickens The Track of a Storm A Knock at the Door “I have saved him.” It was not another of the dreams in which he had often come back; he was really here. And yet his wife trembled, and a vague but heavy fear was upon her. All the air round was so thick and dark, the people were so passionately revengeful and fitful, the innocent were so constantly put to death on vague suspicion and black malice, it was so impossible to forget that many ...Read More

A TALE OF TWO CITIES A STORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION By Charles Dickens The Track of a Storm A Hand at Cards Happily unconscious of the new calamity at home, Miss Pross threaded her way along the narrow streets and crossed the river by the bridge of the Pont-Neuf, reckoning in her mind the number of indispensable purchases she had to make. Mr. Cruncher, with the basket, walked at her side. They both looked to the right and to the left into most of the shops they passed, had a wary eye for all gregarious assemblages of people, ...Read More

A TALE OF TWO CITIES A STORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION By Charles Dickens The Track of a Storm The Game Made While Sydney Carton and the Sheep of the prisons were in the adjoining dark room, speaking so low that not a sound was heard, Mr. Lorry looked at Jerry in considerable doubt and mistrust. That honest tradesman's manner of receiving the look, did not inspire confidence; he changed the leg on which he rested, as often as if he had fifty of those limbs, and were trying them all; he examined his finger-nails with a very questionable ...Read More

A TALE OF TWO CITIES A STORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION By Charles Dickens The Track of a Storm The Substance of the Shadow “I, Alexandre Manette, unfortunate physician, native of Beauvais, and afterwards resident in Paris, write this melancholy paper in my doleful cell in the Bastille, during the last month of the year, 1767. I write it at stolen intervals, under every difficulty. I design to secrete it in the wall of the chimney, where I have slowly and laboriously made a place of concealment for it. Some pitying hand may find it there, when I and ...Read More

A TALE OF TWO CITIES A STORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION By Charles Dickens The Track of a Storm Dusk The wretched wife of the innocent man thus doomed to die, fell under the sentence, as if she had been mortally stricken. But, she uttered no sound; and so strong was the voice within her, representing that it was she of all the world who must uphold him in his misery and not augment it, that it quickly raised her, even from that shock. The Judges having to take part in a public demonstration out of doors, the Tribunal ...Read More

A TALE OF TWO CITIES A STORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION By Charles Dickens The Track of a Storm Darkness Sydney Carton paused in the street, not quite decided where to go. “At Tellson's banking-house at nine,” he said, with a musing face. “Shall I do well, in the mean time, to show myself? I think so. It is best that these people should know there is such a man as I here; it is a sound precaution, and may be a necessary preparation. But care, care, care! Let me think it out!” Checking his steps which had begun ...Read More

A TALE OF TWO CITIES A STORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION By Charles Dickens The Track of a Storm 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 to-morrow was already set apart. Two score and twelve ...Read More

A TALE OF TWO CITIES A STORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION By Charles Dickens The Track of a Storm The Knitting Done In that same juncture of time when the Fifty-Two awaited their fate Madame Defarge held darkly ominous council with The Vengeance and Jacques Three of the Revolutionary Jury. Not in the wine-shop did Madame Defarge confer with these ministers, but in the shed of the wood-sawyer, erst a mender of roads. The sawyer himself did not participate in the conference, but abided at a little distance, like an outer satellite who was not to speak until required, ...Read More

A TALE OF TWO CITIES A STORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION By Charles Dickens The Track of a Storm The Footsteps Die Out For Ever Along the Paris streets, the death-carts rumble, hollow and harsh. Six tumbrils carry the day's wine to La Guillotine. All the devouring and insatiate Monsters imagined since imagination could record itself, are fused in the one realisation, Guillotine. And yet there is not in France, with its rich variety of soil and climate, a blade, a leaf, a root, a sprig, a peppercorn, which will grow to maturity under conditions more certain than those ...Read More