A TALE OF TWO CITIES - 3 - 4 in English Moral Stories by Charles Dickens books and stories PDF | A TALE OF TWO CITIES - 3 - 4

Featured Books
Categories
Share

A TALE OF TWO CITIES - 3 - 4

A TALE OF TWO CITIES

A STORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

By Charles Dickens

The Track of a Storm

(4)

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 of 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, 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 overthrown 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 had found him

in the 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 dread 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 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, 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 sea-shore.

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 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 little 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 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 save 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

victims, 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.

******