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A TALE OF TWO CITIES - 3 - 15

A TALE OF TWO CITIES

A STORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

By Charles Dickens

The Track of a Storm

(15)

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 that have produced this horror. Crush

humanity out of shape once more, under similar hammers, and it will

twist itself into the same tortured forms. Sow the same seed of

rapacious license and oppression over again, and it will surely yield

the same fruit according to its kind.

Six tumbrils roll along the streets. Change these back again to what

they were, thou powerful enchanter, Time, and they shall be seen to be

the carriages of absolute monarchs, the equipages of feudal nobles, the

toilettes of flaring Jezebels, the churches that are not my father's

house but dens of thieves, the huts of millions of starving peasants!

No; the great magician who majestically works out the appointed order

of the Creator, never reverses his transformations. “If thou be changed

into this shape by the will of God,” say the seers to the enchanted, in

the wise Arabian stories, “then remain so! But, if thou wear this

form through mere passing conjuration, then resume thy former aspect!”

Changeless and hopeless, the tumbrils roll along.

As the sombre wheels of the six carts go round, they seem to plough up

a long crooked furrow among the populace in the streets. Ridges of faces

are thrown to this side and to that, and the ploughs go steadily onward.

So used are the regular inhabitants of the houses to the spectacle, that

in many windows there are no people, and in some the occupation of the

hands is not so much as suspended, while the eyes survey the faces in

the tumbrils. Here and there, the inmate has visitors to see the sight;

then he points his finger, with something of the complacency of a

curator or authorised exponent, to this cart and to this, and seems to

tell who sat here yesterday, and who there the day before.

Of the riders in the tumbrils, some observe these things, and all

things on their last roadside, with an impassive stare; others, with

a lingering interest in the ways of life and men. Some, seated with

drooping heads, are sunk in silent despair; again, there are some so

heedful of their looks that they cast upon the multitude such glances as

they have seen in theatres, and in pictures. Several close their eyes,

and think, or try to get their straying thoughts together. Only one, and

he a miserable creature, of a crazed aspect, is so shattered and made

drunk by horror, that he sings, and tries to dance. Not one of the whole

number appeals by look or gesture, to the pity of the people.

There is a guard of sundry horsemen riding abreast of the tumbrils,

and faces are often turned up to some of them, and they are asked some

question. It would seem to be always the same question, for, it is

always followed by a press of people towards the third cart. The

horsemen abreast of that cart, frequently point out one man in it with

their swords. The leading curiosity is, to know which is he; he stands

at the back of the tumbril with his head bent down, to converse with a

mere girl who sits on the side of the cart, and holds his hand. He has

no curiosity or care for the scene about him, and always speaks to the

girl. Here and there in the long street of St. Honore, cries are raised

against him. If they move him at all, it is only to a quiet smile, as he

shakes his hair a little more loosely about his face. He cannot easily

touch his face, his arms being bound.

On the steps of a church, awaiting the coming-up of the tumbrils, stands

the Spy and prison-sheep. He looks into the first of them: not there.

He looks into the second: not there. He already asks himself, “Has he

sacrificed me?” when his face clears, as he looks into the third.

“Which is Evremonde?” says a man behind him.

“That. At the back there.”

“With his hand in the girl's?”

“Yes.”

The man cries, “Down, Evremonde! To the Guillotine all aristocrats!

Down, Evremonde!”

“Hush, hush!” the Spy entreats him, timidly.

“And why not, citizen?”

“He is going to pay the forfeit: it will be paid in five minutes more.

Let him be at peace.”

But the man continuing to exclaim, “Down, Evremonde!” the face of

Evremonde is for a moment turned towards him. Evremonde then sees the

Spy, and looks attentively at him, and goes his way.

The clocks are on the stroke of three, and the furrow ploughed among the

populace is turning round, to come on into the place of execution, and

end. The ridges thrown to this side and to that, now crumble in and

close behind the last plough as it passes on, for all are following

to the Guillotine. In front of it, seated in chairs, as in a garden of

public diversion, are a number of women, busily knitting. On one of the

fore-most chairs, stands The Vengeance, looking about for her friend.

“Therese!” she cries, in her shrill tones. “Who has seen her? Therese

Defarge!”

“She never missed before,” says a knitting-woman of the sisterhood.

“No; nor will she miss now,” cries The Vengeance, petulantly. “Therese.”

“Louder,” the woman recommends.

Ay! Louder, Vengeance, much louder, and still she will scarcely hear

thee. Louder yet, Vengeance, with a little oath or so added, and yet

it will hardly bring her. Send other women up and down to seek her,

lingering somewhere; and yet, although the messengers have done dread

deeds, it is questionable whether of their own wills they will go far

enough to find her!

“Bad Fortune!” cries The Vengeance, stamping her foot in the chair, “and

here are the tumbrils! And Evremonde will be despatched in a wink, and

she not here! See her knitting in my hand, and her empty chair ready for

her. I cry with vexation and disappointment!”

As The Vengeance descends from her elevation to do it, the tumbrils

begin to discharge their loads. The ministers of Sainte Guillotine are

robed and ready. Crash!--A head is held up, and the knitting-women who

scarcely lifted their eyes to look at it a moment ago when it could

think and speak, count One.

The second tumbril empties and moves on; the third comes up. Crash!--And

the knitting-women, never faltering or pausing in their Work, count Two.

The supposed Evremonde descends, and the seamstress is lifted out next

after him. He has not relinquished her patient hand in getting out, but

still holds it as he promised. He gently places her with her back to the

crashing engine that constantly whirrs up and falls, and she looks into

his face and thanks him.

“But for you, dear stranger, I should not be so composed, for I am

naturally a poor little thing, faint of heart; nor should I have been

able to raise my thoughts to Him who was put to death, that we might

have hope and comfort here to-day. I think you were sent to me by

Heaven.”

“Or you to me,” says Sydney Carton. “Keep your eyes upon me, dear child,

and mind no other object.”

“I mind nothing while I hold your hand. I shall mind nothing when I let

it go, if they are rapid.”

“They will be rapid. Fear not!”

The two stand in the fast-thinning throng of victims, but they speak as

if they were alone. Eye to eye, voice to voice, hand to hand, heart to

heart, these two children of the Universal Mother, else so wide apart

and differing, have come together on the dark highway, to repair home

together, and to rest in her bosom.

“Brave and generous friend, will you let me ask you one last question? I

am very ignorant, and it troubles me--just a little.”

“Tell me what it is.”

“I have a cousin, an only relative and an orphan, like myself, whom I

love very dearly. She is five years younger than I, and she lives in a

farmer's house in the south country. Poverty parted us, and she knows

nothing of my fate--for I cannot write--and if I could, how should I

tell her! It is better as it is.”

“Yes, yes: better as it is.”

“What I have been thinking as we came along, and what I am still

thinking now, as I look into your kind strong face which gives me so

much support, is this:--If the Republic really does good to the poor,

and they come to be less hungry, and in all ways to suffer less, she may

live a long time: she may even live to be old.”

“What then, my gentle sister?”

“Do you think:” the uncomplaining eyes in which there is so much

endurance, fill with tears, and the lips part a little more and tremble:

“that it will seem long to me, while I wait for her in the better land

where I trust both you and I will be mercifully sheltered?”

“It cannot be, my child; there is no Time there, and no trouble there.”

“You comfort me so much! I am so ignorant. Am I to kiss you now? Is the

moment come?”

“Yes.”

She kisses his lips; he kisses hers; they solemnly bless each other.

The spare hand does not tremble as he releases it; nothing worse than

a sweet, bright constancy is in the patient face. She goes next before

him--is gone; the knitting-women count Twenty-Two.

“I am the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord: he that believeth

in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and

believeth in me shall never die.”

The murmuring of many voices, the upturning of many faces, the pressing

on of many footsteps in the outskirts of the crowd, so that it swells

forward in a mass, like one great heave of water, all flashes away.

Twenty-Three.

*****

They said of him, about the city that night, that it was the

peacefullest man's face ever beheld there. Many added that he looked

sublime and prophetic.

One of the most remarkable sufferers by the same axe--a woman--had asked

at the foot of the same scaffold, not long before, to be allowed to

write down the thoughts that were inspiring her. If he had given any

utterance to his, and they were prophetic, they would have been these:

“I see Barsad, and Cly, Defarge, The Vengeance, the Juryman, the Judge,

long ranks of the new oppressors who have risen on the destruction of

the old, perishing by this retributive instrument, before it shall cease

out of its present use. I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people

rising from this abyss, and, in their struggles to be truly free, in

their triumphs and defeats, through long years to come, I see the evil

of this time and of the previous time of which this is the natural

birth, gradually making expiation for itself and wearing out.

“I see the lives for which I lay down my life, peaceful, useful,

prosperous and happy, in that England which I shall see no more. I see

Her with a child upon her bosom, who bears my name. I see her father,

aged and bent, but otherwise restored, and faithful to all men in his

healing office, and at peace. I see the good old man, so long their

friend, in ten years' time enriching them with all he has, and passing

tranquilly to his reward.

“I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in the hearts of

their descendants, generations hence. I see her, an old woman, weeping

for me on the anniversary of this day. I see her and her husband, their

course done, lying side by side in their last earthly bed, and I know

that each was not more honoured and held sacred in the other's soul,

than I was in the souls of both.

“I see that child who lay upon her bosom and who bore my name, a man

winning his way up in that path of life which once was mine. I see him

winning it so well, that my name is made illustrious there by the

light of his. I see the blots I threw upon it, faded away. I see him,

fore-most of just judges and honoured men, bringing a boy of my name,

with a forehead that I know and golden hair, to this place--then fair to

look upon, with not a trace of this day's disfigurement--and I hear him

tell the child my story, with a tender and a faltering voice.

“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a

far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”

The End