Book the Third – The Track
of a Storm
The traveller fared slowly on his way, who
fared towards
A very
few French leagues of his journey were accomplished, when Charles Darnay began to perceive that for him along these country
roads there was no hope of return until he should have been declared a good
citizen at Paris. Whatever might befall now, he must on to his journey's end.
Not a mean village closed upon him, not a common barrier dropped across the
road behind him, but he knew it to be another iron door in the series that was
barred between him and
This
universal watchfulness not only stopped him on the highway twenty times in a
stage, but retarded his progress twenty times in a day, by riding after him and
taking him back, riding before him and stopping him by anticipation, riding
with him and keeping him in charge. He had been days upon his journey in
Nothing
but the production of the afflicted Gabelle's letter
from his prison of the Abbaye would have got him on
so far. His difficulty at the guard-house in this small place had been such, that he felt his journey to have come to a crisis. And
he was, therefore, as little surprised as a man could be, to find himself
awakened at the small inn to which he had been remitted until morning, in the
middle of the night.
Awakened
by a timid local functionary and three armed patriots in rough red caps and
with pipes in their mouths, who sat down on the bed.
"Emigrant,"
said the functionary, "I am going to send you on to
"Citizen,
I desire nothing more than to get to
"Silence!"
growled a red-cap, striking at the coverlet with the butt-end of his musket. "Peace, aristocrat!"
"It
is as the good patriot says," observed the timid functionary. "You
are an aristocrat, and must have an escort--and must pay for it."
"I
have no choice," said Charles Darnay.
"Choice! Listen to him!" cried the same
scowling red-cap. "As if it was not a favour to be protected from the lamp-iron!"
"It
is always as the good patriot says," observed the functionary. "Rise
and dress yourself, emigrant."
Darnay complied, and was taken back to the
guard-house, where other patriots in rough red caps were smoking, drinking, and
sleeping, by a watch-fire. Here he paid a heavy price for his escort, and hence
he started with it on the wet, wet roads at
The escort were two mounted patriots in red caps and tri-coloured cockades, armed with national muskets and sabres, who rode one on either side of him.
The
escorted governed his own horse, but a loose line was attached to his bridle,
the end of which one of the patriots kept girded round his wrist. In this state
they set forth with the sharp rain driving in their faces: clattering at a
heavy dragoon trot over the uneven town pavement, and out upon the mire-deep
roads. In this state they traversed without change, except of horses and pace,
all the miredeep leagues that lay between them and
the capital.
They travelled in the night, halting an hour or two after
daybreak, and lying by until the twilight fell. The escort
were so wretchedly clothed, that they twisted straw round their bare
legs, and thatched their ragged shoulders to keep the wet off. Apart from the
personal discomfort of being so attended, and apart from such considerations of
present danger as arose from one of the patriots being chronically drunk, and
carrying his musket very recklessly, Charles Darnay
did not allow the restraint that was laid upon him to awaken any serious fears
in his breast; for, he reasoned with himself that it could have no reference to
the merits of an individual case that was not yet stated, and of
representations, confirmable by the prisoner in the Abbaye,
that were not yet made.
But
when they came to the town of
He
stopped in the act of swinging himself out of his saddle, and, resuming it as
his safest place, said:
"Emigrant,
my friends! Do you not
see me here, in
"You
are a cursed emigrant," cried a farrier, making
at him in a furious manner through the press, hammer in hand; "and you are
a cursed aristocrat!"
The
postmaster interposed himself between this man and the rider's bridle (at which
he was evidently making), and soothingly said, "Let him be; let him be! He
will be judged at
"Judged!"
repeated the farrier, swinging his hammer. "Ay! and
condemned as a traitor." At this the crowd roared approval.
Checking
the postmaster, who was for turning his horse's head to the yard (the drunken
patriot sat composedly in his saddle looking on, with the line round his
wrist), Darnay said, as soon as he could make his
voice heard:
"Friends,
you deceive yourselves, or you are deceived. I am not a traitor."
"He
lies!" cried the smith. "He is a traitor since the decree. His life
is forfeit to the people. His cursed life is not his own!"
At the
instant when Darnay saw a rush in the eyes of the
crowd, which another instant would have brought upon him, the postmaster turned
his horse into the yard, the escort rode in close upon his horse's flanks, and
the postmaster shut and barred the crazy double gates. The farrier
struck a blow upon them with his hammer, and the crowd groaned; but, no more
was done.
"What
is this decree that the smith spoke of?" Darnay
asked the postmaster, when he had thanked him, and stood beside him in the
yard.
"Truly,
a decree for selling the property of emigrants."
"When
passed?"
"On
the fourteenth."
"The
day I left
"Everybody
says it is but one of several, and that there will be others--if there are not
already--banishing all emigrants, and condemning all to death who return. That
is what he meant when he said your life was not your own."
"But
there are no such decrees yet?"
"What
do I know!" said the postmaster, shrugging his shoulders; "there may
be, or there will be. It is all the same. What would you have?"
They
rested on some straw in a loft until the middle of the night, and then rode
forward again when all the town was asleep. Among the
many wild changes observable on familiar things which made this wild ride
unreal, not the least was the seeming rarity of sleep. After long and lonely
spurring over dreary roads, they would come to a cluster of poor cottages, not
steeped in darkness, but all glittering with lights, and would find the people,
in a ghostly manner in the dead of the night, circling hand in hand round a shrivelled tree of Liberty, or all drawn up together
singing a Liberty song. Happily, however, there was sleep in Beauvais that night to help them out of it and they passed
on once more into solitude and loneliness: jingling through the untimely cold
and wet, among impoverished fields that had yielded no fruits of the earth that
year, diversified by the blackened remains of burnt houses, and by the sudden
emergence from ambuscade, and sharp reining up across their way, of patriot
patrols on the watch on all the roads.
Daylight
at last found them before the wall of
"Where
are the papers of this prisoner?" demanded a resolute-looking man in
authority, who was summoned out by the guard.
Naturally
struck by the disagreeable word, Charles Darnay
requested the speaker to take notice that he was a free traveller
and French citizen, in charge of an escort which the disturbed state of the
country had imposed upon him, and which he had paid for.
"Where,"
repeated the same personage, without taking any heed of him whatever,
"are the papers of this prisoner?"
The
drunken patriot had them in his cap, and produced them. Casting his eyes over Gabelle's letter, the same personage in authority showed
some disorder and surprise, and looked at Darnay with
a close attention.
He left
escort and escorted without saying a word, however, and went into the
guard-room; meanwhile, they sat upon their horses outside the gate. Looking
about him while in this state of suspense, Charles Darnay
observed that the gate was held by a mixed guard of soldiers and patriots, the
latter far outnumbering the former; and that while ingress into the city for
peasants' carts bringing in supplies, and for similar traffic and traffickers,
was easy enough, egress, even for the homeliest people, was very difficult. A numerous medley of men and women, not to mention beasts and
vehicles of various sorts, was waiting to issue forth; but, the previous
identification was so strict, that they filtered through the barrier very
slowly. Some of these people knew their turn for examination to be so far off,
that they lay down on the ground to sleep or smoke, while others talked
together, or loitered about. The red cap and tri-colour
cockade were universal, both among men and women.
When he
had sat in his saddle some half-hour, taking note of these things, Darnay found himself confronted by the same man in
authority, who directed the guard to open the barrier. Then he delivered to the
escort, drunk and sober, a receipt for the escorted, and requested him to
dismount. He did so, and the two patriots, leading his tired horse, turned and
rode away without entering the city.
He
accompanied his conductor into a guard-room, smelling of common wine and
tobacco, where certain soldiers and patriots, asleep and awake, drunk and
sober, and in various neutral states between sleeping and waking, drunkenness
and sobriety, were standing and lying about. The light in the guard-house, half
derived from the waning oil-lamps of the night, and half from the overcast day,
was in a correspondingly uncertain condition. Some registers were lying open on
a desk, and an officer of a coarse, dark aspect, presided over these.
"Citizen
Defarge," said he to Darnay's
conductor, as he took a slip of paper to write on. "Is this the emigrant Evremonde?"
"This
is the man."
"Your
age, Evremonde?"
"Thirty-seven."
"Married,
Evremonde?"
"Yes."
"Where
married?"
"In
"Without
doubt. Where is your
wife, Evremonde?"
"In
"Without
doubt. You are
consigned, Evremonde, to the prison of La
Force."
"Just
Heaven!" exclaimed Darnay. "Under what law, and for what offence?"
The
officer looked up from his slip of paper for a moment.
"We
have new laws, Evremonde, and new offences, since you
were here." He said it with a hard smile, and went on writing.
"I
entreat you to observe that I have come here voluntarily, in response to that
written appeal of a fellow-countryman which lies before you. I demand no more
than the opportunity to do so without delay. Is not that my right?"
"Emigrants
have no rights, Evremonde," was the stolid
reply. The officer wrote until he had finished, read over to himself
what he had written, sanded it, and handed it to Defarge,
with the words "In secret."
Defarge motioned with the paper to the prisoner
that he must accompany him. The prisoner obeyed, and a guard of two armed
patriots attended them.
"Is
it you," said Defarge, in a low voice, as they
went down the guardhouse steps and turned into Paris, "who married the
daughter of Doctor Manette, once a prisoner in the
Bastille that is no more?"
"Yes,"
replied Darnay, looking at him with surprise.
"My
name is Defarge, and I keep a wine-shop in the
Quarter Saint Antoine. Possibly you have heard of me."
"My
wife came to your house to reclaim her father? Yes!"
The
word "wife" seemed to serve as a gloomy reminder to Defarge, to say with sudden impatience, "In the name
of that sharp female newly-born, and called La Guillotine, why did you come to
"You
heard me say why, a minute ago. Do you not believe it is the truth?"
"A
bad truth for you," said Defarge, speaking with
knitted brows, and looking straight before him.
"Indeed
I am lost here. All here is so unprecedented, so changed, so sudden and unfair,
that I am absolutely lost. Will you render me a little help?"
"None." Defarge spoke,
always looking straight before him.
"Will
you answer me a single question?"
"Perhaps. According to its nature.
You can say what it is."
"In
this prison that I am going to so unjustly, shall I have some free
communication with the world outside?"
"You
will see."
"I
am not to be buried there, prejudged, and without any means of presenting my
case?"
"You
will see. But, what then? Other people have been
similarly buried in worse prisons, before now."
"But
never by me, Citizen Defarge."
Defarge glanced darkly at him for answer, and
walked on in a steady and set silence. The deeper he sank into this silence,
the fainter hope there was--or so Darnay thought--of
his softening in any slight degree. He, therefore, made haste to say:
"It
is of the utmost importance to me (you know, Citizen, even better than I, of
how much importance), that I should be able to communicate to Mr. Lorry of Tellson's Bank, an English gentleman who is now in Paris,
the simple fact, without comment, that I have been thrown into the prison of La
Force. Will you cause that to be done for me?"
"I
will do," Defarge doggedly rejoined,
"nothing for you. My duty is to my country and the People. I am the sworn
servant of both, against you. I will do nothing for you."
Charles
Darnay felt it hopeless to entreat him further, and
his pride was touched besides. As they walked on in silence, he could not but
see how used the people were to the spectacle of prisoners passing along the
streets. The very children scarcely noticed him. A few passers turned their
heads, and a few shook their fingers at him as an aristocrat; otherwise, that a
man in good clothes should be going to prison, was no more remarkable than that
a labourer in working clothes should be going to
work. In one narrow, dark, and dirty street through which they passed, an
excited orator, mounted on a stool, was addressing an excited audience on the
crimes against the people, of the king and the royal family. The few words that
he caught from this man's lips, first made it known to Charles Darnay that the king was in prison, and that the foreign
ambassadors had one and all left
That he
had fallen among far greater dangers than those which had developed themselves
when he left
Of
unjust treatment in detention and hardship, and in cruel separation from his
wife and child, he foreshadowed the likelihood, or the certainty; but, beyond
this, he dreaded nothing distinctly. With this on his mind, which was enough to
carry into a dreary prison courtyard, he arrived at the prison of La Force.
A man
with a bloated face opened the strong wicket, to whom Defarge presented "The Emigrant Evremonde."
"What
the Devil! How many more of them!" exclaimed the man with the bloated face.
Defarge took his receipt without noticing the
exclamation, and withdrew, with his two fellow-patriots.
"What
the Devil, I say again!" exclaimed the gaoler,
left with his wife. "How many more!"
The gaoler's wife, being provided with no answer to the
question, merely replied, "One must have patience, my dear!" Three
turnkeys who entered responsive to a bell she rang, echoed the sentiment, and
one added, "For the love of
The
prison of La Force was a gloomy prison, dark and filthy, and with a horrible
smell of foul sleep in it. Extraordinary how soon the noisome flavour of imprisoned sleep, becomes manifest in all such
places that are ill cared for!
"In
secret, too," grumbled the gaoler, looking at
the written paper. "As if I was not already full to
bursting!"
He
stuck the paper on a file, in an ill-humour, and
Charles Darnay awaited his further pleasure for half
an hour: sometimes, pacing to and fro in the strong arched room: sometimes,
resting on a stone seat: in either case detained to be imprinted on the memory
of the chief and his subordinates.
"Come!"
said the chief, at length taking up his keys, "come with me,
emigrant."
Through
the dismal prison twilight, his new charge accompanied him by corridor and
staircase, many doors clanging and locking behind them, until they came into a
large, low, vaulted chamber, crowded with prisoners of both sexes. The women
were seated at a long table, reading and writing, knitting, sewing, and
embroidering; the men were for the most part standing behind their chairs, or
lingering up and down the room.
In the
instinctive association of prisoners with shameful crime and disgrace, the
new-comer recoiled from this company. But the crowning unreality of his long
unreal ride, was, their all at once rising to receive him, with every
refinement of manner known to the time, and with all the engaging graces and
courtesies of life.
So
strangely clouded were these refinements by the prison manners and gloom, so
spectral did they become in the inappropriate squalor and misery through which
they were seen, that Charles Darnay seemed to stand
in a company of the dead. Ghosts all! The ghost of beauty, the ghost of
stateliness, the ghost of elegance, the ghost of pride, the ghost of frivolity,
the ghost of wit, the ghost of youth, the ghost of age, all waiting their
dismissal from the desolate shore, all turning on him eyes that were changed by
the death they had died in coming there.
It
struck him motionless. The gaoler standing at his
side, and the other gaolers moving about, who would
have been well enough as to appearance in the ordinary exercise of their
functions, looked so extravagantly coarse contrasted with sorrowing mothers and
blooming daughters who were there--with the apparitions of the coquette, the
young beauty, and the mature woman delicately bred--that the inversion of all
experience and likelihood which the scene of shadows presented, was heightened
to its utmost. Surely, ghosts all. Surely, the long unreal
ride some progress of disease that had brought him to these gloomy
shades!
"In
the name of the assembled companions in misfortune," said a gentleman of
courtly appearance and address, coming forward, "I have the honour of giving you welcome to La Force, and of condoling
with you on the calamity that has brought you among us. May it soon terminate
happily! It would be an impertinence elsewhere, but it
is not so here, to ask your name and condition?"
Charles
Darnay roused himself, and gave the required
information, in words as suitable as he could find.
"But
I hope," said the gentleman, following the chief gaoler
with his eyes, who moved across the room, "that you are not in
secret?"
"I
do not understand the meaning of the term, but I have heard them say so."
"Ah,
what a pity! We so much
regret it! But take courage; several members of our society have been in
secret, at first, and it has lasted but a short time." Then he added,
raising his voice, "I grieve to inform the society--in secret."
There
was a murmur of commiseration as Charles Darnay
crossed the room to a grated door where the gaoler awaited
him, and many voices--among which, the soft and compassionate voices of women
were conspicuous--gave him good wishes and encouragement. He turned at the
grated door, to render the thanks of his heart; it closed under the gaoler's hand; and the apparitions vanished from his sight
forever.
The
wicket opened on a stone staircase, leading upward. When they had ascended
forty steps (the prisoner of half an hour already counted them), the gaoler opened a low black door, and they passed into a
solitary cell. It struck cold and damp, but was not dark.
"Yours,"
said the gaoler.
"Why
am I confined alone?"
"How
do I know!"
"I
can buy pen, ink, and paper?"
"Such
are not my orders. You will be visited, and can ask then. At present, you may
buy your food, and nothing more."
There
were in the cell, a chair, a table, and a straw mattress. As the gaoler made a general inspection of these objects, and of
the four walls, before going out, a wandering fancy wandered through the mind
of the prisoner leaning against the wall opposite to him, that this gaoler was so unwholesomely bloated, both in face and
person, as to look like a man who had been drowned and filled with water. When
the gaoler was gone, he thought in the same wandering
way, "Now am I left, as if I were dead." Stopping then, to look down
at the mattress, he turned from it with a sick feeling, and thought, "And
here in these crawling creatures is the first condition of the body after
death."
"Five
paces by four and a half, five paces by four and a half, five paces by four and
a half." The prisoner walked to and fro in his cell, counting its
measurement, and the roar of the city arose like muffled drums with a wild
swell of voices added to them. "He made shoes, he made shoes, he made shoes." The prisoner counted the measurement
again, and paced faster, to draw his mind with him from that latter repetition.
"The ghosts that vanished when the wicket closed.
There was one among them, the appearance of a lady dressed in black, who was
leaning in the embrasure of a window, and she had a light shining upon her
golden hair, and she looked like * * * * Let us ride on again, for God's sake,
through the illuminated villages with the people all awake! * * * * He made
shoes, he made shoes, he made shoes. * * * * Five paces by four
and a half." With such scraps tossing and rolling upward from the
depths of his mind, the prisoner walked faster and faster, obstinately counting
and counting; and the roar of the city changed to this extent--that it still
rolled in like muffled drums, but with the wail of voices that he knew, in the
swell that rose above them.
Tellson's Bank, established in the Saint Germain Quarter of
Monseigneur gone, and the three strong men absolving
themselves from the sin of having drawn his high wages, by being more than
ready and willing to cut his throat on the altar of the dawning Republic one
and indivisible of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death, Monseigneur's
house had been first sequestrated, and then confiscated. For, all things moved
so fast, and decree followed decree with that fierce precipitation, that now
upon the third night of the autumn month of September, patriot emissaries of
the law were in possession of Monseigneur's house,
and had marked it with the tri-colour, and were
drinking brandy in its state apartments.
A place
of business in
What
money would be drawn out of Tellson's henceforth, and
what would lie there, lost and forgotten; what plate and jewels would tarnish
in Tellson's hiding-places, while the depositors
rusted in prisons, and when they should have violently perished; how many
accounts with Tellson's never to be balanced in this
world, must be carried over into the next; no man could have said, that night,
any more than Mr. Jarvis Lorry could, though he thought heavily of these
questions. He sat by a newly-lighted wood fire (the blighted and unfruitful
year was prematurely cold), and on his honest and courageous face there was a
deeper shade than the pendent lamp could throw, or any object in the room
distortedly reflect--a shade of horror.
He
occupied rooms in the Bank, in his fidelity to the House of which he had grown
to be a part, like strong root-ivy. It chanced that they derived a kind of
security from the patriotic occupation of the main building, but the
true-hearted old gentleman never calculated about that. All such circumstances
were indifferent to him, so that he did his duty. On the opposite side of the
courtyard, under a colonnade, was extensive standing--for carriages--where,
indeed, some carriages of Monseigneur yet stood.
Against two of the pillars were fastened two great flaring flambeaux, and in
the light of these, standing out in the open air, was a large grindstone: a
roughly mounted thing which appeared to have hurriedly been brought there from
some neighbouring smithy, or other workshop. Rising
and looking out of window at these harmless objects, Mr. Lorry shivered, and
retired to his seat by the fire. He had opened, not only the glass window, but
the lattice blind outside it, and he had closed both again, and he shivered
through his frame.
From
the streets beyond the high wall and the strong gate, there came the usual
night hum of the city, with now and then an indescribable ring in it, weird and
unearthly, as if some unwonted sounds of a terrible nature were going up to
Heaven.
"Thank
God," said Mr. Lorry, clasping his hands, "that no one near and dear
to me is in this dreadful town to-night. May He have mercy on all who are in danger!"
Soon
afterwards, the bell at the great gate sounded, and he thought, "They have
come back!" and sat listening. But, there was no loud irruption into the
courtyard, as he had expected, and he heard the gate clash again, and all was
quiet.
The
nervousness and dread that were upon him inspired that vague uneasiness
respecting the Bank, which a great change would naturally awaken, with such
feelings roused. It was well guarded, and he got up to go among the trusty
people who were watching it, when his door suddenly opened, and two figures
rushed in, at sight of which he fell back in amazement.
Lucie
and her father! Lucie with her arms stretched out to him, and with that old
look of earnestness so concentrated and intensified, that it seemed as though
it had been stamped upon her face expressly to give force and power to it in
this one passage of her life.
"What
is this?" cried Mr. Lorry, breathless and confused. "What is the
matter? Lucie! Manette! What has happened? What has
brought you here? What is it?"
With
the look fixed upon him, in her paleness and wildness, she panted out in his
arms, imploringly, "O my dear friend! My husband!"
"Your
husband, Lucie?"
"Charles."
"What
of Charles?"
"Here.
"Here,
in
"Has
been here some days--three or four--I don't know how many-- I can't collect my
thoughts. An errand of generosity brought him here unknown to us; he was
stopped at the barrier, and sent to prison."
The old
man uttered an irrepressible cry. Almost at the same moment, the
beg of the great gate rang again, and a loud noise of feet and voices
came pouring into the courtyard.
"What
is that noise?" said the Doctor, turning towards the window.
"Don't
look!" cried Mr. Lorry. "Don't look out! Manette,
for your life, don't touch the blind!"
The Doctor
turned, with his hand upon the fastening of the window, and said, with a cool,
bold smile:
"My
dear friend, I have a charmed life in this city. I have been a Bastille
prisoner. There is no patriot in
"Don't
look!" cried Mr. Lorry, absolutely desperate. "No,
Lucie, my dear, nor you!" He got his arm round her, and held her.
"Don't be so terrified, my love. I solemnly swear to you that I know of no
harm having happened to Charles; that I had no suspicion even of his being in
this fatal place. What prison is he in?"
"La
Force!"
"La
Force! Lucie, my child, if ever you were brave and serviceable in your
life--and you were always both--you will compose yourself now, to do exactly as
I bid you; for more depends upon it than you can think, or I can say. There is
no help for you in any action on your part to-night; you cannot possibly stir
out. I say this, because what I must bid you to do for Charles's sake, is the hardest thing to do of all. You must instantly
be obedient, still, and quiet. You must let me put you in a room at the back
here. You must leave your father and me alone for two minutes, and as there are
Life and Death in the world you must not delay."
"I
will be submissive to you. I see in your face that you know I can do nothing
else than this. I know you are true."
The old
man kissed her, and hurried her into his room, and turned the key; then, came
hurrying back to the Doctor, and opened the window and partly opened the blind,
and put his hand upon the Doctor's arm, and looked out with him into the
courtyard.
Looked
out upon a throng of men and women: not enough in number, or near enough, to
fill the courtyard: not more than forty or fifty in all. The people in
possession of the house had let them in at the gate, and they had rushed in to
work at the grindstone; it had evidently been set up there for their purpose,
as in a convenient and retired spot.
But,
such awful workers, and such awful work!
The
grindstone had a double handle, and, turning at it madly were two men, whose
faces, as their long hair flapped back when the whirlings
of the grindstone brought their faces up, were more horrible and cruel than the
visages of the wildest savages in their most barbarous disguise. False eyebrows
and false moustaches were stuck upon them, and their hideous countenances were
all bloody and sweaty, and all awry with howling, and all staring and glaring
with beastly excitement and want of sleep. As these ruffians turned and turned,
their matted locks now flung forward over their eyes, now flung backward over
their necks, some women held wine to their mouths that they might drink; and
what with dropping blood, and what with dropping wine, and what with the stream
of sparks struck out of the stone, all their wicked atmosphere seemed gore and
fire. The eye could not detect one creature in the group free from the smear of
blood. Shouldering one another to get next at the sharpening-stone, were men
stripped to the waist, with the stain all over their limbs and bodies; men in
all sorts of rags, with the stain upon those rags; men devilishly set off with
spoils of women's lace and silk and ribbon, with the stain dyeing those trifles
through and through. Hatchets, knives, bayonets, swords, all brought to be
sharpened, were all red with it. Some of the hacked swords were tied to the
wrists of those who carried them, with strips of linen and fragments of dress:
ligatures various in kind, but all deep of the one colour.
And as the frantic wielders of these weapons snatched them from the stream of
sparks and tore away into the streets, the same red hue was red in their
frenzied eyes;--eyes which any unbrutalised beholder
would have given twenty years of life, to petrify with a well-directed gun.
All
this was seen in a moment, as the vision of a drowning man, or of any human
creature at any very great pass, could see a world if it were there. They drew
back from the window, and the Doctor looked for explanation in his friend's
ashy face.
"They
are," Mr. Lorry whispered the words, glancing fearfully round at the
locked room, "murdering the prisoners. If you are sure of what you say; if
you really have the power you think you have--as I believe you have--make
yourself known to these devils, and get taken to La Force. It may be too late,
I don't know, but let it not be a minute later!"
Doctor Manette pressed his hand, hastened bareheaded out of the
room, and was in the courtyard when Mr. Lorry regained the blind.
His
streaming white hair, his remarkable face, and the impetuous confidence of his
manner, as he put the weapons aside like water, carried him in an instant to
the heart of the concourse at the stone. For a few moments there was a pause,
and a hurry, and a murmur, and the unintelligible sound of his voice; and then
Mr. Lorry saw him, surrounded by all, and in the midst of a line of twenty men
long, all linked shoulder to shoulder, and hand to shoulder, hurried out with
cries of--"Live the Bastille prisoner! Help for the Bastille prisoner's
kindred in La Force! Room for the Bastille prisoner in front there! Save the prisoner Evremonde at La
Force!" and a thousand answering shouts.
He
closed the lattice again with a fluttering heart, closed the window and the
curtain, hastened to Lucie, and told her that her father was assisted by the
people, and gone in search of her husband. He found her child and Miss Pross with her; but, it never occurred to him to be
surprised by their appearance until a long time afterwards, when he sat
watching them in such quiet as the night knew.
Lucie
had, by that time, fallen into a stupor on the floor at his feet, clinging to
his hand. Miss Pross had laid the child down on his
own bed, and her head had gradually fallen on the pillow beside her pretty
charge. O the long, long night, with the moans of the poor wife! And O the
long, long night, with no return of her father and no tidings!
Twice
more in the darkness the bell at the great gate sounded, and the irruption was
repeated, and the grindstone whirled and spluttered. "What is it?"
cried Lucie, affrighted. "Hush! The soldiers' swords are sharpened
there," said Mr. Lorry. "The place is national property now, and used
as a kind of armoury, my love."
Twice
more in all; but, the last spell of work was feeble and fitful. Soon afterwards
the day began to dawn, and he softly detached himself from the clasping hand,
and cautiously looked out again. A man, so besmeared that he might have been a
sorely wounded soldier creeping back to consciousness on a field of slain, was
rising from the pavement by the side of the grindstone, and looking about him
with a vacant air. Shortly, this worn-out murderer descried in the imperfect
light one of the carriages of Monseigneur, and,
staggering to that gorgeous vehicle, climbed in at the door, and shut himself
up to take his rest on its dainty cushions.
The
great grindstone, Earth, had turned when Mr. Lorry looked out again, and the
sun was red on the courtyard. But, the lesser grindstone stood alone there in
the calm morning air, with a red upon it that the sun had never given, and
would never take away.
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 man of business.
At
first, his mind reverted to Defarge, and he thought
of finding out the wine-shop again and taking counsel with its master in
reference to the safest dwelling-place in the distracted state of the city.
But, the same consideration that suggested him, repudiated him; he lived in the
most violent Quarter, and doubtless was influential there,
and deep in its dangerous workings.
To this
lodging he at once removed Lucie and her child, and Miss Pross:
giving them what comfort he could, and much more than he had himself. He left
Jerry with them, as a figure to fill a doorway that would bear considerable
knocking on the head, and retained to his own occupations. A disturbed and
doleful mind he brought to bear upon them, and slowly and heavily the day
lagged on with him.
It wore
itself out, and wore him out with it, until the Bank closed. He was again alone
in his room of the previous night, considering what to do next, when he heard a
foot upon the stair. In a few moments, a man stood in his presence, who, with a
keenly observant look at him, addressed him by his name.
"Your
servant," said Mr. Lorry. "Do you know me?"
He was
a strongly made man with dark curling hair, from forty-five to fifty years of
age. For answer he repeated, without any change of emphasis, the words:
"Do
you know me?"
"I
have seen you somewhere."
"Perhaps
at my wine-shop?"
Much
interested and agitated, Mr. Lorry said: "You come from Doctor Manette?"
"Yes.
I come from Doctor Manette."
"And
what says he? What does he send me?"
Defarge gave into his anxious hand, an open scrap
of paper. It bore the words in the Doctor's writing:
"Charles is safe, but I cannot safely leave
this place yet.
I have obtained the favour that the bearer has a
short note
from Charles to his wife. Let the bearer see his wife."
It was
dated from La Force, within an hour.
"Will
you accompany me," said Mr. Lorry, joyfully relieved after reading this
note aloud, "to where his wife resides?"
"Yes,"
returned Defarge.
Scarcely
noticing as yet, in what a curiously reserved and mechanical way Defarge spoke, Mr. Lorry put on his hat and they went down
into the courtyard. There, they found two women; one, knitting.
"Madame
Defarge, surely!" said Mr. Lorry, who had left
her in exactly the same attitude some seventeen years ago.
"It
is she," observed her husband.
"Does
Madame go with us?" inquired Mr. Lorry, seeing that she moved as they
moved.
"Yes.
That she may be able to recognise the faces and know
the persons. It is for their safety."
Beginning
to be struck by Defarge's manner, Mr. Lorry looked
dubiously at him, and led the way. Both the women followed; the second woman
being The Vengeance.
They
passed through the intervening streets as quickly as they might, ascended the
staircase of the new domicile, were admitted by Jerry, and found Lucie weeping,
alone. She was thrown into a transport by the tidings Mr. Lorry gave her of her
husband, and clasped the hand that delivered his note--little thinking what it
had been doing near him in the night, and might, but for a chance, have done to
him.
"DEAREST,--Take
courage.
I am well, and your father has
influence around me. You cannot answer this.
Kiss our child for me."
That
was all the writing. It was so much, however, to her who received it, that she
turned from Defarge to his wife, and kissed one of
the hands that knitted. It was a passionate, loving, thankful, womanly action,
but the hand made no response--dropped cold and heavy, and took to its knitting
again.
There
was something in its touch that gave Lucie a check. She stopped in the act of
putting the note in her bosom, and, with her hands yet at her neck, looked
terrified at Madame Defarge. Madame Defarge met the lifted eyebrows and forehead with a cold,
impassive stare.
"My
dear," said Mr. Lorry, striking in to explain; "there are frequent
risings in the streets; and, although it is not likely they will ever trouble
you, Madame Defarge wishes to see those whom she has
the power to protect at such times, to the end that she may know them--that she
may identify them. I believe," said Mr. Lorry, rather halting in his
reassuring words, as the stony manner of all the three impressed itself upon
him more and more, "I state the case, Citizen Defarge?"
Defarge looked gloomily at his wife, and gave no
other answer than a gruff sound of acquiescence.
"You
had better, Lucie," said Mr. Lorry, doing all he could to propitiate, by
tone and manner, "have the dear child here, and our good Pross. Our good Pross, Defarge, is an English lady, and knows no French."
The
lady in question, whose rooted conviction that she was
more than a match for any foreigner, was not to be shaken by distress and,
danger, appeared with folded arms, and observed in English to The Vengeance,
whom her eyes first encountered, "Well, I am sure, Boldface! I hope you are pretty well!" She
also bestowed a British cough on Madame Defarge; but,
neither of the two took much heed of her.
"Is
that his child?" said Madame Defarge, stopping
in her work for the first time, and pointing her knitting-needle at little
Lucie as if it were the finger of Fate.
"Yes,
madame," answered Mr. Lorry; "this is our
poor prisoner's darling daughter, and only child."
The
shadow attendant on Madame Defarge and her party
seemed to fall so threatening and dark on the child, that her mother
instinctively kneeled on the ground beside her, and held her to her breast. The
shadow attendant on Madame Defarge and her party
seemed then to fall, threatening and dark, on both the mother and the child.
"It
is enough, my husband," said Madame Defarge.
"I have seen them. We may go."
But,
the suppressed manner had enough of menace in it--not visible and presented,
but indistinct and withheld--to alarm Lucie into saying, as she laid her
appealing hand on Madame Defarge's dress:
"You
will be good to my poor husband. You will do him no harm. You will help me to
see him if you can?"
"Your
husband is not my business here," returned Madame Defarge,
looking down at her with perfect composure. "It is the daughter of your
father who is my business here."
"For
my sake, then, be merciful to my husband. For my child's sake! She will put her
hands together and pray you to be merciful. We are more afraid of you than of
these others."
Madame Defarge received it as a compliment, and looked at her
husband. Defarge, who had been uneasily biting his
thumb-nail and looking at her, collected his face into a sterner expression.
"What
is it that your husband says in that little letter?" asked Madame Defarge, with a lowering smile. "Influence; he says
something touching influence?"
"That
my father," said Lucie, hurriedly taking the paper from her breast, but
with her alarmed eyes on her questioner and not on it, "has much influence
around him."
"Surely
it will release him!" said Madame Defarge.
"Let it do so."
"As
a wife and mother," cried Lucie, most earnestly, "I implore you to
have pity on me and not to exercise any power that you possess, against my
innocent husband, but to use it in his behalf. O sister-woman, think of me. As a wife and mother!"
Madame Defarge looked, coldly as ever, at the suppliant, and said,
turning to her friend The Vengeance:
"The
wives and mothers we have been used to see, since we were as little as this
child, and much less, have not been greatly considered? We have known their husbands and fathers laid in prison and kept from them, often enough? All our
lives, we have seen our sister-women suffer, in themselves and in their
children, poverty, nakedness, hunger, thirst, sickness, misery, oppression and
neglect of all kinds?"
"We
have seen nothing else," returned The Vengeance.
"We
have borne this a long time," said Madame Defarge,
turning her eyes again upon Lucie. "Judge you! Is it likely that the
trouble of one wife and mother would be much to us now?"
She
resumed her knitting and went out. The Vengeance followed. Defarge
went last, and closed the door.
"Courage,
my dear Lucie," said Mr. Lorry, as he raised her. "Courage,
courage! So far all goes well with us--much, much better than it has of
late gone with many poor souls. Cheer up, and have a thankful heart."
"I
am not thankless, I hope, but that dreadful woman seems to throw a shadow on me
and on all my hopes."
"Tut, tut!" said Mr. Lorry;
"what is this despondency in the brave little breast? A shadow indeed! No
substance in it, Lucie."
But the
shadow of the manner of these Defarges was dark upon
himself, for all that, and in his secret mind it troubled him greatly.
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
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
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 loathsome prisons, and carried to her through the
streets to slake her devouring thirst.
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 time. Little Lucie she taught, as regularly, as if they had all been
united in their English home. The slight devices with which she cheated herself
into the show of a belief that they would soon be reunited-- the little
preparations for his speedy return, the setting aside of his chair and his
books--these, and the solemn prayer at night for one dear prisoner especially,
among the many unhappy souls in prison and the shadow of death--were almost the
only outspoken reliefs of her heavy mind.
She did
not greatly alter in appearance. The plain dark dresses, akin to mourning
dresses, which she and her child wore, were as neat and as well attended to as
the brighter clothes of happy days. She lost her colour,
and the old and intent expression was a constant, not an occasional, thing;
otherwise, she remained very pretty and comely. Sometimes, at night on kissing
her father, she would burst into the grief she had repressed all day, and would
say that her sole reliance, under Heaven, was on him. He always resolutely
answered: "Nothing can happen to him without my knowledge, and I know that
I can save him, Lucie."
They
had not made the round of their changed life many weeks, when her father said
to her, on coming home one evening:
"My
dear, there is an upper window in the prison, to which Charles can sometimes
gain access at three in the afternoon. When he can get to it--which depends on
many uncertainties and incidents--he might see you in the street, he thinks, if you stood in a certain place that I can show you. But
you will not be able to see him, my poor child, and even if you could, it would
be unsafe for you to make a sign of recognition."
"O
show me the place, my father, and I will go there
every day."
From
that time, in all weathers, she waited there two hours. As the clock struck
two, she was there, and at four she turned resignedly away. When it was not too
wet or inclement for her child to be with her, they went together; at other
times she was alone; but, she never missed a single day.
It was
the dark and dirty corner of a small winding street. The hovel of a cutter of
wood into lengths for burning, was the only house at that end; all else was
wall. On the third day of her being there, he noticed her.
"Good
day, citizeness."
"Good
day, citizen."
This
mode of address was now prescribed by decree. It had been established
voluntarily some time ago, among the more thorough patriots; but, was now law
for everybody.
"Walking
here again, citizeness?"
"You
see me, citizen!"
The
wood-sawyer, who was a little man with a redundancy of gesture (he had once
been a mender of roads), cast a glance at the prison, pointed at the prison,
and putting his ten fingers before his face to represent bars, peeped through
them jocosely.
"But
it's not my business," said he. And went on sawing his
wood.
Next
day he was looking out for her, and accosted her the moment she appeared.
"What?
Walking here again, citizeness?"
"Yes,
citizen."
"Ah!
A child too! Your mother, is it not, my little citizeness?"
"Do
I say yes, mamma?" whispered little Lucie, drawing close to her.
"Yes,
dearest."
"Yes,
citizen."
"Ah!
But it's not my business. My work is my business. See my saw! I call it my
Little Guillotine. La, la, la; La, la, la! And off his head comes!"
The
billet fell as he spoke, and he threw it into a basket.
"I
call myself the Samson of the firewood guillotine. See here again! Loo, loo, loo;
Loo, loo, loo! And off her
head comes! Now, a child. Tickle, tickle; Pickle,
pickle! And off its
head comes. All the family!"
Lucie
shuddered as he threw two more billets into his basket, but it was impossible
to be there while the wood-sawyer was at work, and not be in his sight. Thenceforth,
to secure his good will, she always spoke to him first, and often gave him
drink-money, which he readily received.
He was
an inquisitive fellow, and sometimes when she had quite forgotten him in gazing
at the prison roof and grates, and in lifting her heart up to her husband, she
would come to herself to find him looking at her, with his knee on his bench
and his saw stopped in its work. "But it's not my business!" he would
generally say at those times, and would briskly fall to his sawing again.
In all
weathers, in the snow and frost of winter, in the bitter winds of spring, in
the hot sunshine of summer, in the rains of autumn, and again in the snow and
frost of winter, Lucie passed two hours of every day at this place; and every
day on leaving it, she kissed the prison wall. Her husband saw her (so she
learned from her father) it might be once in five or six times: it might be
twice or thrice running: it might be, not for a week or a fortnight together.
It was enough that he could and did see her when the chances served, and on
that possibility she would have waited out the day, seven days a week.
These
occupations brought her round to the December month, wherein her father walked
among the terrors with a steady head. On a lightly-snowing afternoon she
arrived at the usual corner. It was a day of some wild rejoicing, and a
festival. She had seen the houses, as she came along, decorated with little
pikes, and with little red caps stuck upon them; also, with tricoloured
ribbons; also, with the standard inscription (tricoloured
letters were the favourite), Republic One and
Indivisible.
The
miserable shop of the wood-sawyer was so small, that its whole surface
furnished very indifferent space for this legend. He had got somebody to scrawl
it up for him, however, who had squeezed Death in with most inappropriate
difficulty. On his house-top, he displayed pike and cap, as a good citizen
must, and in a window he had stationed his saw inscribed as his "Little
Sainte Guillotine"-- for the great sharp female was by that time popularly
canonised. His shop was shut and he was not there,
which was a relief to Lucie, and left her quite alone.
But, he
was not far off, for presently she heard a troubled movement and a shouting coming
along, which filled her with fear. A moment afterwards, and a throng of people
came pouring round the corner by the prison wall, in the midst of whom was the wood-sawyer hand in hand with The Vengeance.
There could not be fewer than five hundred people, and they were dancing like
five thousand demons. There was no other music than their own
singing. They danced to the popular Revolution song, keeping a ferocious time
that was like a gnashing of teeth in unison. Men and women danced together,
women danced together, men danced together, as hazard had brought them
together. At first, they were a mere storm of coarse red caps and coarse woollen rags; but, as they filled the place, and stopped to
dance about Lucie, some ghastly apparition of a dance-figure gone raving mad
arose among them. They advanced, retreated, struck at one another's hands,
clutched at one another's heads, spun round alone, caught one another and spun
round in pairs, until many of them dropped. While those were down, the rest
linked hand in hand, and all spun round together: then the ring broke, and in
separate rings of two and four they turned and turned until they all stopped at
once, began again, struck, clutched, and tore, and then reversed the spin, and
all spun round another way. Suddenly they stopped again, paused, struck out the
time afresh, formed into lines the width of the public way, and, with their
heads low down and their hands high up, swooped screaming off. No fight could
have been half so terrible as this dance. It was so emphatically
a fallen sport--a something, once innocent, delivered over to all devilry--a healthy pastime changed into a means of angering
the blood, bewildering the senses, and steeling the heart. Such
grace as was visible in it, made it the uglier, showing how warped and
perverted all things good by nature were become. The maidenly bosom bared to this, the pretty almost-child's head thus
distracted, the delicate foot mincing in this slough of blood and dirt, were
types of the disjointed time.
This
was the Carmagnole. As it passed, leaving Lucie frightened and bewildered in
the doorway of the wood-sawyer's house, the feathery snow fell as quietly and
lay as white and soft, as if it had never been.
"O
my father!" for he stood before her when she lifted up the eyes she had
momentarily darkened with her hand; "such a cruel, bad sight."
"I
know, my dear, I know. I have seen it many times. Don't be frightened! Not one
of them would harm you."
"I
am not frightened for myself, my father. But when I think of my husband, and the mercies of these people--"
"We
will set him above their mercies very soon. I left him climbing to the window,
and I came to tell you. There is no one here to see. You may kiss your hand
towards that highest shelving roof."
"I
do so, father, and I send him my Soul with it!"
"You
cannot see him, my poor dear?"
"No,
father," said Lucie, yearning and weeping as she kissed her hand,
"no."
A
footstep in the snow.
Madame Defarge. "I salute you, citizeness," from the Doctor. "I salute you,
citizen." This in passing. Nothing
more. Madame Defarge gone,
like a shadow over the white road.
"Give
me your arm, my love. Pass from here with an air of cheerfulness and courage,
for his sake. That was well done;" they had left the spot; "it shall
not be in vain. Charles is summoned for to-morrow."
"For
to-morrow!"
"There
is no time to lose. I am well prepared, but there are precautions to be taken,
that could not be taken until he was actually summoned before the Tribunal. He
has not received the notice yet, but I know that he will presently be summoned
for to-morrow, and removed to the Conciergerie; I
have timely information. You are not afraid?"
She
could scarcely answer, "I trust in you."
"Do
so, implicitly. Your suspense is nearly ended, my darling; he shall be restored
to you within a few hours; I have encompassed him with every protection. I must
see Lorry."
He
stopped. There was a heavy lumbering of wheels within hearing. They both knew
too well what it meant. One. Two.
Three. Three tumbrils
faring away with their dread loads over the hushing snow.
"I
must see Lorry," the Doctor repeated, turning her
another way.
The
staunch old gentleman was still in his trust; had never left it. He and his
books were in frequent requisition as to property confiscated and made
national. What he could save for the owners, he saved. No better man living to
hold fast by what Tellson's had in keeping, and to
hold his peace.
A murky
red and yellow sky, and a rising mist from the
Who
could that be with Mr. Lorry--the owner of the riding-coat upon the chair--who
must not be seen? From whom newly arrived, did he come
out, agitated and surprised, to take his favourite in
his arms? To whom did he appear to repeat her faltering words, when, raising
his voice and turning his head towards the door of the room from which he had
issued, he said: "Removed to the Conciergerie,
and summoned for to-morrow?"
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
were announced as being thus fatally recorded. Charles Evremonde,
called Darnay, had reason to know the usage; he had
seen hundreds pass away so.
His
bloated gaoler, who wore spectacles to read with,
glanced over them to assure himself that he had taken
his place, and went through the list, making a similar short pause at each
name. There were twenty-three names, but only twenty were responded to; for one
of the prisoners so summoned had died in gaol and
been forgotten, and two had already been guillotined and forgotten. The list
was read, in the vaulted chamber where Darnay had
seen the associated prisoners on the night of his arrival. Every one of those
had perished in the massacre; every human creature he had since cared for and
parted with, had died on the scaffold.
There
were hurried words of farewell and kindness, but the parting was soon over. It
was the incident of every day, and the society of La Force
were engaged in the preparation of some games of forfeits and a little
concert, for that evening. They crowded to the grates and shed tears there;
but, twenty places in the projected entertainments had to be refilled, and the
time was, at best, short to the lock-up hour, when the common rooms and
corridors would be delivered over to the great dogs who kept watch there
through the night. The prisoners were far from insensible or unfeeling; their
ways arose out of the condition of the time. Similarly, though with a subtle
difference, a species of fervour or intoxication,
known, without doubt, to have led some persons to brave the guillotine unnecessarily,
and to die by it, was not mere boastfulness, but a wild infection of the wildly
shaken public mind. In seasons of pestilence, some of us will have a secret
attraction to the disease-- a terrible passing inclination to die of it. And
all of us have like wonders hidden in our breasts, only needing circumstances
to evoke them.
The
passage to the Conciergerie was short and dark; the
night in its vermin-haunted cells was long and cold. Next day, fifteen
prisoners were put to the bar before Charles Darnay's
name was called. All the fifteen were condemned, and the trials of the whole
occupied an hour and a half.
"Charles
Evremonde,
called Darnay," was at length arraigned.
His
judges sat upon the Bench in feathered hats; but the rough red cap and tricoloured cockade was the head-dress otherwise
prevailing. Looking at the Jury and the turbulent audience, he might have
thought that the usual order of things was reversed, and that the felons were
trying the honest men. The lowest, cruelest, and worst populace
of a city, never without its quantity of low, cruel, and bad, were the
directing spirits of the scene: noisily commenting, applauding, disapproving,
anticipating, and precipitating the result, without a check. Of the men, the
greater part were armed in various ways; of the women,
some wore knives, some daggers, some ate and drank as they looked on, many
knitted. Among these last, was one, with a spare piece of knitting under her
arm as she worked. She was in a front row, by the side of a man whom he had never
seen since his arrival at the Barrier, but whom he directly remembered as Defarge. He noticed that she once or twice whispered in his
ear, and that she seemed to be his wife; but, what he most noticed in the two
figures was, that although they were posted as close to himself as they could
be, they never looked towards him. They seemed to be waiting for something with
a dogged determination, and they looked at the Jury, but at nothing else. Under
the President sat Doctor Manette, in his usual quiet
dress. As well as the prisoner could see, he and Mr. Lorry were the only men
there, unconnected with the Tribunal, who wore their usual clothes, and had not
assumed the coarse garb of the Carmagnole.
Charles
Evremonde, called Darnay,
was accused by the public prosecutor as an emigrant, whose life was forfeit to
the Republic, under the decree which banished all emigrants on pain of Death.
It was nothing that the decree bore date since his return to
"Take
off his head!" cried the audience. "An enemy to the
Republic!"
The
President rang his bell to silence those cries, and asked the prisoner whether
it was not true that he had lived many years in
Undoubtedly
it was.
Was he
not an emigrant then? What did he call himself?
Not an
emigrant, he hoped, within the sense and spirit of the law.
Why
not? the President desired to know.
Because
he had voluntarily relinquished a title that was distasteful to him, and a station that was distasteful to him, and had left
his country--he submitted before the word emigrant in the present acceptation
by the Tribunal was in use--to live by his own industry in