_Time_: 1775 to 1792
CHARACTERS
Doctor Manette A French physician
Rescued after long imprisonment in the Bastille
Lucie His daughter
Miss Pross Her English nurse
Sydney Carton An idle and dissipated law student
Mr. Lorry The agent of an English bank doing
business in Paris
The Marquis de St. Evrémonde A French nobleman
Charles Darnay His nephew
A young Frenchman living in England as a tutor
Later, the Marquis de St. Evrémonde, and Lucie's
husband
Gabelle The steward of Darnay's French estates
Defarge A Paris wine shop keeper
A leader of the revolutionists
Madame Defarge His wife
Barsad A spy and turnkey
A TALE OF TWO CITIES
I
HOW LUCIE FOUND A FATHER
A little more than a hundred years ago there lived in London (one of the
two cities of this tale) a lovely girl of seventeen named Lucie Manette.
Her mother had died when she was a baby, in France, and she lived alone
with her old nurse, Miss Pross, a homely, grim guardian with hair as red
as her face, who called Lucie "ladybird" and loved her very much. Miss
Pross was sharp of speech and was always snapping people up as if she
would bite their heads off, but, though she seldom chose to show it, she
was the kindest, truest, most unselfish person in the world. Lucie had
no memory of her father, and had always believed he also had died when
she was a baby.
One day, however, through a Mr. Lorry, the agent of a bank, she learned
a wonderful piece of news. He told her that her father was not dead, but
that he had been wickedly thrown into a secret prison in Paris before
she was born, and had been lost thus for eighteen long years. This
prison was the Bastille--a cold, dark building like a castle, with high
gray towers, a deep moat and drawbridge, and soldiers and cannon to
defend it.
In those days in France the rich nobles who belonged to the royal court
were very powerful and overbearing, and the rest of the people had few
rights. One could be put into prison then without any trial at all, so
that many innocent people suffered. Lucie's mother had guessed that
Doctor Manette (for he was a physician) had in some way incurred the
hatred of some one of the nobles and had thus been taken from her; but
all she certainly knew was that he had disappeared one day in Paris and
had never come back.
For a year she had tried in every way to find him, but at length,
desolate and heartbroken, she had fallen ill and died, leaving little
Lucie with only Miss Pross, her English nurse, to care for her. Mr.
Lorry himself, who told Lucie this story, having known her father, had
brought her, a baby, to London in his arms.
Now, he told her, after all these years, her father had been released,
and was at that moment in Paris in charge of a man named Defarge, who
had once been his servant. But the long imprisonment had affected his
mind, so that he was little more than the broken wreck of the man he had
once been. Mr. Lorry was about to go to Paris to identify him, and he
wished Lucie to go also to bring him to himself.
You can imagine that Lucie's heart was both glad and sorrowful at the
news; joyful that the father she had always believed dead was alive,
and yet full of grief for his condition. She hastily made ready and
that same day set out with Mr. Lorry for France.
When they reached Paris they went at once to find Defarge. He was a
stern, forbidding man, who kept a cheap wine shop in one of the poorer
quarters of the city. He took them through a dirty courtyard behind the
shop and up five flights of filthy stairs to a door, which he unlocked
for them to enter.
In the dim room sat a withered, white-haired old man on a low bench
making shoes. His cheeks were worn and hollow, his eyes were bright and
his long beard was as white as snow. He wore a ragged shirt, and his
hands were thin and transparent from confinement. It was Lucie's father,
Doctor Manette!
He scarcely looked up when they entered, for his mind was gone and he
knew no one. All that seemed to interest him was his shoemaking. He had
forgotten everything else. He even thought his own name was "One hundred
and five, North Tower," which had been the number of his cell in the
Bastille.
Lucie's heart almost broke to see him. She wanted to throw her arms
about him, to lay her head on his breast and tell him she was his
daughter who loved him and had come to take him home at last. But she
was afraid this would frighten him.
She came close to him, and after a while he began to look at her. She
greatly resembled her dead mother, and presently her face seemed to
remind him of something. He unwound a string from around his neck and
unfolded a little rag which was tied to it, and there was a lock of hair
like Lucie's. Then he suddenly burst into tears--the first he had shed
for long, long years--and the tears seemed to bring back a part of the
past. Lucie took him in her arms and soothed him, while Mr. Lorry went
to bring the coach that was to take them to England.
Through all their preparations for departure her father sat watching in
a sort of scared wonder, holding tight to Lucie's hand like a child, and
when they told him to come with them he descended the stairs obediently.
But he would not go into the coach without his bench and shoemaking
tools, and, to quiet him, they were obliged to take them, too.
So the father and daughter and Mr. Lorry journeyed back to Lucie's home
in London. All the miles they rode Lucie held her father's hand, and the
touch seemed to give him strength and confidence.
On the boat crossing to London was a young man who called himself
Charles Darnay, handsome, dark and pale. He was most kind to Lucie, and
showed her how to make a couch on deck for her father, and how she could
shelter it from the wind. In the long months that followed their
arrival, while the poor old man regained a measure of health, she never
forgot Darnay's face and his kindness to them.
Doctor Manette's mind and memory came slowly back with his improving
health. There were some days when his brain clouded. Then Lucie would
find him seated at his old prison bench making shoes, and she would coax
him away and talk to him until the insanity would pass away.
So time went by peacefully till a strange thing happened: Charles
Darnay, who had been so kind to Lucie and her father on the boat, was
arrested on a charge of treason.
England at that time was not on good terms with France, and Darnay, who
was of French birth, was accused of selling information concerning the
English forts and army to the French Government. This was a very serious
charge, for men convicted of treason then were put to death in the
cruelest ways that could be invented.
The charge was not true, and Darnay himself knew quite well who was
working against him.
The fact was that Charles Darnay was not his true name. He was really
Charles St. Evrémonde, the descendant of a rich and noble French family,
though he chose to live in London as Charles Darnay, and earned his
living by giving lessons in French. He did this because he would not be
one of the hated noble class of his own country, who treated the poor so
heartlessly.
In France the peasants had to pay many oppressive taxes, and were
wretched and half-starved, while the rich nobles rode in gilded coaches,
and, if they ran over a little peasant child, threw a coin to its mother
and drove on without a further thought. Among the hardest-hearted of
all, and the most hated by the common people, were the Evrémondes, the
family of the young man who was now accused of treason. As soon as he
was old enough to know how unjust was his family's treatment of the poor
who were dependent on them, he had protested against it. When he became
a man he had refused to live on the money that was thus taken from the
hungry peasantry, and had left his home and come to London to earn his
own way by teaching.
His heartless uncle, the Marquis de St. Evrémonde, in France, the head
of the family, hated the young man for this noble spirit. It was this
uncle who had invented the plot to accuse his nephew of treason. He had
hired a dishonest spy known as Barsad, who swore he had found papers in
Darnay's trunk that proved his guilt, and, as Darnay had been often back
and forth to France on family matters, the case looked dark for him.
Cruelly enough, among those who were called to the trial as witnesses,
to show that Darnay had made these frequent journeys to France, were
Doctor Manette and Lucie--because they had seen him on the boat during
that memorable crossing. Lucie's tears fell fast as she gave her
testimony, believing him innocent and knowing that her words would be
used to condemn him.
Darnay would doubtless have been convicted but for a curious
coincidence: A dissipated young lawyer, named Sydney Carton, sitting in
the court room, had noticed with surprise that he himself looked very
much like the prisoner; in fact, that they were so much alike they might
almost have been taken for twin brothers. He called the attention of
Darnay's lawyer to this, and the latter--while one of the witnesses
against Darnay was making oath that he had seen him in a certain place
in France--made Carton take off his wig (all lawyers wear wigs in
England while in court) and stand up beside Darnay. The two were so
alike the witness was puzzled, and he could not swear which of the two
he had seen. For this reason Darnay, to Lucie's great joy, was found not
guilty.
Sydney Carton, who had thought of and suggested this clever thing, was a
reckless, besotted young man. He cared for nobody, and nobody, he used
to say, cared for him. He lacked energy and ambition to work and
struggle for himself, but for the sake of plenty of money with which to
buy liquor, he studied cases for another lawyer, who was fast growing
rich by his labor. His master, who hired him, was the lion; Carton was
content, through his own indolence and lack of purpose, to be the
jackal.
His conscience had always condemned him for this, and now, as he saw the
innocent Darnay's look, noble and straightforward, so like himself as he
might have been, and as he thought of Lucie's sweet face and of how she
had wept as she was forced to give testimony against the other, Carton
felt that he almost hated the man whose life he had saved.
The trial brought Lucie and these two men (so like each other in
feature, yet so unlike in character) together, and afterward they often
met at Doctor Manette's house.
It was in a quiet part of London that Lucie and her father lived, all
alone save for the faithful Miss Pross. They had little furniture, for
they were quite poor, but Lucie made the most of everything. Doctor
Manette had recovered his mind, but not all of his memory. Sometimes he
would get up in the night and walk up and down, up and down, for hours.
At such times Lucie would hurry to him and walk up and down with him
till he was calm again. She never knew why he did this, but she came to
believe he was trying vainly to remember all that had happened in those
lost years which he had forgotten. He kept his prison bench and tools
always by him, but as time went on he gradually used them less and less
often.
Mr. Lorry, with his flaxen wig and constant smile, came to tea every
Sunday with them and helped to keep Doctor Manette cheerful. Sometimes
Darnay, Sydney Carton and Mr. Lorry would meet there together, but of
them all, Darnay came oftenest, and soon it was easy to see that he was
in love with Lucie.
Sydney Carton, too, was in love with her, but he was perfectly aware
that he was quite undeserving, and that Lucie could never love him in
return. She was the last dream of his wild, careless life, the life he
had wasted and thrown away. Once he told her this, and said that,
although he could never be anything to her himself, he would give his
life gladly to save any one who was near and dear to her.
Lucie fell in love with Darnay at length and one day they were married
and went away on their wedding journey.
Until then, since his rescue, Lucie had never been out of Doctor
Manette's sight. Now, though he was glad for her happiness, yet he felt
the pain of the separation so keenly that it unhinged his mind again.
Miss Pross and Mr. Lorry found him next morning making shoes at the old
prison bench and for nine days he did not know them at all. At last,
however, he recovered, and then, lest the sight of it affect him, one
day when he was not there they chopped the bench to pieces and burned it
up.
But her father was better after Lucie came back with her husband, and
they took up their quiet life again. Darnay loved Lucie devotedly. He
supported himself still by teaching. Mr. Lorry came from the bank
oftener to tea and Sydney Carton more rarely, and their life was
peaceful and content.
Once after his marriage, his cruel uncle, the Marquis de St. Evrémonde,
sent for Darnay to come to France on family matters. Darnay went, but
declined to remain or to do the other's bidding.
But his uncle's evil life was soon to be ended. While Darnay was there
the marquis was murdered one night in his bed by a grief-crazed laborer,
whose little child his carriage had run over.
Darnay returned to England, shocked and horrified the more at the
indifference of the life led by his race in France. Although now, by the
death of his uncle, he had himself become the Marquis de St. Evrémonde,
yet he would not lay claim to the title, and left all the estates in
charge of one of the house servants, an honest steward named Gabelle.
He had intended after his return to Lucie to settle all these affairs
and to dispose of the property, which he felt it wrong for him to hold;
but in the peace and happiness of his life in England he put it off and
did nothing further.
And this neglect of Darnay's--as important things neglected are apt to
prove--came before long to be the cause of terrible misfortune and agony
to them all.
II
DARNAY CAUGHT IN THE NET
While these things were happening in London, the one city of this tale,
other very different events were occurring in the other city of the
story--Paris, the French capital.
The indifference and harsh oppression of the court and the nobles toward
the poor had gone on increasing day by day, and day by day the latter
had grown more sullen and resentful. All the while the downtrodden
people of Paris were plotting secretly to rise in rebellion, kill the
king and queen and all the nobles, seize their riches and govern France
themselves.
The center of this plotting was Defarge, the keeper of the wine shop,
who had cared for Doctor Manette when he had first been released from
prison. Defarge and those he trusted met and planned often in the very
room where Mr. Lorry and Lucie had found her father making shoes. They
kept a record of all acts of cruelty toward the poor committed by the
nobility, determining that, when they themselves should be strong
enough, those thus guilty should be killed, their fine houses burned,
and all their descendants put to death, so that not even their names
should remain in France. This was a wicked and awful determination, but
these poor, wretched people had been made to suffer all their lives,
and their parents before them, and centuries of oppression had killed
all their pity and made them as fierce as wild beasts that only wait for
their cages to be opened to destroy all in their path.
They were afraid, of course, to keep any written list of persons whom
they had thus condemned, so Madame Defarge, the wife of the wine seller,
used to knit the names in fine stitches into a long piece of knitting
that she seemed always at work on.
Madame Defarge was a stout woman with big coarse hands and eyes that
never seemed to look at any one, yet saw everything that happened. She
was as strong as a man and every one was somewhat afraid of her. She was
even crueler and more resolute than her husband. She would sit knitting
all day long in the dirty wine shop, watching and listening, and
knitting in the names of people whom she hoped soon to see killed.
One of the hated names that she knitted over and over again was
"Evrémonde." The laborer who, in the madness of his grief for his dead
child, had murdered the Marquis de St. Evrémonde, Darnay's hard-hearted
uncle, had been caught and hanged; and, because of this, Defarge and his
wife and the other plotters had condemned all of the name of Evrémonde
to death.
Meanwhile the king and queen of France and all their gay and careless
court of nobles feasted and danced as heedlessly as ever. They did not
see the storm rising. The bitter taxes still went on. The wine shop of
Defarge looked as peaceful as ever, but the men who drank there now were
dreaming of murder and revenge. And the half-starved women, who sat and
looked on as the gilded coaches of the rich rolled through the streets,
were sullenly waiting--watching Madame Defarge as she silently knitted,
knitted into her work names of those whom the people had condemned to
death without mercy.
One day this frightful human storm, which for so many years had been
gathering in France, burst over Paris. The poor people rose by
thousands, seized whatever weapons they could get--guns, axes, or even
stones of the street--and, led by Defarge and his tigerish wife, set out
to avenge their wrongs. Their rage turned first of all against the
Bastille, the old stone prison in which so many of their kind had died,
where Doctor Manette for eighteen years had made shoes. They beat down
the thick walls and butchered the soldiers who defended it, and released
the prisoners. And wherever they saw one of the king's uniforms they
hanged the wearer to the nearest lamp post. It was the beginning of the
terrible Revolution in France that was to end in the murder of thousands
of innocent lives. It was the beginning of a time when Paris's streets
were to run with blood, when all the worst passions of the people were
loosed, and when they went mad with the joy of revenge.
The storm spread over France--to the village where stood the great
château of the Evrémonde family, and the peasants set fire to it and
burned it to the ground. And Gabelle (the servant who had been left in
charge by Darnay, the new Marquis de St. Evrémonde, whom they had never
seen, but yet hated) they seized and put in prison. They stormed the
royal palace and arrested the king and queen, threw all who bore noble
names or titles into dungeons, and, as they had planned, set up a
government of their own.
Darnay, safe in London with Lucie, knew little and thought less of all
this, till he received a pitiful letter from Gabelle, who expected each
morning to be dragged out to be killed, telling of the plight into which
his faithfulness had brought him, and beseeching his master's aid.
This letter made Darnay most uneasy. He blamed himself, because he knew
it was his fault that Gabelle had been left so long in such a dangerous
post. He did not forget that his own family, the Evrémondes, had been
greatly hated. But he thought the fact that he himself had refused to be
one of them, and had given his sympathy rather to the people they
oppressed, would make it possible for him to obtain Gabelle's release.
And with this idea he determined to go himself to Paris.
He knew the very thought of his going, now that France was mad with
violence, would frighten Lucie, so he determined not to tell her. He
packed some clothing hurriedly and left secretly, sending a letter back
telling her where and why he was going. And by the time she read this he
was well on his way from England.
Darnay had expected to find no trouble in his errand and little personal
risk in his journey, but as soon as he landed on the shores of France he
discovered his mistake. He had only to give his real name, "the Marquis
de St. Evrémonde," which he was obliged to do if he would help Gabelle,
and the title was the signal for rude threats and ill treatment. Once
in, he could not go back, and he felt as if a monstrous net were closing
around him (as indeed, it was) from which there was no escape.
He was sent on to Paris under a guard of soldiers, and there he was at
once put into prison to be tried--and in all probability condemned to
death--as one of the hated noble class whom the people were now killing
as fast as they could.
The great room of the prison to which he was taken Darnay found full of
ladies and gentlemen, most of them rich and titled, the men chatting,
the women reading or doing embroidery, all courteous and polite, as if
they sat in their own splendid homes, instead of in a prison from which
most of them could issue only to a dreadful death. He was allowed to
remain here only a few moments; then he was taken to an empty cell and
left alone.
It happened that the bank of which Mr. Lorry was agent had an office
also in Paris, and the old gentleman had come there on business the day
before Darnay arrived. Mr. Lorry was an Englishman born, and for him
there was no danger. He knew nothing of the arrest of Darnay until a day
or two later, when, as he sat in his room, Doctor Manette and Lucie
entered, just arrived from London, deeply agitated and in great fear for
Darnay's safety.
As soon as Lucie had read her husband's letter she had followed at once
with her father and Miss Pross. Doctor Manette, knowing Darnay's real
name and title (for, before he married Lucie, he had told her father
everything concerning himself), feared danger for him. But he had
reasoned that his own long imprisonment in the Bastille--the building
the people had first destroyed--would make him a favorite, and render
him able to aid Darnay if danger came. On the way, they had heard the
sad news of his arrest, and had come at once to Mr. Lorry to consider
what might best be done.
While they talked, through the window they saw a great crowd of people
come rushing into the courtyard of the building to sharpen weapons at a
huge grindstone that stood there. They were going to murder the
prisoners with which the jails were by this time full!
Fearful that he would be too late to save Darnay, Doctor Manette rushed
to the yard, his white hair streaming in the wind, and told the leaders
of the mob who he was--how he had been imprisoned for eighteen years in
the Bastille, and that now one of his kindred, by some unknown error,
had been seized. They cheered him, lifted him on their shoulders and
rushed away to demand for him the release of Darnay, while Lucie, in
tears, with Mr. Lorry and Miss Pross, waited all night for tidings.
But none came that night. The rescue had not proved easy. Next day
Defarge, the wine shop keeper, brought a short note to Lucie from Darnay
at the prison, but it was four days before Doctor Manette returned to
the house. He had, indeed, by the story of his own sufferings, saved
Darnay's life for the time being, but the prisoner, he had been told,
could not be released without trial.
For this trial they waited, day after day. The time passed slowly and
terribly. Prisoners were no longer murdered without trial, but few
escaped the death penalty. The king and queen were beheaded. Thousands
were put to death merely on suspicion, and thousands more were thrown
into prison to await their turn. This was that dreadful period which has
always since been called "The Reign of Terror," when no one felt sure of
his safety.
There was a certain window in the prison through which Darnay sometimes
found a chance to look, and from which he could see one dingy street
corner. On this corner, every afternoon, Lucie took her station for
hours, rain or shine. She never missed a day, and thus at long intervals
her husband got a view of her.
So months passed till a year had gone. All the while Doctor Manette, now
become a well-known figure in Paris, worked hard for Darnay's release.
And at length his turn came to be tried and he was brought before the
drunken, ignorant men who called themselves judge and jury.
He told how he had years before renounced his family and title, left
France, and supported himself rather than be a burden on the peasantry.
He told how he had married a woman of French birth, the only daughter of
the good Doctor Manette, whom all Paris knew, and had come to Paris now
of his own accord to help a poor servant who was in danger through his
fault.
The story caught the fancy of the changeable crowd in the room. They
cheered and applauded it. When he was acquitted they were quite as
pleased as if he had been condemned to be beheaded, and put him in a
great chair and carried him home in triumph to Lucie.