Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0069/00692.txt

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$Title{(A) Tale Of Two Cities
Chapter X}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Dickens, Charles}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{brother
doctor
last
boy
hand
saw
time
am
brothers
carriage}
$Date{}
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Title:       (A) Tale Of Two Cities
Book:        Book The Third: The Track of a Storm
Author:      Dickens, Charles

Chapter X

The Substance Of The Shadow

     "I, Alexandre Manette, unfortunate physician, native of Beauvais, and
afterwards resident in Paris, write this melancholy paper in my doleful cell
in the Bastille, during the last month of the year 1767.  I write it at
stolen intervals, under every difficulty.  I design to secrete it in the wall
of the chimney, where I have slowly and laboriously made a place of
concealment for it.  Some pitying hand may find it there, when I and my
sorrows are dust.

     "These words are formed by the rusty iron point with which I write with
difficulty in scrapings of soot and charcoal from the chimney, mixed with
blood, in the last month of the tenth year of my captivity.  Hope has quite
departed from my breast.  I know from terrible warnings I have noted in
myself that my reason will not long remain unimpaired, but I solemnly declare
that I am at this time in the possession of my right mind - that my memory is
exact and circumstantial - and that I write the truth as I shall answer for
these my last recorded words, whether they be ever read by men or not, at the
Eternal Judgment-seat.

     "One cloudy moonlight night, in the third week of December (I think the
twenty-second of the month) in the year 1757, I was walking on a retired part
of the quay by the Seine for the refreshment of the frosty air, at an hour's
distance from my place of residence in the Street of the School of Medicine,
when a carriage came along behind me, driven very fast.  As I stood aside to
let that carriage pass, apprehensive that it might otherwise run me down, a
head was put out at the window, and a voice called to the driver to stop.

     "The carriage stopped as soon as the driver could rein in his horses,
and the same voice called to me by my name.  I answered.  The carriage was
then so far in advance of me that two gentlemen had time to open the door and
alight before I came up with it.  I observed that they were both wrapped in
cloaks, and appeared to conceal themselves.  As they stood side by side near
the carriage door, I also observed that they both looked of about my own age,
or rather younger, and that they were greatly alike, in stature, manner,
voice, and (as far as I could see) face too.

     "'You are Doctor Manette?' said one.

     "'I am.'

     "'Doctor Manette, formerly of Beauvais,' said the other; 'the young
physician, originally an expert surgeon, who within the last year or two has
made a rising reputation in Paris?'

     "'Gentlemen,' I returned, 'I am that Doctor Manette of whom you speak so
graciously.'

     'We have been to your residence,' said the first, 'and not being so
fortunate as to find you there, and being informed that you were probably
walking in this direction, we followed, in the hope of overtaking you.  Will
you please to enter the carriage?'

     "The manner of both was imperious, and they both moved, as these words
were spoken, so as to place me between themselves and the carriage door.
They were armed.  I was not.

     "'Gentlemen,' said I, 'pardon me; but I usually inquire who does me the
honour to seek my assistance, and what is the nature of the case to which I
am summoned.'

     "The reply to this was made by him who had spoken second.  'Doctor, your
clients are people of condition.  As to the nature of the case, our
confidence in your skill assures us that you will ascertain it for yourself
better than we can describe it.  Enough.  Will you please to enter the
carriage?'

     "I could do nothing but comply, and I entered it in silence.  They both
entered after me - the last springing in, after putting up the steps.  The
carriage turned about, and drove on at its former speed.

     "I repeat this conversation exactly as it occurred.  I have no doubt
that it is, word for word, the same.  I describe everything exactly as it
took place, constraining my mind not to wander from the task.  Where I make
the broken marks that follow here, I leave off for the time, and put my paper
in its hiding-place.  * * * *

     "The carriage left the streets behind, passed the North Barrier, and
emerged upon the country road.  At two-thirds of a league from the Barrier -
I did not estimate the distance at that time, but afterwards when I traversed
it - it struck out of the main avenue, and presently stopped at a solitary
house.  We all three alighted, and walked, by a damp soft footpath in a
garden where a neglected fountain had overflowed, to the door of the house.
It was not opened immediately, in answer to the ringing of the bell, and one
of my two conductors struck the man who opened it, with his heavy
riding-glove, across the face.

     "There was nothing in this action to attract my particular attention,
for I had seen common people struck more commonly than dogs.  But, the other
of the two, being angry likewise, struck the man in like manner with his arm;
the look and bearing of the brothers were then so exactly alike, that I then
first perceived them to be twin brothers.

     "From the time of our alighting at the outer gate (which we found
locked, and which one of the brothers had opened to admit us, and had
re-locked), I had heard cries proceeding from an upper chamber.  I was
conducted to this chamber straight, the cries growing louder as we ascended
the stairs, and I found a patient in a high fever of the brain, lying on a
bed.

     "The patient was a woman of great beauty, and young; assuredly not much
past twenty.  Her hair was torn and ragged, and her arms were bound to her
sides with sashes and handkerchiefs.  I noticed that these bonds were all
portions of a gentleman's dress.  On one of them, which was a fringed scarf
for a dress of ceremony.  I saw the armorial bearings of a Noble, and the
letter E.

     "I saw this, within the first minute of my contemplation of the patient;
for, in her restless strivings she had turned over on her face on the edge of
the bed, had drawn the end of the scarf into her mouth, and was in danger of
suffocation.  My first act was to put out my hand to relieve her breathing;
and in moving the scarf aside, the embroidery in the corner caught my sight.

     "I turned her gently over, placed my hands upon her breast to calm her
and keep her down, and looked into her face.  Her eyes were dilated and wild,
and she constantly uttered piercing shricks, and repeated the words, 'My
husband, my father, and my brother!" and then counted up to twelve, and said,
'Hush!'  For an instant, and no more, she would pause to listen, and then the
piercing shrieks would begin again, and she would repeat the cry, 'My
husband, my father, and my brother!' and would count up to twelve, and say
'Hush!'  There was no variation in the order, or the manner.  There was no
cessation, but the regular moment's pause, in the utterance of these sounds.

     "'How long,' I asked,'has this lasted?'

     "To distinguish the brothers, I will call them the elder and the
younger; by the elder, I mean him who exercised the most authority.  It was
the elder who replied, 'Since about this hour last night.'

     "'She has a husband, a father, and a brother?'

     "'A brother.'

     "'I do not address her brother?'

     "He answered with great contempt, 'No.'

     "'She has some recent association with the number twelve?

     "The younger brother impatiently rejoined, 'With twelve o'clock?'

     "'See, gentlemen,' said I, still keeping my hands upon her breast, 'how
useless I am, as you have brought me!  If I had known what I was coming to
see, I could have come provided.  As it is, time must be lost.  There are no
medicines to be obtained in this lonely place.'

     "The elder brother looked to the younger, who said haughtily, 'There is
a case of medicines here;' and brought it from a closet, and put it on the
table.  * * * *

     "I opened some of the bottles, smelt them, and put the stoppers to my
lips.  If I had wanted to use anything save narcotic medicines that were
poisons in themselves, I would not have administered any of those.

     "'Do you doubt them?' asked the younger brother.

     "'You see, monsieur, I am going to use them,' I replied, and said no
more.

     "I made the patient swallow, with great difficulty, and after many
efforts, the dose that I desired to give.  As I intended to repeat it after a
while, and as it was necessary to watch its influence, I then sat down by the
side of the bed.  There was a timid and suppressed woman in attendance (wife
of the man down-stairs), who had retreated into a corner.  The house was damp
and decayed, indifferently furnished - evidently, recently occupied and
temporarily used.  Some thick old hangings had been nailed up before the
windows, to deaden the sound of the shrieks.  They continued to be uttered in
their regular succession, with the cry, 'My husband, my father, and my
brother!' the counting up to twelve, and 'Hush!'  The frenzy was so violent,
that I had not unfastened the bandages restraining the arms, but, I had
looked to them, to see that they were not painful.  The only spark of
encouragement in the case, was, that my hand upon the sufferer's breast had
this much soothing influence, that for minutes at a time it tranquillised the
figure.  It had no effect upon the cries: no pendulum could be more regular.

     "For the reason that my hand had this effect (I assume), I had sat by
the side of the bed for half an hour, with the two brothers looking on,
before the elder said:

     "'There is another patient.'

     "I was startled and asked, 'Is it a pressing case?'

     "'You had better see,' he carelessly answered; and took up a light.  * *
* *

     "The other patient lay in a back room across a second staircase, which
was a species of loft over a stable.  There was a low plastered ceiling to a
part of it; the rest was open, to the ridge of the tiled roof, and there were
beams across.  Hay and straw were stored in that portion of the place, fagots
for firing, and a heap of apples in sand.  I had to pass through that part,
to get at the other.  My memory is circumstantial and unshaken.  I try it
with these details, and I see them all, in this my cell in the Bastille, near
the close of the tenth year of my captivity, as I saw them all that night.

     "On some hay on the ground, with a cushion thrown under his head, lay a
handsome peasant boy - a boy of not more than seventeen at the most.  He lay
on his back, with his teeth set, his right hand clenched on his breast, and
his glaring eyes looking straight upward.  I could not see where his wound
was, as I kneeled on one knee over him; but, I could see that he was dying of
a wound from a sharp point.

     "'I am a doctor, my poor fellow,' said I.  'Let me examine it,'

     "'I do not want it examined,' he answered; 'let it be.'

     "It was under his hand, and I soothed him to let me move his hand away.
The wound was a sword-thrust, received from twenty to twenty-four hours
before, but no skill could have saved him if it had been looked to without
delay.  He was then dying fast.  As I turned my eyes to the elder brother, I
saw him looking down at this handsome boy whose life was ebbing out, as if he
were a wounded bird, or hare, or rabbit; not at all as if he were a
fellow-creature.

     "'How has this been done, monsieur?' said I.

     "'A crazed young common dog!  A serf! Forced my brother to draw upon
him, and has fallen by my brother's sword - like a gentleman.'

     "There was no touch of pity, sorrow, or kindred humanity, in this
answer.  The speaker seemed to acknowledge that it was inconvenient to have
that different order of creature dying there, and that it would have been
better if he had died in the usual obscure routine of his vermin kind.  He
was quite incapable of any compassionate feeling about the boy, or about his
fate.

     "The boy's eyes had slowly moved to him as he had spoken, and they now
slowly moved to me.

     "'Doctor, they are very proud, these Nobles; but we common dogs are
proud too, sometimes.  They plunder us, outrage us, beat us, kill us; but we
have a little pride left, sometimes.  She - have you seen her, Doctor?'

     "The shrieks and the cries were audible there, though subdued by the
distance.  He referred to them, as if she were lying in our presence.

     "I said, 'I have seen her.'

     "'She is my sister, Doctor.  They have had their shameful rights, these
Nobles, in the modesty and virtue of our sisters, many years, but we have had
good girls among us.  I know it, and have heard my father say so.  She was a
good girl.  She was betrothed to a good young man, too: a tenant of his.  We
were all tenants of his - that man's who stands there.  The other is his
brother, the worst of a bad race.'

     "It was with the greatest difficulty that the boy gathered bodily force
to speak; but, his spirit spoke with a dreadful emphasis.

     "'We were so robbed by that man who stands there, as all we common dogs
are by those superior Beings - taxed by him without mercy, obliged to work
for him without pay, obliged to grind our corn at his mill, obliged to feed
scores of his tame birds on our wretched crops, and forbidden for our lives
to keep a single tame bird of our own, pillaged and plundered to that degree
that when we chanced to have a bit of meat, we ate it in fear, with the door
barred and the shutters closed, that his people should not see it and take it
from us - I say, we were so robbed, and hunted, and were made so poor, that
our fathertold us it was a dreadful thing to bring a child into the world,
and that what we should most pray for, was, that our women might be barren
and our miserable race die out!'

     "I had never before seen the sense of being oppressed, bursting forth
like a fire.  I had supposed that it must be latent in the people somewhere;
but, I had never seen it break out, until I saw it in the dying boy.

     "'Nevertheless, Doctor, my sister married.  He was ailing at that time,
poor fellow, and she married her lover, that she might tend and comfort him
in our cottage - our dog-hut, as that man would call it.  She had not been
married many weeks, when that man's brother saw her and admired her, and
asked that man to lend her to him - for what are husbands among us!  He was
willing enough, but my sister was good and virtuous, and hated his brother
with a hatred as strong as mine.  What did the two then, to persuade her
husband to use his influence with her, to make her willing?'

     "The boy's eyes, which had been fixed on mine, slowly turned to the
looker-on, and I saw in the two faces that all he said was true.  The two
opposing kinds of pride confronting one another.  I can see, even in this
Bastille; the gentleman's all negligent indifference; the peasant's, all
trodden-down sentiment, and passionate revenge.

     "'You know, Doctor, that it is among the Rights of these Nobles to
harness us common dogs to carts, and drive us.  They so harnessed him and
drove him.  You know that it is among their Rights to keep us in their
grounds all night, quieting the frogs, in order that their noble sleep may
not be disturbed.  They kept him out in the unwholesome mists at night, and
ordered him back into his harness in the day.  But he was not persuaded.  No!
Taken out of harness one day at noon, to feed - if he could find food - he
sobbed twelve times, once for every stroke of the bell, and died on her
bosom.'

     "Nothing human could have held life in the boy but his determination to
tell all his wrong.  He forced back the gathering shadows of death, as he
forced his clenched right hand to remain clenched, and to cover his wound.

     "'Then, with that man's permission and even with his aid, his brother
took her away; in spite of what I know she must have told his brother - and
what that is, will not be long unknown to you, Doctor, if it is now - his
brother took her away - for his pleasure and diversion, for a little while.
I saw her pass me on the road.  When I took the tidings home, our father's
heart burst; he never spoke one of the words that filled it.  I took my young
sister (for I have another) to a place beyond the reach of this man, and
where, at least, she will never be his vassal.  Then, I tracked the brother
here, and last night climbed in - a common dog, but sword in hand. - Where is
the loft window?  It was somewhere here?'

     "The room was darkening to his sight; the world was narrowing around
him.  I glanced about me, and saw that the hay and straw were trampled over
the floor, as if there had been a struggle.

     "'She heard me, and ran in.  I told her not to come near us till he was
dead.  He came in and first tossed me some pieces of money; then struck at me
with a whip.  But I, though a common dog, so struck at him as to make him
draw.  Let him break into as many pieces as he will, the sword that he
stained with my common blood; he drew to defend himself - thrust at me with
all his skill for his life.'

     "My glance had fallen, but a few moments before, on the fragments of a
broken sword, lying among the hay.  That weapon was a gentleman's.  In
another place, lay an old sword that seemed to have been a soldier's.

     "'Now, lift me up, Doctor; lift me up.  Where is he?'

     "'He is not here,' I said, supporting the boy, and thinking that he
referred to the brother.

     "'He! Proud as these nobles are, he is afraid to see me.  Where is the
man who was here?  Turn my face to him.'

     "I did so, raising the boy's head against my knee.  But, invested for
the moment with extraordinary power, he raised himself completely: obliging
me to rise too, or I could not have still supported him.

     "'Marquis,' said the boy, turned to him with his eyes opened wide, and
his right hand raised, 'in the days when all these things are to be answered
for, I summon you and yours, to the last of your bad race, to answer for
them.  I mark this cross of blood upon you, as a sign that I do it.  In the
days when all these things are to be answered for, I summon your brother, the
worst of the bad race, to answer for them separately.  I mark this cross of
blood upon him, as a sign that I do it.'

     "Twice, he put his hand to the wound in his breast, and with his
forefinger drew a cross in the air.  He stood for an instant with the finger
yet raised, and, as it dropped, he dropped with it, and I laid him down dead.
* * * *

     "When I returned to the bedside of the young woman.  I found her raving
in precisely the same order and continuity.  I knew that this might last for
many hours, and that it would probably end in the silence of the grave.

     "I repeated the medicines I had given her, and I sat at the side of the
bed until the night was far advanced.  She never abated the piercing quality
ofher shrieks, never stumbled in the distinctness or the order of her words.
They were always 'My husband, my father, and my brother!  One, two, three,
four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve.  Hush!'

     "This lasted twenty-six hours from the time when I first saw her.  I had
come and gone twice, and was again sitting by her, when she began to falter.
I did what little could be done to assist that opportunity, and by-and-by she
sank into a lethargy, and lay like the dead.

     "It was as if the wind and rain had lulled at last, after a long and
fearful storm.  I released her arms, and called the woman to assist me to
compose her figure and the dress she had torn.  It was then that I knew her
condition to be that of one in whom the first expectations of being a mother
have arisen; and it was then that I lost the little hope I had had of her.

     "'Is she dead?' asked the Marquis, whom I will still describe as the
elder brother, coming booted into the room from his horse.

     "'Not dead,' said I; 'but like to die.'

     "'What strength there is in these common bodies!' he said, looking down
at her with some curiosity.

     "'There is prodigious strength,' I answered him, 'in sorrow and
despair.'

     "He first laughed at my words, and then frowned at them.  He moved a
chair with his foot near to mine, ordered the woman away, and said in a
subdued voice,

     "'Doctor, finding my brother in this difficulty with these hinds.  I
recommended that your aid should be invited.  Your reputation is high, and,
as a young man with your fortune to make, you are probably mindful of your
interest.  The things that you see here, are things to be seen, and not
spoken of.'

     "I listened to the patient's breathing, and avoided answering.

     "'Do you honour me with your attention, Doctor?'

     "'Monsieur,' said I, 'in my profession, the communications of patients
are always received in confidence.'  I was guarded in my answer, for I was
troubled in my mind with what I had heard and seen.

     "Her breathing was so difficult to trace, that I carefully tried the
pulse and the heart.  There was life, and no more.  Looking round as I
resumed my seat, I found both the brothers intent upon me.  * * * *

     "I write with so much difficulty, the cold is so severe, I am so fearful
of being detected and consigned to an underground cell and total darkness,
that I must abridge this narrative.  There is no confusion or failure in my
memory; it can recall, and could detail, every word that was ever spoken
between me and those brothers.

     "She lingered for a week.  Towards the last, I could understand some few
syllables that she said to me, by placing my ear close to her lips.  She
asked me where she was, and I told her; who I was, and I told her.  It was in
vain that I asked her for her family name.  She faintly shook her head upon
the pillow, and kept her secret, as the boy had done.

     "I had no opportunity of asking her any question, until I had told the
brothers she was sinking fast, and could not live another day.  Until then,
though no one was ever presented to her consciousness save the woman and
myself, one or other of them had always jealously sat behind the curtain at
the head of the bed when I was there.  But when it came to that, they seemed
careless what communication I might hold with her; as if - the thought passed
through my mind - I were dying too.

     "I always observed that their pride bitterly resented the younger
brother's (as I call him) having crossed swords with a peasant, and that
peasant a boy.  The only consideration that appeared to affect the mind of
either of them was the consideration that this was highly degrading to the
family, and was ridiculous.  As often as I caught the younger brother's eyes,
their expression reminded me that he disliked me deeply, for knowing what I
knew from the boy.  He was smoother and more polite to me than the elder; but
I saw this.  I also saw that I was an incumbrance in the mind of the elder,
too.

     "My patient died, two hours before midnight - at a time, by my watch,
answering almost to the minute when I had first seen her.  I was alone with
her, when her forlorn young head drooped gently on one side, and all her
earthly wrongs and sorrows ended.

     "The brothers were waiting in a room down-stairs, impatient to ride
away.  I had heard them, alone at the bedside, striking their boots with
their riding-whips, and loitering up and down.

     "'At last she is dead?' said the elder, when I went in.

     "'She is dead,' said I.

     "'I congratulate you, my brother,' were his words as he turned round.

     "He had before offered me money, which I had postponed taking.  He now
gave me a rouleau of gold.  I took it from his hand, but laid it on the
table.  I had considered the question, and had resolved to accept nothing.

     "'Pray excuse me,' said I.  'Under the circumstances, no.'

     "They  exchanged looks, but bent their heads to me as I bent mine to
them, and we parted without another word on either side.  * * * *

     "I am weary, weary, weary - worn down by misery.  I cannot read what I
have written with this gaunt hand.

     "Early in the morning, the rouleau of gold was left at my door in a
little box, with my name on the outside.  From the first, I had anxiously
considered what I ought to do.  I decided, that day, to write privately to
the Minister stating the nature of the two cases to which I had been
summoned, and the place to which I had gone: in effect, stating all the
circumstances.  I knew what Court influence was, and what the immunities of
the Nobles were, and I expected that the matter would never be heard of; but,
I wished to relieve my own mind.  I had kept the matter a profound secret,
even from my wife; and this, too, I resolved to state in my letter.  I had no
apprehension whatever ofmy real danger; but I was conscious that there might
be danger for others, if others were compromised by possessing the knowledge
that I possessed.

     "I was much engaged that day, and could not complete my letter that
night.  I rose long before my usual time next morning to finish it.  It was
the last day of the year.  The letter was lying before me just completed,
when I was told that a lady waited, who wished to see me.  * * * *

     "I am growing more and more unequal to the task I have set myself.  It
is so cold, so dark, my senses are so benumbed, and the gloom upon me is so
dreadful.

     "The lady was young, engaging, and handsome, but not marked for long
life.  She was in great agitation.  She presented herself to me as the wife
of the Marquis St. Evremonde.  I connected the title by which the boy had
addressed the elder brother, with the initial letter embroidered on the
scarf, and had no difficulty in arriving at the conclusion that I had seen
that nobleman very lately.

     "My memory is still accurate, but I cannot write the words of our
conversation.  I suspect that I am watched more closely than I was, and I
know not at what times I may be watched.  She had in part suspected, and in
part discovered, the main facts of the cruel story, of her husband's share in
it, and my being resorted to.  She did not know that the girl was dead.  Her
hope had been, she said in great distress, to show her, in secret, a woman's
sympathy.  Her hope had been to avert the wrath of Heaven from a House that
had long been hateful to the suffering many.

     "She had reasons for believing that there was a young sister living, and
her greatest desire was, to help that sister.  I could tell her nothing but
that there was such a sister; beyond that, I knew nothing.  Her inducement to
come to me, relying on my confidence, had been the hope that I could tell her
the name and place of abode.  Whereas, to this wretched hour I am ignorant of
both.  * * * *

     "These scraps of paper fail me.  One was taken from me, with a warning,
yesterday.  I must finish my record to-day.

     "She was a good, compassionate lady, and not happy in her marriage.  How
could she be!  The brother distrusted and disliked her, and his influence was
all opposed to her; she stood in dread of him, and in dread of her husband
too.  When I handed her down to the door, there was a child, a pretty boy
from two to three years old, in her carriage.

     "'For his sake, Doctor,' she said, pointing to him in tears, 'I would do
all I can to make what poor amends I can.  He will never prosper in his
inheritance otherwise.  I have a presentiment that if no other innocent
atonement is made for this, it will one day be required of him.  What I have
left to call my own - it is little beyond the worth of a few jewels - I will
make it the first charge of his life to bestow, with the compassion and
lamenting of his dead mother, on this injured family, if the sister can be
discovered.'

     "She kissed the boy, and said, caressing him, 'It is for thine own dear
sake.  Thou wilt be faithful, little Charles?'  The child answered her
bravely, 'Yes!' I kissed her hand, and she took him in her arms, and went
away caressing him.  I never saw her more.

     "As she had mentioned her husband's name in the faith that I knew it, I
added no mention of it to my letter.  I sealed my letter, and, not trusting
it out of my own hands, delivered it myself that day.

     "That night, the last night of the year, towards nine o'clock, a man in
a black dress rang at my gate, demanded to see me, and softly followed my
servant, Ernest Defarge, a youth, up-stairs.  When my servant came into the
room where I sat with my wife - O my wife, beloved of my heart!  My fair
young English wife! - we saw the man, who was supposed to be at the gate,
standing silent behind him.

     "An urgent case in the Rue St. Honore, he said.  It would not detain me,
he had a coach in waiting.

     "It brought me here, it brought me to my grave.  When I was clear of the
house, a black muffler was drawn tightly over my mouth from behind, and my
arms were pinioned.  The two brothers crossed the road from a dark corner,
and identified me with a single gesture.  The Marquis took from his pocket
the letter I had written, showed it me, burnt it in the light of a lantern
that was held, and extinguished the ashes with his foot.  Not a word was
spoken.  I was brought here, I was brought to my living grave.

     "If it had pleased God to put it in the hard heart of either of the
brothers, in all these frightful years, to grant me any tidings of my dearest
wife - so much as to let me know by a word whether alive or dead - I might
have thought that He had not quite abandoned them.  But, now I believe that
the mark of the red cross is fatal to them, and that they have no part in His
mercies.  And them and their descendants, to the last of their race, I,
Alexandre Manette, unhappy prisoner, do this last night of the year 1767, in
my unbearable agony, denounce to the times when all these things shall be
answered for.  I denounce them to Heaven and to earth."

     A terrible sound arose when the reading of this document was done.  A
sound of craving and eagerness that had nothing articulate in it but blood.
The narrative called up the most revengeful passions of the time, and there
was not a head in the nation but must have dropped before it.

     Little need, in presence of that tribunal and that auditory, to show how
the Defarges had not made the paper public, with the other captured Bastille
memorials borne in procession, and had kept it, biding their time.  Little
need to show that this detested family name had long been anathematised by
Saint Antoine, and was wrought into the fatal register.  The man never trod
ground whose virtues and services would have sustained him in that place that
day, against such denunciation.

     And all the worse for the doomed man, that the denouncer was a
well-known citizen, his own attached friend, the father of his wife.  One of
the frenzied aspirations of the populace was, for imitations of the
questionable public virtues of antiquity, and for sacrifices and
self-immolations on the people's altar.  Therefore when the President said
(else had his own head quivered on his shoulders), that the good physician of
the Republic would deserve better still of the Republic by rooting out an
obnoxious family of Aristocrats, and would doubtless feel a sacred glow and
joy in making his daughter a widow and her child an orphan, there was wild
excitement, patriotic fervour, not a touch of human sympathy.

     "Much influence around him, has that Doctor?" murmured Madame Defarge,
smiling to The Vengeance.  "Save him now, my Doctor, save him!"

     At every juryman's vote, there was a roar.  Another and another.  Roar
and roar.

     Unanimously voted.  At heart and by descent an Aristocrat, an enemy of
the Republic, a notorious oppressor of the People.  Back to the Conciergerie,
and Death within four-and-twenty hours!