A Tale of Two Cities
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 Paris. On the road (except at
Beauvais) he had heard absolutely nothing. The escort and the universal
watchfulness had completely isolated him.
That he had fallen among far greater dangers than those which had
developed themselves when he left England, he of course knew now. That
perils had thickened about him fast, and might thicken faster and faster
yet, he of course knew now. He could not but admit to himself that he
might not have made this journey, if he could have foreseen the events
of a few days. And yet his misgivings were not so dark as, imagined by
the light of this later time, they would appear. Troubled as the future
was, it was the unknown future, and in its obscurity there was ignorant
hope. The horrible massacre, days and nights long, which, within a few
rounds of the clock, was to set a great mark of blood upon the blessed
garnering time of harvest, was as far out of his knowledge as if it had
been a hundred thousand years away. The “sharp female newly-born, and
called La Guillotine,” was hardly known to him, or to the generality
of people, by name. The frightful deeds that were to be soon done, were
probably unimagined at that time in the brains of the doers. How could
they have a place in the shadowy conceptions of a gentle mind?
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 Evrémonde.”
“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 Liberty;” which sounded in that place like an inappropriate
conclusion.
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.
CHAPTER II.
The Grindstone
Tellson’s Bank, established in the Saint Germain Quarter of Paris, was
in a wing of a large house, approached by a courtyard and shut off from
the street by a high wall and a strong gate. The house belonged to
a great nobleman who had lived in it until he made a flight from the
troubles, in his own cook’s dress, and got across the borders. A
mere beast of the chase flying from hunters, he was still in his
metempsychosis no other than the same Monseigneur, the preparation
of whose chocolate for whose lips had once occupied three strong men
besides the cook in question.
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