A Tale of Two Cities Book Notes

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

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Author/Context

Charles John Huffam Dickens was born on February 7, 1812, in Portsmouth, England. He moved with his family to London and later to Chatham, Kent, where he had many happy childhood experiences. His father was a well-paid clerk in the Navy pay office, but was extravagant and wasteful with his money. He eventually landed in a debtor's prison, and Charles was forced to quit school and work in a factory, an experience that scarred him. Though he detested his brief foray into the working class, the experience acquainted him with the struggles and poverty of the lower classes, and he gained a sympathy for them that appeared in his later works. After his father's release from prison, he re-entered school briefly but left at age 15. After briefly working for two legal firms, he learned shorthand and became a court reporter, which gave him the legal knowledge he later used in his novels. He became romantically involved with Maria Beadnell, a woman who would haunt him for years after their affair cooled because she deemed his family and his prospects unsatisfactory. She briefly reentered his life years later, an experience that proved disappointing and disillusioning to Dickens.

After acting on the London stage and seriously considering a career in the theater, Dickens became a parliamentary reporter for the Mirror of Parliament and the True Sun. His experiences as a reporter left him with a life-long affection for journalism and a suspicion of law and parliament. He published his first sketch, "A Dinner at Poplar Walk," in the Monthly Magazine in 1833. In 1836 he married Catherine Hogarth, became editor of Bentley's Miscellany, and published Sketches by "Boz." A year later, "Oliver Twist" began to appear as a serialization in Bentley's Miscellany. A year later, "Nicholas Nickelby" began to appear, and the first of his nine children was born. After the publication of "Barnaby Rudge," he visited the United States. Though he was warmly welcomed, the experience left him disillusioned with the country. Following the publication of "Martin Chuzzlewit," and "A Christmas Carol" and the births of several more children, he served briefly as the editor of the Daily News. In 1849, he began serialization of "David Copperfield," probably his most successful novel.

As a personality, Dickens was popular and engaging; he was considered to be one of the best after-dinner speakers in London and was popular in his circle of sophisticated and illustrious friends. Dickens relished his public popularity and long maintained a deep affection for his public. He was convivial, yet complicated; his creative process was marked by a deep commitment to punctuality and organization, along with the long walks through the London streets that became essential to his creativity. He was devoted to his children and prided himself on maintaining a happy home and family life. This happiness eventually deteriorated, however, in later years. Tragedy struck when several of his children died. He also fell out of love with his wife, and some of his other children proved to be disappointing to him.

In 1856, he collaborated with Wilkie Collins, a close friend, on a play, "The Frozen Deep." When the play was produced a year later, Dickens fell in love with one if the actresses, Ellen Ternan. His scandalous affair led to his separation from Catherine in 1858, but it did nothing to dim his immense public popularity. His romance with Ternan continued until his death. After his separation from Catherine, he began to perform public readings, an act he greatly enjoyed and would continue for many years. Also that year, he began to publish installments of A Tale of Two Cities.

A Tale of Two Cities was one of Dickens' final novels and a departure from his usual style. It was a dense narrative that relied less on humor, dialogue, and characterization than usual. Though it remains a staple on high school reading lists, it is not generally regarded from a critical standpoint as one of his major works. While many readers, and Dickens himself, found Sydney Carton's self-sacrifice to be extremely moving, many critics are now more impressed with Dr. Manette as an achievement in characterization. The following year, he published Great Expectations, which is considered to be less ambitious than earlier novels but still his finest literary achievement. In 1864, he published Our Mutual Friend, another novel of social criticism. Though his health was by now deteriorating, he nonetheless embarked on a second reading tour of America. During this time, critics became more hostile to him, and he struck friends as being sadder than before. His sons continued to cause him worry and disappointment, though he still loved the country house, Gad's Hill, which became his permanent home until his death.

In 1865, he was injured in a railway accident; an experience that left him badly shaken and that proved to be the beginning of a descent into poor health. He collapsed in 1869 during a farewell reading tour. He gave one more short series of readings in London and began writing his last novel, Edwin Drood. The novel was never completed; Dickens suffered a stroke and died at Gad's Hill on June 9, 1870, at age 58. He was buried at Westminster Abbey.

Despite the critical hostility he faced in his later years, he is now considered to be ranked second only to Shakespeare in the canon of English authors.

Bibliography

Dickens, Charles. A Tale of Two Cities. New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 1993.

Marzials, Frank T. Life of Charles Dickens. London: Walter Scott, 1887.

Murray, Brian. Charles Dickens. New York: Continuum, 1994.

The New Encyclopedia Britannica, Volume 17. Chicago: The University of Chicago, 1992.

Priestly, J.B. Charles Dickens: A Pictorial Biography. London: Thames and Hudson, 1961.

Plot Summary

It is the year 1775, and England and France are undergoing a period of social upheaval and turmoil. The forces that are leading to revolution in France are colliding with a circle of people in England, causing their destinies to be irrevocably intertwined.

Lucie Manette, a young woman who has been raised as an orphan and a ward of Tellson's bank, learns that her father is alive and has recently been released from prison after eighteen years of unjust incarceration. She travels to the French suburb of Saint Antoine with Mr. Jarvis Lorry, a longtime Tellson's employee who had managed her father's affairs before his imprisonment. They find her father at the home of Ernest Defarge, a former domestic of Dr. Manette's who has housed the doctor since his release. Though her father is teetering on the brink of insanity, she solemnly vows that she will be true to him and devote her life to helping him recover himself. The family relocates to London, and Mr. Lorry becomes a friend of the family. After time, the doctor begins to recover and resumes his practice, and though he occasionally reverts back to his trance-like state, he slowly but surely returns to himself. Throughout the process, he and Lucie become extremely close.

After a period of five years, Lucie and her father are called to testify in the trial of Charles Darnay, a French citizen and London resident who has been accused of treason against England. Lucie testifies that she and her father saw Darnay on a ship bound for England the night she brought her father back home to London, and that he was conversing with other men and poring over documents. Though the testimony is damaging, Lucie notes that Darnay had been extremely kind and helpful to her in caring for her father on the ship, and she admits that she hopes her testimony has not doomed him. Darnay is ultimately saved when one witness' testimony hinges on the witness' certainty that he saw Darnay at a certain locale at a particular time. When Sydney Carton, a member of Darnay's defense team, removes his wig in court, it is revealed that he bears a striking resemblance to Darnay, thereby eroding the witness' credibility in terms of his certainty of having seen Charles Darnay himself. Darnay is ultimately freed, and this circumstance draws everyone involved closer together. Darnay, along with Mr. Lorry, becomes a friend of the family, and Sydney Carton becomes a regular visitor, if not an entirely welcome one--he is frequently drunk, often sullen, and coarse in his manner. Though the others complain of Carton's manner, one evening he confides in Lucie and tells her that while he has made nothing of his life and will not improve before he dies, he wants her to know that she has awakened feelings in him that he thought had been stamped out long ago. She asks if she can help him, and he says no, but that he wants her to know that he cares for her deeply. The group continues to visit regularly, and on one particular evening, Lucie notes that there is an ominous feeling in the air, as if she is able to forecast that grave danger and turmoil are in her future. But the family continues to be happy, and Lucie eventually marries Darnay, who tells her father that he has a secret that no one else knows. Dr. Manette asks Darnay to save the secret for the marriage morning, and Darnay does.

A year passes. Darnay returns to France to attend to the business that had gotten him into trouble in England in the first place. He pays a visit to his uncle, a corrupt aristocrat who is so cruel that when his carriage driver recklessly ran over and killed a peasant's child, he blamed the peasants for being in the way. After having dinner in his uncle's lavish chateau, Darnay wakes up to find that his uncle has been murdered.

He returns to England, and several more years pass. He and Lucie have two children, a son and a daughter. The son passes away as a young boy, but the family continues to be relatively happy despite this tragic circumstance. But the foreboding sense looms in the air, and Mr. Lorry notes that many of Tellson's Paris customers are frantically transferring their assets to the London branch, signaling some kind of danger in Paris. He notes that he will have to travel to Paris to help the office there handle the volume. One day, Mr. Lorry remarks to Darnay that he has received a letter addressed to a Marquis St. Evrémonde in care of Tellson's. Darnay says that he knows the man and will deliver the letter; in truth, Darnay is the Marquis St. Evrémonde, a descendant of the corrupt rulers of France. The letter is from an old friend who has been put in prison unjustly and who fears that he will soon be executed. Darnay, who has so long avoided France for fear of what might happen to him there because of his heritage, realizes that he must go.

He goes to intervene on his friend's behalf and quickly realizes that the situation is worse than he could have imagined. A revolution has taken place; the peasants have overthrown the government and are murdering anyone who they feel represents the old guard. Darnay is immediately taken into custody, though he tries desperately to explain that unlike his uncle and father, he is on the peasants' side and wants to help them. They disregard his testimony, and none other than Ernest Defarge, who has since become a revolutionary, sends Darnay to prison. By this time, Lucie and her father have learned that Darnay has returned to France, aware that Darnay is probably in grave danger. The revolutionaries treat Dr. Manette as a hero, however, because he had so long suffered at the hands of the same government that oppressed them (and that they have since overthrown). Because of his newfound influence, he is able to learn where Darnay is, and he intervenes on his behalf.

When Darnay is tried for his life in front of a corrupt and farcical tribunal, only Dr. Manette's testimony saves him. He is freed, but before even one day passes, he is recaptured on the grounds that three French citizens have denounced him. He is forced to undergo another trial, at which it is learned that the citizens who denounced him are Ernest Defarge, Madame Defarge (Ernest's cruel and vengeful wife), and Dr. Manette. When Dr. Manette declares that he has never denounced Charles and that whoever accused him of doing so is lying, Defarge presents a paper to the tribunal to be read aloud. The paper turns out to be a journal that Dr. Manette had written after ten years in prison and hidden in a chimney; Defarge discovered it when the peasants freed that particular prison. The account reveals that Dr. Manette had learned that a Marquis St. Evrémonde and his brother had cruelly murdered a peasant, and he learned this because the men retrieved him to give medical attention to their victims before they died. He saw how the brothers treated their victims so cruelly, and he had written a letter to the government informing them of what he saw. The brothers Evrémonde learned that Dr. Manette had written the letter. Shortly thereafter, he was taken prisoner, and his wife was never informed of what happened to him. For this, Dr. Manette wrote that he denounced the brothers Evrémonde and all their descendants.

After the letter is read, the court erupts into an uproar, and the tribunal votes unanimously to execute Darnay. Lucie and her father are beside themselves; by this time, Carton has traveled to Paris, and he and Mr. Lorry confer and try to decide what to do. During this time, Dr. Manette tries to save Darnay, but he relapses into his trance-like state and is unable to do anything. Through a series of coincidences, Carton discovers that one of the men who testified against Darnay at his trial several years earlier is working as a spy in France. He learns that the man is a spy in the prison where Darnay is held, and he blackmails the man into granting him access to Darnay. Mr. Lorry remarks solemnly that this will not help Darnay; Carton says he knows this, and Darnay's fate seems irrevocably sealed. Carton, however, has other plans. He goes to the prison on the day of Charles' execution on the pretense of visiting him one last time. But once he gets inside, he uses his physical resemblance to Darnay and his ability to manipulate the spy to pull off the ultimate sacrifice. He drugs Darnay into a stupor, switches clothing with him, and has the spy smuggle Darnay out of the prison and into a waiting carriage that also includes Dr. Manette, Lucie, and Mr. Lorry. He tells no one of his plan, and not even the Manettes know it. They are waiting in their carriage for Carton, fully expecting that he will join them and that they will leave France in a hurry. The rest of the family is in danger because of Madame Defarge, who wants to denounce all of them. The peasant that the Evrémonde brothers murdered was her brother, and she wants revenge against Darnay and his entire family. The spy smuggles Charles to the waiting carriage, and the family escapes France. Carton, however, goes to the guillotine and dies for Lucie, fulfilling his promise to her that he would die "to keep a life you love beside you." Just before he dies, he thinks to himself that his final act is far better than anything else he has ever done.

Major Characters

Dr. Manette: Father of Lucie Manette. Wrongfully imprisoned in France for 18 years, he is brought back from the brink of madness by his adoring daughter, whom he treasures above all else. Though he is eventually freed and makes his home in England with his daughter, where he resumes his medical practice, he is still prone to occasional relapses of a trance-like state, in which he does not remember who he is and can only make shoes. It is the condition in which Lucie found him after his years of imprisonment, and the relapses occur when he is in a state of distress. His unjust imprisonment eventually works in his favor when he is held up as a hero by the revolutionaries, a status that enables him to get his son-in-law, Charles Darnay, freed from prison--but only once. When Darnay is re-imprisoned and the doctor's status cannot help him, Dr. Manette reverts back to his trance-like state.

Lucie Manette: Dr. Manette's kind, loving and beautiful daughter, she helped bring him back from the brink of insanity after his unjust imprisonment. Lucie evokes a deep love from those around her, including her father, Charles Darnay (who eventually marries her), Mr. Stryver, Miss Pross, and, perhaps most of all, Sydney Carton. She cares deeply for her father and marries Charles only after she reassures her father that the marriage will not separate her from him at all. Her beauty and tenderness evoke the last sentiments of real love and emotion in Sydney Carton, as Lucie is one of the last people on earth to treat him with sympathy and kindness. His deep, unspoken love for her leads him to commit an extremely selfless and courageous act on her behalf.

Charles Darnay: The son of corrupt French aristocrats, Darnay flees France to escape the shame of his family's name and to forsake his role in the oppression of the French peasants. Settles in England, where he is unsuccessfully tried for treason. Returns to France at the most dangerous period of the Revolution in order to save a friend who is unjustly imprisoned; is eventually tried twice for crimes against the Republic after the Revolution. Marries Lucie Manette and has a daughter with her; he is deeply committed to both Lucie and her father. Remaining committed to his family and his passionate dislike of corrupt aristocracy, he is one of the most morally upright characters in the book.

Sydney Carton: A lawyer and assistant to 'The Lion,' Mr. Stryver. Carton is known as Stryver's less successful 'jackal.' He is crude, frequently drunk, and often melancholy, and he feels resigned to the disappointing course his once-promising life has taken. Still, he is capable of feeling deep, immense, and tragic love that others cannot see. His one moment of grace comes in a single selfless act that ultimately renders him the hero of the book.

Jarvis Lorry: A long-time banker at Tellson's and a fiercely loyal family friend to the Manettes. Had overseen Dr. Manette's affairs before his imprisonment; was in charge of that account when Lucie became a ward of Tellson's when it was assumed as a child that she was an orphan. Told Lucie that her father was alive and brought her to meet him for the first time. An honest, trustworthy, and compassionate man, Mr. Lorry held the institution of Tellson's and the Manette family above all else in his life.

Madame Defarge: A cruel, vengeance-seeking agent of the revolution, Madame Defarge spends her days knitting a 'register' of names of people she has marked for death. Married to Ernest Defarge, owner of a wine shop in Saint Antoine, Madame Defarge is utterly devoid of human sympathy and is single-minded in her zeal to have Charles Darnay executed, despite his proven innocence of any crimes and despite her husband's loyalty to and compassion for Dr. Manette. Her desire for vengeance stems from the murders of her brother and brother-in-law and the torture of her family at the hands of the Marquis St. Evrémonde and his brother--Charles Darnay's uncle and father. She is so filled with hatred toward them that she wants to wipe out Darnay's entire family, including the Manettes. She is the book's clearest example of how the oppressed peasants became the oppressors during the Revolution.

Monseigneur the Marquis: Charles Darnay's cruel and corrupt uncle. A French aristocrat by birth, Monseigneur has no trace of pity and despises the peasants of France. Born into wealth, he believes that his family was meant to enjoy a higher station in life than the lower classes. He tells his nephew, Charles Darnay, that he plans to keep the oppressed masses in their place as long as he is alive. He is eventually assassinated by one of those peasants, the action that starts the Revolution.

Monsieur Defarge: Former domestic of Dr. Manette's prior to the doctor's imprisonment; cares for Dr. Manette immediately after the doctor's release; married to Madame Defarge. Though he is fond of Dr. Manette, he secretly fears his wife and does not object when she demands the denunciation of Darnay. He is also an important leader of the revolution who discovered Dr. Manette's letter hidden in the chimney of his old cell in the Bastille.

Minor Characters

Miss Pross: Woman who cared for Lucie from the time she was orphaned. Sassy and tart-tongued, she is fiercely protective and loving of Lucie.

Roger Cly: Former servant of Charles Darnay. He testified against Darnay in England and later faked his own death to avoid persecution in his home country before fleeing to France to work as a spy for England.

John Barsad (a.k.a. Solomon Pross): Miss Pross' no-account brother who testified against Charles Darnay in England before fleeing to France to avoid persecution in England. Worked as a spy for England in France and was blackmailed by Sydney Carton into aiding Carton in his final scheme.

Mr. Stryver: Lawyer known as 'The Lion.' A longtime friend of Sydney Carton, he successfully defended Charles Darnay at his treason trial in England. Stryver became a frequent visitor of the Manettes and announced his intention to marry Lucie.

Jerry Cruncher: Messenger for Tellson's and Mr. Lorry's assistant. Comical yet possesses a mean streak, such as when he beats his wife for praying, which irritates him. Supports his income from Tellson's with occasional work as a grave robber. His nocturnal activities eventually play a critical role in the book.

The woodcutter/mender of roads: A revolutionary who works with the Defarges.

Jacques Three: A member of the corrupt Tribunal that sentences Charles Darnay to execution, he is a bloodthirsty and vengeful sidekick to Madame Defarge and the Vengeance.

Lucie: Daughter of Charles Darnay and Lucie Manette.

The Vengeance: Friend of Madame Defarge and fellow revolutionary.

Monsieur Gabelle: Tax collector who is persecuted by the revolutionaries in France; makes an appeal to Darnay to help free him from prison. His letter brings Charles to France, where his life is immediately threatened.

Young Jerry: Jerry Cruncher's son.

Mrs. Cruncher: Jerry Cruncher's wife. Her incessant praying on Jerry's behalf enrages him, though he learns to appreciate it later.

Gaspard: His young son is run over by the Marquis' carriage as it speeds through town. In response, the Marquis flicks Gaspard a coin, showing a complete disregard for Gaspard's son's life. Gaspard later assassinates the Marquis, and is then captured and killed himself. Support for Gaspard grows throughout these events--these three deaths are the beginning of the French Revolution.

Objects/Places

London: One of the two cities where the book takes place and where the Manettes and Darnay make their home after they are persecuted in France.

Paris: The other city in the story, it is a scene of a violent and brutal revolution that wreaks havoc on the lives of the book's main characters.

The guillotine: The violent revolutionaries' executional method of choice. It is used in many unjust executions and lionized by the bloodthirsty revolutionaries as a national treasure.

One Hundred Five, North Tower: Cell where Dr. Manette was imprisoned. When he is first released from prison, he does not know his name and refers to himself by this address. Defarge, his old domestic, returns to the cell when the prison is liberated in the revolution and discovered a paper the doctor had written several years ago, a discovery that eventually comes back to haunt the doctor.

Shoemaker's bench & tools: The tools Dr. Manette uses to comfort himself when he reverts back to his trance-like state. During his imprisonment, Dr. Manette learned to make shoes, which was very comforting to him, as it enabled him to occupy his mind with thoughts other than his constant mental torture. The tools are eventually destroyed when Mr. Lorry believes it might be helpful in Dr. Manette's full recovery.

Madame Defarge's knitting: The knitted register into which Madame Defarge knits her victim's names. Everyone who winds up in the register is marked for execution, and Madame Defarge's knitting is constantly at her side.

The chateau: Home of Monseigneur the Marquis and scene of his assassination. It is symbolic of the corruption and gross disparity of wealth between the ruling class and the peasants. It is burned during the revolution.

Saint Antoine: Suburb of Paris where the Defarges live. Its residents are extremely poor, and it is a hotbed and central point of revolutionary activity.

Red caps: Worn by the revolutionaries, they are symbolic of the newfound freedom of the peasants.

La Force: Prison that the corrupt revolutionaries use to imprison anyone they deem a traitor to the new Republic. Most who enter La Force are executed, often unjustly.

The Tribunal: The court that hears the cases of prisoners. Very corrupt as most trials are shams.

Tellson's: The bank that employs Mr. Jarvis Lorry, Lucie was raised as a ward of this bank.

Quotes

Quote 1: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way--in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only." Book 1, Chapter 1, pg. 1

Quote 2: "'Jerry, say that my answer was, "RECALLED TO LIFE."'" Book 1, Chapter 2, pg. 8

Quote 3: "'Buried how long?'"
"'Almost eighteen years.'"
"'You had abandoned all hope of being dug out?'"
"'Long ago.'"
"'You know that you are recalled to life?'"
"'They tell me so.'"
"'I hope you care to live?'"
"'I can't say.'"
"'Shall I show her to you? Will you come and see her?'" Book 1, Chapter 3, pg. 12

Quote 4: "'Eighteen years! Gracious Creator of day! To be buried alive for eighteen years!'" Book 1, Chapter 3, pg. 13

Quote 5: "'She had laid her head upon my shoulder, that night when I was summoned out--she had a fear of my going, though I had none--and when I was brought to the North Tower they found these upon my sleeve. "You will leave me them? They can never help me to escape in the body, though they may in the spirit." Those words I said. I remember them very well.'" Book 1, Chapter 6, pg. 43

Quote 6: "'If, when I tell you, dearest dear, that your agony is over, and that I have come here to take you from it, and that we go to England to be at peace and at rest, I cause you to think of your useful life laid waste, and of our native France so wicked to you, weep for it, weep for it! And if, when I shall tell you of my name, and of my father who is living, and of my mother who is dead, you learn that I have to kneel to my honoured father, and implore his pardon for never having for his sake striven all day and lain awake and wept all night, because the love of my poor mother hid his torture from me, weep for it, weep for it! Weep for her, then, and for me! Good gentlemen, thank God! I feel his sacred tears upon my face, and his sobs strike against my heart. O, see! Thank God for us, thank God!'" Book 1, Chapter 6, pg. 44

Quote 7: "All through the cold and restless interval, until, dawn, they once more whispered in the ears of Mr. Jarvis Lorry--sitting opposite the buried man who had been dug out, and wondering what subtle powers were forever lost to him, and what were capable of restoration--the old inquiry:
'I hope you care to be recalled to life?'
And the old answer:
'I can't say.'" Book 1, Chapter 6, pg. 48

Quote 8: "But indeed, at that time, putting to death was a recipe much in vogue with all trades and professions, and not least of all with Tellson's. Death is Nature's remedy for all things, and why not Legislation's? Accordingly, the forger was put to Death; the utterer of a bad note was put to Death; the unlawful opener of a letter was put to Death; the purloiner of forty shillings and sixpence was put to death; the holder of a horse at Tellson's door, who made off with it, was put to Death; the coiner of a bad schilling was put to Death; the sounders of three-fourths of the notes in the whole gamut of Crime, were put to Death. Not that it did the least good in the way of prevention--it might almost have been worth remarking that the fact was exactly the reverse--but, it cleared off (as to this world) the trouble of each particular case, and left nothing else connected with it to be looked after." Book 2, Chapter 1, pg. 51

Quote 9: "'I won't be gone again, in this manner. I am as rickety as a hackney-coach, I'm as sleepy as laudanum, my lines is strained to that degree that I shouldn't know, if it wasn't for the pain in 'em, which was me and which was somebody else, yet I'm none the better for it in pocket; and it's my suspicion that you've been at it from morning to night to prevent me from being better for it in the pocket, and I won't put up with it, Aggerawayter, and what do you say now!" Book 2, Chapter 1, pg. 53

Quote 10: "Waste forces within him, and a desert all around, this man stood still on his way across a silent terrace, and saw for a moment, lying in the wilderness before him, a mirage of honorable ambition, self-denial, and perseverance. In the fair city of this vision, there were airy galleries from which the loves and graces looked upon him, gardens in which the fruits of life hung ripening, waters of Hope that sparkled in his sight. A moment, and it was gone. Climbing to a high chamber in a well of houses, he threw himself down in his clothes on a neglected bed, and its pillow was wet with wasted tears." Book 2, Chapter 5, pg. 88

Quote 11: "'I have sometimes sat alone here of an evening, listening, until I have made the echoes out to be the echoes of all the footsteps that are coming by and by into our lives.'" Book 2, Chapter 6, pg. 99

Quote 12: "'There is a great crowd coming one day into our lives, if that be so.'" Book 2, Chapter 6, pg. 99

Quote 13: "'What a night it has been! Almost a night, Jerry, to bring the dead out of their graves.'" Book 2, Chapter 6, pg. 100

Quote 14: "'I devote you to the Devil!'" Book 2, Chapter 7, pg. 105

Quote 15: "'It is extraordinary to me that you people cannot take care of yourselves and your children. One or the other of you is forever in the way. How do I know what injury you have done to my horses? See!'" Book 2, Chapter 7, pg. 107

Quote 16: "'I know it all, I know it all. Be a brave man, my Gaspard! It is better for the poor plaything to die so, than to live. It has died in a moment without pain. Could it have lived an hour as happily?'" Book 2, Chapter 7, pg. 107

Quote 17: "'Repression is the only lasting philosophy. The dark deference of fear and slavery, my friend, will keep the dogs obedient to the whip, as long as this roof shuts out the sky,'" Book 2, Chapter 9, pg. 119

Quote 18: "'Good-night! I look to the pleasure of seeing you again in the morning. Good repose! Light Monsieur my nephew to his chamber there! And burn Monsieur my nephew in his bed, if you will.'" Book 2, Chapter 9, pg. 122

Quote 19: "It portended that there was one stone face too many, up at the chateau.

The Gorgon had surveyed the building again in the night, and had added the one stone face wanting; the stone face for which it had waited through about two hundred years.

It lay back on the pillow of Monsieur the Marquis. It was like a fine mask, suddenly startled, made angry, and petrified. Driven home into the heart of the stone figure attached to it, was a knife. Round its hilt was a frill of paper, on which it was scrawled:

'Drive him fast to his tomb. This, from JACQUES.'" Book 2, Chapter 9, pg. 125

Quote 20: "'There is no harm at all done. I have not proposed to the young lady, and, between ourselves, I am by no means certain, on reflection, that I ever should have committed myself to that extent. Mr. Lorry, you cannot control the mincing vanities and giddiness of empty-headed girls; you must not expect to do it, or you will always be disappointed. Now, pray say no more about it. I tell you, I regret it on account of others, but I am satisfied on my own account. And I am really very much obliged to you for allowing me to sound you, and for giving me your advice; you know the young lady better than I do; you were right, it never would have done.'" Book 2, Chapter 12, pp. 144-145

Quote 21: "'The time will come, the time will not be long in coming, when new ties will be formed about you--ties that will bind you yet more tenderly and strongly to the home you so adorn--the dearest ties that will ever grace and gladden you. O Miss Manette, when the little picture of a happy father's face looks up in yours, when you see your own bright beauty springing up anew at your feet, think now and then that there is a man who would give his life, to keep a life you love beside you!'" Book 2, Chapter 13, pp. 149-150

Quote 22: "But, there were other echoes, from a distance, that rumbled menacingly in the corner all through this space of time. And it was now, about little Lucie's sixth birthday, that they began to have an awful sound, as of a great storm in France with a dreadful sea rising." Book 2, Chapter 21, pg. 209

Quote 23: "Seven prisoners released, seven gory heads on pikes, the keys of the accursed fortress of the eight strong towers, some discovered letters and other memorials of prisoners of old time, long dead of broken hearts--such, and such-like, the loudly echoing footsteps of Saint Antoine escort through Paris streets in mid-July, one thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine. Now, Heaven defeat the fancy of Lucie Darnay, and keep these feet far out of her life! For, they are headlong, mad, and dangerous; and in the years so long after the breaking of the cask at Defarge's wine-shop door, they are not easily purified when once stained red." Book 2, Chapter 21, pg. 217

Quote 24: "From such household occupations as their bare poverty yielded, from their children, from their aged and their sick crouching on the bare ground famished and naked, they ran out with streaming hair, urging one another, and themselves, to madness with the wildest cries and actions. Villain Foulon taken, my sister! Old Foulon taken, my mother! Miscreant Foulon taken, my daughter! Then, a score of others ran into the midst of these, beating their breasts, tearing their hair, and screaming, Foulon alive! Foulon who told the starving people they might eat grass! Foulon who told my old father that he might eat grass, when I had no bread to give him! Foulon who told my baby it might suck grass, when these breasts were dry with want! O mother of God, this Foulon! O Heaven, our suffering! Hear me, my dead baby and my withered father: I swear on my knees, on these stones, to avenge you on Foulon!" Book 2, Chapter 22, pg. 219

Quote 25: "For scores of years gone by, Monseigneur had squeezed and wrung it, and had seldom graced it with his presence except for the pleasures of the chase--now, found in hunting the people; now, found in hunting the beasts, for whose preservation Monseigneur made edifying spaces of barbarous and barren wilderness. No. The change consisted in the appearance of strange faces of low caste, rather than in the disappearance of the high-caste, chiseled, and otherwise beatified and beatifying features of Monseigneur." Book 2, Chapter 23, pg. 223

Quote 26: "'Ah! Most gracious Monsieur heretofore the Marquis, where is that emigrant? I cry in my sleep, where is he? I demand of Heaven, will he not come to deliver me? No answer. Ah, Monsieur heretofore the Marquis, I send my desolate cry across the sea, hoping it may perhaps reach your ears through the great bank of Tellson known at Paris!

For the love of Heaven, of justice, of generosity, of the honour of your noble name, I supplicate you, Monsieur heretofore the Marquis, to succour and release me. My fault is that I have been true to you. Oh, Monsieur heretofore the Marquis, I pray you be true to me!'" Book 2, Chapter 24, pg. 237

Quote 27: "The Loadstone Rock was drawing him, and he must sail on, until he struck. He knew of no rock; he saw hardly any danger. The intention with which he had done what he had done, even although he had left it incomplete, presented it before him in an aspect that would be gratefully acknowledged in France on his presenting himself to assert it. Then, that glorious vision of doing good, which is so often the sanguine mirage of so many good minds, arose before him, and he even saw himself in the illusion with some influence to guide this raging Revolution that was running so fearfully wild." Book 2, Chapter 24, pg. 239

Quote 28: "'Five paces by four and a half, five paces by four and a half, five paces by four and a half. He made shoes, he made shoes, he made shoes. 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.'" Book 3, Chapter 1, pg. 254

Quote 29: "'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?'" Book 3, Chapter 3, pg. 266

Quote 30: "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 particular 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." Book 3, Chapter 4, pg. 271

Quote 31: "'I call myself 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!'" Book 3, Chapter 5, pg. 274

Quote 32: "I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die." Book 3, Chapter 9, pg. 311

Quote 33: "'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--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.'" Book 3, Chapter 10, pp. 329-330

Quote 34: "Then tell the Wind and Fire where to stop, but don't tell me." Book 3, Chapter 12, pg. 338

Quote 35: "'If you remember the words that passed between us, long ago, you will readily comprehend this when you see it. You do remember them, I know. It is not in your nature to forget them. I am thankful that the time has come, when I can prove them. That I do so is no subject for regret or grief. If it had been otherwise, I never should have used the longer opportunity. If it had been otherwise....'" Book 3, Chapter 13, pp. 349-350

Quote 36: "'It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.'" Book 3, Chapter 15, pg. 374

Topic Tracking: Fate

Book 2, Chapter 3

Fate 1: One of the members of the prisoner's counsel happens to bear a striking physical resemblance to him under certain conditions, a fact that leads to the prisoner's acquittal when it seemed certain he would be condemned to death. The physical resemblance saves the prisoner's life.

Book 2, Chapter 6

Fate 2: Lucie's ominous vision portends that the people visiting at Dr. Manette's may be doomed to a dark fate that they cannot foresee.

Book 2, Chapter 7

Fate 3: Madame Defarge's knitting seems innocent, but she is sealing the fate of every name she knits into her register. The names she knits are people who the revolutionaries intend to kill.

Book 2, Chapter 16

Fate 4: Defarge feels secretly remorseful that forces in the world have brought together the daughter of Dr. Manette, whom he respects and cares for, with Darnay, who has ended up in his wife's knitted register of intended victims.

Book 2, Chapter 21

Fate 5: Despite her happiness, Lucie still feels the same looming sense of dread, as if she knows that fate will bring destruction to her family.

Fate 6: Dickens uses the metaphor of a storm to signal the dark fate of France, and he also invokes the sound of the imaginary echoes that haunt Lucie.

Book 2, Chapter 24

Fate 7: Darnay's past confronts him, as he realizes that he can no longer run away from who he used to be. He realizes that he must travel back to Paris to take care of unfinished business. Circumstances and factors have collided to push him toward a destiny he has spent his life avoiding.

Book 3, Chapter 1

Fate 8: Darnay begins to realize that he cannot escape his heritage; just as he was persecuted in England, he is now persecuted in France.

Book 3, Chapter 8

Fate 9: In yet another coincidence that will have important consequences for the book's characters, Miss Pross' brother turns out to be John Barsad, the spy who had visited the Defarge's and had testified against Darnay in England.

Book 3, Chapter 10

Fate 10: This is another example of how a coincidence can change someone's fate forever. Dr. Manette's letter dooms Darnay to die, a fact he could never have foreseen, as he had no way of knowing when he wrote the letter years ago that his beloved daughter would one day marry a descendant of the Evrémondes.

Book 3, Chapter 12

Fate 11: The fates of the revolutionaries and the oppressed are joined together in even more ways, as the men who caused Dr. Manette's imprisonment are Darnay's ancestors and the murderers of Madame Defarge's brother.

Book 3, Chapter 15

Fate 12: Carton's resemblance to Darnay comes into play again; he resembles him both physically and in the fact that they both love Lucie. Carton felt as if he was destined to act in the way that he did, as if his resemblance to Darnay was not just coincidental, but somehow given to him as a gift that he could use to give his life meaning.

Topic Tracking: Oppression/Class Struggle

Book 1, Chapter 1

Oppression/Class Struggle 1: In France, the ruling class of aristocrats has oppressed the people for so long that many are starving. The peasants are treated cruelly by the corrupt ruling class, which lives in lavish opulence. In England, an aristocracy also rules, and the harsh punishments meted out are a measure of the government's oppression of its people. Both countries are reaping what they have sowed, as a band of revolutionaries in each country is resorting to violence to overthrow the ruling classes.

Book 1, Chapter 5

Oppression/Class Struggle 2: The peasants are so hungry and thirsty that they have resorted to scooping wine out of the dirt; the scene illustrates how dire is their situation.

Book 1, Chapter 7

Oppression/Class Struggle 3: Monseigneur, a member of the corrupt aristocracy, is so depraved as to blame the boy's death on the peasants themselves, rather than his driver's irresponsibility. The scene highlights how cruel and utterly lacking in mercy the rulers of France have become.

Book 2, Chapter 9

Oppression/Class Struggle 4: Monseigneur's cruel philosophy illustrates the mindset that has crept into the most privileged class and demonstrates how power can corrupt. The contrast between his philosophy and his nephew's beliefs further underscores the suffering of the masses.

Oppression/Class Struggle 5: The tables have turned; the murder of Monseigneur is the turning point in the book where the oppressed become the oppressors.

Book 2, Chapter 15

Oppression/Class Struggle 6: Defarge's insistence that the entire ruling class be destroyed illustrates how members of his class have become so fed up with being oppressed at the hands of the aristocracy that they will stop at nothing to gain their freedom. They are so bitter, however, that their rage has turned murderous.

Book 2, Chapter 21

Oppression/Class Struggle 7: The rebels have taken on the characteristics of their long-time oppressors, threatening to murder members of the ruling class who don't obey their orders.

Book 2, Chapter 22

Oppression/Class Struggle 8: Here, the oppressed are remembering the particularly cruel and inhumane treatment they received at the hands of Foulon, and they are vowing to avenge their dead and suffering relatives by murdering him. This is another turning point signifying the change that is taking place in the peasant class.

Book 2, Chapter 23

Oppression/Class Struggle 9: The change is complete: Save for their outward appearances and other symbols of their low caste, the peasants have fully come to resemble the ruling class they sought to overthrow in their barbarity and murderous rage.

Book 2, Chapter 24

Oppression/Class Struggle 10: Dickens is referring to "Monseigneur" in the metaphorical sense; he is using the man's name to refer to the entire class. When he says, "Monseigneur was by this time scattered far and wide," he means that the ruling class has been overthrown completely--another sign that the once-oppressed are now oppressing.

Book 3, Chapter 2

Oppression/Class Struggle 11: By now, the peasants have completely lost sight of any compassion or objectivity and are now murdering prisoners without giving them fair trials. They have become so obsessed with overthrowing the old powers that they are now slaughtering innocents, exactly as their oppressors had done.

Book 3, Chapter 3

Oppression/Class Struggle 12: Here, Madame Defarge demonstrates the "eye for an eye" philosophy that makes the once-oppressed peasants so cruel and unsympathetic.

Book 3, Chapter 4

Oppression/Class Struggle 13: The peasants who have revolted are refusing to grant Charles immunity, despite the doctor's influence, because he represents the class that oppressed them for so long.

Book 3, Chapter 5

Oppression/Class Struggle 14: The mender of roads, once cursed by Monseigneur, has become utterly depraved and cruel, and he is another example of how power corrupts.

Book 3, Chapter 10

Oppression/Class Struggle 15: Dr. Manette is deeply shaken by what he has seen. The incident that he describes in his letter is a pivotal point in the book and explains a great deal of where Madame Defarge's own cruelty derives from.

Topic Tracking: Resurrection

Book 1, Chapter 3

Resurrection 1: Mr. Lorry's dream, in which he is digging a man out of earth, symbolizes the real-life resurrection that is about to take place in the book, when he brings a man who had long been unjustly imprisoned back into society.

Book 1, Chapter 4

Resurrection 2: Mr. Lorry cannot let go of the image of a man being buried alive and resurrected. Dickens describes Mr. Lorry's thought process as "digging."

Book 1, Chapter 6

Resurrection 3: Mr. Lorry wonders if, when he finally "resurrects" the prisoner who has been "buried alive" for so long, if the man will even want to be brought back into the world.

Book 2, Chapter 3

Resurrection 4: With the jury's acquittal, Darnay has been "resurrected" from his seemingly certain fate of torture and execution.

Book 2, Chapter 13

Resurrection 5: Carton's deep, unspoken love for Lucie has resurrected feelings in him that are indicative of the man he used to be, before alcohol and depression ravaged him.

Book 2, Chapter 14

Resurrection 6: Young Jerry discovers his father's second occupation as a "Resurrection Man," someone who digs bodies out of their graves and sells them to science laboratories for dissection.

Book 2, Chapter 16

Resurrection 7: Darnay's true identity has been resurrected, a fate he has been trying to escape.

Book 2, Chapter 18

Resurrection 8: With the trauma of Lucie's wedding--and his knowledge of Darnay's secret--Dr. Manette has undergone a shock, and his old fears and mental state have been resurrected.

Book 3, Chapter 6

Resurrection 9: Dr. Manette himself has been resurrected, as he can finally return to his native France and receive the respect he had once enjoyed before his long imprisonment. With his acquittal, Darnay has also been resurrected once again, through the influence of Dr. Manette.

Book 3, Chapter 15

Resurrection 10: With his stunning sacrifice, Carton has resurrected Darnay from certain death, Lucie from widowhood, and Dr. Manette from a return to the madness that plagued him as a prisoner.

Book 1, Chapter 1

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way--in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only." Book 1, Chapter 1, pg. 1

It is the year 1775, social events have wreaked havoc on London and Paris. A revolution of British colonists in America has ripped the colony from British hands, and in Paris, the masses of peasants are starving under the brutal oppression and tyranny of aristocratic rule. In both cities, unjust and cruel executions and police tortures are the order of the day. England is rife with crime, and France with poverty. On the thrones of the respective countries sit kings and queens who rule the lands with what they believe are their divine rights as rulers.

Topic Tracking: Oppression/Class Struggle 1

Book 1, Chapter 2

One Friday night in late November, a carriage carrying the Dover mail is proceeding along the Dover road. Three passengers are accompanying the mail. It is an exceedingly cold night, and the passengers are trudging alongside the carriage, as the carriage is so heavy that the horses are refusing to cooperate. The coachman, guard, and the passengers are all suspicious of each other, as crime and robberies are frequent occurrences. A messenger approaches the carriage looking for Mr. Jarvis Lorry on behalf of T. and Co. Mr. Lorry recognizes the messenger as a fellow employee at Tellson's Bank in London and asks to receive the message. The guard is suspicious of strangers but reluctantly agrees. Mr. Lorry reads the message, which instructs him to wait at Dover for "Mam'selle." Mr. Lorry turns to the messenger and says, "'Jerry, say that my answer was, "RECALLED TO LIFE."'" Book 1, Chapter 2, pg. 8 The messenger is puzzled by the message. He shakes his head incredulously but agrees to deliver it. The other men pile into the carriage and pretend to fall asleep. The guard and coachmaster admit to each other that they also find the message puzzling.

Book 1, Chapter 3

Jerry proceeds through the dark night shadows to deliver the message to Tellson's. He discerns a vague sense of creepiness, as if the shadows of the night are trying to communicate the strange message he is delivering. Meanwhile, the passengers in the Dover coach are resting, but Mr. Lorry is having a haunting dream that he is conversing with a man who has been buried alive. He sees an image of a man with an emaciated, pale face. In his dream, Mr. Lorry has this exchange with the man:

"'Buried how long?'
'Almost eighteen years.'
'You had abandoned all hope of being dug out?'
'Long ago.'
'You know that you are recalled to life?'
'They tell me so.'
'I hope you care to live?'
'I can't say.'
'Shall I show her to you? Will you come and see her?'"
Book 1, Chapter 3, pg. 12

In his dream, Mr. Lorry always receives a different answer to the last question. Sometimes the emaciated man replies that he wants to see "her," other times he says it would kill him if he saw her too soon, and other times he simply replies that he doesn't know who she is. In the dream, the exchange is followed with Mr. Lorry digging the man out of the earth.

Topic Tracking: Resurrection 1

When the man finally emerges, earth caked in his hair, he fades away to dust. The image startles Mr. Lorry into consciousness. But even in his awakened state, he still sees the figure and still has the same exchange with him. When he fully awakens, he realizes that it is dawn. He exclaims to himself, "'Eighteen years! Gracious Creator of day! To be buried alive for eighteen years!'" Book 1, Chapter 3, pg. 13

Book 1, Chapter 4

Upon his arrival in Dover, Mr. Lorry checks into a hotel and sits down to breakfast. He informs an employee that he wishes for accommodations to be made for a woman who will be arriving that day and requesting to see him. Later, after a stroll on the beach, he sits down to dinner in front of the fireplace, where his thoughts are wandering, as though searching the coals of the fire.

Topic Tracking: Resurrection 2

After awhile, the waiter tells him that Miss Manette has arrived from London and wishes to see him. He follows the waiter into Miss Manette's apartment. There he sees a pretty and fresh-faced young woman who asks him, in a voice slightly tinged with a foreign accent, to take a seat. She tells him that she received a letter from Tellson's bank about the small property of her father, whom she has never seen, as he has been dead for many years, and that the letter instructed her to travel to Paris to communicate with a gentleman of the bank. Mr. Lorry tells her that he is the gentleman, and she asks if she may travel with him, as she is an orphan and has no one to travel with. He tells her that he would be happy to travel with her. He tells her that he will explain the nature of the business, although it is very difficult for him to begin.

He tells her that he once had a customer, a French doctor of high esteem, whom he knew for many years in Paris as a business colleague. He tells her the man married an English woman and that he, Mr. Lorry, was one of the trustees, as the doctor's affairs were entirely in the hands of Tellson's. He reiterates that he only knew the man on a strictly business level, and that their relations never extended beyond that. Miss Manette says that Mr. Lorry is actually telling her the story of her father, and she asks Mr. Lorry if he was not the man who took her to England when she became an orphan after her mother died only two years after her father. He tells her that he was. He also adds that her mother died after two years of searching for her husband (Miss Manette's father) and left her to grow up without living with the awful uncertainty of whether her father was alive after having wasted away in prison for so many years.

Mr. Lorry tells her that her father has been discovered, alive, and has been taken to the home of an old servant in Paris. He tells her they are going there to identify him and for her to take him home. She tells him that they will only find his ghost, not him, and that she has been happy her whole life without being haunted by his ghost. Just then, a wild-looking woman with red hair bursts into the room and demands that someone fetch smelling salts for Miss Manette. She fawns over the girl and excoriates Mr. Lorry for scaring her so.

Book 1, Chapter 5

In the Paris suburb of Saint Antoine, a large cask of wine tumbles from a cart and bursts. The town's dirt-poor residents rush out into the street and drink the wine, scooping it up from the dirt with cupped hands and dipping cloths into it to wring into their mouths.

Topic Tracking: Oppression/Class Struggle 2

The owner of a corner wine shop watches the proceedings, declaring them out of his control. The man returns to his store, where his wife, Madame Defarge, sits knitting behind a counter. He looks around the store and notices an elderly gentleman communicating with a young woman. The elderly gentleman approaches and speaks with him, and the two men beckon to the young woman to follow them. They leave the store and walk through a small courtyard that leads to several houses. They enter a small garret. As they enter, Miss Manette admits that she is frightened of the man they are about to meet. They enter the room, which is small and dark. There, they find a white-haired man sitting on a bench, his back turned to them, busily making shoes.

Book 1, Chapter 6

Monsieur Defarge greets the white-haired man with "Good Day." The white-haired man responds in kind, although in a very faint voice, the voice of a man who has not had occasion to speak in years. The man only speaks when spoken to and seems more intent on finishing his work than speaking with Monsieur Defarge or the two strangers in the room. Mr. Lorry steps forward, and the man looks up, puts a finger to his lips, then drops his hand and returns to his work. Monsieur Defarge tells the man that he has a visitor, indicating Mr. Lorry, and asks him to tell the visitor about the shoe he is working on. After a pause, the man asks him to repeat the question, then shows the visitor the shoe. Monsieur Defarge asks the man his name, and he simply replies, "One Hundred and Five, North Tower." Mr. Lorry and the man make small talk, until Mr. Lorry finally addresses the man as Monsieur Manette (Dr. Manette) and asks if he does not remember him. Mr. Manette drops the shoe to the ground, but he does not answer. Monsieur Defarge whispers to Mr. Lorry, asking him if it is indeed Mr. Manette. Mr. Lorry confirms that it is. Miss Manette then approaches Mr. Manette. He eventually looks up, notices her and asks quietly, "What is this?" Tears fall down her face. She gently sits down beside him and puts her hand on his arm. He recoils at first, then puts down his knife and looks at her. She puts her hand on his shoulder. He reaches for a black string around his neck. The string has a scrap of cloth attached to it, and he removes from the cloth one or two long golden hairs. He compares the hair in the cloth to the hair on Miss Manette's head and exclaims aloud that it is the same, but that it cannot be. He turned her toward the light, and said:

"'She had laid her head upon my shoulder, that night when I was summoned out--she had a fear of my going, though I had none--and when I was brought to the North Tower they found these upon my sleeve. "You will leave me them? They can never help me to escape in the body, though they may in the spirit." Those words I said. I remember them very well.'" Book 1, Chapter 6, pg. 43

She speaks, telling Mr. Lorry and Monsieur Defarge not to come near them. He hears her voice and exclaims, "Who was that?" He releases her and pulls at his hair in a frenzy. He regains himself, puts the hairs back into the cloth, and looks at her, telling her that it cannot be her, as she is too young. He asks her name, and she drops to her knees, putting her hands upon his chest. She tells him she will bring him to a home where she will be a faithful and dutiful servant to him, and that if this home reminds him of a home long lost, he should weep for it also. She exclaims:

"'If, when I tell you, dearest dear, that your agony is over, and that I have come here to take you from it, and that we go to England to be at peace and at rest, I cause you to think of your useful life laid waste, and of our native France so wicked to you, weep for it, weep for it! And if, when I shall tell you of my name, and of my father who is living, and of my mother who is dead, you learn that I have to kneel to my honoured father, and implore his pardon for never having for his sake striven all day and lain awake and wept all night, because the love of my poor mother hid his torture from me, weep for it, weep for it! Weep for her, then, and for me! Good gentlemen, thank God! I feel his sacred tears upon my face, and his sobs strike against my heart. O, see! Thank God for us, thank God!'" Book 1, Chapter 6, pg. 44

Mr. Manette sinks into her arms, and the room drops into silence. After a few moments alone with her father, Miss Manette, her father and Mr. Lorry head toward the carriage. Mr. Manette asks pitifully for his shoemaking tools, and Madame Defarge retrieves them. The trio gets into the carriage and departs. As they ride toward England, Mr. Lorry recalls his dream:

"All through the cold and restless interval, until, dawn, they once more whispered in the ears of Mr. Jarvis Lorry--sitting opposite the buried man who had been dug out, and wondering what subtle powers were forever lost to him, and what were capable of restoration--the old inquiry:
'I hope you care to be recalled to life?'
And the old answer:
'I can't say.'"
Book 1, Chapter 6, pg. 48

Topic Tracking: Resurrection 3

Book 2, Chapter 1

It is five years later, and executions are rampant in London:

"But indeed, at that time, putting to death was a recipe much in vogue with all trades and professions, and not least of all with Tellson's. Death is Nature's remedy for all things, and why not Legislation's? Accordingly, the forger was put to Death; the utterer of a bad note was put to Death; the unlawful opener of a letter was put to Death; the purloiner of forty shillings and sixpence was put to death; the holder of a horse at Tellson's door, who made off with it, was put to Death; the coiner of a bad schilling was put to Death; the sounders of three-fourths of the notes in the whole gamut of Crime, were put to Death. Not that it did the least good in the way of prevention--it might almost have been worth remarking that the fact was exactly the reverse--but, it cleared off (as to this world) the trouble of each particular case, and left nothing else connected with it to be looked after." Book 2, Chapter 1, pg. 51

Standing outside the staid, stuffy institution of the same Tellson's mentioned above is Jerry Cruncher, the bank's odd-job man. Standing next to him is his twelve-year-old son, who looks exactly like him. Mr. Cruncher, who is grumpy and coarse, lives with his wife and son in a less-than-desirable neighborhood, although his dwelling is neatly kept. He awakens after snapping at his wife for praying over him:

"'I won't be gone again, in this manner. I am as rickety as a hackney-coach, I'm as sleepy as laudanum, my lines is strained to that degree that I shouldn't know, if it wasn't for the pain in 'em, which was me and which was somebody else, yet I'm none the better for it in pocket; and it's my suspicion that you've been at it from morning to night to prevent me from being better for it in the pocket, and I won't put up with it, Aggerawayter, and what do you say now!'" Book 2, Chapter 1, pg. 53

After breakfast, he and his lookalike son go to Tellson's. There, his job is to sit on a stool and wait for errands to run. He calls himself "an honest tradesman" though his job is hardly dignified. His young son sits next to him and takes his father's place on the stool when the elder Cruncher is sent on an errand. That morning, he is sent on an errand as soon as he arrives at the bank.

Book 2, Chapter 2

Jerry is instructed to go to the court and wait for Mr. Lorry. Jerry inquires about the nature of the trial and is told that it is for treason. When he arrives at the court, he asks about the sentencing of the case. A man tells him that if found guilty, the defendant will be drawn on a hurdle to be half hanged, then sliced, then his insides will be removed and burned as he looks on, and his head will be chopped off, and he will be cut into quarters. The man assures Jerry that the defendant will be found guilty. The prisoner is brought in, and everyone in the court looks at him anxiously. The prisoner is about twentyfive, handsome and well-dressed with sunburned cheeks and dark eyes. His long dark hair is tied at the back of his neck with a ribbon. The defendant, Charles Darnay, had pleaded not guilty the day before. The accusation against Darnay is that he is guilty of treason against the crown for conspiring to aid the French king, Lewis, in wars against England. After the spectators withdraw their attention from him, they notice an elderly gentleman sitting with a beautiful young woman, with her arm linked through his. Their appearance prompts much whispering amongst the spectators, who want to know who they are and why they are here.

Book 2, Chapter 3

The attorney general opens the session with remarks condemning the young man as a traitor against England. He reiterates the accusations against him and declares that he will produce two unimpeachable witnesses, including the defendant's own servant, to testify against the defendant. After finishing his oration, he calls the first witness, John Barsad, to the stand. Mr. Barsad recalls the attorney general's story almost verbatim, then receives questions from the defense. The defense attorney questions Mr. Barsad's character. Mr. Barsad admits he has been in a debtor's prison and admits he has been kicked for cheating at dice. However, he claims he did not cheat, and that he owes the prisoner money, but that he has seen him with lists of names of English soldiers (that the defendant planned to give to hostile forces).

Having chinked away at this witnesses' credibility, the defense next questions Roger Cly, Mr. Darnay's former servant. Mr. Cly testifies that he volunteered to work as a servant for Mr. Darnay strictly out of charity but that he became suspicious of him soon after, especially after seeing him present lists of names to French gentlemen. He admits under questioning that he had once stolen a mustard pot from his master, but that it only turned out to be a plated one (he denied ever having been suspected of stealing a silver tea pot).

Next, the attorney general calls Mr. Lorry to the stand. He asks him if he had had occasion to travel with the Dover mail some five years ago, and Mr. Lorry states that he did. He asks him if one of the men traveling with him was the prisoner, and Mr. Lorry replies that he cannot say, as the travelers were bundled up, and it was dark. Mr. Lorry testifies that he has seen the prisoner before, though; he says that when he was returning from France on that same trip, the prisoner came on board the ship sometime around midnight, and that he was the only person who boarded the ship at that time. He testifies that he, Mr. Lorry, was traveling with two other passengers, a gentleman and a lady, and that he did not converse with the prisoner, as he was tired.

The attorney general then calls Miss Manette to the stand. The attorney asks her if she has ever seen him before, and she replies that she has. Over the course of questioning, Miss Manette reveals that she conversed at length with the prisoner, and that he helped her father, who was in a state of weak health, and that he was exceedingly kind to them. She also reveals that he had come on board with two French gentlemen, and that they had conferred together until the Frenchmen had to board their boat, and that the men were passing around sheets of paper and conversing, and that they stood whispering about the papers. She then exclaims with distress that she hopes her testimony will not do the man harm. She adds that the prisoner told her he was traveling on business of a very delicate nature, and that the business could get people into trouble, and so he was traveling under an assumed name. She adds that he told her the business might take him at intervals between England and France for long periods to come. The attorney asks her if the man said anything about America, and she replies that the prisoner told her how the quarrel came about, and that it was a wrong and foolish one on England's part as far as he could determine. He added jokingly that George Washington might gain as great a name in history as George the Third. She insists, however, that he meant this only as a joke.

Next, the attorney calls Dr. Manette to the stand and asks him if he has seen the prisoner before. He says that he has, when the man was called to his lodgings in London. The attorney then asks if he can identify him as the man who was aboard the ship in France, and Dr. Manette replies that he can do neither, as he had just been released from prison at the time and had lost some of his memory.

Next, the attorney general calls a witness to attempt to prove that the prisoner had traveled with the Dover mail, then exited the group and traveled somewhere else to gather information. A witness is called to state that the prisoner had been spotted at a particular locale at a particular time (a fact that would lend credence to the prosecution's argument that the prisoner was indeed collecting information). The defense cross-examines the witness with little result, except to establish that the witness has never seen the prisoner on any other occasion. Just then, the counsel asks the witness if he is certain that the man he saw is the prisoner, and that he could not possibly have seen someone else instead. The witness replies that he is certain he saw the prisoner and no one else. The attorney then points to another man in the courtroom and asks the man to remove his wig. When the man removes it, the courtroom gasps, as he bears a surprising resemblance to the prisoner. The result is surprising enough to weaken the witness' testimony.

Topic Tracking: Fate 1

After closing arguments, the jury convenes for deliberation. Mr. Darnay tells Sydney Carton, the wigged gentleman who resembles him (and who is an attorney working for the defense), to tell Miss Manette that he is deeply sorry to have been the cause of her agitation. After awhile, it is announced that a verdict has been reached, and Mr. Lorry hands Jerry a scrap of paper with the verdict written on it. He tells him to get it to Tellson's immediately. When Jerry looks at the paper, he sees the word "ACQUITTED." Jerry mutters to himself that if Mr. Lorry had asked him to deliver the message "Recalled to life" again, it would have made sense this time.

Topic Tracking: Resurrection 4

Book 2, Chapter 4

Dr. Manette, Lucie Manette, Mr. Lorry, the solicitor for the defense, and the defense counsel, Mr. Stryver, stand around Darnay and congratulate him on his acquittal. Darnay kisses Lucie's hand and thanks Mr. Stryver warmly. After conversing, the group disperses. Carton approaches Mr. Lorry and the two men begin conversing about the case until Mr. Lorry leaves to return to Tellson's. Carton, who appears to be drunk, then insists to Darnay that the two men should have dinner. At dinner, Carton proceeds to drink even more, and he attempts to argue with Darnay. Carton asks Darnay if he thinks he is drunk, and Darnay says that he believes that Carton has been drinking. Carton tells him that he doesn't care for anyone on earth, and no one cares for him. Darnay replies that he is sorry at this, as Carton could have used his talents better. Darnay leaves, and Carton asks himself if he likes Darnay. He mutters that it has done him no good to talk to a young man who resembles him, and who reminds him of what he might have been. He admits to himself that he hates Darnay. He finishes his pint of wine and falls asleep at the table.

Book 2, Chapter 5

At ten o'clock, Carton proceeds to Mr. Stryver's chambers to do more work. Mr. Stryver and Carton are great friends, and though Carton is not as respectable an attorney as Mr. Stryver, it is the general consensus that while Carton is no legal lion, he makes a surprisingly good jackal. Though he is drunk, as Mr. Stryver notes upon his arrival, Carton sits down to work and works diligently throughout the night. The two converse about the divergent paths their lives have taken, and how, despite the fact that they attended the same schools, Mr. Stryver is so much more successful. Mr. Stryver surmises that it is because Carton has no ambition or energy. Carton argues that it is simply a matter of natural rank; Mr. Stryver fell into his rank, and he fell into his. With a sad air of contemplation, Carton goes home:

"Waste forces within him, and a desert all around, this man stood still on his way across a silent terrace, and saw for a moment, lying in the wilderness before him, a mirage of honorable ambition, self-denial, and perseverance. In the fair city of this vision, there were airy galleries from which the loves and graces looked upon him, gardens in which the fruits of life hung ripening, waters of Hope that sparkled in his sight. A moment, and it was gone. Climbing to a high chamber in a well of houses, he threw himself down in his clothes on a neglected bed, and its pillow was wet with wasted tears." Book 2, Chapter 5, pg. 88

Book 2, Chapter 6

Mr. Lorry drops in for a visit with Dr. Manette and Lucie in the doctor's quaint lodgings on a quiet corner in Soho. He chats with Miss Pross, the red-haired woman who rushed to Lucie's aid in the hotel five years ago. Miss Pross tells him she constantly has to attend to the "hundreds" of visitors dropping by to ask about or visit with Lucie (she calls Lucie her "Ladybird"), which she claims only began to happen after Dr. Manette reentered her life. Dr. Manette and Lucie arrive, and they all sit down to dinner. After the meal, they retire to the back yard to sit under the plane tree, and Darnay and Carton drop by to visit. Mr. Lorry notes to himself with amusement that the "hundreds of people" Miss Pross promised were nowhere to be found. After a time, they return to the house, and rain begins to fall. They notice the sound of footsteps as people outside begin to rush toward shelter. The sounds spark a philosophical discussion. Lucie notes ominously:

"'I have sometimes sat alone here of an evening, listening, until I have made the echoes out to be the echoes of all the footsteps that are coming by and by into our lives.'" Book 2, Chapter 6, pg. 99

Carton replies gruffly:

"'There is a great crowd coming one day into our lives, if that be so.'" Book 2, Chapter 6, pg. 99

They sit, listening to the rain and thunderstorm, and contemplate Lucie's thought. After a time, Mr. Lorry leaves, escorted by Jerry. He remarks to Jerry, "'What a night it has been! Almost a night, Jerry, to bring the dead out of their graves.'" Book 2, Chapter 6, pg. 100. Darnay wonders if such a night will ever occur again.

Topic Tracking: Fate 2

Book 2, Chapter 7

Monseigneur the Marquis, "one of the great Lords in power at the Court," is having his twice-monthly reception at a grand hotel in Paris. He sits down to take his chocolate, assisted by no fewer than four opulently dressed men. Monseigneur lives lavishly and spends excessively, despite the dire poverty of the rest of the country. He and his attendants and servants (and various other people who seem to have no real purpose other than to lounge around decoratively), pass their days idly, but are always impeccably dressed. Everyone in Monseigneur's grand living quarters, down to the common executioner, is extremely well-dressed, as if for a fancy ball. After the reception, Monseigneur leaves. On his way out, he stops in front of a mirror and declares to his reflection, "'I devote you to the Devil!'" Book 2, Chapter 7, pg. 105 He proceeds to the courtyard, gets into his carriage, and drives away. His driver proceeds through the streets recklessly, with little regard for the commoners who might be standing in the way of the grand carriage. After a time, Monseigneur hears a loud cry, and the horses rear and plunge. The driver jumps out of the carriage, and Monseigneur asks what is the matter. A man huddles over a small bundle, which turns out to be a child that the carriage had struck. The man shrieks, "Killed! Dead!" A crowd gathers around the sad scene, and Monseigneur eyes them all. He coldly declares, "'It is extraordinary to me that you people cannot take care of yourselves and your children. One or the other of you is forever in the way. How do I know what injury you have done to my horses? See!'" Book 2, Chapter 7, pg. 107

Topic Tracking: Oppression/Class Struggle 3

He takes a gold coin out of his purse and indifferently flicks it to the valet, ordering him to give it to the grieving man. Monsieur Defarge joins the crowd, telling the grieving man, "'I know it all, I know it all. Be a brave man, my Gaspard! It is better for the poor plaything to die so, than to live. It has died in a moment without pain. Could it have lived an hour as happily?'" Book 2, Chapter 7, pg. 107 Monseigneur declares the man a philosopher and throws him another gold coin. Someone who he cannot see throws one of the coins back at him, and he demands to know who it is. He declares that they are all dogs and that he'd gladly run any of them over. The crowd watches in stunned silence. Madame Defarge, who is observing the scene with her ever-present knitting, fixes him with an icy stare. He proceeds on, and Madame Defarge continues her knitting, "with the steadfastness of Fate."

Topic Tracking: Fate 3

Book 2, Chapter 8

Monseigneur, whose full name is Monsieur the Marquis, is riding through the countryside in his traveling carriage. The village he is passing through is obviously poor; there are few children, no dogs, and very little food. As he approaches the gate of a house, he sees many miserable-looking peasants gathered around, staring at him. Another peasant, a mender of roads, joins the group, and Monsieur beckons to the man to approach. He asks if he passed the man on the road, and the man replies that he did. Monsieur asks the man why he stared at him so intently, and the man replies that he was staring at "the man." Monsieur asks him what man, and the man says that there was a man who was hanging on to the bottom of Monsieur's carriage, as if he were trying to rob it. Monsieur calls the man an idiot and demands to know exactly what he is talking about. The man says he does not know who the man was, but that he was tall and extremely pale and was hanging off the side of the carriage. Monsieur chastises the man for not telling him then that he saw a thief trying to rob his carriage. He asks the man if the thief ran away, and the man replies that the thief threw himself head-first over the hillside. The carriage continues on, eventually stopping at a large chateau. When he arrives in the house, he asks someone there if Monsieur Charles, who he is expecting from England, has arrived. The person replies that he has not.

Book 2, Chapter 9

After Monsieur the Marquis sits down to dinner, his expected guest, his nephew Charles Darnay, arrives. The two sit down to dinner, and Mr. Darnay tells Monsieur that he has returned to France pursuing "the object that took me away." The two get into a cordial discussion with heated undertones about the state of France and their station in it. Mr. Darnay decries the fact that his family lives in riches while the masses are starving, and Monsieur argues that he will die trying to continue the system that keeps the masses in poverty and repression, so long as it means comfort to himself. He tells his nephew, "'Repression is the only lasting philosophy. The dark deference of fear and slavery, my friend, will keep the dogs obedient to the whip, as long as this roof shuts out the sky,'" Book 2, Chapter 9, pg. 119.

Topic Tracking: Oppression/Class Struggle 4

Mr. Darnay insists that his family has done wrong for years, and that they are reaping the fruits of the evils they have committed. He asserts that he wants no part of it, and that he finds the system frightful. He adds that he wants to execute the last request of his dear mother--to redress the wrongs and have mercy on others. His uncle inquires exactly where he plans to live with his new philosophy, and he tells him that he wishes to continue living in England, where he does not have to endure the shame of the family name. He calls England his refuge, and his uncle asks him if he is acquainted with another Frenchman who sought refuge there--a doctor with a daughter. Mr. Darnay replies that he is. The Marquis suddenly bids him good night and trudges off to bed muttering about a doctor with a daughter--he does not explain the reason for his inquiry. He tells his nephew, "'Good-night! I look to the pleasure of seeing you again in the morning. Good repose! Light Monsieur my nephew to his chamber there!'" Book 2, Chapter 9, pg. 122. He then adds to himself, "'And burn Monsieur my nephew in his bed, if you will.'" (Book 2, Chapter 9, pg. 122) He retreats to bed, deep inside the chateau that is flanked out front by a stone wall, with stone lions. As the sun rises, the villagers gather around the fountain in the center of town. Some are armed, and they are whispering amongst each other in low voices. Monsieur Gabelle is hoisted up on horseback, and the road-mender has joined the group. Monsieur gallops away on a horse, behind a servant. The scene is grim and portentous, and a sense of foreboding looms:

"It portended that there was one stone face too many, up at the chateau.
The Gorgon had surveyed the building again in the night, and had added the one stone face wanting; the stone face for which it had waited through about two hundred years.
It lay back on the pillow of Monsieur the Marquis. It was like a fine mask, suddenly startled, made angry, and petrified. Driven home into the heart of the stone figure attached to it, was a knife. Round its hilt was a frill of paper, on which it was scrawled:
'Drive him fast to his tomb. This, from JACQUES.'" Book 2, Chapter 9, pg. 125

Monsieur the Marquis has been assassinated by the villagers.

Topic Tracking: Oppression/Class Struggle 5

Book 2, Chapter 10

One year passes. Darnay continues to live in London, where he is tutoring students in French (he also spends some time tutoring at Cambridge). He is suitably prosperous, but only through hard work. He has also come to realize that he is in love with Lucie Manette. He decides that he can no longer withhold his feelings, and he pays a visit to Dr. Manette. He tells the doctor that he is deeply in love with his daughter, that he has not told Lucie of his feelings, and that he has withheld his emotions as long as he could for fear of interrupting the delicate and strong relationship between Lucie and the doctor. Dr. Manette is stunned and shaken at the thought of someone else loving his daughter so deeply, but he collects himself and tells Darnay that he already knew of his feelings. Darnay asks the doctor if Lucie has any other suitors, and Dr. Manette replies that the only men who visit her are Mr. Stryver and Sydney Carton, and that he has no idea whether these men are romantically interested in Lucie. Darnay then confesses that he has something important he needs to tell Dr. Manette--that his true surname is not Darnay. He says he wants to tell Dr. Manette what his true name is and why he is in England. Dr. Manette implores him to stop; he asks Darnay that if he and Lucie should fall in love to tell him the secret on their marriage morning. Darnay agrees to the promise and leaves. Later, Lucie comes home and calls for her father. She hears nothing but a low hammering sound emanating from his bedroom. She looks in his door and retreats in fear, but collects herself and returns. She taps at his door and calls for him, and he comes out to her. They walk up and down together for a long time, a ritual they had engaged in to soothe him when he was first released from captivity.

Book 2, Chapter 11

That same evening, Sydney Carton has been working at Mr. Stryver's, finishing up business before Mr. Stryver's vacation. When he finally finishes, Mr. Stryver tells Carton that he wants to talk to him. He tells Carton that he intends to marry Lucie Manette. He adds that he is ready to make a change in his life and to have a home that he can look forward to going to. He then tells Carton that he is concerned about his prospects, and that he should find a woman to marry to take care of and look after him. He tells him to think about it, and Carton replies that he will.

Book 2, Chapter 12

Book 2, Chapter 12

Mr. Stryver has decided that he is ready to propose to Lucie. He first pays a visit to Jarvis Lorry at Tellson's to ask him what he thinks of the idea. Mr. Lorry tells Mr. Stryver that he does not believe this would be a good idea. Mr. Stryver is enraged, demanding to know if he is not eligible, successful, and ambitious. Mr. Lorry agrees that he is, but he does not back down from his position. He tells Mr. Stryver that he will pay a visit to Lucie and the doctor and try to find out subtly if Lucie would be agreeable to the idea; he will then go to Mr. Stryver's house that night and tell him what he finds out. Mr. Stryver agrees. Later, Mr. Lorry pays a visit to Mr. Stryver and tells him that his original opinion has been confirmed. Mr. Stryver pretends that he is relieved, as he did not really want to bother with marriage anyway:

"'There is no harm at all done. I have not proposed to the young lady, and, between ourselves, I am by no means certain, on reflection, that I ever should have committed myself to that extent. Mr. Lorry, you cannot control the mincing vanities and giddiness of empty-headed girls; you must not expect to do it, or you will always be disappointed. Now, pray say no more about it. I tell you, I regret it on account of others, but I am satisfied on my own account. And I am really very much obliged to you for allowing me to sound you, and for giving me your advice; you know the young lady better than I do; you were right, it never would have done.'" Book 2, Chapter 12, pp. 144-145

Mr. Lorry leaves, stunned at Mr. Stryver's about-face.

Book 2, Chapter 13

Sydney Carton, even more depressed than usual, drops by the Manette's to pay a visit to Lucie. She sees that he is upset and tells him with concern that she can see he is not well. He tells her he is not, but that his lifestyle is not conducive to health. She asks him if it is not a pity to live such a life. He tells her it is indeed a shame. He begins to cry, and she is startled and saddened, as she has never seen him soften like this before. He tells her that he is a miserable, drunken, self-destructed wretch, and that if it were even possible that she could return his love, he would only bring her down with him. She asks him if she cannot save him, if she cannot put him on a better course. He sadly replies that she cannot, but that meeting her and seeing how she cares for her father has awakened emotions in him he had thought were long dead, such as remorse and ambition.

Topic Tracking: Resurrection 5

She asks him imploringly if none of these emotions remain in him and begs him to try. He tells her that he cannot, that he knows he will only become worse, but that he wants her to know that she rekindled a fire in him, even though he knows the fire will burn out soon. She apologizes for having made him unhappier than he was before he met her. He assures her that she is not the cause, and that she would have reclaimed him, if anything could. He asks her not to tell anyone of his confidence; she assures him she will not. He tells her that he is drawing fast to an end, but until his death, he will hold their conversation sacred, knowing that his last avowal of himself was made to her. She begins to cry, and he tells her not to be sad, that he is not worth her tears. He tells her that he will always feel towards her the way he does now inside, but on the outside, he will be as he has been before. He asks her to believe him. He tells her that his last supplication to her will be to relieve her of a visitor with whom he knows she has nothing in common, and that he would do anything for her. He asks her to try to remember him in quiet times, and to realize how sincere he is when he tells her one thing:

"'The time will come, the time will not be long in coming, when new ties will be formed about you--ties that will bind you yet more tenderly and strongly to the home you so adorn--the dearest ties that will ever grace and gladden you. O Miss Manette, when the little picture of a happy father's face looks up in yours, when you see your own bright beauty springing up anew at your feet, think now and then that there is a man who would give his life, to keep a life you love beside you!'" Book 2, Chapter 13, pp. 149-150

He bids her farewell and says "God bless you!" then leaves.

Book 2, Chapter 14

One day, when Jerry Cruncher and his son are sitting at Tellson's, they see a very noisy and raucous funeral procession passing by, and a crowd has gathered around it. Members of the crowd are shouting "Spies!" and "Old Bailey spy. Yaha! Tst! Yah!" Jerry asks who it is, and someone tells him it is Roger Cly--Darnay's former servant who testified against him at his trial. The crowd attacks the hearse, and the lone mourner inside flees the carriage, ripping off his traditional mourning vestments as he goes. The crowd eagerly rips these to shreds, all the while continuing their shouts. Members of the crowd, now including Jerry Cruncher, fling themselves into and on top of the carriage. The carriage proceeds to the old church of Saint Pancras, to its burial ground.

There, they bury Mr. Cly in a manner much to their satisfaction. Now bored, the crowd begins to harass passersby, declaring each one an Old Bailey spy. Soon, the rowdy crowd moves on to looting. Jerry Cruncher does not participate, however, choosing instead to remain in the churchyard, smoking a pipe. Later, he returns to Tellson's and waits until the clerks file out before returning home with his son.

Upon entering, he excoriates his wife and blames her praying on his recent hard luck and decline in pay at work. He continues his ranting and raving, telling her not to ever pray again. He tells her he is going fishing that night. When his wife and child are in bed, he gets up, takes a key out of his pocket, and unlocks a cupboard, from which he takes a sack, a crowbar, a rope and a chain, "and other fishing tackle of that nature." He leaves, extinguishing the light behind him. Unbeknownst to him, his son follows him.

Jerry walks awhile and is eventually joined by two other "fishermen." They stop at an iron gate, which they scale. Young Jerry approaches the gate, holding his breath; he sees that the men are in a graveyard; they get to a grave and begin "fishing" with their spades and shovels. Young Jerry is so frightened that he leaves, but he returns before long out of a strong desire to know what his father is up to. He sees the men lifting a coffin out of the grave, and he sees that his father is trying to wrench it open. He flees in terror, feeling that the coffin is following him home. He jumps into bed and can hardly sleep.

When he finally does fall asleep, he awakens not much later to hear his father in the family room; he sees him grabbing Mrs. Cruncher by the ears and slamming her head into the headboard of the bed. The elder Jerry says, "I told you I would", and he rants at her again, telling her that when she opposes him and the partners of his business, others suffer. She tells him she is only trying to be a good wife, and says dishonoring her husband's business and defying him where that business is concerned is not being a good wife.

Later that morning, when Jerry and his son are walking to Tellson's, Young Jerry asks his father what a Resurrection Man is. His father says he doesn't know; then he says that it is a tradesman. Young Jerry asks what a Resurrection Man's goods are, and if they are bodies. The father says he believes it is something of that nature. Young Jerry tells his father, beaming, that he would like to be a Resurrection Man when he grows up. The elder Jerry thinks to himself that perhaps one day the boy will be a blessing to him and will make up for his mother.

Topic Tracking: Resurrection 6

Book 2, Chapter 15

In Monsieur Defarge's wine shop, people are drinking earlier than usual, as they have been for three straight days. Monsieur Defarge enters and bids everyone good day. One man gets up and leaves. Monsieur Defarge tells his wife that he has been traveling with a man, a mender of roads, named Jacques, and he tells her to give him a drink. Another man then gets up and leaves. Madame Defarge gives Jacques a drink; he sips it while eating his bread. A third man gets up and leaves. After awhile, Monsieur Defarge asks Jacques if he is ready to see the apartment that he has told him he can occupy. Jacques says yes. The two men make their way through courtyard, up the stairs, to the garret where Dr. Manette once sat making shoes several years ago. The men who left the wine shop are already waiting here.

Defarge closes the door behind them and addresses the men as Jacques One, Jacques Two, and Jacques Three. He tells them that he has brought the witness Jacques Five, which he, Jacques Four, has told them about. Jacques Five, the mender of roads, begins to speak. He tells the other men that he saw "him" a year ago, hanging by a chain underneath the carriage of the Marquis. One man asks if he ever saw the man before; another says no. Another man then asks how he could have recognized him again, if he had never seen him before that. The mender of roads answers that it is because he was so tall; he says that when the Marquis asked what the man looked like he replied that he was as tall as a spectre. The mender of roads tells the men that months later, he was at work on the hillside and about to go home when he saw six soldiers coming over the hill with a tall man with his arms bound to his side. He recognized the tall man, and he believed the tall man recognized him. The prisoner was taken to the prison near the village.

The villagers began to whisper about the prisoner. They whispered that while the man had been condemned to death, he would not be executed, as a petition had been circulated showing that the man had been enraged by the death of his child, and that the petition had been circulated to the King himself. Despite the petition, he says, the villagers whispered that the man would be executed anyway because he killed Monsieur the Marquis. One Sunday night, while all the villagers slept, workers began constructing a gallows that was forty feet high. At midday, the prisoner was wheeled up to the gallows, where he was hanged.

He tells the men that is the end of his story, and that he left at sunset as he had been warned to do, and that he kept walking until he met Monsieur Defarge. The men ask the man to leave for a moment. When he does, Jacques One asks Defarge how he will be registered. Defarge answers he will be registered "as doomed to destruction." The man says magnificent and inquires if he means "the chateau and all the race?" Defarge answers yes.

Topic Tracking: Oppression/Class Struggle 6

The next day, Monsieur and Madame Defarge and the mender of roads travel to Versailles to see the king and queen. The mender of roads is not thrilled to be traveling with Madame Defarge, as he is secretly afraid of her. He is also disconcerted to see her knitting incessantly amid the crowd, in broad daylight. Soon, the royal procession passes; it is such a spectacle of riches, wealth, and beauty that the mender of roads, beside himself, exclaims "Long live the King! Long live the Queen!" After the procession, Defarge pats the mender on the back, telling him that he has done a good job--he has made the crowds believe that the royal reign will last forever, thus making them more insolent and bringing an end to it sooner. Madame Defarge takes a jab at him for his enthusiasm regarding the royals and orders him to go home.

Book 2, Chapter 16

Book 2, Chapter 16

When Monsieur and Madame Defarge are returning to Saint Antoine from Versailles, they stop in Paris and pay a visit to a policeman, an acquaintance of Defarge's whom he greets warmly. After they leave, Madame Defarge asks her husband what Jacques the Policeman told him. He tells her he has learned that another spy has been commissioned for their quarter; Madame Defarge remarks that they will have to add the spy to their register. He tells her the spy is an Englishman named John Barsad, and that he has black hair, a dark complexion, an aquiline nose, and generally looks sinister.

The next day, Madame Defarge sits in the shop, knitting energetically. After awhile, a newcomer walks in who perfectly fits the description of the spy her husband gave to her. He asks for cognac; she gives it to him and he praises it, which arouses her suspicions even more. He tells her she knits with great skill and asks what she does it for. She answers that it is simply a pastime. He asks if it is for use, and she says that perhaps one day she will find a use for it. He asks if business is bad; she replies that it is because the people are so poor. He says the people are miserable and oppressed and suggests that she would agree. She says that she does not think so, that she and her husband are too busy running the shop to think about other matters at all. He then remarks that Gaspard's execution was a sad business. She replies that anyone who uses knives to murder should have to pay for it.

Her husband enters. The spy calls him Jacques; Defarge tells the man he must be confused, as his name is Ernest Defarge. The spy repeats to Defarge his belief that there is much sympathy in the neighborhood for Gaspard. Defarge replies that if there is, he does not know of it. The spy then tells Defarge that he knows Defarge was an old domestic of Dr. Manette's, and that he had charge of Dr. Manette after his release from prison. He tells Defarge that he also knows that Lucie and Mr. Lorry came to retrieve him, and that they took him to England. Defarge replies that it is true. The spy tells him that he knows the Manettes, and that Lucie is going to be married to a Frenchman who is living in England. He adds that Lucie's husband-to-be is the nephew of Monsieur the Marquis, but that he lives in England under the name Darnay (though D'Aulnais is the name of his mother's family). Madame Defarge knits steadily; her husband is not so cool--the spy notices that Defarge's hand is trembling under the counter. The spy pays for his drink, then leaves.

Defarge wonders aloud if it is true that Lucie is going to marry the nephew of Monsieur the Marquis, and hopes that destiny will keep her husband out of France. Madame Defarge coolly replies that the man's destiny will take him wherever he needs to go, and that it will lead him to the end that is to end him. Defarge asks her if she does not find it strange that Lucie's future husband's name is inscribed in the very same register as the loathsome John Barsad. Madame answers that stranger things will happen.

Topic Tracking: Resurrection 7
Topic Tracking: Fate 4

Book 2, Chapter 17

Lucie is sitting under the plane-tree with Dr. Manette on the night before her marriage. They are having an earnest conversation in which Lucie promises not to change and to always be there for her father. She tells him that if she had never met Charles, she would have been perfectly happy to continue living as she had been with him. He tells her earnestly that he dreamed of her in captivity, and that his troubles at their worst never compared to how happy he has felt after their reunion. That night, she has dinner with her father and Miss Pross, and after dinner they go to bed. That night, Lucie tiptoes into her father's room and finds him sound asleep. She kisses him goodnight as he sleeps, then tiptoes away.

Book 2, Chapter 18

Lucie and Charles are happily married; Dr. Manette is pleased to tell Charles that Lucie is now his. After the wedding, Mr. Lorry stops by Tellson's. He tells Miss Pross that when he comes back, they will take the doctor out for dinner and a ride in the country to help him deal with the momentary shock of losing Lucie (even though Lucie and Charles have decided to live with her father in the apartment above his living quarters). When he comes back from Tellson's and stops by Dr. Manette's, he is surprised to hear a low hammering sound emanating from Dr. Manette's room. Miss Pross comes to him with a terrified face, declaring that Dr. Manette is making shoes.

Mr. Lorry goes to Dr. Manette's room and sees the doctor busily making shoes. Mr. Lorry asks the doctor what he is working on, and Dr. Manette tells him it is a lady's walking shoe. Dr. Manette looks up occasionally but is mostly interested in his work. Mr. Lorry realizes immediately that he must not tell Lucie or anyone else who knows the doctor besides Miss Pross. He takes time off from Tellson's and watches the doctor attentively. He realizes after the first day that things are worse than he realized and that all he can do is watch the doctor. Dr. Manette does not improve for nine straight days, during which time he becomes frightfully adept at making shoes.

Topic Tracking: Resurrection 8

Book 2, Chapter 19

On the tenth morning of his observation, Mr. Lorry is surprised to see that Dr. Manette is sitting by his window in his usual dress, reading instead of making shoes. Dr. Manette joins Mr. Lorry and Miss Pross and during the meal Mr. Lorry realizes that the doctor has returned to himself. After breakfast, Mr. Lorry turns to the doctor and gently asks for his advice on how he should help a particular "friend." The doctor knows he is talking about him, but the men carry on the conversation delicately, carefully referring only to an unnamed "friend." Mr. Lorry says he is concerned about a very dear friend of his, and he asks him to advise him well on the case for the friend and the friend's daughter's sake. The doctor asks if the "friend" has undergone some sort of mental shock. Mr. Lorry answers yes, and that the shock was a relapse of a larger one that the friend had suffered earlier for an unknown period of time. The doctor asks how he knew of the friend's shock, and if it revealed itself in the form of some pursuit that the friend had engaged in during the first period of distress. Mr. Lorry answers yes. The doctor asks if the friend's daughter knows of the relapse, and Mr. Lorry replies that she does not, and that it was kept from her, as he hopes it always will be. Dr. Manette grasps Mr. Lorry's hand and tells him that was very kind and thoughtful.

Mr. Lorry asks the doctor how such a relapse could come about, if another one could occur, and if there is any way to prevent it. Dr. Manette replies that the friend probably knew that the shock was coming and had attempted to take steps to prevent it from happening. He adds that the attack probably surfaced due to the resurfacing of some memory that was the cause of the first episode, and that perhaps there had been a dread of coming events lurking in the man's mind.

Mr. Lorry gently asks about a concern--that when the man is under an attack, he resumes the practice of some profession (which he calls "'Blacksmith's work'"), and that it is the profession that the man practiced during his first and most prolonged episode of shock. He says gently that even after the man got well, he kept the tools of the profession beside him, and he asks delicately if it would not be best if the man rid himself of the remnants of that profession. Dr. Manette, after an uncomfortable pause, explains that the man had once yearned frightfully for that occupation, and when it came, it relieved his mental pain and anguish so much because it allowed him to think about something else besides his mental torture. Mr. Lorry asks if the retention of the thing might not lead to the retention of the ideas that plague him and cause his shock. The doctor replies morosely that the thing is a very old companion. Mr. Lorry says he would recommend to the friend that he sacrifice it, for his daughter's sake. The doctor says that it must be taken away, for the daughter's sake, but that it should be done while the friend is not present, and that he should miss the old companion after an absence.

Mr. Lorry waits for four days until Dr. Manette leaves to join Lucie and Charles in Wales, where they are vacationing. When Dr. Manette leaves, Mr. Lorry goes into the doctor's room on the night of his departure with a saw, chisel, hammer, and chopper. Miss Pross accompanies him, carrying a light. Somewhat guiltily, as if he were committing a murder, Mr. Lorry chops up the shoemaker's bench into small pieces; they then burn them in the kitchen fire. The tools, shoes and leather are then buried in the garden.

Book 2, Chapter 20

When Charles and Lucie return home, their first visitor is Sydney Carton. Darnay notices that Carton seems friendlier, in his own rugged way. Carton pulls Charles aside after a time and tells him he hopes they might be friends. Darnay tells him they already are. Carton says that Darnay knows him as a "dissolute dog" who has never done any good and never will. Darnay replies that he isn't sure Carton will never do any good. Carton says he can assure him he will not, but he asks Darnay if he could endure such a miserable wretch as himself to come and go as a privileged friend at their residence. He tells him he would not abuse the privilege, just that it would satisfy him to know that he had it. Darnay replies that he can. The men shake hands, and after the discussion, Carton returns, by all outward appearances, to his usual self.

Later, over dinner, Miss Pross, the Doctor, Darnay and Mr. Lorry discuss the conversation, and Darnay refers to Carton as a problem, with his carelessness and recklessness. After dinner, when he retreats to his apartment, Darnay finds Lucie in an unusually contemplative state. She tells him that he should be more thoughtful of Carton than he was at dinner. He asks why, and she says that she cannot tell him. He asks what he should do, and she tells him he should be very generous and kind to Carton always and be forgiving of his faults. She says that though Carton very rarely reveals his heart, she knows it is wounded, as she has seen it bleeding. He tells her it is a painful thought to think he might have done any wrong to Carton. She tells him that Carton, sadly, is not to be reclaimed, but that she is sure he is capable of good things. He holds her close, and she exclaims that they must remember how rich they are in their happiness and how poor Carton is in his misery. He tells her he will always remember it.

Book 2, Chapter 21

Though Lucie spends the next several years living happily with her husband and father, she occasionally feels dread and a sense of doubt, as if she will not remain on earth for long. The sounds of the footsteps--the dream that once haunted her--have returned to her.

Topic Tracking: Fate 5

Time passes, and she gives birth to a daughter, also named Lucie. Lucie lives happily and tranquilly in the next several years, though not without tragedy--a son, born after the daughter, dies young. Sydney Carton continues to visit through the years, though not more than a few times a year. He feels close to the family and especially to the children, who feel pity for him even though they don't know what their mother knows about him. Before he dies, Lucie's son asks his mother to kiss Carton for him. Carton continues to work diligently for Mr. Stryver, with no ambition higher than remaining the lion's jackal.

Thus the years pass, until little Lucie is six years old. But change looms in the air:

"But, there were other echoes, from a distance, that rumbled menacingly in the corner all through this space of time. And it was now, about little Lucie's sixth birthday, that they began to have an awful sound, as of a great storm in France with a dreadful sea rising." Book 2, Chapter 21, pg. 209

Topic Tracking: Fate 6

One night in mid-July, 1789, Mr. Lorry comes in late from Tellson's and sits down beside Lucie and her husband at the window where they had once had the conversation in which Lucie described the echoes she heard. He tells them he believes he will have to spend the whole night at Tellson's, as there has been such an uneasiness in Paris that the company's French customers are scrambling to transfer their assets to the London branch. He says there is mania among the customers to get their property transferred to England. Darnay says that things look bad and Mr. Lorry agrees, but adds that they don't know why. Darnay replies that the sky is gloomy and threatening.

Dr. Manette comes in to join them. They chat awhile, and Mr. Lorry asks Lucie to tell them again about the echoes about which she has her theory. She tells him it is not a theory, only a fancy. Mr. Lorry asks her if the echoes are not very numerous and very loud, and he tells her only to listen to them.

Meanwhile, in Saint Antoine, a storm is brewing. The villagers, led by Monsieur and Madame Defarge, have armed themselves to the teeth, and one evening, the storm reaches fever pitch. The villagers march to the Bastille--men, women, all heavily armed with whatever they can carry--all the while burning bridges and vowing vengeance on the mercenaries who have oppressed them and kept them in poverty for so long. They battle for hours as the storm rages. A terrible flood is drenching the land, but it does not quell the mob. The rebels demand that the prisoners be freed. They accost the prison officers and tell them they will be killed if they don't obey orders.

Topic Tracking: Oppression/Class Struggle 7

Defarge asks to be taken to One Hundred Five, North Tower--the old prison cell where Dr. Manette was held unjustly for so many years. The officer takes him and Jacques Three to the tiny, dark cell. There, they see the initials "A.M."--Alexandre Manette--carved into the wall. Defarge whispers to him that the doctor, without a doubt, also carved a calendar. They begin to tear the cell apart, and everything in it, in an attempt to unearth it. They do not find it. They set the cell ablaze, then leave. They bring the officer out to the mob, who beat and stab him. Madame Defarge administers the final blows--she steps on his neck, and with her cruel knife, which she has long been waiting to use, she cuts off his head. The body is hoisted up, as a lamp, to show what the peasants are about, as was Defarge's original idea. The storm literally and figuratively rages on. In the ocean of faces of the mob, two groups of seven stand out--seven newly liberated prisoners, and seven murdered men who died at the hands of the angry mob:

"Seven prisoners released, seven gory heads on pikes, the keys of the accursed fortress of the eight strong towers, some discovered letters and other memorials of prisoners of old time, long dead of broken hearts --such, and such-like, the loudly echoing footsteps of Saint Antoine escort through Paris streets in mid-July, one thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine. Now, Heaven defeat the fancy of Lucie Darnay, and keep these feet far out of her life! For, they are headlong, mad, and dangerous; and in the years so long after the breaking of the cask at Defarge's wine-shop door, they are not easily purified when once stained red." Book 2, Chapter 21, pg. 217

Book 2, Chapter 22

A week passes. Madame Defarge sits, presiding over the customers. The villagers are conducting themselves differently, with the defiant confidence of people who have nothing to lose and are willing to risk death for what they feel is just. A member of Madame Defarge's sisterhood sits knitting beside her. The woman, the wife of a starved grocer and two children, has earned the nickname The Vengeance. Defarge enters. He addresses them all as patriots and tells them he has news--a man named Foulon, who once told the peasants they could eat grass and who was thought to be dead, is alive and has been discovered. After a moment of silence, the armed crowd goes out to have their vengeance on the cruel Foulon:

"From such household occupations as their bare poverty yielded, from their children, from their aged and their sick crouching on the bare ground famished and naked, they ran out with streaming hair, urging one another, and themselves, to madness with the wildest cries and actions. Villain Foulon taken, my sister! Old Foulon taken, my mother! Miscreant Foulon taken, my daughter! Then, a score of others ran into the midst of these, beating their breasts, tearing their hair, and screaming, Foulon alive! Foulon who told the starving people they might eat grass! Foulon who told my old father that he might eat grass, when I had no bread to give him! Foulon who told my baby it might suck grass, when these breasts were dry with want! O mother of God, this Foulon! O Heaven, our suffering! Hear me, my dead baby and my withered father: I swear on my knees, on these stones, to avenge you on Foulon!" Book 2, Chapter 22, pg. 219

Topic Tracking: Oppression/Class Struggle 8

They find Foulon and tie him up. They prepare to hang him, and Madame Defarge presides over the affair with murderous gusto. They hang him, with his mouth stuffed full of grass. Now angrier than ever, the mob learns that the son-in-law of Foulon--"another of the people's enemies and insulters"--is coming into Paris with a cavalry of 500. They quickly find him, murder him, and set his head and heart on pikes. They parade these, along with the dead Foulon, through the streets raucously. They return to their homes; while hungry, they are filled with the satisfaction of human fellowship. That night, Defarge tells his wife that what they longed for has at last come. She coolly replies, "Almost." And the village drops off to sleep.

Book 2, Chapter 23

The mood in France has irrevocably changed. Where Monsieur the Marquis and members of his class once reigned, the peasants have now risen up and claimed that place as their own. The people are still poor and miserable, and the land ruined, and the elegance Monseigneur lived in has been stamped out completely:

"For scores of years gone by, Monseigneur had squeezed and wrung it, and had seldom graced it with his presence except for the pleasures of the chase--now, found in hunting the people; now, found in hunting the beasts, for whose preservation Monseigneur made edifying spaces of barbarous and barren wilderness. No. The change consisted in the appearance of strange faces of low caste, rather than in the disappearance of the high-caste, chiseled, and otherwise beatified and beatifying features of Monseigneur." Book 2, Chapter 23, pg. 223

Topic Tracking: Oppression/Class Struggle 9

The mender of roads continues his meager work and continues to starve. One evening, a compatriot named Jacques (who also addresses the mender of roads as Jacques), pays him a visit. The two discuss in vague terms a plan that they will carry out later that evening.The results of their plan are visible when the village realizes that the lavish chateau where Monsieur the Marquis once lived has been set ablaze. The few people who live there hurry out and rush to Monsieur Gabelle's door, begging him to help them. The chateau dwellers beg a group of officers and soldiers to help them, as there is valuable property burning, but the soldiers simply reply that the chateau must burn. The fire rages; it burns the chateau to the ground and spreads to the forest. The villagers, meanwhile, become obsessed with the idea that they must speak with Monsieur Gabelle immediately, as he has something to do with the collection of rent and taxes. Though he no longer collects rent and collects only meager taxes, the villagers surround his house and demand that he come forth. He hides on his roof behind a stack of chimneys until the people finally disperse.

Book 2, Chapter 24

Three more years pass, and the raging storm in France continues. The people have become even more desperate and, as a consequence, more vengeful. But the class of Monseigneur has retreated in haste. Royalty has been removed, having been besieged in its palace and suspended. By August 1792, Monseigneur was scattered across the land.

Topic Tracking: Oppression/Class Struggle 10

But "Monseigneur" has reappeared at Tellson's in London, as Tellson's extends great courtesy to its longtime customers who have fallen from their lofty stations. The fleeing, dispatched nobility has transferred its property to Tellson's, and all newcomers from France who were once members of this class there report immediately to Tellson's upon their arrival in London. As a result, Tellson's has also become a source of information about the conflict. One afternoon, Darnay is talking to Mr. Lorry , trying to persuade Mr. Lorry not to travel to Paris on business, telling him it is too dangerous. Someone hands Mr. Lorry a letter that is addressed to Tellson's on behalf of a Marquis St. Evrémonde, of France; the letter reads that its contents are "very pressing." Darnay had kept his promise to Dr. Manette and revealed to him on the morning of his wedding to Lucie that this is his true name, and that no one else is to know of it but Dr. Manette. Mr. Lorry says to the messenger that he has searched high and low but cannot find any trace of Marquis St. Evrémonde.

Mr. Lorry asks Darnay to take charge of the letter and deliver it. Darnay takes it and tells Mr. Lorry that he will come to Tellson's at eight to see him off to Paris. He leaves and reads the letter. It is a plea from Gabelle telling Darnay that he has been seized and taken to Paris to be imprisoned, and that his house has been destroyed. He tells him he is going to be tried and murdered for treason because he has acted against them for an emigrant. He writes passionately:

"'Ah! Most gracious Monsieur heretofore the Marquis, where is that emigrant? I cry in my sleep, where is he? I demand of Heaven, will he not come to deliver me? No answer. Ah, Monsieur heretofore the Marquis, I send my desolate cry across the sea, hoping it may perhaps reach your ears through the great bank of Tellson, known at Paris!

For the love of Heaven, of justice, of generosity, of the honour of your noble name, I supplicate you, Monsieur heretofore the Marquis, to succour and release me. My fault is that I have been true to you. Oh, Monsieur heretofore the Marquis, I pray you be true to me!'" Book 2, Chapter 24, pg. 237

Darnay realizes that he must travel to Paris, and though he knows it will be dangerous and that he may never get out alive, he can hardly see the severity of the danger that lies before him:

"The Loadstone Rock was drawing him, and he must sail on, until he struck. He knew of no rock; he saw hardly any danger. The intention with which he had done what he had done, even although he had left it incomplete, presented it before him in an aspect that would be gratefully acknowledged in France on his presenting himself to assert it. Then, that glorious vision of doing good, which is so often the sanguine mirage of so many good minds, arose before him, and he even saw himself in the illusion with some influence to guide this raging Revolution that was running so fearfully wild." Book 2, Chapter 24, pg. 239

Topic Tracking: Fate 7

He decides that Lucie and her father cannot know until after he is gone, to spare Lucie the pain of separation and her father the pain of old memories. He returns to Tellson's and tells Mr. Lorry that he has delivered a letter, and that the party requested that Mr. Lorry deliver a message in France: to go to a prisoner in the Abbaye named Gabelle. He is to tell Gabelle that the party has received the letter and will come. Mr. Lorry asks if there is any time mentioned; Darnay says to tell the prisoner that the party will start his journey tomorrow night. That night, August 14, 1792, he stays awake and writes two intense letters--one to Lucie, telling her that he is going to Paris under a personal obligation and that he will be safe, and another, to Dr. Manette, asking him to take care of Lucie and their daughter. He leaves the letters with a porter to be delivered half an hour before midnight. He takes a horse to Dover and begins his journey.

Book 3, Chapter 1

When Darnay arrives in France, he is awakened one night at an inn where he is sleeping by a local functionary, who tells him that he has been assigned a guard to travel with him to Paris. Darnay protests but is not allowed to travel without the escort. When he arrives in Beauvais, he is taunted by an ominous crowd of villagers chanting "Down with the emigrant!" The postmaster plants himself between a particularly agitated man and Darnay, telling the man that Darnay will be judged at Paris. Darnay tells the crowd that they have been deceived and that he is not a traitor. When they arrive at Paris, the barrier is closed and a guard stands in front of it, demanding to know where the papers for "this prisoner" are, referring to Darnay. Darnay is startled and points out that he is a French citizen and a free traveler. The guard simply asks for the prisoner's papers again. The escort shows the guard Gabelle's letter. A man accompanies him into a guardroom, where an officer is presiding over some registers. Monsieur Defarge, who is in the guardroom, asks if Darnay is emigrant Evrémonde, and the guard says yes. He adds at their prompting that he is 37, married, and lives with his wife in England. Defarge tells Darnay he will be confined to the prison La Force. Darnay exclaims aloud and demands to know for what offense. The officer says that France has passed new laws and new offenses since Darnay left. He writes on a sheet of paper and signs in "in secret," then hands the paper to Defarge. Two armed guards and Defarge accompany Darnay. Defarge asks him if he is married to Dr. Manette's daughter. Darnay replies yes. Defarge tells Darnay that he keeps a wine shop in St. Antoine and that perhaps he has heard of him. Darnay says excitedly that his wife accompanied Defarge to reclaim her father. Defarge solemnly asks Darnay "in the name of that sharp female newly-born, and called La Guillotine," why he returned to France. Darnay tells him that he has already told him why, and that he did not know how different things would be.

Topic Tracking: Fate 8

He asks Defarge for help. Defarge refuses and will not answer Darnay's questions about prison--whether he will have communication with the outside world and whether he will be executed with no trial. Darnay asks if he will be able to communicate with a Mr. Lorry of Tellson's Bank, and Defarge tells him he with do nothing for him, as he is the sworn servant of his country and that it is his duty to act against Darnay. Darnay is taken to a solitary cell. He asks to know why he is confined alone, and the guard says he doesn't know. Darnay paces to and fro in his cell, which contains only a chair, a table, and a small mattress. He becomes consumed with thoughts as he measures by paces the size of his cell:

"'Five paces by four and a half, five paces by four and a half, five paces by four and a half. He made shoes, he made shoes, he made shoes. 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.'" Book 3, Chapter 1, pg. 254

Book 3, Chapter 2

One day, as Mr. Lorry is toiling at Tellson's Paris office, he is stunned to see Dr. Manette and Lucie in his chambers. Lucie tells him they have come for Charles, who has been sent to prison. Dr. Manette adds that he has great influence over the revolutionaries, having been a prisoner in the Bastille, unjustly held by the repressive regime they have been fighting against. He says he has come to save Charles, and that he was able to find out where Charles is imprisoned because of this influence. Mr. Lorry tells Lucie to be as calm and serviceable as she can be, as they are all in danger. He begs them not to look out the window, where a large crowd has gathered around a stone in the yard, sharpening all manner of weapons on it--knives, bayonets, hatchets, swords. The crowd of men and women is dressed in rags, and their clothing and weapons are drenched in blood. The stone is also stained with a red that could never be removed. Mr. Lorry whispers to Dr. Manette that the revolutionaries are murdering the prisoners, and that he must get to La Force right away.

Topic Tracking: Oppression/Class Struggle 11

Dr. Manette goes out to meet the crowd. They look at him suspiciously, but when he explains who he is, they exclaim, "Long live the Bastille prisoner!" and begin yelling that the prisoner Evrémonde at La Force must be saved. Mr. Lorry closes the curtain, and Lucie falls at his feet. Miss Pross puts little Lucie in Mr. Lorry's bed, and the long night drags on as the revolutionaries continue to sharpen their knives on the grindstone.

Book 3, Chapter 3

Mr. Lorry, out of concern for Tellson's and for Lucie, puts her and her family up in a small apartment in the same quarter of the city as the bank. He sends Jerry Cruncher, the messenger, to watch over them. Later, a visitor arrives at the bank. The man asks Mr. Lorry if he remembers who he is, suggesting that perhaps he may remember him from his wine shop. Agitated, Mr. Lorry asks if he is relaying a message from Dr. Manette. Defarge says yes and hands him a note from Dr. Manette saying that Charles is safe but that he (the doctor) cannot yet leave safely. He also writes that the bearer of the message will also be bringing a short note from Charles to Lucie and that the bearer should be allowed to see Lucie. Relieved, Mr. Lorry asks Defarge to accompany him to Lucie's; Defarge agrees and they go down to the courtyard, where they see two women, one of whom is knitting. "Madame Defarge, surely!" exclaims Mr. Lorry, who recognizes the woman and notes that she is engaged in the same activity that she was when he left them. He asks Defarge if she is going with them. Defarge says yes, so that she can recognize the faces and know who they are--for their safety, he explains. So the men set off with Madame Defarge and the second woman, The Vengeance. They find Lucie weeping in her apartment. She reads the note from Charles, which is brief, telling her to take courage, as her father has great influence and will be helping him. He asks her to kiss Lucie for him. She is so moved and delirious with joy over the note that she grabs one of Madame Defarge's hands away from the knitting and kisses it. Madame Defarge makes no response and looks at Lucie coldly. The woman's reticence so shocks Lucie that she looks at her in terror. Madame Defarge points to Lucie's daughter and asks if it is Lucie's child. Mr. Lorry answers yes, and Madame Defarge curtly replies that she has seen enough and that they can leave. Madame Defarge's gaze at little Lucie is so intense and threatening that Lucie instinctively grabs her daughter and clutches her to her chest. Lucie is so unnerved at Madame Defarge's menacing manner that she pleads with her to help her and to be good to her husband. Lucie begs her earnestly as a wife and mother to have pity on her and not to exercise any power over her husband but to use it on his behalf instead. Madame Defarge turns to The Vengeance and says coldly:

"'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?'" Book 3, Chapter 3, pg. 266

Topic Tracking: Oppression/Class Struggle 12

She turns to Lucie and asks her if it is likely, after all this, that they should concern themselves with the troubles of one wife and mother. She resumes her knitting and leaves. The Vengeance and Defarge follow. After they leave, Mr. Lorry tells Lucie to have courage and be thankful. Lucie replies that she is not thankless, but that that "dreadful woman" has thrown a shadow over her hopes. Mr. Lorry tells her there is no substance in it. Secretly, though, he is greatly troubled by the dark manner of the Defarges.

Book 3, Chapter 4

Dr. Manette does not return until four days later. During his absence, a dreadful massacre of eleven hundred prisoners of all ages and both sexes has taken place (a fact Lucie will not learn until long after she leaves France). Dr. Manette tells Mr. Lorry in confidence that he was dragged through this scene of carnage on his way to La Force, and that in the prison setting there he found a self-appointed Tribunal, to which the prisoners were brought individually and tried. Most often, they were sent to be massacred, sometimes they were freed, and sometimes they were sent back to their cells. He tells Mr. Lorry that he appeared before this Tribunal. He identified himself as a secret and unaccused prisoner of the Bastille. He related that one of the Tribunal members had identified him, and that this man was Defarge, and that he was able to find that his son-in-law was among the imprisoned. He learned that Darnay had pleaded with the Tribunal, some members of which were murderers, for his life and liberty. Members of the Tribunal enthusiastically supported Dr. Manette upon learning of his history and agreed to his request that Darnay be brought before them and tried immediately. He was told that the prisoner would be tried soon but must be held in their custody; Dr. Manette begged to stay to ensure Charles' safety and was granted permission. Meanwhile, the doctor puts his medical skills to use and proves himself so indispensable that he becomes staff physician at three prisons, including La Force, where he can see Charles regularly and occasionally deliver letters from him to Lucie. But, while the doctor tries hard to free Darnay, the national tide is set against him. The king has been beheaded, his wife shortly thereafter, and the masses are chanting the new mantra--Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death. The national fever continues to rage, the slaughter unceasing. What began as a fight against oppression has turned ugly, with innocents jailed and murdered without fair trial. And La Guillotine is talked about constantly:

"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 particular 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." Book 3, Chapter 4, pg. 271

Despite these terrors, the doctor remains confident, collected, and calm. But the forces of the revolution keep Charles in prison for another year and three months.

Topic Tracking: Oppression/Class Struggle 13

Book 3, Chapter 5

Lucie spends the year and a half in a constant state of uncertainty, never knowing if her husband's head will one day be lopped off. But she passes the time by completing her usual duties and caring for her daughter. One day her father tells her that there is a window in the prison that Charles can sometimes gain access to at three in the afternoon. Whether he can get to it depends on many variables. Her father thinks that if Lucie stood at a particular spot on the street, he could see her (though she would not be able to see him). Lucie vows to go everyday, and from two to four each day, through rain, snow, wind and heat, she stands at the spot. Some days she brings her daughter, some days she goes alone, but she never knows if her husband can see her. Still, knowing that he might be able to is enough. On the third day, a woodcutter sees her and greets her in the national greeting (which has been required by law)--"Good day, citizeness." She replies, "Good day, citizen." The next day, he sees her again and greets her. He points to the prison and spreads his fingers over his eyes, then says that it is not his business. The next day, the man (who had once been a mender of roads) taunts her again, this time when she's with her daughter. As he saws his wood, he asks if the girl is Lucie's daughter, then declares that it is none of his business. He goes on sawing wood, and as the pieces fall into the basket, he declares:

"'I call myself 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!'" Book 3, Chapter 5, pg. 274

Topic Tracking: Oppression/Class Struggle 14

Lucie shudders, but continues to endure it so that her husband may see her. She passes many months this way until December. One day, as she is standing there, she hears a crowd approaching. A throng of people surrounds her, and in the middle is the wood-sawyer holding hands with The Vengeance. There are at least five hundred people, all wildly dancing and singing the song of the Revolution. Their red revolution caps swirl around her as she stands there, terrified; the mob swirling around her, advancing, retreating, breaking into pairs, then rejoining, forming separate rings around her, and singing terribly. The dance--once innocent, but now devilish--terrifies Lucie and her daughter. Her father approaches and tells her he has seen it many times, but not to be afraid, as none of them would harm her. She says she is not worried about herself, but that her husband's fate is up to the mercies of these people. He tells her that he will put him above their mercies soon. He tells her that Charles has been summoned for tomorrow. He tells her there is no time to waste, that he is well prepared but that he must take precautions. He tells her that her husband will be returned to her in a matter of hours. As they walk, they hear the terrible sound that they know too well--a cart, carrying a cargo of three dead bodies. Dr. Manette tells her that he must see Mr. Lorry.

Book 3, Chapter 6

At last, Charles Evrémonde, called Darnay, is called before the Tribunal, which is known for sending prisoners out to be executed with gusto and without fair trial. As he is brought in, the audience begins to demand his head and hungrily eyes him as if they would like to remove it themselves. He testifies that while it is true he has lived many years in England and married an English woman, he left France to relinquish a station and title that were distasteful to him. He wants to live by his own work in England, rather than off the work of the people in France. He points out that his wife, Lucie, is French by birth. He calls two witnesses--Theophile Gabelle and Alexandre Manette. The audience cheers upon hearing the name of the heroic former prisoner of the Bastille. The president of the Tribunal asks him why he had returned to France when he did, and not sooner. Darnay says he returned to save his friend's life regardless of the potential harm to his own. He asks if this is criminal in the eyes of the republic, and the crowd enthusiastically cries, "No!" The president asks to see the letter in question, and Gabelle is asked to confirm it, and Gabelle, having been freed by the same Tribunal three days earlier, does so. Dr. Manette is next questioned. He testifies that the accused was his first friend after his long imprisonment. He stated that the accused had been devoted to him and to his daughter, and that he was no friend of England's aristocratic government. In fact he had been tried for his life by it (as a foe of England and friend of the United States). He appeals to Mr. Lorry to back him up; he does, and the jury declares that it has heard enough. The jury members vote aloud, one at a time, and after each vote, the crowd rejoices. It is unanimously decided that Darnay will be set free. At this declaration, tears are shed and the prisoner is embraced, and he is carried, in a chair with a red flag and cap draped over it, by a cheering crowd to his apartment. He sees Lucie, and she falls into his arms. He kisses Lucie and grasps the hands of Dr. Manette and Mr. Lorry, and Lucie says she must thank God on her knees for saving Charles. She lays her head on her father's chest, as he had laid his on hers so many years ago. He feels happy that he has finally been recompensed for his years of suffering, and he tells Lucie that she must not be weak and tremble, as he has saved her husband.

Topic Tracking: Resurrection 9

Book 3, Chapter 7

Charles returns to his wife in the apartment in Paris. As Lucie, Charles, their daughter and Dr. Manette are sitting in their apartment the evening of his release from prison (while Jerry and Miss Pross have gone out to gather supplies for the evening meal), they hear footsteps on the stairs, followed by a knock on the door. Lucie, distressed, asks her father to hide Charles. Her father tells her to be calm, as he has saved her husband. He answers the door. Four men wearing red caps and carrying weapons enter the room and demand Charles. Charles presents himself and is told that he is once again being taken prisoner. He is told that he is being summoned back to the Conciergerie for tomorrow, and he will find out why then. Dr. Manette, stunned, asks the men if they know who he is; they say yes. He asks to know why this is happening. They tell him Charles has been denounced by Monsieur and Madame Defarge, and one other citizen who they refuse to name.

Book 3, Chapter 8

Miss Pross and Jerry, unaware of the events taking place at home, are stopped at a wine shop when Miss Pross is shocked to see her long-lost brother, Solomon. He tells her not to call him by that name; she calls him brother and chastises him for speaking so sternly to her. Jerry stares at the man and doesn't say a word. The man takes them out and asks her what she wants; she begins to cry and calls him cruel for greeting her in such a way. He tells her he is an official and that if she doesn't want to put him in danger, she must leave him alone. Jerry then touches the man on the shoulder and asks him if his name is John Solomon or Solomon John. The man asks him what he means; Jerry says he can't remember what the man called himself back in England. Jerry says he knew the man's name had two syllables and that he knows who he is, as the man was once a spy witness at the Bailey.

Topic Tracking: Fate 9

He repeats again that he cannot remember what the man called himself in England. "Barsad," chimes in another man. Jerry exclaims that that is indeed the name. The speaker who uttered it is Sydney Carton; he tells Miss Pross not to be alarmed, that he arrived yesterday and visited with Mr. Lorry, with whom it was agreed that Carton should not present himself until he could make himself useful. He adds that he wishes she had a better-employed brother than Barsad, whom he calls a sheep of the prisons (a slang word meaning spy). He asks Barsad if he will accompany him to Tellson's to speak about a private matter. Barsad asks if he is threatening him; Carton says no. The spy turns to his sister and tells her that if anything negative comes of it, it will be her doing. But he agrees to go.

He brings Barsad to Mr. Lorry's at Tellson's; Mr. Lorry remarks that he has an association with the name and the face. He tells Mr. Lorry that Barsad is Miss Pross' brother and that Charles has been arrested again. Mr. Lorry is shocked and dismayed. Carton admits he is shaken by Dr. Manette's inability to prevent the arrest, and Mr. Lorry solemnly agrees. Carton remarks that he wants to play a game; the stake he is playing for is his friend in the Conciergerie. The spy coolly tells him he will need to have good cards. He remarks that he knows that Barsad is a spy and that he represents himself to his employers under a false name, and that this is a very good card to have. He tells Barsad to look over his hand. Barsad appeals to Mr. Lorry; Carton replies that he will play his ace shortly. Barsad asks Carton if he would not feel guilty by causing his friend, Miss Pross, to lose a brother; Carton coolly replies that he believes it would be a favor to her. He is so unflappable as to be intimidating to Barsad. Carton replies that he has yet another card; he mentions the friend and fellow spy who also testified against Darnay in England--Roger Cly. Barsad replies that Cly is dead and has been for several years. Mr. Lorry looks at Jerry Cruncher and notices that his hair is standing on end. Jerry asks Barsad if he put Cly in his coffin; Barsad replies yes. Then Jerry asks him who took him out. Barsad is stunned and asks what he means. Jerry declares that Cly was never in his grave and exclaims that he'll have his own head taken off if Cly was ever in it. Carton remarks that this is indeed a strong card, that he knows Barsad is in cahoots with another English aristocrat and spy who has feigned his own death. Barsad admits defeat and adds that he only got out of England at the risk of being killed and that Cly never would have gotten out if he hadn't feigned his own death. He turns to Carton and tells him that he must return soon to the prison and that if Carton has a proposal for him, he needs to hear it soon. Carton asks Barsad if he is a turnkey at the Conciergerie. Barsad replies that there is no possible way a prisoner could escape. Carton repeats his question and asks if the man can come and go from the Conciergerie as he pleases; the man replies that he is sometimes and that he can pass in and out when he chooses. He tells the man he now wants to speak with him privately.

Book 3, Chapter 9

After a moment, Carton emerges from the room and tells Mr. Lorry that not much has come of their arrangement; he has gained access to Darnay, but that is all. Mr. Lorry says that this will never save Charles. Carton agrees sadly and tells Mr. Lorry that he is a dear friend to him and that he would not respect Mr. Lorry's sorrow more if he were Carton's father. Mr. Lorry is touched and clasps Carton's hand. Carton tells Mr. Lorry not to communicate Carton's presence to Lucie, as he does not want to get her hopes up that he could do something for her. Carton asks how Lucie is; Mr. Lorry tells him that she is anxious and unhappy but still very beautiful. Carton heaves a long, wistful sigh. After a while, Carton walks Mr. Lorry to the Manette's apartment, and when Mr. Lorry goes up, Carton stands in the courtyard for awhile, gazing up at Lucie's window. He walks toward the prison at La Force, thinking to himself that he is tracing Lucie's steps, as she used to walk there daily.

Outside the prison, he sees the woodcutter. They strike up a conversation, in which the depraved woodcutter exclaims happily that there were sixty-three executions that day, and that they were committed in less time than it took him to smoke two pipes of tobacco. Carton chats with him amiably but is secretly revolted. After awhile, he stops at a chemist's shop and purchases some packets of powder. Still restless, he continues walking throughout the night, all the while thinking of a phrase that was read at his father's grave: "I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die." Book 3, Chapter 9, pg. 311 The phrase comes to him over and over during his walk. After sunrise, he goes to the Conciergerie, where Charles' trial is about to take place. He sees Lucie, Dr. Manette, and Mr. Lorry, but he hides in the back. All eyes in the courtroom are on the jury, which includes a bloodthirsty-looking Jacques Three. A member of the jury reads the details of Darnay's case and announces that Darnay has been openly denounced by three people--Ernest Defarge, his wife Thérèse, and Dr. Alexandre Manette. At the reading of Dr. Manette's name, the court erupts into an uproar, and Dr. Manette leaps to his feet, exclaiming that this denunciation is a fraud and demanding to know who would accuse him of denouncing his own son-in-law. The court calls Defarge to testify; Defarge says that when he cared for Dr. Manette after he was freed, the doctor did not know his own name and that he only knew himself by the name One Hundred Five, North Tower, where he had been imprisoned. Defarge says that he vowed to search out this cell when the Bastille fell, and he did so on the very day it did. There, he said, he found a paper in a hole in the chimney of the cell that Dr. Manette had written while he was a prisoner. He gives the paper to the President, who says that it must be read aloud.

Book 3, Chapter 10

The paper is read aloud. It is Dr. Manette's written story, written after he had been in prison ten years, describing the circumstances under which he had been imprisoned. He wrote that one night, as he was out walking, a carriage pulled up to him and demanded that he get inside, as the men in the carriage needed him to see someone who was in need of medical attention. Dr. Manette agreed to go on behalf of a patient who might need him. He believes the two men are identical twin brothers; for clarity's sake, he refers to the most authoritative and outspoken brother as the older brother and the quiet one as the younger brother. The brothers take him to a solitary house out in the country, where he is brought inside to see the patient--a beautiful young woman, lying in bed with her arms tied to her side, screaming one phrase over and over, almost rhythmically: "My husband, my father, and my brother!" after which she would count to twelve and say "Hush." She does this unceasingly, with no variation. The brothers tell him she has been doing this for a whole day. Dr. Manette remarks that the woman must have some kind of association with the number twelve. The men tell Dr. Manette there is another patient. He is startled but follows them to another room in the back, a loft over a stable. There he sees a young man of no more than seventeen lying on a pile of hay, having suffered a sharp puncture wound. The older brother explains that the boy has fallen by the younger brother's sword. He says this without a trace of pity or emotion. Dr. Manette tries to tend to the young boy, who asks him to leave him alone. With great difficulty, the boy tells his side of the story--that he, his sister (the shrieking woman) and his sister's husband had been tenants of the two brothers. He says the brothers were extremely cruel to them--charging them exorbitantly high taxes, letting their pet birds feed on the poor family's crops, and generally made to suffer miserable poverty at their hands. Dr. Manette notes in his letter that this is the first time he can acknowledge having seen true oppression.

Topic Tracking: Oppression/Class Struggle 15

The boy says that his sister's husband was ill, and that the brothers harnessed him to a cart like an animal and made him plow the fields, only freeing him for a noon meal. At night, the husband was forced to stand outside and quiet the frogs, so the nobles' sleep would not be disturbed. After a few days of this, the husband, having been freed from his harness for his noon meal, put his weak head on his wife's chest and sobs twelve times--once for each stroke of the bell. He died there. The dying boy says to the nobles that he draws a cross of blood upon them so that they may one day answer for their terrible crimes. He touches the wound in his chest and draws a sign of the cross in the air, then dies.

Dr. Manette goes to tend to the sister; she continues her unceasing cry for the next twenty-six hours. After a week, the woman dies. The brothers try to pay Dr. Manette, but he refuses to accept it. He leaves, trying to decide what to do about the cruelty and murder he has seen. He decides to write privately to the Minister, telling him what he saw and where it happened. He expects that the nobles' stature will grant them immunity, but he wants to do it so that it will not hang on his conscience. He keeps the matter secret even from his wife. He completes the letter one night, on the last day of the year, and it is lying in front of him, just completed, when he is told that a woman wants to see him.

He meets the woman, a young, agitated woman who tells him she is the wife of the Marquis St. Evrémonde. He makes the connection that this is the title by which the younger brother had addressed the older brother. She tells him she has suspected and discovered some of the facts of the story and her husband's role in it (and that Dr. Manette had been called). She tells him that she has heard that there was a young sister living and that it is her greatest desire to help that sister. He tells her that there is such a sister, but that beyond that, he knows nothing. She hopes he could tell her the name and abode; he writes that to that day, he is ignorant of both.

He writes that the woman was good and compassionate, and that in her carriage sat a pretty young boy of two to three years of age. She points to him and tells Dr. Manette that for the boy's sake, she will do what she can to make whatever amends she can. Whatever she has left to call her own, she will bestow to him and make it the first charge of his life to give to that injured family, if the still-living sister is ever discovered. She kisses the boy, calling him Charles, and asks if he will be faithful for her sake. The boy bravely answers yes. They leave, and Dr. Manette never sees the woman again. Later that day, he delivers the letter, not mentioning the names of the brothers, even though he knows it. That night, a man demands to see him and follows Dr. Manette's domestic, Ernest Defarge, up the stairs. The man tells him there is an urgent case and that he must follow them without delay. Once he is in the carriage and away from the house, they put a black muffler over him and tie his arms down. The Marquis removes Dr. Manette's letter from his pocket and burns it, and they take the doctor to the prison. He finishes the letter with a solemn wish:

"'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--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.'" Book 3, Chapter 10, pp. 329-330

After the letter is read, the courtroom erupts into a terrifyingly bloodthirsty cry. The jury votes unanimously that Charles Evrémonde will be beheaded within twenty-four hours.

Topic Tracking: Fate 10

Book 3, Chapter 11

After the verdict is read, Lucie begs to embrace her husband one last time; her wish is granted, and they hold each other tenderly for a few moments. She tells him their separation will break her heart and that she will pass soon, but that God will raise their daughter up as He did her. Dr. Manette begins to fall to his knees, and Darnay seizes him, exclaiming that the doctor did everything he could for him and that he thanks him with all his heart. Dr. Manette puts his hands in his hair and wrings them while letting out a shriek of anguish. Charles is taken away; Lucie looks at him radiantly, then turns to her father and lays her head on his breast. She tries to speak to him but instead falls at his feet. Carton then approaches and scoops her up. He takes her to a coach and delicately places her inside. Little Lucie begs Carton to do something to save her father; Carton embraces her, then puts her down gently. He asks if, before he leaves, he may kiss Lucie. He leans down and briefly kisses her, meanwhile murmuring something. (Little Lucie later reveals to her grandchildren that she heard him say, "A life you love.") He leaves the room and sees Dr. Manette and Mr. Lorry entering. Carton tells Dr. Manette that, as he had great influence just one day before, he should try to use it again. Dr. Manette expresses discouragement, but says that he will try and will not rest one moment. Dr. Manette adds that he is going to see the prosecutor and the president of the Tribunal, and that he should be back immediately after dark. Carton tells him he will go to Mr. Lorry's at nine to hear what Dr. Manette has been able to accomplish. Mr. Lorry follows Carton to the door and confides in him that he has no hope. Carton agrees that there is no real hope.

Book 3, Chapter 12

Sydney goes out for a walk and eventually ends up at Defarge's wine shop. He asks in French for a small amount of wine. He overhears her say that he looks remarkably like Evrémonde. Monsieur Defarge brings him his wine and bids him good evening, then drinks to the republic. Defarge goes back to the counter and tells his wife that the man looks "a little" like Evrémonde; Madame Defarge says that he looks a great deal like him. The Vengeance agrees, and says merrily that Madame Defarge looks forward with much pleasure to seeing Evrémonde tomorrow.

Carton pretends to read but eavesdrops on the conversation. Defarge remarks that Dr. Manette has suffered a great deal and that his face looked stricken when the verdict was read. Madame Defarge contemptuously replies that she has observed Dr. Manette's face to be a false friend of the Republic. Defarge remarks that Madame Defarge has also seen the anguish of Lucie Manette, which must certainly be dreadful to Dr. Manette. Spitefully, Madame Defarge replies that she has indeed observed Lucie and makes a sinister gesture miming the guillotine. Jacques Three, a member of the Tribunal, declares Madame Defarge "superb." Madame Defarge tells Jacques Three and The Vengeance that she has had "this race" on her register a long time. She tells them she has a secret that she told her husband one night, and that she will now share with them: the shrieking woman described in Dr. Manette's paper was her sister, the mortally wounded boy was her brother, and their father was her father. She asks them to ask Defarge if she tells the truth; he tells them it is so. She replies, "Then tell the Wind and Fire where to stop, but don't tell me." Book 3, Chapter 12, pg. 338 Defarge mumbles weakly, exhorting Madame to remember the kindness of the Marquis' wife, but she only repeats her phrase.

Topic Tracking: Fate 11

Carton, having heard enough, departs. He visits the prison, then returns to Mr. Lorry's quarters, where he finds Mr. Lorry pacing back and forth anxiously. Mr. Lorry reports that no one has seen or heard from Dr. Manette, who has been gone more than five hours. They are discussing where he might be when Dr. Manette suddenly enters the room. They see his face and realize there is no hope. Dr. Manette tells them that he cannot find something and that he must have it. He asks again for his shoemaker's bench and his tools, saying that he must have it and that time is pressing. They do not answer; he begs for them and begins to tear at his hair and stamp his feet on the ground.

Carton tells Mr. Lorry that Dr. Manette must be taken to Lucie but that he has a favor of urgent importance to ask him. He gives Mr. Lorry a paper enabling Dr. Manette, Lucie, and Lucie's daughter to leave the country freely. He tells Mr. Lorry that the papers could be recalled at any moment and that the family must leave the next day, as they are in great danger. He relates what he heard at the wine shop--that Madame Defarge wants to denounce the entire Manette family. He tells Mr. Lorry that he, Mr. Lorry, can save them all by doing one thing: make preparations for the family to leave the country at two p.m. sharp. Mr. Lorry readily agrees. Carton tells him that he will meet them at that time, and the moment he arrives, they must depart immediately. Mr. Lorry asks if he should wait for Carton under all circumstances. Carton says that he has given Mr. Lorry his certificate along with all the others and that they should wait for nothing but his arrival before departing to England. He helps Mr. Lorry take Dr. Manette out, and in the courtyard of Lucie's apartment, he looks up at the light in the window of her room. Before he leaves, he gives it a blessing and a farewell.

Book 3, Chapter 13

Darnay sits alone in his cell, awaiting his fate. He tries valiantly to steel himself for what he knows is coming, but it is difficult, as he can still see his wife's face. He writes long letters to Lucie and her father, and he writes a letter to Mr. Lorry explaining his worldly affairs. In his writing, he never thinks of Carton. He writes the letters and goes to sleep, knowing that it will be his last night alive. He awakens in the morning and paces his cell as the hours pass. Finally, he hears the clock strike one, knowing he is to be removed from his cell at two. He hears voices outside his cell and hears a man saying in low English that he has never seen him here, and the man tells someone else to go inside and that he will wait near.

The door opens, and Darnay looks up to see Carton. Carton looks so bright, so remarkable, that Darnay believes he might be hallucinating. But Carton begins to speak, and Darnay realizes it is him. He asks Carton if he is a prisoner; Carton says no, and that he came here to bring him a request from his wife. Charles wrings his hands and asks what the request is. Carton tells Darnay that he has no time to ask why he brings this request or what it means. He orders him to remove his boots and to put on Carton's. He orders Darnay to swap clothing with him; Darnay does it quickly and without questions, but he tells him that to try to escape is madness and cannot be attempted. Carton tells him he is not asking him to try to escape. He orders Darnay to sit down and write what he dictates. Darnay sits down, and Carton dictates the following message, which he asks him to address to no one:

"'If you remember the words that passed between us, long ago, you will readily comprehend this when you see it. You do remember them, I know. It is not in your nature to forget them. I am thankful that the time has come, when I can prove them. That I do so is no subject for regret or grief. If it had been otherwise, I never should have used the longer opportunity. If it had been otherwise....'" Book 3, Chapter 13, pp. 349-350

At this point, Darnay's hand begins to drift off, as Carton has been slowly but surely anesthetizing him by putting a chemical on his hand and waving it near Darnay's face as he writes. Darnay puts up a struggle, but finally drifts off. Carton quickly dresses in Charles' clothes, and the Spy enters, imploring Carton to be true to his word and to carry out his part of the bargain. Carton replies that he will be true to the death. The Spy replies that seeing Carton in Darnay's clothes reassures him that the plan will work. He tells the Spy to take Charles to a coach and to tell anyone who asks that he (meaning Carton) has fainted from grief at seeing the prisoner for the last time. He tells the Spy to take Charles to the courtyard they agreed on and to place him into a carriage, and to tell Dr. Manette to use no restorative powers on him other than air. The Spy agrees, then leaves, returning shortly thereafter with two men. They collect the figure, then leave. The Spy turns to Carton and says that time is short. Carton replies that he is aware of this, and he asks them to leave him.

After awhile, the door to his cell is opened, and someone commands Citizen Evrémonde that it is time. Carton follows him, where he is brought to wait with the other fifty-one who are to be executed that day. A young woman approaches him and calls him Citizen Evrémonde; she tells him that they were prisoners together at La Force and that she remembers him. She tells him that she'd heard he was released and that she'd hoped it was true. Carton tells her he was, but he was again captured and condemned. She asks him, if they ride to the guillotine together, if she may take his hand for comfort, and that it would give her more courage. He tells her she can. As she looks at him, a look of astonishment crosses her face, as she realizes that he is not the Citizen Evrémonde she remembered. He quiets her. She asks him if he is dying for Citizen Evrémonde. He replies that he is dying for Citizen Evrémonde, and for his wife and child. The woman asks if she can hold his hand and calls him a brave stranger. He tells her she may hold his hand to the last. At the same time, a coach driving out of Paris is stopped and examined. Mr. Lorry presents papers for himself, Dr. Manette, Lucie, her daughter, and Sydney Carton. After a brief examination, in which they see that "Carton" is passed out from fainting, they are allowed to pass. They travel on, through the night.

Book 3, Chapter 14

While the fifty-two prisoners are awaiting their fate, Madame Defarge is meeting with The Vengeance and Jacques Three at the wood-sawyer's shed. She tells them that her husband has a weakness for Dr. Manette, but that she does not. She adds that Dr. Manette, his daughter, and his daughter must be executed as well. The Vengeance and Jacques Three agree heartily and excitedly. She says she can denounce Lucie for making signals to her husband while he was in prison, and that the woodcutter can back her up. The woodcutter agrees that he will do so. She tells them to visit her at eight, and she will give them the necessary information for denunciation. After the woodcutter leaves, she tells Jacques Three and The Vengeance that Lucie will be at home, in mourning, and that she will go to her. She tells The Vengeance to take her knitting and to save her her usual seat to watch the execution. Madame Defarge, by now completely devoid of all pity and human sympathy, walks over to Lucie's, hiding a loaded pistol in her bosom and a sharpened dagger in her dress. Meanwhile, at Lucie's, the entire family has departed in the coach except for Jerry Cruncher and Miss Pross. It had been decided that for everyone to leave at once would be too dangerous, and that these two should follow shortly after. Jerry and Miss Pross decide that Jerry will fetch a coach and take it to the cathedral, where Miss Pross will meet him at three (at which time they will beat a hasty retreat for England). Miss Pross, left alone and afraid, goes to a water basin and splashes her face. When she looks up, she cries out desperately, as she sees the figure of Madame Defarge. Madame looks at her coldly and demands to see Lucie. Miss Pross hastily shuts all the doors, not wanting to give away the fact that the family has fled, and refuses to oblige Madame Defarge. Madame Defarge suggests that the family has fled; she demands to have a look in one of the rooms. They get into an intense argument, and Miss Pross plants herself firmly in front of the door to the room, telling Madame Defarge that she will not budge an inch. The two get into a physical struggle, and Miss Pross grabs Madame Defarge by the waist, refusing to let her go, telling Madame Defarge she will hold her until one of them faints or dies. Madame Defarge stops striking her, and she feels at Miss Pross' waist. Gradually, her hands are at her bosom. Miss Pross looks up and sees that Madame Defarge has a gun, and she reaches up and strikes at it. She hears a loud pop and sees smoke; after it is over, she sees Madame Defarge's body, lifeless on the ground. She composes herself quickly, locks the apartment behind her, then hurries away. She crosses a bridge, dropping a key in the water, then meets Jerry in their coach. She finds that she cannot hear anything he says to her; indeed, she never hears anything again.

Book 3, Chapter 15

Citizen Evrémonde is ordered to the guillotine. The clock strikes three. The Vengeance desperately calls out for Madame Defarge, knowing that something must be wrong, as Madame Defarge would not miss the execution for anything. The stranger to whom Carton has been talking tells him that she would not be so composed if not for him. She tells him she thinks he was sent to her from Heaven. He tells her that perhaps she was sent to him. They hold hands as the line in front of them thins, as the prisoners are beheaded one by one. She asks him if she may ask him one question, telling him she is ignorant. He tells her that she may. She asks him if, after she dies and is in Heaven, if it will seem like a long wait until she is joined by her cousin, who is an orphan like herself and her only living relative. She explains that she has been unable to tell her cousin of her fate, as she cannot read or write. Carton tells her that there is no time or trouble in Heaven, and she will find comfort there. He kisses her, and his number is called. He approaches the guillotine, thinking that he sees, in the future, Lucie's family--Dr. Manette, Lucie, Charles, and their daughter--happy and restored, and that he knows he will long have a sanctuary in their hearts. He thinks to himself, of his final act on earth:

"'It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.'" Book 3, Chapter 15, pg. 374

Topic Tracking: Resurrection 10
Topic Tracking: Fate 10