A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (best free ebook reader for android .txt) ๐
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- Author: Charles Dickens
Read book online ยซA Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (best free ebook reader for android .txt) ๐ยป. Author - Charles Dickens
โIs that his child?โ said Madame Defarge, stopping in her work for the first time, and pointing her knitting-needle at little Lucie as if it were the finger of Fate.
โYes, madame,โ answered Mr. Lorry; โthis is our poor prisonerโs darling daughter, and only child.โ
The shadow attendant on Madame Defarge and her party seemed to fall so threatening and dark on the child, that her mother instinctively kneeled on the ground beside her, and held her to her breast. The shadow attendant on Madame Defarge and her party seemed then to fall, threatening and dark, on both the mother and the child.
โIt is enough, my husband,โ said Madame Defarge. โI have seen them. We may go.โ
But, the suppressed manner had enough of menace in itโnot visible and presented, but indistinct and withheldโto alarm Lucie into saying, as she laid her appealing hand on Madame Defargeโs dress:
โYou will be good to my poor husband. You will do him no harm. You will help me to see him if you can?โ
โYour husband is not my business here,โ returned Madame Defarge, looking down at her with perfect composure. โIt is the daughter of your father who is my business here.โ
โFor my sake, then, be merciful to my husband. For my childโs sake! She will put her hands together and pray you to be merciful. We are more afraid of you than of these others.โ
Madame Defarge received it as a compliment, and looked at her husband. Defarge, who had been uneasily biting his thumb-nail and looking at her, collected his face into a sterner expression.
โWhat is it that your husband says in that little letter?โ asked Madame Defarge, with a lowering smile. โInfluence; he says something touching influence?โ
โThat my father,โ said Lucie, hurriedly taking the paper from her breast, but with her alarmed eyes on her questioner and not on it, โhas much influence around him.โ
โSurely it will release him!โ said Madame Defarge. โLet it do so.โ
โAs a wife and mother,โ cried Lucie, most earnestly, โI implore you to have pity on me and not to exercise any power that you possess, against my innocent husband, but to use it in his behalf. O sister-woman, think of me. As a wife and mother!โ
Madame Defarge looked, coldly as ever, at the suppliant, and said, turning to her friend The Vengeance:
โThe 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?โ
โWe have seen nothing else,โ returned The Vengeance.
โWe have borne this a long time,โ said Madame Defarge, turning her eyes again upon Lucie. โJudge you! Is it likely that the trouble of one wife and mother would be much to us now?โ
She resumed her knitting and went out. The Vengeance followed. Defarge went last, and closed the door.
โCourage, my dear Lucie,โ said Mr. Lorry, as he raised her. โCourage, courage! So far all goes well with usโmuch, much better than it has of late gone with many poor souls. Cheer up, and have a thankful heart.โ
โI am not thankless, I hope, but that dreadful woman seems to throw a shadow on me and on all my hopes.โ
โTut, tut!โ said Mr. Lorry; โwhat is this despondency in the brave little breast? A shadow indeed! No substance in it, Lucie.โ
But the shadow of the manner of these Defarges was dark upon himself, for all that, and in his secret mind it troubled him greatly.
Calm in Storm
Doctor Manette did not return until the morning of the fourth day of his absence. So much of what had happened in that dreadful time as could be kept from the knowledge of Lucie was so well concealed from her, that not until long afterwards, when France and she were far apart, did she know that eleven hundred defenceless prisoners of both sexes and all ages had been killed by the populace; that four days and nights had been darkened by this deed of horror; and that the air around her had been tainted by the slain. She only knew that there had been an attack upon the prisons, that all political prisoners had been in danger, and that some had been dragged out by the crowd and murdered.
To Mr. Lorry, the Doctor communicated under an injunction of secrecy on which he had no need to dwell, that the crowd had taken him through a scene of carnage to the prison of La Force. That, in the prison he had found a self-appointed Tribunal sitting, before which the prisoners were brought singly, and by which they were rapidly ordered to be put forth to be massacred, or to be released, or (in a few cases) to be sent back to their cells. That, presented by his conductors to this Tribunal, he had announced himself by name and profession as having been for eighteen years a secret and unaccused prisoner in the Bastille; that, one of the body so sitting in judgment had risen and identified him, and that this man was Defarge.
That, hereupon he had ascertained, through the registers on the table, that his son-in-law was among the living prisoners, and had pleaded hard to the Tribunalโof whom some members were asleep and some awake, some dirty with murder and some clean, some sober and some notโfor his life and liberty. That, in the first frantic greetings lavished on himself as a notable sufferer under the overthrown system, it had been accorded to him to have Charles Darnay brought before the lawless Court, and examined. That, he seemed on the point of being at once released, when the tide in his favour met with some unexplained check (not intelligible to the Doctor), which led to a few words of secret conference. That, the man sitting as President had then informed Doctor Manette that the prisoner must remain in custody, but should, for his sake, be held inviolate in safe custody. That, immediately, on a signal, the prisoner was removed to the interior of the prison again; but, that he, the Doctor, had then so strongly pleaded for permission to remain and assure himself that his son-in-law was, through no malice or mischance, delivered to the concourse whose murderous yells outside the gate had often drowned the proceedings, that he had obtained the permission, and had remained in that Hall of Blood until the danger was over.
The sights he had seen there, with brief snatches of food and sleep by intervals, shall remain untold. The mad joy over the prisoners who were saved, had astounded him scarcely less than the mad ferocity against those who were cut to pieces. One prisoner there was, he said, who
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