A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (best young adult book series .TXT) ๐
Description
A doctor is released from the Bastille after being falsely imprisoned for almost eighteen years. A young woman discovers the father sheโs never known is not dead but alive, if not entirely well. A young man is acquitted of being a traitor, due in part to the efforts of a rather selfish lout who is assisting the young manโs attorney. A man has a wine shop in Paris with a wife who knits at the bar. These disparate elements are tied together as only Dickens can, and in the process he tells the story of the French Revolution.
Charles Dickens was fascinated by Thomas Carlyleโs magnum opus The French Revolution; according to Dickensโ letters, he read it โ500 timesโ and carried it with him everywhere while he was working on this novel. When he wrote to Carlyle asking him for books to read on background, Carlyle sent him two cartloads full. Dickens mimicked Carlyleโs style, his chronology, and his overall characterization of the revolution; although A Tale of Two Cities is fiction, the historical events described are largely accurate, sometimes exactly so. Even so, Dickens made his name and reputation on telling stories full of characters one could be invested in, care about, and despise, and this novel has all of those and more. It also, in its first and last lines, has two of the most famous lines in literature. With the possible exception of A Christmas Carol, it is his most popular novel, and according to many, his best.
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- Author: Charles Dickens
Read book online ยซA Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (best young adult book series .TXT) ๐ยป. Author - Charles Dickens
She had moved from the wall of the garret, very near to the bench on which he sat. There was something awful in his unconsciousness of the figure that could have put out its hand and touched him as he stooped over his labour.
Not a word was spoken, not a sound was made. She stood, like a spirit, beside him, and he bent over his work.
It happened, at length, that he had occasion to change the instrument in his hand, for his shoemakerโs knife. It lay on that side of him which was not the side on which she stood. He had taken it up, and was stooping to work again, when his eyes caught the skirt of her dress. He raised them, and saw her face. The two spectators started forward, but she stayed them with a motion of her hand. She had no fear of his striking at her with the knife, though they had.
He stared at her with a fearful look, and after a while his lips began to form some words, though no sound proceeded from them. By degrees, in the pauses of his quick and laboured breathing, he was heard to say:
โWhat is this?โ
With the tears streaming down her face, she put her two hands to her lips, and kissed them to him; then clasped them on her breast, as if she laid his ruined head there.
โYou are not the gaolerโs daughter?โ
She sighed โNo.โ
โWho are you?โ
Not yet trusting the tones of her voice, she sat down on the bench beside him. He recoiled, but she laid her hand upon his arm. A strange thrill struck him when she did so, and visibly passed over his frame; he laid the knife down softly, as he sat staring at her.
Her golden hair, which she wore in long curls, had been hurriedly pushed aside, and fell down over her neck. Advancing his hand by little and little, he took it up and looked at it. In the midst of the action he went astray, and, with another deep sigh, fell to work at his shoemaking.
But not for long. Releasing his arm, she laid her hand upon his shoulder. After looking doubtfully at it, two or three times, as if to be sure that it was really there, he laid down his work, put his hand to his neck, and took off a blackened string with a scrap of folded rag attached to it. He opened this, carefully, on his knee, and it contained a very little quantity of hair: not more than one or two long golden hairs, which he had, in some old day, wound off upon his finger.
He took her hair into his hand again, and looked closely at it. โIt is the same. How can it be! When was it! How was it!โ
As the concentrated expression returned to his forehead, he seemed to become conscious that it was in hers too. He turned her full to the light, and looked at her.
โShe had laid her head upon my shoulder, that night when I was summoned outโ โshe had a fear of my going, though I had noneโ โand when I was brought to the North Tower they found these upon my sleeve. โYou will leave me them? They can never help me to escape in the body, though they may in the spirit.โ Those were the words I said. I remember them very well.โ
He formed this speech with his lips many times before he could utter it. But when he did find spoken words for it, they came to him coherently, though slowly.
โHow was this?โ โWas it you?โ
Once more, the two spectators started, as he turned upon her with a frightful suddenness. But she sat perfectly still in his grasp, and only said, in a low voice, โI entreat you, good gentlemen, do not come near us, do not speak, do not move!โ
โHark!โ he exclaimed. โWhose voice was that?โ
His hands released her as he uttered this cry, and went up to his white hair, which they tore in a frenzy. It died out, as everything but his shoemaking did die out of him, and he refolded his little packet and tried to secure it in his breast; but he still looked at her, and gloomily shook his head.
โNo, no, no; you are too young, too blooming. It canโt be. See what the prisoner is. These are not the hands she knew, this is not the face she knew, this is not a voice she ever heard. No, no. She wasโ โand He wasโ โbefore the slow years of the North Towerโ โages ago. What is your name, my gentle angel?โ
Hailing his softened tone and manner, his daughter fell upon her knees before him, with her appealing hands upon his breast.
โO, sir, at another time you shall know my name, and who my mother was, and who my father, and how I never knew their hard, hard history. But I cannot tell you at this time, and I cannot tell you here. All that I may tell you, here and now, is, that I pray to you to touch me and to bless me. Kiss me, kiss me! O my dear, my dear!โ
His cold white head mingled with her radiant hair, which warmed and lighted it as though it were the light of Freedom shining on him.
โIf you hear in my voiceโ โI donโt know that it is so, but I hope it isโ โif you hear in my voice any resemblance to a voice that once was sweet music in your ears, weep for it, weep for it! If you touch, in touching my hair, anything that recalls a beloved head that lay on your breast when you were young and free, weep for it, weep for it! If, when I hint to you of a Home that is before us, where I will be true to you with all my duty and with all my faithful service, I bring back the remembrance of a Home long
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