book three chapter x of a tale of two cities by charles dickens this librivox recording is in the public domain recording by paul adams chapter x the substance of the shadow i alexandre manette unfortunate physician native of beauvais and afterwards resident in paris write this melancholy paper in my doleful cell in the bastile during the last month of the year seventeen sixty seven i write it at stolen intervals under every difficulty i design to secrete it into the wall of the chimney where i have slowly and laboriously made a place of concealment for it some pitying hand may find it there when i and my sorrows are dust these words are formed by the rusty iron point with which i write with difficulty in scrapings of soot and charcoal from the chimney mixed with blood in the last month of the tenth year of my captivity hope has quite departed from my breast i know from terrible warnings i have noted in myself that my reason will not long remain unimpaired but i solemnly declare that i am at this time in the possession of my right mind that my memory is exact and circumstantial, and that I write the truth, as I shall answer for these my last recorded words, whether they be ever read by men, or not, at the eternal judgment-seat. One cloudy moonlight night, in the third week of December, I think the twenty-second of the month, in the year 1757, I was walking on a retired part of the quay by the Seine, for the refreshment of the frosty air. at an hour's distance from my place of residence in the street of the school of medicine when a carriage came along behind me driven very fast as i stood aside to let that carriage pass apprehensive that it might otherwise run me down a head was put out at the window and a voice called to the driver to stop the carriage stopped as soon as the driver could rein in his horses and the same voice called to me by my name i answered the carriage was then so far in advance of me that two gentlemen had time to open the door and alight before i came up with it i observed that they were both wrapped in cloaks and appeared to conceal themselves as they stood side by side near the carriage door i also observed that they both looked of about my own age or rather younger and that they were greatly alike in stature manner voice and, as far as I could see, face, too."'You are Dr. Manette?'said one."'I am.'"'Dr. Manette, formerly of Beauvais,'said the other,"'the young physician, originally an expert surgeon, who, within the last year or two, has made a rising reputation in Paris.
Gentlemen,'I returned,"'I am that Dr. Manette of whom you speak so graciously.'"'We have been to your residence,'said the first. and not being so fortunate as to find you there and being informed that you were probably walking in this direction we followed in the hope of overtaking you were you pleased to enter the carriage the manner of both was imperious and they both moved as these words were spoken so as to place me between themselves and the carriage door they were armed i was not gentlemen said i Pardon me, but I usually inquire who does me the honour to seek my assistance, and what is the nature of the case to which I am summoned? 'The reply to this was made by him who had spoken second."'Doctor, your clients are people of condition. As to the nature of the case, our confidence in your skill assures us that you will ascertain it for yourself better than we can describe it. Enough. Will you please to enter the carriage?' i could do nothing but comply and i entered it in silence they both entered after me the last springing in after putting up the steps the carriage turned about and drove on at its former speed i repeat this conversation exactly as it occurred i have no doubt that it is word for word the same i describe everything exactly as it took place constraining my mind not to wander from the task where i made the broken marks that follow here i leave off for the time and put my paper in its hiding-place broken mark the carriage left the streets behind passed the north barrier and emerged upon the country road at two-thirds of a league from the barrier i did not estimate the distance at that time but afterwards when i traversed it it struck out of the main avenue and presently stopped at a solitary house we all three alighted and walked by a damp soft footpath in a garden where a neglected fountain had overflowed to the door of the house it was not opened immediately in answer to the ringing of the bell and one of my two conductors struck the man who opened it with his heavy riding-glove across the face there was nothing in this action to attract my particular attention for i had seen common people struck more commonly than dogs but the other of the two being angry likewise struck the man in like manner with his arm the look and bearing of the brothers were then so exactly alike that i then first perceived them to be twin brothers From the time of our alighting at the outer gate, which we found locked, and which one of the brothers had opened to admit us, and had relocked, I had heard cries proceeding from an upper chamber. I was conducted to this chamber straight, the cries growing louder as we ascended the stairs, and I found a patient, in a high fever of the brain, lying on a bed. The patient was a woman of great beauty, and young, assuredly not much past. twenty, her hair was torn and ragged, and her arms were bound to her sides with sashes and handkerchiefs. I noticed that these bonds were all portions of a gentleman's dress. On one of them, which was a fringe scarf for a dress of ceremony, I saw the armorial bearings of a noble, and the letter E. I saw this within the first minute of my contemplation of the patient. for in her restless strivings she had turned over on her face on the edge of the bed had drawn the end of the scarf into her mouth and was in danger of suffocation my first act was to put out my hand to relieve her breathing and in moving the scarf aside the embroidery in the corner caught my sight i turned her gently over placed my hands upon her breast to calm her and keep her down and looked into her face her eyes were dilated and wild and she constantly uttered piercing shrieks and repeated the words my husband my father and my brother and then counted up to twelve and said hush for an instant and no more she would pause to listen and then the piercing shrieks would begin again and she would repeat the cry my husband my father and my brother and would count up to twelve and say hush there was no variation in the order or the manner there was no cessation but the regular moment's pause in the utterance of these sounds how long i asked has this lasted to distinguish the brothers i will call them the elder and the younger by the elder i mean him who exercised the most authority it was the elder who replied since about this hour last night she has a husband a father and a brother a brother i do not address her brother he answered with great contempt no she has some recent association with the number twelve the younger brother impatiently rejoined with twelve o'clock see gentlemen said i still keeping my hands upon her breast how useless i am as you have brought me if i had known what i was coming to see i could have come provided as it is time must be lost. There are no medicines to be obtained in this lonely place.'The elder brother looked to the younger, who said haughtily,"'There's a case of medicines here,'and brought it from a closet, and put it on the table.
Broken mark. i opened some of the bottles smelt them and put the stoppers to my lips if i had wanted to use anything save narcotic medicines that were poisons in themselves i would not have administered any of those do you doubt them asked the younger brother you see monsieur i am going to use them i replied and said no more i made the patient swallow with great difficulty and after many efforts the dose that i desired to give as i intended to repeat it after a while and as it was necessary to watch its influence i then sat down by the side of the bed there was a timid and suppressed woman in attendance wife of the man downstairs who had retreated into a corner the house was damp and decayed indifferently furnished evidently recently occupied and temporarily used some thick old hangings had been nailed up before the windows to deaden the sound of the shrieks they continued to be uttered in their regular succession with the cry my husband my father and my brother the counting up to twelve and hush the frenzy was so violent that I had not unfastened the bandages restraining the arms. But I had looked to them to see that they were not painful.
The only spark of encouragement in the case was that my hand upon the sufferer's breast had this much soothing influence that for minutes at a time it tranquilised the figure. It had no effect upon the cries. No pendulum could be more regular.
For the reason that my hand had this effect, I assume, I had sat by the side of the bed for half an hour, with the two brothers looking on, before the elder said, There is another patient. I was startled, and asked, Is it a pressing case? You had better see, he carelessly answered, and took up a light. Broken mark. The other patient lay in a back room across a second staircase, which was a species of loft over a stable.
There was a low plastered ceiling to a part of it. The rest was open to the ridge of the tiled roof, and there were beams across. Hay and straw were stored in that portion of the place, faggots for firing, and a heap of apples in sand.
I had to pass through that part, to get at the other. My memory is circumstantial and unshaken. I try it with these details, and I see them all, in this my cell in the Bastille, near the close of the tenth year of my captivity, as I saw them all that night.
On some hay on the ground, with a cushion thrown under his head, lay a handsome peasant boy, a boy of not more than seventeen at the most. He lay on his back, with his teeth set, his right hand clenched on his breast, and his glaring eyes looking straight upward. I could not see where his wound was, as I kneeled on one knee over him, but I could see that he was dying of a wound from a sharp point."'I am a doctor, my poor fellow,'said I."'Let me examine it.'"'I do not want it examined,'he answered."'Let it be! 'It was under his hand, and I soothed him to let me move his hand away. The wound was a sword-thrust, received from twenty to twenty-four hours before, but no skill could have saved him if it had been looked to without delay.
He was then dying fast. As I turned my eyes to the elder brother, I saw him looking down at this handsome boy whose life was ebbing out, as if he were a wounded bird, or hare, or rabbit, not at all as if he were a fellow-creature."'How has this been done, monsieur?'said I. crazed young common dog a serf forced my brother to draw upon him and has fallen by my brother's sword like a gentleman there was no touch of pity sorrow or kindred humanity in this answer the speaker seemed to acknowledge that it was inconvenient to have that different order of creature dying there and that it would have been better if he had died in the usual obscure routine of his vermin kind he was quite incapable of any compassionate feeling about the boy, or about his fate. The boy's eyes had slowly moved to him as he had spoken, and they now slowly moved to me."'Doctor, they are very proud, these nobles, but we common dogs are proud too sometimes. They plunder us, outrage us, beat us, kill us, but we have a little pride left sometimes. She, have you seen her, Doctor? ' the shrieks and the cries were audible there though subdued by the distance he referred to them as if she were lying in our presence i said i have seen her she is my sister doctor they have their shameful rights these nobles in the modesty and virtue of our sisters many years but we have had good girls among us i know it and have heard my father say so she was a good girl she was betrothed to a good young man too a tenant of his we were all tenants of his that man who stands there the other of his brother the worst of a bad race it was with the greatest difficulty that the boy gathered bodily force to speak but his spirit spoke with a dreadful emphasis we were so robbed by that man who stands there as all we common dogs are by those superior beings taxed by him without mercy obliged to work for him without pay obliged to grind our corn at his mill obliged to feed scores of his tame birds on our wretched crops and forbidden for our lives to keep a single tame bird of our own pillaged and plundered to that degree that when we chanced to have a bit of meat we ate it in fear with the door barred and the shutters closed that his people should not see it and take it from us i say we were so robbed and hunted and were made so poor that our father told us it was a dreadful thing to bring a child into the world and that what we should most pray for was that our women might be barren and our miserable race die out i had never before seen the sense of being oppressed bursting forth like a fire i had supposed that it must be latent in the people somewhere but i had never seen it break out until i saw it in the dying boy nevertheless doctor my sister married he was ailing at that time poor fellow and she married her lover that she might tend and comfort him in our cottage dog-hut, as that man would call it.
She had not been married many weeks, though when that man's brother saw her, and admired her, and asked that man to lend her to him, for what a husband's among us! He was willing enough, but my sister was good and virtuous, and hated his brother with a hatred as strong as mine. What did the two then to persuade her husband? been to use his influence with her to make her willing?
The boy's eyes, which had been fixed on mine, slowly turned to the looker-on, and I saw in the two faces that all he said was true. The two opposing kinds of pride confronting one another, I can see, even in this Bastille, the gentlemen's all negligent indifference, the peasants'all trodden-down sentiment and passionate revenge. you know doctor that it is among the rights of these nobles to harness us common dogs to carts and drivers they so harnessed him and drove him you know that it is among their rights to keep us in their grounds all night quieting the frogs in order that their noble sleep may not be disturbed they kept him out in the unwholesome mists at night and ordered him back into his harness in the day but he was not persuaded no taken out of harness one day at noon to feed if he could find food he sobbed twelve times once for every stroke of the bell and died on her bosom nothing human could have held life in the boy but his determination to tell all that was wrong he forced back the gathering shadows of death as he forced his clenched right hand to remain clenched and to cover his wound.
Then with that man's permission, and even with his aid, his brother took her away, in spite of what I know she must have told his brother, and what that is will not be long unknown to you, doctor, if it is now. His brother took her away for his pleasure and diversion for a little while. I saw her pass me on the road.
When I took the tidings home our father's heart burst. he never spoke one of the words that filled it i took my young sister for i have another to a place beyond the reach of this man and where at least she will never be his vassal then i tracked the brother here and last night climbed in a common dog but sword in hand where is the loft window it was somewhere here the room was darkening to his sight the world was narrowing around him i glanced about me and saw that the hay and straw were trampled over the floor as if there had been a struggle she heard me and ran in i told her not to come near us till he was dead he came in and first tossed me some pieces of money then struck at me with a whip but i though a common dog struck at him as to make him draw let him break into as many pieces as he will the sword that he stained with my common blood he drew to defend himself thrust at me with all his skill for his life my glance had fallen but a few moments before on the fragments of a broken sword lying among the hay that weapon was a gentleman's in another place lay an old sword that seemed to have been a soldier's. Now lift me up, doctor, lift me up. Where is he? He is not here, I said, supporting the boy, and thinking that he referred to the brother.
He, proud as these nobles are, he is afraid to see me. Where is the man who was here? Turn my face to him. I did so, raising the boy's head against my knee. But— invested for the moment with extraordinary power he raised himself completely, obliging me to rise too, or I could not have still supported him."'Marquis,'said the boy, turned to him with his eyes open wide, and his right hand raised,"'in the days when all these things are to be answered for, I summon you and yours, to the last of your bad race, to answer for them.' i mark this cross of blood upon you as a sign that i do it in the days when all these things are to be answered for i summon your brother the worst of the bad race to answer for them separately i mark this cross of blood upon him as a sign that i do it twice he put his hand to the wound in his breast and with his forefinger drew a cross in the air he stood for an instant with the finger yet raised and as it dropped he dropped with it and i laid him down dead broken mark when i returned to the bedside of the young woman i found her raving in precisely the same order of continuity i knew that this might last for many hours and that it would probably end in the silence of the grave i repeated the medicines i had given her and i sat at the side of the bed until the night was far advanced she never abated the piercing quality of her shrieks never stumbled in the distinctness or the order of her words they were always my husband my father and my brother one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve this lasted twenty-six hours from the time when i first saw her i had come and gone twice and was again sitting by her when she began to falter i did what little could be done to assist that opportunity and by and by she sank into a lethargy and lay like the dead it was as if the wind and rain had lulled at last after a long and fearful storm i released her arms and called the woman to assist me to compose her figure and the dress she had torn it was then that i knew her condition to be that of one in whom the first expectations of being a mother have arisen and it was then that i lost the little hope i had had of her is she dead asked the marquis whom i will still describe as the elder brother coming booted into the room from his horse not dead said i but like to die what strength there is in these common bodies he said looking down at her with some curiosity there is prodigious strength i answered him in sorrow and despair he first laughed at my words and then frowned at them he moved a chair with his foot near to mine ordered the woman away and said in a subdued voice doctor finding my brother in this difficulty with these hinds i recommended that your aid should be invited your reputation is high and as a young man with your fortune to make you are probably mindful of your interest the things that you see here are things to be seen and not spoken of i listened to the patient's breathing and avoided answering do you honour me with your attention doctor monsieur said i in my profession the communications of patients are always received in confidence i was guarded in my answer for i was troubled in my mind what i had heard and seen her breathing was so difficult to trace that i carefully tried the pulse and the heart there was life and no more looking round as i resumed my seat i found both the brothers intent upon me broken mark i write with so much difficulty the cold is so severe i am so fearful of being detected and consigned to an underground cell and total darkness that i must abridge this narrative there is no confusion or failure in my memory it can recall and could detail every word that was ever spoken between me and those brothers she lingered for a week towards the last i could understand some few syllables that she said to me by placing my ear close to her lips she asked me where she was and i told her who i was and i told her it was in vain that i asked her for her family name she faintly shook her head upon the pillow and kept her secret as the boy had done i had no opportunity of asking her any question until I had told the brother she was sinking fast and could not live another day.
Until then, though no one was ever presented to her consciousness save the woman and myself, one or other of them had always jealously sat behind the curtain at the head of the bed when I was there. But when it came to that, they seemed careless what communication I might hold with her, as if, the thought passed through my mind, I were dying too. I always observed that their pride bitterly resented, the younger brothers, as I call him, having crossed swords with a peasant, and that peasant a boy.
The only consideration that appeared to affect the mind of either of them was the consideration that this was highly degrading to the family, and was ridiculous. As often as I caught the younger brothers'eyes, their expression reminded me that he disliked me deeply. simply for knowing what i knew from the boy.
He was smoother and more polite to me than the elder, but I saw this. I also saw that I was an encumbrance in the mind of the elder, too. My patient died two hours before midnight, at a time by my watch answering almost to the minute when I had first seen her. i was alone with her when her forlorn young head drooped gently on one side and all her earthly wrongs and sorrows ended the brothers were waiting in a room downstairs impatient to ride away i had heard them alone at the bedside striking their boots with their riding-whips and loitering up and down at last she is dead said the elder when i went in she is dead said i "'I congratulate you, my brother,'were his words as he turned around. He had before offered me money, which I had postponed taking. He now gave me a rouleau of gold. I took it from his hand, but laid it on the table. I had considered the question, and had resolved to accept nothing. Pray excuse me,'said I,"'under the circumstances—'No. They exchanged looks.
but bent their heads to me as I bent mine to them, and we parted without another word on either side. Broken mark! I am weary, weary, weary, worn down by misery. I cannot read what I have written with this gaunt hand. Early in the morning the rouleau of gold was left at my door in a little box with my name on the outside from the first i had anxiously considered what i ought to do i decided that day to write privately to the minister stating the nature of the two cases to which i had been summoned and the place to which i had gone in effect stating all the circumstances i knew what court influence was and what the immunity of the nobles were and i expected that the matter would never be heard of but i wished to relieve my own mind i had kept the matter a profound secret even from my wife and this too i resolved to state in my letter i had no apprehension whatever of my real danger but i was conscious that there might be danger for others if others were compromised by possessing the knowledge that i possessed i was much engaged that day and could not complete my letter that night i rose long before my usual time next morning to finish it was the last day of the year the letter was lying before me just completed when i was told that a lady waited who wished to see me broken mark i am growing more and more unequal to the task i have set myself it is so cold so dark my senses are so benumbed and the gloom upon me is so dreadful the lady was young engaging and handsome but not marked for long life she was in great agitation she presented herself to me as the wife of the marquis saint evremonde i connected the title by which the boy addressed the elder brother, with the initial letter embroidered on the scarf, and had no difficulty in arriving at the conclusion that I had seen that nobleman very lately.
My memory is still accurate, but I cannot write the words of our conversation. I suspect that I am watched more closely than I was, and I know not at what times I may be watched. She had in part suspected, and in part discovered, the main facts of the cruel story of her husband's share in it and my being resorted to. She did not know that the girl was dead. Her hope had been, she said in great distress, to show her in secret a woman's sympathy.
Her hope had been to avert the wrath of heaven from a house that had long been hateful to the suffering many. She had reasons for believing that there was a young sister living, and her greatest desire was to help. that sister i could tell her nothing but that there was such a sister beyond that i knew nothing her inducement to come to me relying on my confidence had been the hope that i could tell her the name and place of abode whereas to this wretched hour i am ignorant of both broken marks these scraps of paper fail me one was taken from me with a warning yesterday i must finish my record to-day she was a good compassionate lady and not happy in her marriage how could she be the brother distrusted and disliked her and his influence was all opposed to her she stood in dread of him and in dread of her husband too when i handed her down to the door there was a child a pretty boy from two to three years old in her carriage for his sake doctor she said pointing to him in tears i would do all i can to make what poor amends i can he will never prosper in his inheritance otherwise i have a presentiment that if no other innocent atonement is made for this it will one day be required of him what i have left to call my own it is little beyond the worth of a few jewels i will make it the first charge of his life to bestow with the compassion and lamenting of his dead mother on this injured family if the sister can be discovered she kissed the boy and said caressing him it is for thine own dear sake thou wilt be faithful little charles the child answered her bravely yes i kissed her hand and she took him in her arms and went away caressing him i never saw her more as she had mentioned her husband's name in the faith that i knew it i added no mention of it to my letter i sealed my letter, and, not trusting it out of my own hands, delivered it myself that day.
That night, the last night of the year, towards nine o'clock, a man in a black dress rang at my gate, demanding to see me, and softly followed my servant, Ernest Defarge, a youth, upstairs. When my servant came into the room where I sat with my wife—Oh, my wife, beloved of my heart, my fair young English wife! —I said to her,—'What's the matter?
' We saw the man who was supposed to be at the gate, standing silent behind him."'An urgent case in the Rue Saint-Honoré,'he said. It would not detain me. He had a coach in waiting. It brought me here. It brought me to my grave. When I was clear of the house, a black muffler was drawn tightly over my mouth from behind, and my arms were pinioned. The two brothers crossed the road from a dark... corner and identified me with a single gesture the marquis took from his pocket the letter i had written showed it me burnt it in the light of a lantern that was held and extinguished the ashes with his foot not a word was spoken i was brought here i was brought to my living grave if it had pleased god to put it in the hard heart of either of the brothers in all these frightful years to grant me any tidings of my dearest wife so much as to let me know by a word whether alive or dead i might have thought that he had not quite abandoned them but now i believe that the mark of the red cross is fatal to them and that they have no part in his mercies and them and their descendants to the last of their race i alexandre manette unhappy prisoner do this last night of the year seventeen sixty seven in my unbearable agony denounce to the times when all these things shall be answered for I denounce them to heaven and to earth. A terrible sound arose when the reading of this document was done, a sound of craving, an eagerness, that had nothing articulate in it but blood. The narrative called up the most revengeful passions of the time, and there was not a head in the nation but must have dropped before it. little need in presence of that tribunal and that auditory to show how the defarges had not made the paper public with the other captured bastille memorials borne in procession and had kept it biding their time little need to show that this detested family name had long been anathematized by saint antoine and was wrought into the fatal register the man never trod ground whose virtues and services would have sustained him in that place that day against such denunciation. And all the worse for the doomed man that the denouncer was a well-known citizen, his own attached friend, the father of his wife. One of the frenzied aspirations of the populace was for imitations of the questionable public virtues of antiquity, and for sacrifices and self-immolations on the people's altar. Therefore, when the President said, else had his own head quivered on his shoulders, that the good physician of the Republic would deserve better still of the Republic by rooting out an obnoxious family of aristocrats, and would doubtless feel a sacred glow and joy in making his daughter a widow and her child an orphan, there was wild excitement, patriotic fervour, not a touch of human sympathy. much influence around him has that doctor murmured madame defarde smiling to the vengeance save him now my doctor save him at every juryman's vote there was a roar another and another roar and roar unanimously voted at heart and by descent an aristocrat an enemy of the republic a notorious oppressor of the people back to the conciergerie