ect to be purely and truthfully as you have stated it. I believe your intention is to perpetuate and not to weaken the ties between me and my other and far dearer self. If she should ever tell me that you are essential to her perfect happiness, I will give her to you. If there were, Charles Darnay, if there were, the young man had taken his hand gratefully. Their hands were joined as the doctor spoke. Any fancies, any reasons, any apprehensions, anything whatsoever, new or old, against the man she really loved, the direct responsibility thereof, not lying on his head, they should all be obliterated for her sake. She is everything to me. More to me than suffering. More to me than wrong. More to me, well, this is idle talk. So strange was the way in which he faded into silence and so strange his fixed look when he had ceased to speak that Darnay felt his own hand turn cold in the hand that slowly released and dropped it. You said something to me, said Dr. Minette, breaking into a smile. What was it you said to me? He was at a loss, how to answer, until he remembered having spoken of a condition. Relieved as his mind reverted to that, he answered, your confidence in me ought to be returned with full confidence on my part. My present name, though, but slightly changed from my mother's, is not, as you will remember, my own. I wish to tell you what that is and why I am in England. Stop, said the doctor of Boubaix. I wish it that I may the better deserve your confidence and have no secret from you. Stop. For an instant the doctor even had his two hands at his ears. For another instant even had his two hands laid on Darnay's lips. Tell me when I ask you, not now, if your suit should prosper, if Lucy should love you, you shall tell me on your marriage morning. Do you promise? Willingly. Give me your hand. She will be home directly and it is better she should not see us together tonight. Go, God bless you. It was dark when Charles Darnay left him and it was an hour later and darker when Lucy came home. She hurried into the room alone for Miss Prost had gone straight upstairs and was surprised to find his reading chair empty. My father, she called to him. Father, dear, nothing was said in answer, but she heard a low hammering sound in his bedroom. Passing lightly across the intermediate room, she looked in at his door and came running back frightened, crying to herself with her blood all chilled. What shall I do? What shall I do? Her uncertainty lasted but a moment. She hurried back and tapped at his door and softly called to him. The noise ceased at the sound of her voice and he presently came out to her and they walked up and down together for a long time. She came down from her bed to look at him in his sleep that night. He slept heavily and his tray of shoemaking jewels and his old unfinished work were all as usual. End of chapter. Book two, chapter 11 of A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Richard Reiman, audibly speaking.com. A companion picture. Sidney, said Mr. Stryver on that self-same night or morning to his jackal, makes another bowl of punch. I have something to say to you. Sidney had been working double tides that night and the night before and the night before that and a good many nights in succession, making a grand clearance among Mr. Stryver's papers before the setting in of the long vacation. The clearance was affected at last. The Stryver arrears were handsomely fetched up. Everything was got rid of until November should come with its fogs atmospheric and fogs legal and bring gris to the mill again. Sidney was none the livelier and none the soberer for so much application. He had taken a deal of extra wet tallying to pull him through the night. A correspondingly extra quantity of wine had preceded the tallying and he was in a very damaged condition as he had now pulled his turban off and threw it into the basin in which he had steeped it at intervals for the last six hours. Are you mixing that other bowl of punch? Said Stryver of the Portley with his hands in his waistband glancing round from the sofa where he lay on his back. I am. Now look here. I'm going to tell you something that will rather surprise you and that perhaps will make you think me not quite as shrewd as you usually do think me. I intend to marry. Do you? Yes. And not for money. What do you say now? I don't feel disposed to say much. Who is she? Yes. Do I know her? Yes. I am not going to guess at five o'clock in the morning with my brains frying and sputtering in my head. If you want me to guess, you must ask me to dinner. Well then, I'll tell you, said Stryver, coming slowly into a sitting posture.   Come, rejoins Stryver, laughing boastfully. Though I don't prefer any claim to being the soul of romance, for I hope I know better. Still, I am a tenor sort of fellow than you. You are luckier if you mean that. I don't mean that. I mean, I am a man of more, more say gallantry while you are about it, suggested Carton. Well, I'll say gallantry. My meaning is that I am a man, said Stryver, inflating himself at his friend as he made the punch. Who cares to be more agreeable? Who takes more pains to be agreeable? Who knows better how to be agreeable in a woman's society than you do? Go on, said Sidney Carton. No, but before I go on, said Stryver, shaking his head in his bullying way, I'll have this out with you. You've been at Dr. Minet's house as much as I have, or more than I have. Why, I have been ashamed of your morose-ness there.  It should be very beneficial to a man in your practice at the bar to be ashamed of anything, returns Sidney. You ought to be much obliged to me. You shall not get off in that way, rejoined Stryver, shouldering the rejoinder at him.   Sidney drank a bumper of the punch he had made and laughed. Look at me, said Stryver, squaring himself. I have less need to make myself agreeable than you have, being more independent in circumstances. Why do I do it? I never saw you do it yet, muttered Carton. I do it because it's politic. I do it on principle. And look at me, I get on. You don't get on with your account of your matrimonial intentions, answered Carton with a careless air. I wish you would keep to that. As to me, will you never understand that I am incorrigible? He asked the question with some appearance of scorn. You have no business to be incorrigible, was his friend's answer, delivered in no very soothing tone. I have no business to be, at all, that I know of, said Sidney Carton. Who is the lady? Now don't let my announcement of the name make you uncomfortable, Sidney, said Mr. Stryver, preparing him with ostentatious friendliness for the disclosure he was about to make, because I know you don't mean half you say. And if you meant it all, it would be of no importance. I make this little preface because you once mentioned the young lady to me in sliding terms. I did? Certainly, and in these chambers. Sidney Carton looked at his punch and looked at his complacent friend, drank his punch, and looked at his complacent friend. You made mention of the young lady as a golden-haired doll. The young lady is Miss Manette. If you had been a fellow of any sensitiveness or delicacy of feeling in that kind of way, Sidney, I might have been a little resentful of your employing in such a designation, but you are not. You want that sense altogether. Therefore I am no more annoyed when I think of the expression than I should be annoyed by a man's opinion of a picture of mine who had no eye for pictures or a piece of music of mine who had no ear for music. Sidney Carton drank the punch at a great rate, drank it by bumpers looking at his friend. Now you know all about it, Sid, said Mr. Striver. I don't care about fortune. She is a charming creature and I have made up my mind to please myself. On the whole I think I can afford to please myself. She will have in me a man already pretty well off and a rapidly rising man and a man of some distinction. It is a piece of good fortune for her, but she is worthy of good fortune. Are you astonished? Carton, still drinking the punch, rejoined. Why should I be astonished? You approve? Carton, still drinking the punch, rejoined. Why should I not approve? Well, said his friend, Striver, you take it more easily than I fancied you would and are less mercenary on my behalf than I thought you would be, though to be sure you know well enough by this time that your ancient chum is a man of a pretty strong will. Yes, Sidney, I have had enough of this style of life with no other as a change from it. I feel that it is a pleasant thing for a man to have a home when he feels inclined to go to it, when he doesn't he can stay away and I feel that this manette will tell well in any station and will always do me credit. So I have made up my mind. And now Sidney, oh boy, I want to say a word to you about your prospects. You are in a bad way, you know. You really are in a bad way. You don't know the value of money. You live hard. You'll knock up one of these days and be ill and poor. You really ought to think about a nurse. The prosperous patronage with which he said it made him look twice as big as he was and four times as offensive. Now let me recommend you, pursued striver, to look it in the face. I have looked it in the face in my different way. Look it in the face, you, in your different way. Marry. Provide somebody to take care of you. Never mind your having no enjoyment of women's society nor understanding of it nor tact for it. Find out somebody. Find out some respectable woman with a little property, somebody in the landlady way or lodging-ledding way and marry her against a rainy day. That's the kind of thing for you. Now think of it, Sidney. I'll think of it, said Sidney. End of chapter. Book II, chapter 12 of A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Richard Reiman, audiblyspeaking.com. The Fellow of Delegacy. Mr. Striver, having made up his mind to that magnanimous bestowal of good fortune on the doctor's daughter, resolved to make her happiness known to her before he left town for the long vacation. After some mental debating of the point, he came to the conclusion that it would be as well to get all the preliminaries done with, and they could then arrange at their leisure whether he should give her his hand a week or two before Nicolamus term or in the little Christmas vacation between it and Hillary. As to the strength of his case, he had not a doubt about it, but clearly saw his way to the verdict. Argued with the jury on substantial worldly grounds, the only grounds ever worth taking into account, it was a plain case and had not a weak spot in it. He called himself for the plaintiff. There was no getting over his evidence. The counsel for the defendant threw up his brief, and the jury did not even turn to consider. After trying it, Striver C.J. was satisfied that no planer case could be. Accordingly, Mr. Striver inaugurated the long vacation with a formal proposal to take Miss Minette to Vauxhall Gardens, that failing to Ramele. That, unaccountably failing too, it behooved him to present himself in Soho and there declare his noble mind. Towards Soho, therefore, Mr. Striver shouldered his way from the temple while the bloom of the long vacation's infancy was still upon it. Anybody who had seen him projecting himself into Soho while he was yet on St. Dunstan's side of Temple Bar, bursting in his full-blown way along the pavement to the jostlement of all weaker people might have seen how safe and strong he was. His way, taking him past Telsons, and he, both banking at Telsons and knowing Mr. Lorry as the intimate friend of the Minettes, it entered Mr. Striver's mind to enter the bank and reveal to Mr. Lorry the brightness of the Soho horizon. So he pushed open the door with the weak rattle in its throat, stumbled down the two steps, got past the two ancient cashiers, and shouldered himself into the musty black closet where Mr. Lorry sat at great books ruled for figures with perpendicular iron bars at his window as if that were ruled for figures too and everything under the clouds were a sum. Hello, said Mr. Striver. How do you do? I hope you are well. It was Striver's grand peculiarity that he always seemed too big for any place or space. He was so much too big for Telsons that old clerks in distant corners looked up with looks of remonstrance as though he squeezed them against the wall. The house itself, magnificently reading the paper quite in the far-off perspective, lowered displeased as if the Striver head had been butted into its responsible waistcoat. The discreet Mr. Lorry said in a sample tone of the voice he would recommend under the circumstances. How do you do, Mr. Striver? How do you do, sir? And shook hands. There was a peculiarity in his manner of shaking hands always to be seen in any clerk at Telsons who shook hands with the customer when the house pervaded the air. He shook in a self-abnegating way as one who shook for Telson and Coe. Can I do anything for you, Mr. Striver? asked Mr. Lorry in his business character. Why, no, thank you. This is a private visit to yourself, Mr. Lorry. I have come for a private word. Oh, indeed, said Mr. Lorry, bending down his ear while his eyes strayed to the house far off. I am going, said Mr. Striver, leaning his arms confidentially on the desk, whereupon, although it was a large double one, there appeared to be not half-desk enough for him. I am going to make an offer of myself in marriage to your agreeable little friend, Miss Manette, Mr. Lorry. Oh, dear me, cried Mr. Lorry, rubbing his chin and looking at his visitor dubiously. Oh, dear me, sir, repeated Striver, drawing back. Oh, dear you, sir. What may your meaning be, Mr. Lorry? My meaning, answered the man of business, is, of course, friendly and appreciative and that it does you the greatest credit and, in short, my meaning is everything you could desire but really you know, Mr. Striver, Mr. Lorry paused and shook his head at him in the oddest manner as if he were compelled against his will to add internally. You know there really is so much, too much of you. Well, said Striver, slapping the desk with his contentious hand, opening his eyes wider and taking a long breath. If I understand you, Mr. Lorry, I'll be hanged. Mr. Lorry adjusted his little wig at both ears as a means towards that end and bit the feather of a pen. Damn it all, sir, said Striver, staring at him. Am I not eligible? Oh, dear, yes, yes. Oh, yes, you're eligible, said Mr. Lorry. If you say eligible, you are eligible. Am I not prosperous, asked Striver. Oh, if you come to prosperous, you are prosperous, said Mr. Lorry. And advancing. If you come to advancing, you know, said Mr. Lorry, delighted to be able to make another admission. Nobody can doubt that.  Well, I, were you going there now, asked Mr. Lorry. Straight, said Striver, with a plump of his fist on the desk. Then I think I wouldn't if I was you. Why, said Striver, now I'll put you in a corner, forensically shaking a forefinger at him. You are a man of business and bound to have a reason. State your reason. Why wouldn't you go? Because, said Mr. Lorry, I wouldn't go on such an object without having some cause to believe that I should succeed. Damn me, cried Striver, but this beats everything. Mr. Lorry glanced at the distant house and glanced at the angry Striver. Here's a man of business, a man of years, a man of experience. In a bank, said Striver, and having summed up three leading reasons for complete success, he says there's no reason at all.  When I speak of success, I speak of success with the young lady, and when I speak of causes and reasons to make success probable, I speak of causes and reasons that will tell as such with the young lady. The young lady, my good sir, said Mr. Lorry, mildly tapping the Striver arm. The young lady, the young lady goes before all. Then you mean to tell me Mr. Lorry, said Striver, squaring his elbows, that it is your deliberate opinion that the young lady at present in question is a mincing fool? Not exactly so. I mean to tell you, Mr. Striver, said Mr. Lorry, red-name, that I will hear no disrespectful word of that young lady from any lips, and that if I knew any man, which I hope I do not, whose taste was so coarse, and whose temper was so overbearing that he could not restrain himself from speaking disrespectfully of that young lady at this desk, not even Telsen should prevent my giving him a piece of my mind. The necessity of being angry in a suppressed tone had put Mr. Striver's blood vessels into a dangerous state when it was his turn to be angry. Mr. Lorry's veins, methodical as their course could usually be, were in no better state now it was his turn. This is what I mean to tell you, sir, said Mr. Lorry.  He broke the awkward silence by saying, this is something new to me, Mr. Lorry. You deliberately advised me not to go to Soho and offer myself, myself, Mr. Striver of the King's Bench Bar? Do you ask me for my advice, Mr. Striver? Yes, I do. Very good. Then I give it, and you have repeated it correctly. And all I can say of it is, laughs Striver with a vexed laugh, that this ha! beats everything past, present, and to come. Now understand me, pursued Mr. Lorry. As a man of business, I am not justified in saying anything about this matter, for as a man of business, I know nothing of it, but as an old fellow who has carried Miss Manette at his arms, who is the trusted friend of Miss Manette and of her father, too, and who has a great affection for them both I have spoken. The confidence is not of my seeking recollect. Now you think I may not be right? Not I, said Striver, whistling. I can't undertake to find third parties in common sense. I can only find it for myself. I suppose sense in certain quarters. You suppose mincing bread and butter nonsense. It's new to me, but you are right, I dare say. But I suppose, Mr. Striver, I claim to characterize for myself and understand me, sir, said Mr. Lorry, quickly flushing again. I will not, not even at Telsons, have it characterized for me by any gentleman breathing. There, I beg your pardon, said Striver. Granted, thank you. Well, Mr. Striver, I was about to say. It might be painful to you to find yourself mistaken. It might be painful to Dr. Manette to have the task of being explicit with you. It might be very painful to Miss Manette to have the task of being explicit with you. You know the terms upon which I have the honor and happiness to stand with the family. If you please, committing you in no way, representing you in no way, I will undertake to correct my advice by the exercise of a little new observation and judgment expressly brought to bear upon it. If you should then be dissatisfied with it, you can but test its soundness for yourself. If, on the other hand, you should be satisfied with it and it should be what it now is, it may spare all sides what is best spared. What do you say? How long would you keep me in town? Oh, it is only a question of a few hours. I could go to Soho in the evening and come to your chambers afterwards. Then I say yes, said Striver. I won't go up there now. I am not so hot upon it as that comes to. I say yes and I shall expect you to look in tonight. Good morning. Then Mr. Striver turned and burst out of the bank, causing such a concussion of air on his passage through that to stand up against it, bowing behind the two counters, required the utmost remaining strength of the two ancient clerks. Those venerable and feeble persons were always seen by the public in the act of bowing and were popularly believed when they had bowed a customer out, still to keep on bowing in the empty office until they bowed another customer in. The barrister was keen enough to divine that the banker would not have gone so far in his expression of opinion on any less solid ground than moral certainty. Unprepared as he was for the large pill he had to swallow, he got it down. And now, said Mr. Striver, shaking his forensic finger at the temple in general when it was down, my way out of this is to put you all in the wrong. It was a bit of the art of an old Bailey tactician in which he found great relief. You shall not put me in the wrong young lady, said Mr. Striver. I'll do that for you. Accordingly, when Mr. Laurie called that night his latest 10 o'clock, Mr. Striver, among the quantity of books and papers littered out for the purpose, seemed to have nothing less on his mind than the subject of the morning. He even showed surprise when he saw Mr. Laurie and was all together in an absent and preoccupied state. Well, said that good-natured emissary after a full half hour of bootless attempts to bring him around to the question. I have been to Soho. To Soho, repeated Mr. Striver coldly. Oh, to be sure. What am I thinking of? And I have no doubt, said Mr. Laurie, that I was right in the conversation we had. My opinion is confirmed and I reiterate my advice. I assure you, returned Mr. Striver, in the friendliest way. Then I am sorry for it on your account and sorry for it on the poor father's account. I know this must always be a sore subject with the family. Let us say no more about it. I don't understand you, said Mr. Laurie. I dare say not, rejoined Striver, nodding his head in a smoothing and final way. No matter, no matter. But it does matter, Mr. Laurie urged. No, it doesn't. I assure you it doesn't. Having supposed that there was sense when there is no sense and a laudable ambition where there is not a laudable ambition, I am well out of my mistake and no harm is done. Young women have committed similar follies often before and have repented them in poverty and obscurity often before. In an unselfish aspect, I am sorry that the thing has dropped because it would have been a bad thing for me in a worldly point of view. In a selfish aspect, I am glad that the thing has dropped because it would have been a bad thing for me in a worldly point of view. It is hardly necessary to say I could have gained nothing by it. 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. Laurie, you cannot control the mincing vanities and giddinesses 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 lady better than I do. You were right. It never would have done. Mr. Laurie was sub-taken aback that he looked quite stupidly at Mr. Stryver shouldering him towards the door with an appearance of showering generosity, forbearance and goodwill on his airing head. Make the best of it, my dear sir, said Stryver. Say no more about it. Thank you again for allowing me to sound you. Good night. Mr. Laurie was out in the night before he knew where he was. Mr. Stryver was lying back on his sofa winking at his ceiling. End of chapter. Book 2, Chapter 13 of A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Richard Reiman, audiblyspeaking.com. The fellow of no delicacy. If Sidney Carton ever shone anywhere, he certainly never shone in the house of Dr. Manette. He had been there often during a whole year and had always been the same moody and morose lounger there. When he cared to talk, he talked well, but the cloud of caring for nothing which overshadowed him with such a fatal darkness was very rarely pierced by the light within him. And yet he did care something for the streets that environed that house and for the senseless stones that made their pavements. Many a night he vaguely and unhappily wandered there when wine had brought no transitory gladness to him. Many a dreary daybreak revealed his solitary figure lingering there and still lingering there when the first beams of the sun brought into strong relief removed beauties of architecture, inspires of churches and lofty buildings as perhaps the quiet time brought some sense of better things, elves forgotten and unattainable into his mind. Of late, the neglected bed in the temple court had known him more scantily than ever and often when he had thrown himself upon it no longer than a few minutes, he had got up again and haunted that neighborhood. On a day in August when Mr. Striver, after notifying to his jackal that he had thought better of that marrying matter, had carried his delicacy into debonchire and when the sight and scent of flowers in the city streets had some waves of goodness in them for the worst of health for the sickliest and of youth for the oldest, Sidney's feet still trod those stones. From being irresolute and purposeless, his feet became animated by an intention and in the working out of that intention they took him to the doctor's door. He was shown upstairs and found Lucy at her work alone. She had never been quite at her ease with him and received him with some little embarrassment as he seated himself near her table. But looking up at his face in the interchange of the first few common places she observed a change in it. I fear you are not well, Mr. Carton. No, but the life I lead, Ms. Minette, is not conducive to health. What is to be expected of or by such profligates? Is it not, forgive me, I have begun the question on my lips, a pity to live no better life?  Then why not change it? Looking gently at him again, she was surprised and sad and to see that there were tears in his eyes. There were tears in his voice too, as he answered. It is too late for that. I shall never be better than I am. I shall sink lower and be worse.  The table trembled in the silence that followed. She had never seen him softened and was much distressed. He knew her to be so without looking at her and said, pray forgive me, Ms. Minette. I break down before the knowledge of what I want to say to you. Will you hear me? If it will do you any good, Mr. Carton, if it would make you happier, it would make me very glad. God bless you for your sweet compassion. He unshaded his face after a little while and spoke steadily. Don't be afraid to hear me. Don't shrink from anything I say. I am like one who died young. All my life might have been. No, Mr. Carton. I'm sure that the best part of it might still be. I'm sure that you might be much, much worthier of yourself. Say of you, Ms. Minette, and although I know better, although in the mystery of my own wretched heart I know better, I shall never forget it. She was pale and trembling. He came to her relief with a fixed despair of himself which made the interview unlike any other that could have been holding. If it had been possible, Ms. Minette, that you could have returned the love the man you see before yourself, flung away, wasted, drunk, and poor creature of misuse as you know him to be, he would have been conscious this day and hour in spite of his happiness that he would bring you to misery, bring you to sorrow and repentance, blight you, disgrace you, pull you down with him. I know very well that you can have no tenderness for me. I ask for none. I am even thankful that it cannot be. Without it, can I not save you, Mr. Carton? Can I not recall you? Forgive me again. To a better course? Can I in no way repay your confidence? I know this is a confidence, she modestly said after a little hesitation and in earnest tears. I know you would say this to no one else. Can I turn it to no good account for yourself, Mr. Carton? No, Ms. Minette, to none. If you will hear me through a very little more, all you can ever do for me is done. I wish you to know that you have been the last dream of my soul. In my degradation I have not been so degraded but that the sight of you with your father and of this home made such a home by you has stirred old shadows that I thought had died out of me. Since I knew you, I have been troubled by a remorse that I thought would never reproach me again and have heard whispers from old voices impelling me upward that I thought were silent forever. I have had unformed ideas of striving afresh, beginning anew, shaking off sloth and sensuality and fighting out the abandoned fight, a dream, all a dream that ends in nothing and leaves the sleeper where he lay down but I wish you to know that you inspired it. Will nothing of it remain? Oh, Mr. Carton, think again, try again. No, Miss Manette, all through it I have known myself to be quite undeserving and yet I have had the weakness and have still the weakness to wish you to know with what a sudden mastery you kindled me, heap of ashes that I am, into fire, a fire, however, inseparable in its nature from myself, quickening nothing, lighting nothing, doing no service, idly burning away. Since it is mine as fortune, Mr. Carton, to have made you more unhappy than you were before you knew me, don't say that, Miss Manette, for you would have reclaimed me if anything could. You will not be the cause of my becoming worse. Since the state of your mind that you describe is at all events attributable to some influence of mine, this is what I mean. If I can make it plain, can I use no influence to serve you? Have I no power for good with you at all? The utmost good that I am capable of now, Miss Manette, I have come here to realize. Let me carry through the rest of my misdirected life, the remembrance that I opened my heart to you last of all the world and that there was something left in me at this time which you could deplore and pity. Which I entreated you to believe again and again most fervently with all my heart was capable of better things, Mr. Carton. Entreat me to believe it no more, Miss Manette. I have proved myself and I know better. I distress you, I draw fast to an end. Will you let me believe when I recall this day that the last confidence of my life was reposed in your pure and innocent breast and that it lies there alone and will be shared by no one? If that will be a consolation to you, yes. Not even by the dearest one ever to be known to you? Mr. Carton, she answered after an agitated pause. The secret is yours, not mine, and I promise to respect it. Thank you, and again, God bless you. He put her hand to his lips and moved towards the door. Be under no apprehension, Miss Manette, of my ever-resuming disconversation by so much as a passing word. I will never refer to it again. If I were dead, that could not be sure than it is henceforth. In the hour of my death I shall hold sacred the one good remembrance, and shall thank and bless you for it, that my last avowal of myself was made to you, and that my name and faults and miseries were gently carried in your heart. May it otherwise be light and happy. He was so unlike what he had ever shown himself to be, and it was so sad to think how much he had thrown away and how much he every day kept down and perverted that Lucy Manette wept mournfully for him as he stood looking back at her. Be comforted, he said. I am not worth such feeling, Miss Manette. An hour or two hence, and the low companions and low habits that I scorn but yield to will render me less worthy such tears as those than any wretch who creeps along the streets. Be comforted, but within myself I shall always be towards you what I am now, though outwardly I shall be what you have here to foresee me. The last supplication but one I make to you is that you will believe this of me. I will, Mr. Carton. My last supplication of all is this, and with it I will relieve you of a visitor with whom I well know you have nothing in unison, and between whom in you there is an impassable space. It is useless to say it I know, but it rises out of my soul.  If my career were of that better kind, that there was an opportunity or capacity of sacrifice in it, I would embrace any sacrifice for you and for those dear to you. Try to hold me in your mind at some quiet times as ardent and sincere in this 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. Oh, 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. He said farewell, said Alast, God bless you, and left her. End of chapter. Book two, chapter 14 of A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, recording by Richard Reiman, audiblyspeaking.com. The Honest Tradesman. To the eyes of Mr. Jeremiah Cruncher, sitting on his stool in Fleet Street with his grittly urchin beside him, a vast number and variety of objects in movement were every day presented. Who could sit upon anything in Fleet Street during the busy hours of the day and not be dazed and deafened by two immense processions, one ever-tending westward with the sun, the other ever-tending eastward from the sun, both ever-tending to the plains beyond the range of red and purple where the sun goes down. With his straw in his mouth, Mr. Cruncher sat watching the two streams, like the heathen rustic who has for several centuries been on duty watching one stream, saving that Jerry had no expectation of their ever-running dry. Nor would it have been an expectation of a hopeful kind since a small part of his income was derived from the pilotage of timid women, mostly of a full habit and past the middle term of life, from Telsen's side of the tides to the opposite shore. Brief as such companionship was in every separate instance, Mr. Cruncher never failed to become so interested in the lady as to express a strong desire to have the honor of drinking her very good health. And it was from the gifts bestowed upon him towards the execution of this benevolent purpose that he recruited his finances as just now observed. Time was when a poet sat upon a stool in a public place and mused in the sight of men. Mr. Cruncher sitting on a stool in a public place but not being a poet mused as little as possible and looked about him. It fell out that he was thus engaged in a season when crowds were few and belated women few and when his affairs in general were so unprosperous as to awaken a strong suspicion in his breast that Mrs. Cruncher must have been flopping in some pointed manner when an unusual concourse pouring down Fleet Street Westward attracted his attention. Looking that way, Mr. Cruncher made out that some kind of funeral was coming along and that there was a popular objection to this funeral which engendered uproar. Young Jerry, said Mr. Cruncher, turning to his offspring. It's a barion. Hurrah, father, cried Young Jerry. The young gentleman uttered this exultant sound with mysterious significance. The elder gentleman took the cry so ill that he watched his opportunity and smote the young gentleman on the ear. What do you mean? What are you, a hurrah in that? What do you want to convey to your own father, you young rip? This boy is getting too many from me, said Mr. Cruncher, surveying him. Him and his hurrahers. Don't let me hear no more of you or you shall feel some more of me. You hear? I weren't doing no harm. Young Jerry protested, rubbing his cheek. Drop it then, said Mr. Cruncher. I won't have none of your no harms. Get atop of that there seat and look at the crowd.  They were bawling and hissing around a dingy hearse and dingy morning coach in which morning coach there was only one mourner dressed in the dingy trappings that were considered essential to the dignity of the position. The position appeared by no means to please him however, with an increasing rabble surrounding the coach, deriding him, making grimaces at him and incessantly groaning and calling out, yeah spies, yeah spies. With many compliments too numerous and forcible to repeat. Furals had at all times a remarkable attraction for Mr. Cruncher. He always pricked up his senses and became excited when a funeral passed tells us. Naturally, therefore a funeral with this uncommon attendance excited him greatly and he asked of the first man who ran against him, what is it brother? What's it about? I don't know, said the man. Spies, yeah spies. He asked another man, who is it? I don't know, returned the man clapping his hands to his mouth nevertheless and vociferating in a surprising heat and with the greatest ardor. Spies, yeah spies. At length the person better informed on the merits of the case tumbled against him and from this person he learned that the funeral was the funeral of one Roger Cly. Was he a spy? Asked Mr. Cruncher. Old Bailey spy returned his informant. Yeah, old Bailey spies. Why to be sure exclaimed Jerry, recalling the trial at which he had assisted. I've seen him, dead is he? Dead is mutton returned the other and can't be too dead.  The idea was so acceptable in the prevalent absence of any idea that the crowd caught it up with eagerness and loudly repeating the suggestion to have him out and to pull him out mobbed the two vehicles so closely that they came to a stop. On the crowds opening the coach doors, the one mourner scuffled out by himself and was in their hands for a moment but he was so alert and made such good use of his time that in another moment he was scouring away up a by street after shedding his cloak, hat, long hat band, white pocket hackerchief and other symbolical tears. These the people tore to pieces and scattered far and wide with great enjoyment while the tradesmen hurriedly shut up their shops. For a crowd in those times stopped at nothing and was a monster much dreaded. They had already got the length of opening the hearse to take the coffin out when some brighter genius proposed instead it's being escorted to its destination amidst general rejoicing. Practical suggestions being much needed. This suggestion too was received with acclamation and the coach was immediately filled with eight inside and a dozen out while as many people got on the roof of the hearse as could by any exercise of ingenuity stick upon it. Among the first of these volunteers was Jerry Cruncher himself who modestly concealed his spiky head from the observation of Telsons in the further corner of the mourning coach. The officiating undertakers made some protest against these changes in the ceremonies but the river being alarmingly near and several voices remarking on the efficacy of cold immersion in bringing refractory members of the profession to reason the protest was faint and brief. The remodeled procession started with a chimney sweep driving the hearse advised by the regular driver who was perched beside him under close inspection for the purpose and with a pieman also attended by his cabinet minister driving the mourning coach. A bear leader, a popular street character of the time was impressed as an additional ornament before the cable car had gone far down the strand and his bear who was black and very mangy gave quite an undertaking air to that part of the procession in which he walked. Thus with beer drinking, pipe smoking, song roaring and infinite caricaturing of woe the disorderly procession went its way recruiting at every step and all the shops shutting up before it. Its destination was the old church of St. Pancras far off in the fields. It got there in course of time insisted on pouring into the burial ground finally accomplished the internment of the deceased Roger Cly in its own way and highly to its own satisfaction. The dead man disposed of and the crowd being under the necessity of providing some other entertainment for itself another brighter genius or perhaps the same conceived the humor of impeaching casual passers by as old Bailey spies and wreaking vengeance on them. Chase was given to some scores of inoffensive persons who had never been near the old Bailey in their lives in the realization of this fancy and they were roughly hustled and maltreated. The transition to the sport of window breaking and thence to the plundering of public houses was easy and natural. At last after several hours when sundry summer houses had been pulled down and some area railings had been torn up to arm the more belligerent spirits a rumor got about that the guards were coming. Before this rumor the crowd gradually melted away and perhaps the guards came and perhaps they never came and this was the usual progress of a mob. Mr. Cruncher did not assist at the closing sports but had remained behind in the churchyard to confer and condole with the undertakers. In the place had a soothing influence on him. He procured a pipe from a neighboring public house and smoked it looking in at the railings and maturely considering the spot. Jerry, said Mr. Cruncher, apostrophizing himself in his usual way. You see that there, cry that day and you see with your own eyes that he was a young and a straight maiden. Having smoked his pipe out and ruminate it a little longer he turned himself about that he might appear before the hour of closing on his station at Telsons. Whether his meditations on mortality had touched his liver or whether his general health had been previously at all amiss or whether he desired to show a little attention to an eminent man is not so much to the purpose as that he made a short call upon his medical advisor, a distinguished surgeon on his way back. Young Jerry relieved his father with dutiful interest and reported no job in his absence. The bank closed, the ancient clerks came out, the usual watch was set and Mr. Cruncher and his son went home to tea. Now I tell you where it is, said Mr. Cruncher to his wife on entering. If as an honest tridesman, my ventures go wrong tonight, I shall make sure that you've been praying again me and I shall work you for it just the same as if I seen you do it. The dejected Mrs. Cruncher shook her head. Why, you're at it before my face, said Mr. Cruncher with signs of angry apprehension. I am saying nothing. Well then don't meditate nothing. You might as well flop as meditate. You may as well go again me one way as another. Drop it all together. Yes, Jerry. Yes, Jerry, repeated Mr. Cruncher sitting down to tea. Ah, it is yes, Jerry. That's about it. You may say yes, Jerry. Mr. Cruncher had no particular meaning in these sulky corroborations, but made use of them as people not infrequently do to express general ironical dissatisfaction. You and your yes, Jerry, said Mr. Cruncher, taking a bite out of his bread and butter and seeming to help it down with the large invisible oyster out of his saucer. I think so. I believe you. You are going out tonight? Asked his decent wife when he took another bite. Yes, I am. May I go with you, father? Asked his son briskly. No, you mate.  That's where I'm going to, going a fishing. Your fishing rod gets rather rusty, don't it, father? Never you mind. Shall you bring any fish home, father? If I don't, you'll have short comments tomorrow. Returned that gentle and shaking his head. That's questions enough for you. I ain't a going out till you've been along the bed. He devoted himself during the remainder of the evening to keeping a most vigilant watch on Mrs. Cruncher and sullenly holding her in conversation that she might be prevented from meditating any petitions to his disadvantage. With this view, he urged his son to hold her in conversation also and led the unfortunate woman a hard life by dwelling on any causes of complaint he could bring against her rather than he would leave her for a moment to her own reflections. The devoutest person could have rendered no greater homage to the efficacy of an honest prayer than he did in this distrust of his wife. It was as if a professed unbeliever in ghosts should be frightened by a ghost's story. And mind you, said Mr. Cruncher, no games tomorrow. If I, as an honest tridesman, succeed in providing a jint of meter to, none of you are not touching of it and sticking to bread. If I, as an honest tridesman, am able to provide a little beer, none of you are declaring on water. When you go to Rome, do as Rome does.  Mind your realm, you know. Then he began grumbling again. With your flying into the face of your own whittles and drink, I don't know how scarce you may and make the whittles and drink here by your flopping tricks and your unfeeling conduct.  He is your in, ain't he? He says thin as a lace.  This touched young Jerry on a tender place who adjured his mother to perform her first duty and whatever else she did are neglected above all things to lay a special stress on the discharge of that maternal function. So effectively and delicately indicated by his other parent. Thus the evening wore away with the Cruncher family until young Jerry was ordered to bed and his mother, laid under similar injunctions, obeyed them. Mr. Cruncher beguiled the earlier watches of the night with solitary pipes and did not start upon his excursion until nearly one o'clock. Towards that small and ghostly hour, he rose up from his chair, took a key out of his pocket, opened a locked cupboard and brought forth a sack, a crowbar, a convenient size, a rope and a chain and other fishing tackle of that nature. Disposing these articles about him in a skillful manner, he bestowed a parting defiance on Mrs. Cruncher, extinguished the light and went out. Young Jerry who had only made a faint of undressing when he went to bed was not long after his father. Under cover of the darkness, he followed out of the room, followed down the stairs, followed down the court, followed out into the streets. He was in no uneasiness concerning his getting into the house again for it was full of lodgers and the door stood ajar all night. Impelled by a laudable ambition to study the art and mystery of his father's honest calling, Young Jerry caping as close to house fronts, walls and doorways as his eyes were close to one another held his honored parent in view. The honored parents during Northward had not gone far when he was joined by another disciple of Isaac Walton and the two trudged on together. Within half an hour from the first starting, they were beyond the winking lamps and the more than winking watchmen and were out upon a lonely road. Another fisherman was picked up here and that so silently that if Young Jerry had been superstitious, he might have supposed the second follower of the gentlecraft to have all of a sudden split himself into two. The three went on and Young Jerry went on until the three stopped under a bank overhanging the road. Upon the top of the bank was a low brick wall surmounted by an iron railing. In the shadow of bank and wall, the three turned out of the road and up a blind lane of which the wall, there risen to some eight or 10 feet high, formed one side. Crouching down in a corner, peeping up the lane, the next object that Young Jerry saw was the form of his honored parent, pretty well-defined against a watery and clouded moon, nimbly scaling an iron gate. He was soon over and then the second fisherman got over and then the third. They all dropped softly on the ground within the gate and lay there a little, listening perhaps. Then they moved away on their hands and knees. It was now Young Jerry's turn to approach the gate, which he did holding his breath. Crouching down again in a corner there and looking in, he made out the three fishermen, creeping through some rank grass and all the gravestones in the churchyard. It was a large churchyard they were in, looking on like ghosts in white while the church tower itself looked on like the ghost of a monstrous giant. They did not creep far before they stopped and stood upright and then they began to fish. They fished with a spade at first. Presently the honored parent appeared to be adjusting some instrument like a great corkscrew. Whatever tools they worked with, they worked hard until the awful striking of the church clock so terrified Young Jerry that he made off with his hair as stiff as his father's. But his long cherished desire to know more about these matters not only stopped him in his running away but lured him back again. They were still fishing perseveringly when he peeped in at the gate for the second time. But now they seem to have got a bite. There was a screwing and complaining sound down below and their bent figures were strained as if by a weight. By slow degrees the weight broke away the earth upon it and came to the surface. Young Jerry very well knew what it would be but when he saw it and saw his honored parent about to wrench it open he was so frightened being new to the site that he made off again and never stopped until he had run a mile or more. He would not have stopped then for anything less necessary than breath. It being a spectral sort of race that he ran and one highly desirable to get to the end of. He had a strong idea that the coffin he had seen was running after him and pictured as hopping on behind him bolt upright upon its narrow end always on the point of overtaking him and hopping on at his side perhaps taking his arm. It was a pursuer to shun. It was an inconsistent and ubiquitous fiend too for while it was making the whole night behind him dreadful he darted out into the roadway to avoid dark alleys fearful of its coming hopping out of them like a tropical boys kite without tail and wings. It hid in doorways too rubbing its horrible shoulders against doors and drawing them up to its ears as if it were laughing. It got into shadows on the road and lay cunningly on its back to trip him up. All this time it was incessantly hopping on behind and gaining on him so that even when the boy got to his own door he had reason for being half dead and even then it would not leave him but followed him upstairs with a bump on every stair scrambled into bed with him and bumped down dead and heavy on his breast when he fell asleep. From his oppressed slumber young Jerry in his closet was awakened after daybreak and before sunrise by the presence of his father in the family room. Something had gone wrong with him at least so young Jerry inferred from the circumstance of his holding Mrs. Cruncher by the ears and knocking the back of her head against the headboard of the bed. I told you I would, said Mr. Cruncher, and I did. Jerry, Jerry, Jerry, his wife implored. You opposed yourself to the profit of the business, said Jerry and me and my partners suffer. You was to honor and obey. Why the devil don't you? I tried to be a good wife, Jerry, the poor woman protested with tears. Is it being a good wife to oppose your husband's business? Is it honoring your husband to dishonor his business? Is it obeying your husband to disobey him on the vital subject of his business? You hadn't taken to the dreadful business then, Jerry. It's enough for you, retorted Mr. Cruncher, to be the wife of an honest triceman and not to occupy your female mind with calculations when he took to his trade or when he didn't. A honoring and obeying wife would let his tribe alone altogether. Call yourself a religious woman. If you're a religious woman, give me a irreligious one. You have no more natural sense of duty than the bed of this here Thames River has of a pile. And similarly it must be knocked into you. The altercation was conducted in a low tone of voice and terminated in the honest tradesmen's kicking off his clay soil boots and lying down at his length on the floor. After taking a timid peep at him lying on his back with his rusty hands under his head for a pillow, his son lay down too and fell asleep again. There was no fish for breakfast and not much of anything else. Mr. Cruncher was out of spirits and out of temper and kept an iron pot lit by him as a projectile for the correction of Mrs. Cruncher in case he should observe any symptoms of her saying grace. He was brushed and washed at the usual hour and set off with his son to pursue his ostensible calling. Young Jerry walking with a stool under his arm at his father's side along sunny and crowded Fleet Street was a very different young Jerry from him of the previous night running home through darkness and solitude from his grim pursuer. His cunning was fresh with the day and his qualms were gone with the night in which particulars it is not improbable that he had compheres in Fleet Street in the city of London that fine morning. Father said young Jerry as they walked along taking care to keep at arm's length and to have the stool well between them. What's a resurrection man? Mr. Cruncher came to a stop on the pavement before he answered, how should I know? I thought you know everything, father, said the artless boy. Well, returned Mr. Cruncher going on again and lifting off his hat to give his spikes free play. He's a tridesman. What's his goods, father? Asked the brisk young Jerry. His goods, said Mr. Cruncher after turning it over in his mind, is a branch of scientific goods. Person's bodies, ain't it, father? Asked the lively boy. I believe it is something of that sort, said Mr. Cruncher.  It depends upon how you develop your talents. Be careful to develop your talents and never to say no more than you can help to nobody and there's no telling at the present time what you may not come to be fit for. As young Jerry thus encouraged, went on a few yards in advance to plant the stool in the shadow of the bar, Mr. Cruncher added to himself, Jerry, you honest tridesman, there's hopes what that boy will yet be a blessing to you and a recompense to you for his mother. End of chapter. Book two, chapter 15 of A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Richard Reiman, audiblyspeaking.com. Knitting. There had been earlier drinking than usual in the wine shop of Monsieur Defarge. As early as six o'clock in the morning, sallow faces peeping through its barred windows had described other faces within, bending over measures of wine. Monsieur Defarge sold a very thin wine at the best of times but it would seem to have been an unusually thin wine that he sold at this time. A sour wine, moreover, or a sourine for its influence on the mood of those who drank it was to make them gloomy. No vivacious speck and alien flame leaped out of the pressed grape of Monsieur Defarge but a smoldering fire that burnt in the dark lay hidden in the drinks of it. This had been the third morning in succession on which there had been early drinking at the wine shop of Monsieur Defarge. It had begun on Monday and here was Wednesday come. There had been more of early brooding than drinking for many men had listened and whispered and slunk about there from the time of the opening of the door who could not have laid a piece of money on the counter to save their souls. These were to the full as interested in the place, however, as if they could have commanded whole barrels of wine and they glided from seat to seat and from corner to corner swallowing talk in lieu of drink with greedy looks. Notwithstanding an unusual flow of company, the master of the wine shop was not visible. He was not missed for nobody who crossed the threshold look for him. Nobody asked for him. Nobody wondered to see only Madame Defarge in her seat presiding over the distribution of wine with a bowl of battered small coins before her as much defaced and beaten out of their original impress as the small coinage of humanity from whose ragged pockets they had come. A suspended interest and a prevalent absence of mind were perhaps observed by the spies who looked in at the wine shop as they looked in at every place high and low from the king's palace to the criminal's jail. Games at cards languished. Players at dominoes musingly built towers with them. Drinkers drew figures on the tables with spilt drops of wine. Madame Defarge herself picked out the pattern on her sleeve with her toothpick and saw and heard something inaudible and invisible a long way off. Thus San Antoine in this finest feature of his until midday, it was high noontide when two dusty men passed through his streets and under his swinging lamps of whom one was matured Defarge, the other a mender of roads in a blue cap. All a dust and a thirst, the two entered the wine shop. Their arrival had lighted a kind of fire in the breast of San Antoine, fast spreading as they came along which stirred and flickered in flames of faces at most doors and windows. Yet no one had followed them and no man spoke when they entered the wine shop though the eyes of every man there were turned upon them. Good day, gentlemen, said Monsieur Defarge. It may have been a signal for loosening the general tongue, yet he elicited an answering chorus of, Good day, it is bad weather, gentlemen, said Defarge, shaking his head. Upon which every man looked at his neighbor and then all cast down their eyes and sat silent except one man who got up and went out. My wife, said Defarge, aloud, addressing Madame Defarge. I have traveled certain leagues with this good mender of roads called Jacques. I met him by accident a day and a half's journey out of Paris. He is a good child, this mender of roads called Jacques. Give him to drink, my wife. A second man got up and went out. Madame Defarge set wine before the mender of roads called Jacques who doffed his blue cap to the company and drank. In the breast of his blouse he carried some coarse dark bread. He ate of this between wiles and sat munching and drinking near Madame Defarge's counter. A third man got up and went out. Defarge refreshed himself with a draft of wine but he took less than was given to the stranger as being himself a man to whom it was no rarity and stood waiting until the countrymen had made his breakfast. He looked at no one present and no one now looked at him, not even Madame Defarge who had taken up her knitting and was at work. Have you finished your repast friend? He asked in due season. Yes, thank you. Come then, you shall see the apartment that I told you you could occupy. It will suit you to a marvel. Out of the wine shop into the street, out of the street into a courtyard, out of the courtyard of a steep staircase, out of the staircase into a garret formerly the garret where a white-haired man sat on a low bench stooping forward and very busy making shoes. No white-haired man was there now but the three men were there who had gone out of the wine shop singly and between them and the white-haired man afar off was the one small link that they had once looked in at him through the chinks in the wall. Defarge closed the door carefully and spoken a subdued voice. Jack one, Jack two, Jack three. This is the witness encountered by appointment by me, Jack four. He will tell you all. Speak, Jack five. The Mender of Roads blue cap in hand wiped his smarty forehead with it and said, where shall I commence, Mishore? Commence was Mishore Defarge's not unreasonable reply at the commencement. I saw him then, Mishore's, began the Mender of Roads. A year ago this running summer underneath the carriage of the marquee hanging by the chain. Behold the manner of it. I, leaving my work on the road, the sun going to bed, the carriage of the marquee slowly ascending the hill, he hanging by the chain, like this. Again, the Mender of Roads went through the whole performance in which he ought to have been perfect by that time seeing that it had been the infallible resource and indispensable entertainment of his village during a whole year. Jack one struck in and asked if he had ever seen the man before. Never answered the Mender of Roads recovering his perpendicular. Jack three demanded how he afterwards recognized him then by his tall figure said the Mender of Roads softly and with his finger at his nose. When Mishore the marquee demands that evening say what he is like, I make response all as a specter. You should have said short as a dwarf, returned Jack two. But what did I know? The deed was not then accomplished. Neither did he confide in me. Observe, under those circumstances even, I do not offer my testimony.  My faith, Mishores, I offer nothing. He is right there. Jack murmured the farge to him who had interrupted. Go on. Good said the Mender of Roads with an air of mystery. The tall man is lost and he is sought. How many months? Nine, 10, 11? No matter the number said the farge, he is well hidden but at last he is unluckily found. Go on. I am again at work upon the hillside and the sun is again about to go to bed. I am collecting my tools to descend to my cottage down in the village below where it is already dark when I raise my eyes and see coming over the hill six soldiers. In the midst of them is a tall man with his arms bound tied to his sides like this. With the aid of his indispensable cap, he represented a man with his elbows bound fast at his hips with cords that were knotted behind him. I stand aside, Mishores, by my heap of stones to see the soldiers in their prisoner pass for it is a solitary road that where any spectacle is worth looking at. And at first as they approach, I see no more than that they are six soldiers with a tall man bound and that they are almost black to my sight except on the side of the sun going to bed where they have a red edge, Mishore. Also, I see that their long shadows are on the hollow ridge on the opposite side of the road and are on the hill above it and are like the shadows of giants. Also, I see that they are covered with dust and that the dust moves with them as they come tramp, tramp. But when they advance quite near to me, I recognize the tall man and he recognizes me. Ah, but he would be well content to precipitate himself over the hillside once again as on the evening when he and I first encountered close to the same spot. He described it as if he were there and it was evident that he saw it vividly. Perhaps he had not seen much in his life. I do not show the soldiers that I recognize the tall man. He does not show the soldiers that he recognizes me. We do it and we know it with our eyes. Come on, says the chief of that company pointing into the village. Bring him fast to his tomb and they bring him faster. I follow. His arms are swell because of being bound so tight. His wooden shoes are large and clumsy and he is lame.  He imitated the action of a man's being impelled forward by the butt ends of muskets. As they descend the hill like mad men running to race, he falls. They laugh and pick him up again. His face is bleeding and covered with dust, but he cannot touch it. Thereupon they laugh again. They bring him into the village. All the village runs to look. They take him past the mill and up to the prison. All the village sees the prison gate open in the darkness of the night and swallow him like this. He opened his mouth as wide as he could and shut it with a sound snapping of his teeth. Observant of his unwillingness to mar the effect by opening it again, Defarge said, Go on, Jack. All the village pursued the mender of roads on tiptoe and in a low voice, withdraws. All the village whispers by the fountain. All the village sleeps. All the village streams of that unhappy one within the locks and bars of the prison on the crag and never to come out of it except to perish. In the morning with my tools upon my shoulder, eating my morsel of black bread as I go, I make a circuit by the prison on my way to my work. There I see him high up behind the bars with a lofty iron cage, bloody and dusty as last night, looking through. He has no hand free to wave to me. I dare not to call to him. He regards me like a dead man. Defarge and the three glanced darkly at one another. The looks of all of them were dark, repressed and revengeful as they listened to the countryman's story. The manner of all of them while it was secret was authoritative too. They had the air of a rough tribunal, Jack one and two sitting on the old pallet bed, each with his chin resting on his hand and his eyes intent on the road mender. Jack three equally intent on one knee behind them with his agitated hand always gliding over the network of fine nerves about his mouth and nose. Defarge standing between them and the narrator whom he had stationed in the light of the window by turns looking from him to them and from them to him. Go on Jack, said Defarge. He remains up there in his iron cage some days. The village looks at him by stealth for it is afraid but it always looks up from a distance at the prison on the crag. And in the evening when the work of the day is achieved and it assembles to gossip at the fountain, all faces are turned towards the prison. Formerly they were turned towards the posting house. Now they are turned towards the prison. They whisper at the fountain that although condemned to death, he will not be executed. They say the petitions have been presented in Paris showing that he was enraged and made mad by the death of his child. They say that a petition has been presented to the king himself. What do I know? It is possible. Perhaps yes, perhaps no. Listen then Jack, number one of that name, sternly interposed. Know that a petition was presented to the king and queen. All here, yourself accepted, saw the king take it in his carriage in the street sitting beside the queen.  And once again, listen Jack, said the kneeling number three. His fingers ever wandering over and over those fine nerves with a strikingly greedy air as if he hungered for something that was neither food nor drink. The guard, horse and foot surrounded the petitioner and struck him blows. You hear? I hear him ashores. Go on then, said Defarge. Again, on the other hand, they whisper at the fountain. Resumed the countrymen that he has brought down into our country to be executed on the spot and that he will very certainly be executed. They even whisper that because he has slain Monsignor and because Monsignor was the father of his tenants, serves what you will, he will be executed as a parasite. One old man says at the fountain that his right hand armed with the knife will be burnt off before his face, that into wounds which will be made in his arms, his breast and his legs, there will be poured boiling oil, melted lead, hot resin, wax and sulfur. Finally that he will be torn limb from limb by four strong horses. That old man says all this was actually done to a prisoner who made an attempt on the life of the late King Louis XV. But how do I know if he lives? I am no scholar. Listen once again, Jack, said the man with the restless hand and the craving air. The name of that prisoner was Damien's and it was all done in open day in the open streets of this city of Paris and nothing was more noticed in the vast concourse that saw it done than the crowd of ladies of quality and fashion who were full of eager attention to the last. To the last, Jack, prolonged until nightfall when he had lost two legs and an arm and still breathed and it was done. Why, how old are you? 35, said the mender of Rhodes who looked 60. It was done when you were more than 10 years old. You might have seen it. Enough said Defarge with grim impatience. Long live the devil, go on. Well, some whisper this, some whisper that. They speak of nothing else. Even the fountain appears to fall at that tomb. At length on Sunday night when all the villages asleep come soldiers winding down from the prison and their guns ring on the stones of the little street. Workmen dig, workmen hammer, soldiers laugh and sing. In the morning by the fountain, there is raised a gallows 40 feet high poisoning the water. The mender of Rhodes looked through rather than at the low ceiling and pointed as if he saw the gallows somewhere in the sky. All work is stopped, all assembled there. Nobody leads the cows out. The cows are there with the rest. At midday, the roll of drums. Soldiers have marched into the prison in the night and he is in the midst of many soldiers. He is bound as before and in his mouth there is a gag, tied so with a tight string, making him look almost as if he laughed.  On the top of the gallows is fixed the knife blade upward with its poison in the air. He has hanged there 40 feet high and his left hanging poisoning the water. They looked at one another as he used his blue cap to wipe his face, on which the perspiration had started afresh while he recalled this spectacle. It is frightful, Mishours. How can the women and the children draw water? Who can gossip of an evening under that shadow? Under it have I said. When I left the village, Monday evening as the sun was going to bed and look back from the hill, the shadow struck across the church, across the mill, across the prison, seemed to strike across the earth, Mishours, to where the sky rests upon it. The hungry man nod one of his fingers as he looked at the other three and his finger quavered with the craving that was on him. That's all, Mishours. I left at sunset, as I had been warned to do, and I walked on that night and half next day until I met, as I was warned I should, this comrade. With him I came on, now riding and now walking through the rest of yesterday and through last night. And here you see me. After a gloomy silence, the first jock said, Good, you have acted and recounted faithfully. Will you wait for us a little outside the door? Very willingly, said the mender of roads. Doom to Farge escorted to the top of the stairs and, leaving seated there, returned. The three had risen and their heads were together when he came back to the garret. I'll say you, Jacques, demanded number one, to be registered, to be registered as doom to destruction returned to Farge. Magnificent, croaked the man with the craving. The chateau and all the race, inquired the first. The chateau and all the race returned to Farge. Extermination. The hungry man repeated in a rapturous croak, Magnificent, and began gnawing another finger. Are you sure, asked Jacques, too, of the Farge, that no embarrassment can arise from our manner of keeping the register? Without doubt, it is safe, for no one beyond ourselves can decipher it. But shall we always be able to decipher it? Or I ought to say, will she? Jacques returned to Farge, drawing himself up. If madame, my wife, undertook to keep the register in her memory alone, she would not lose a word of it, not a syllable of it. Knitted in her own stitches and her own symbols, it will always be as plain to her as the sun. Confide in madame de Farge. It would be easier for the weakest paltrune that lives to erase himself from existence than to erase one letter of his name or crimes from the knitted register of madame de Farge. There was a murmur of confidence and approval, and then the man who hungered asked, is this rustic to be sent back soon? I hope so. He is very simple. Is he not a little dangerous? He knows nothing, said de Farge. At least nothing more than would easily elevate himself to a gallows of the same height. I'd charge myself with him. Let him remain with me. I will take care of him and set him on his road. He wishes to see the fine world, the king, the queen, and court. Let him see them on Sunday. What? exclaimed the hungry man, staring. Is it a good sign that he wishes to see royalty and nobility? Jacques, said de Farge, judiciously show a cat milk if you wish her to thirst for it. Judiciously show a dog his natural prey if you wish him to bring it down one day. Nothing more was said and the mender of roads being found already dozing on the topmost stair was advised to lay himself down on the pallet bed and take some rest. He needed no persuasion and was soon asleep. Worse quarters than de Farge's wine shop could easily have been found in Paris for a provincial slave of that degree. Saving for a mysterious dread of madame by which he was constantly haunted, his life was very new and agreeable. But madame sat all day at her counter, so expressly unconscious of him and so particularly determined not to perceive that his being there had any connection with anything below the surface, that he shook in his wooden shoes whenever his eye lighted on her. For he contended with himself that it was impossible to foresee what that lady might pretend next. And he felt assured that if she should take it into her brightly ornamented head to pretend that she had seen him do a murder and afterwards flay the victim, she would infallibly go through with it until the play was played out. Therefore when Sunday came, the Mender of Roads was not enchanted, though he said he was, to find that madame was to accompany Mature and himself to Versailles. It was additionally disconcerting to have madame knitting all the way there in a public conveyance. It was additionally disconcerting yet to have madame in the crowd in the afternoon, still with her knitting in her hands as the crowd waited to see the carriage of the king and queen. You work hard madame, said a man nearer. Yes, answered madame de Farge. I have a good deal to do. What do you make madame? Many things. For instance? For instance, returned madame de Farge, composedly, shrouds. The man moved a little further away as soon as he could and the Mender of Roads fanned himself with his blue cap, feeling it mightily close and oppressive. If he needed a king and queen to restore him, he was fortunate in having his remedy at hand, for soon the large-faced king and the fair-faced queen came in their golden coach, attended by the shining bull's eye of their court, a glittering multitude of laughing ladies and fine lords, and in jewels and silks and powder and splendor, and elegantly spurning figures and handsomely disdainful faces of both sexes. The Mender of Roads bathed himself so much to his temporary intoxication that he cried, long live the king, long live the queen, long live everybody and everything, as if he had never heard of ubiquitous Jacques in his time. Then there were gardens, courtyards, terraces, fountains, green banks, more king and queen, more bull's eye, more lords and ladies, more long live they all, until he absolutely wept with sentiment. During the whole of this scene, which lasted some three hours, he had plenty of shouting and weeping and sentimental company, and throughout, Defarge held him by the collar as if to restrain him from flying at the objects of his brief devotion and tearing them to pieces. Bravo, said Defarge, clapping him on the back when it was over like a patron.  The Mender of Roads was now coming to himself and was mistrustful of having made a mistake in his late demonstrations. But no, you are the fellow we want, said Defarge, in his ear. You make these fools believe that it will last forever. Then they are the more insolent and it is the nearer ended. Hey, cried the Mender of Roads, reflectively. That's true. These fools know nothing. While they despise your breath and would stop it forever and ever, in you or in a hundred like you, rather than in one of their own horses or dogs, they only know what your breath tells them. Let it deceive them then, a little longer it cannot deceive them too much. Madam Defarge looked superciliously at the client and nodded in confirmation. As to you, said she, you would shout and shed tears for anything if it made a show and a noise. Say, would you not? Truly, madam, I think so for the moment. If you were shown a great heap of dolls and were set upon them to pluck them to pieces and to spoil them for your own advantage, you would pick out the richest and gayest. Say, would you not? Truly yes, madam. Yes. And if you were shown a flock of birds unable to fly and were set upon them to strip them of their feathers for your own advantage, you would set upon the birds of the finest feathers. Would you not? It is true, madam. You have seen both dolls and birds today, said Madam Defarge, with a wave of her hand towards the place where they had last been apparent. Now, go home. End of chapter. Book II, Chapter 16 of A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Richard Reiman, audiblyspeaking.com. Still knitting. Madam Defarge and mature her husband returned amicably to the bosom of San Antoine, while a speck in a blue cap toiled through the darkness and through the dust and down the weary miles of Avenue by the wayside, slowly tending towards that point of the compass where the chateau of Mishore the Marquis, now in his grave, listened to the whispering trees. Such ample leisure had the stone faces now for listening to the trees and to the fountain that the few village scarecrows, who, in their quest for herbs to eat and fragments of dead stick to burn, strayed within sight of the great stone courtyard and terrace staircase, had it born in upon their starved fancy that the expression of the faces was altered. A rumor just lived in the village, had a faint and bare existence there, as its people had, that when the knife struck home, the faces changed, from faces of pride to faces of anger and pain, also that when that dangling figure was hauled up 40 feet above the fountain, they changed again and bore a cruel look of being avenged, which they would henceforth bear forever. In the stone face over the great window of the bed chamber where the murder was done, two fine dints were pointed out in the sculptured nose, which everybody recognized and which nobody had seen of old. And on the scarce occasion when two or three ragged peasants emerged from the crowd to take a hurried peep at Mishore the Marquis petrified, a skinny finger would not have pointed to it for a minute before they all started away among the moss and leaves, like the more fortunate hares who could find a living there. Chateau and Hut, stone face and dangling figure, the red stain on the stone floor and the pure water in the village well, thousands of acres of land, a whole province of France, all France itself lay under the night sky, concentrated into a faint hair-breathed line. So does a whole world with all its greatnesses and littlenesses lie in a twinkling star. And as mere human knowledge can split a ray of light and analyze the manner of its composition, so sublimer intelligences may read in the feeble shining of this earth of ours, every thought and act, every vice and virtue of every responsible creature on it. The Defarge's husband and wife came lumbering under the starlight in their public vehicle to that gate of Paris where onto their journey naturally tended. There was the usual stoppage at the barrier guardhouse and the usual lanterns came glancing forth for the usual examination and inquiry. Mishore Defarge alighted, knowing one or two of the soldiery there and one of the police. The latter he was intimate with and affectionately embraced. When Sam Antoine had again enfolded the Defarges in his dusky wings and they, having finally alighted near the saint's boundaries, were picking their way on foot through the black mud and offal of his streets, Madame Defarge spoke to her husband. Say then, my friend, what did Jacques of the police tell thee? Very little tonight, but all he knows. There is another spy commission for our quarter. There may be many more for all that he can say, but he knows of one. Ah, well, said Madame Defarge, raising her eyebrows with a cool business air. It is necessary to register him. How do they call that man? He is English. So much the better, his name. Bar-Sad, said Defarge, making it French by pronunciation. But he had been so careful to get it accurately that he then spelt it with perfect correctness. Bar-Sad repeated Madame. Good, Christian name, John. John Bar-Sad repeated Madame after murmuring it once to herself. Good, his appearance, is it known? Age about 40 years, height about five feet nine, black hair, complexion dark, generally rather handsome visage, eyes dark, face thin, long and shallow, nose act line but not straight, having a peculiar inclination towards the left cheek, expression therefore sinister.  He shall be registered tomorrow. They turned into the wine shop, which was closed for it was midnight. And where Madame Defarge immediately took her post at her desk, counted the small monies that had been taken during her absence, examined the stock, went through the entries in the book, made other entries of her own, checked the serving man in every possible way, and finally dismissed him to bed. Then she turned out the contents of the bowl of money for the second time and began knotting them up in her handkerchief in a chain of separate knots for safekeeping through the night. All this while Defarge, with his pipe in his mouth, walked up and down, complacently admiring but never interfering, in which condition and need, as to the business and his domestic affairs, he walked up and down through life.  I'm sure Defarge's olfactory sense was by no means delicate, but the stock of wine smelt much stronger than it ever tasted, and so did the stock of rum and brandy and aniseed. He whiffed the compound of sense away as he put down his smoked-out pipe. You are fatigued, said Madame, praising her glance as she knotted the money. There are only the usual odors. I am a little tired, her husband acknowledged. You are a little depressed too, said Madame, whose quick eyes had never been so intent on the accounts, but they had a ray or two for him. Oh, the men, the men. But my dear, began Defarge. But my dear, you are faint of heart tonight, my dear. Well then, said Defarge, as if a thought were wrung out of his breast, it is a long time. It is a long time, repeated his wife. And when is it not a long time? Vengeance and retribution require a long time. It is the rule. It does not take a long time to strike a man with lightning, said Defarge. How long, demanded Madame, compositely. Does it take to make and store the lightning? Tell me. Defarge raised his head thoughtfully as if there was something in that too. It does not take a long time, said Madame, for an earthquake to swallow a town. Eh, well, tell me how long it takes to prepare the earthquake. A long time, I suppose, said Defarge. But when it is ready, it takes place and grinds to pieces everything before it. In the meantime, it is always preparing, though it is not seen or heard. That is your consolation, keep it. She tied a knot with flashing eyes, as if it throttled a foe. I tell thee, said Madame, extending her right hand for emphasis, that although it is a long time on the road, it is on the road and coming. I tell thee it never retreats and never stops. I tell thee it is always advancing. Look around and consider the lives of all the world that we know. Consider the faces of all the world that we know. Consider the rage and discontent to which the Jacquerie addresses itself with more and more certainty every hour. Can such things last? Bah, I mock you.  I do not question all this, but it has lasted a long time, and it is possible, you know well, my wife, it is possible that it may not come during our lives. Eh, well, how then, demanded Madame, tying another knot as if there were another enemy strangled. Well, said Defarge, with a half-complaining and half-apologetic shrug, we shall not see the triumph. We shall have helped it, returned Madame, with her extended hand and strong action. Nothing that we do is done in vain. I believe with all my soul that we shall see the triumph, but even if not, even if I knew certainly not, show me the neck of an aristocrat and tyrant, and still I would, then Madame, with her teeth set, tied a very terrible knot indeed. Hold, cried Defarge, reddening a little as if he felt charged with cowardice. I too, my dear, will stop at nothing. Yes, but it is your weakness that you sometimes need to see your victim and your opportunity to sustain you, sustain yourself without that. When the time comes, let loose a tiger and a devil, but wait for the time with the tiger and the devil chained, not shown, yet always ready. Madame enforced the conclusion of this piece of advice by striking her little counter with her chain of money as if she knocked its brains out and then gathering the heavy handkerchief under her arm in a serene manner and observing that it was time to go to bed. Next noon Tide saw the admirable woman in her usual place in the wine shop, knitting away assiduously. A rose lay beside her and if she now and then glanced at the flower, it was with no infraction of her usual preoccupied air. There were a few customers, drinking or not drinking, standing or seated, sprinkled about. The day was very hot and heaps of flies who were extending their inquisitive and adventurous perquisitions into all the gluttonous little glasses near Madame fell dead at the bottom. Their decease made no impression on the other flies out from Nadi who looked at them in the coolest manner as if they themselves were elephants or something as far removed until they met the same fate. Curious to consider how heedless flies are, perhaps they thought as much at court that sunny summer day. A figure entering at the door threw a shadow on Madame Defarge which she felt to be a new one. She laid down her knitting and began to pin her rose in her headdress before she looked at the figure. It was curious. The moment Madame Defarge took up the rose, the customer ceased talking and began gradually to drop out of the wine shop. Good day, Madame, said the newcomer. Good day, monsieur. She said it aloud but added to herself as she resumed her knitting. Huh, good day, age about 40, height about five feet nine, black hair, generally rather handsome visage, complexion, dark eyes, dark thin, long and shallow face, aquiline nose, but not straight, having a peculiar inclination towards the left cheek which imparts a sinister expression. Good day, one and all. Have the goodness to give me a little glass of old cognac and a mouthful of cool fresh water, Madame. Madame complied with the polite air. Marvelous cognac, this Madame. It was the first time it had ever been so complimented and Madame Defarge knew enough of its antecedents to know better. She said, however, that the cognac was flattered and took up her knitting. The visitor watched her fingers for a few moments and took the opportunity of observing the place in general. You knit with great skill, Madame. I am accustomed to it. A pretty pattern, too. You think so? Said Madame, looking at him with a smile. Decidedly, may one ask what it is for? Past time, said Madame, still looking at him with a smile while her fingers moved nimbly. Not for use? That depends. I may find a use for it one day.  It was remarkable, but the taste of San Antoine seemed to be decidedly opposed to a rose on the headdress of Madame Defarge. Two men had entered separately and had been about to order drink when, catching sight of that novelty, they faltered, made a pretence of looking about as if for some friend who was not there and went away. Nor of those who had been there when this visitor entered was there one left.  The spy had kept his eyes open but had been able to detect no sign. They had lounged away in a poverty-stricken, purposeless, accidental manner, quite natural and unimpeachable. John thought Madame, checking off her work as her fingers knitted and her eyes looked at the stranger. Stay long enough and I shall knit bar-sad before you go. You have a husband, Madame? I have. Children? No children. Business seems bad. Business is very bad. The people are so poor. Ah, the unfortunate miserable people. So oppressed too, as you say. As you say, Madame retorted, corrected him and definitely knitting an extra something into his name that boasted him no good. Pardon me, certainly it was I who said so, but you naturally think so, of course. I think, returned Madame in a high voice. I and my husband have enough to do to keep this wine shop open without thinking. That is the subject we think of and it gives us from morning to night enough to think about without embarrassing our heads concerning others. I think for others? No, no. The spy who was there to pick up any crumbs he could find or make did not allow his baffled state to express itself in his sinister face, but stood with an air of gossiping gallantry, leaning his elbow on Madame Defarge's little counter and occasionally sipping his cognac. A bad business this, Madame, of Gaspar's execution? Ah, the poor Gaspar, with a sigh of great compassion. My faith, returned Madame, coolly and lightly. If people use knives for such purposes, they have to pay for it. He knew beforehand what the price of his luxury was. He has paid the price.  I believe there is much compassion and anger in this neighborhood touching the poor fellow between ourselves. Is there, asked Madame vacantly, is there not? Here's my husband, said Madame Defarge. As the keeper of the wine shop entered at the door, the spy saluted him by touching his hat and saying with an engaging smile, good day, Jacques. Defarge stopped short and stared at him. Good day, Jacques, the spy repeated, with not quite so much confidence or quite so easy a smile under the stare. You deceive yourselves, Mature, returned the keeper of the wine shop. You mistake me for another. That is not my name. I am Ernest Defarge. Is all the same, said the spy, eerily but discomforted too. Good day. Good day, answered Defarge, strightly. I was saying to Madame, with whom I had the pleasure of chatting when you entered, that they tell me there is, and no wonder, much sympathy and anger in San Antoine, touching the unhappy fate of poor Gaspard.  I know nothing of it. Having said it, he passed behind a little counter and stood with his hand on the back of his wife's chair, looking over that barrier at the person to whom they were both opposed and whom either of them would have shot with the greatest satisfaction. The spy, well used to his business, did not change his unconscious attitude, but drained his little glass of cognac, took a sip of fresh water, and asked for another glass of cognac. Madame Defarge poured it out for him, took to her knitting again, and hummed a little song over it. You seem to know this quarter well, that is to say better than I do, observed Defarge. Not at all, but I hope to know it better. I am so profoundly interested in its miserable inhabitants. Ha, muttered Defarge. The pleasure of conversing with you, Monsieur Defarge, recalls to me, pursued the spy, that I have the honor of cherishing some interesting associations with your name. Indeed, said Defarge, with much indifference. Yes, indeed. When Dr. Manette was released, you, his old domestic, had the charge of him, I know. He was delivered to you. You see, I am informed of the circumstances. Such is the fact, certainly, said Defarge. He had had it conveyed to him in an accidental touch of his wife's elbow as she knitted and warbled, that he would do best to answer, but always with brevity. It was to you, said the spy, that his daughter came and it was from your care that his daughter took him, accompanied by a neat brown shawar. How is he called in a little wig, Lori of the Bank of Telsen and Company, over to England? Such is the fact, repeated Defarge. Very interesting remembrances, said the spy. I have known Dr. Manette and his daughter in England. Yes, said Defarge. You don't hear much about them now, said the spy. No, said Defarge. In effect, madams struck in, looking up from her work in her little song, we never hear about them. We receive the news of their safe arrival and perhaps another letter or perhaps two, but since then they have gradually taken their road in life. We ours and we have held no correspondence. Perfectly so, madame, replied the spy. She is going to be married. Going, echoed madame, she was pretty enough to have been married long ago. You English are cold, it seems to me. Oh, you know I am English? I perceive your tongue is, returned madame, and what the tongue is I suppose the man is. He did not take the identification as a compliment, but he made the best of it and turned it off with a laugh. After sipping his cognac to the end, he added, yes, Miss Manette is going to be married, but not to an Englishman, to one who, like herself, is French by birth. And speaking of Gaspard, ah, poor Gaspard, it was cruel, cruel. It is a curious thing that she is going to marry the nephew of Monsieur the Marquis, for whom Gaspard was exalted to that height of so many feet. In other words, the present Marquis. But he lives unknown in England, he has no Marquis there. He is Mr. Charles Darnay. Darnay is the name of his mother's family. Madame Defarge knitted steadily, but the intelligence had a palpable effect upon her husband. Do what he would, behind the little counter, as to the striking of a light and the lighting of his pipe, he was troubled, and his hand was not trustworthy. The spy would have been no spy if he had failed to see it, or to record it in his mind. Having made at least this one hit, whatever it might prove to be worth, and no customers coming in to help him to any other, Mr. Barsad paid for what he had drunk and took his leave, taking occasion to say in a gentile manner before he departed, that he looked forward to the pleasure of seeing Monsieur and Madame Defarge again.  Can it be true, said Defarge, in a low voice, looking down at his wife as he stood smoking with his hand on the back of her chair? What he has said of Madame Eselmanette? As he has said it, returned Madame, lifting her eyebrows a little, it is probably false, but it may be true. If it is, Defarge began and stopped. If it is, repeated his wife. And if it does come while we live to see a triumph, I hope for her sake, Destiny will keep her husband out of France. Her husband's destiny, said Madame Defarge, with her usual composure, will take him where he is to go and will lead him to the end that is to end him. That is all I know. But it is very strange. Now, at least is it not very strange, said Defarge, rather pleading with his wife to induce her to admit it, that after all our sympathy from sure her father and herself, her husband's name should be prescribed under your hand at this moment by the side of that infernal dog who has just left us? Stranger things than that will happen when it does come, answered Madame. I have them both here of a certainty, and they are both here for their merits. That is enough. She rolled up her knitting when she had said those words and presently took the rose out of the handkerchief that was wound about her head. Either San Antoine had an instinctive sense that the objectionable decoration was gone, or San Antoine was on the watch for its disappearance. Halbiet, the saint took courage to lounge in very shortly afterwards, and the wine shop recovered its habitual aspect. In the evening at which season of all others, San Antoine turned himself inside out and sat on doorsteps and window edges and came to the corners of vile streets and courts for a breath of air. Madame Defarge, with her work in her hand, was accustomed to pass from place to place and from group to group. A missionary, there were many like her, such as the world will do well never to breed again. All the women knitted, they knitted worthless things, but the mechanical work was a mechanical substitute for eating and drinking. The hands moved for the jaws and the digestive apparatus. If the bony fingers had been still, the stomachs would have been more famine-pinched. But as the fingers went, the eyes went and the thoughts. And as Madame Defarge moved on from group to group, all three went quicker and fiercer among every little knot of women that she had spoken with and left behind. Her husband smoked at his door looking after her with admiration. A great woman, said he, a strong woman, a grand woman, a frightfully grand woman. Darkness closed around and then came the ringing of church bells and the distant beating of the military drums in the palace courtyard as the women sat knitting, knitting. Darkness encompassed them. Another darkness was closing in as surely when the church bells then ringing pleasantly in many an airy steeple over France should be melted into thundering cannon. When the military drums should be beating to drown a wretched voice, that night all potent as the voice of power and plenty, freedom and life. So much was closing in about the women who sat knitting, knitting, that they, their very selves, were closing in around a structure yet unbuilt where they were to sit knitting, knitting, counting, dropping heads. End of chapter. Book two, chapter 17 of A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Richard Breiman, audiblyspeaking.com. One night, Never did the sun go down with a brighter glory on the quiet corner in Soho than one memorable evening when the doctor and his daughter sat under the plain tree together. Never did the moon rise with a milder radiance over great London than on that night when it found them still seated under the tree and shone upon their faces through its leaves. Lucy was to be married tomorrow. She had reserved this last evening for her father and they sat alone under the plain tree. You are happy, my dear father? Quite, my child. They had said little though they had been there a long time. When it was yet light enough to work and read, she had neither engaged herself in her usual work nor had she read to him. She had employed herself in both ways at his side under the tree many and many a time. But this time was not quite like any other and nothing could make it so. And I am very happy tonight, dear father. I am deeply happy in the love that heaven has so blessed. My love for Charles and Charles's love for me. But if my life were not to be still consecrated to you or if my marriage were so arranged as that it would part us, even by the length of a few of these streets, I should be more unhappy and self-reproachable now than I can tell you, even as it is. Even as it was, she could not command her voice. In the sad moonlight, she clasped him by the neck and laid her face upon his breast. In the moonlight, which is always sad, as the light of the sun itself is, as the light called human life is at its coming and going. Dear, dear, can you tell me this last time that you feel quite, quite sure that no new affections of mine and no new duties of mine will ever interpose between us? I know it well, but do you know it? In your own heart, do you feel quite certain? Her father answered with a cheerful firmness of conviction he could scarcely have assumed. Quite sure, my darling.  My future is far brighter, Lucy, seen through your marriage than it could have been, nay, than it ever was, without it. If I could hope that, my father, believe it, love. Indeed it is so. Consider how natural and how plain it is, my dear, that it should be so. You, devoted and young, cannot fully appreciate the anxiety I have felt that your life should not be wasted. She moved her hand toward his lips, but he took it in his and repeated the word. Wasted, my child, should not be wasted, struck aside from the natural order of things, for my sake. Your unselfishness cannot entirely comprehend how much my mind has gone on this. But only ask yourself, how could my happiness be perfect while yours was incomplete? If I had never seen Charles, my father, I should have been quite happy with you. He smiled at her unconscious admission that she would have been unhappy with Al-Charles, having seen him, and replied, my child, you did see him, and it is Charles. If it had not been Charles, it would have been another. Or if it had been no other, I should have been the cause. And then the dark part of my life would have cast its shadow beyond myself and would have fallen on you. It was the first time, except at the trial, of her ever hearing him referred to the period of his suffering. It gave her a strange and new sensation while his words were in her ears, and she remembered it long afterwards. See, said the doctor of O'Ae, raising his hand towards the moon. I have looked at her from my prison window when I could not bear her light. I have looked at her when it has been such torture to me to think of her shining upon what I had lost, that I have beaten my head against my prison walls. I have looked at her in a state so dull and lethargic that I have thought of nothing but the number of horizontal lines I could draw across her at the full and the number of perpendicular lines with which I could intersect them. He added in his inward and pondering manner as he looked at the moon. It was twenty, either way, I remember, and the twentieth was difficult to squeeze in. The strange thrill with which she heard him go back to that time, deepened as he dwelt upon it, but there was nothing to shock her in the manner of his reference. He only seemed to contrast his present cheerfulness and felicity with the dire endurance that was over.  There was a time in my imprisonment when my desire for vengeance was unbearable, whether it was a son who would never know his father's story, who might even lived away the possibility of his father's having disappeared of his own will and act, whether it was a daughter who would grow to be a woman. She drew closer to him and kissed his cheek in hand. I have pictured my daughter to myself as perfectly forgetful of me, rather altogether ignorant of me and unconscious of me. I have cast up the years of her age year after year. I have seen her married to a man who knew nothing of my fate. I have altogether perished from the remembrance of the living and in the next generation, my place was a blank. My father, even to hear that you had such thoughts of a daughter who never existed, strikes to my heart as if I had been that child. You Lucy, it is out of the consolation and restoration you have brought to me that these remembrances arise and pass between us and the moon on this last night. What did I just say now? She knew nothing of you. She cared nothing for you. So, but on other moonlight nights, when the sadness and the silence have touched me in a different way, have affected me with something like a sorrowful sense of peace as any emotion that had pain for its foundations could, I have imagined her as coming to me in my cell and leading me out into the freedom beyond the fortress. I have seen her image in the moonlight often as I now see you, except that I never held her in my arms. It stood between the little graded window and the door, but you understand that that was not the child I am speaking of. The figure was not the image, the fancy? No, that was another thing. It stood before my disturbed sense of sight, but it never moved. The fandom that my mind pursued was another and more real child. Of her outward appearance I know no more than that she was like her mother. The other had that likeness too, as you have, but it was not the same. Can you follow me, Lucy? Hardly, I think. I doubt you must have been a solitary prisoner to understand these perplexed distinctions. His collected and calm manner could not prevent her blood from running cold as he thus tried to anatomize his old condition. In that more peaceful state I have imagined her in the moonlight coming to me and taking me out to show me that the home of her married life was full of her loving remembrance of her lost father.  Her life was active, cheerful, useful, but my poor history pervaded it all. I was that child, my father. I was not half so good, but in my love that was I. And she showed me her children, said the doctor of Beauvais, and they had heard of me and had been taught to pity me. When they passed a prison of the state, they kept far from its frowning walls and looked up at its bars and spoke in whispers. She could never deliver me. I imagined that she always brought me back after showing me such things. But then, blessed with the relief of tears, I fell upon my knees and blessed her. I am that child, I hope, my father. Oh, my dear, my dear. Will you bless me as fervently tomorrow? You see, I recall these old troubles in the reason that I have tonight for loving you better than words can tell and thanking God for my great happiness. My thoughts, when they were wildest, never rose near the happiness that I have known with you and that we have before us. He embraced her, solemnly commended her to heaven and humbly thanked heaven for having bestowed her on him. By and by, they went into the house. There was no one bidden to the marriage but Mr. Lori. There was even to be no bridesmaid but the gaunt, Ms. Pross. The marriage was to make no change in their place of residence. They had been able to extend it by taking to themselves the upper rooms formerly belonging to the apocryphal invisible lodger and they desired nothing more. Dr. Manette was very cheerful at the little supper. They were only three at table and Ms. Pross made the third. He regretted that Charles was not there, was more than half-disposed to object to the loving little plot that kept him away and drank to him affectionately. So, the time came for him to bid Lucy good night and they separated. But in the stillness of the third hour of the morning, Lucy came downstairs again and stole into his room not free from unshaped fears beforehand. All things, however, were in their places.  She put her needless candle in the shadow at a distance, crept up to his bed and put her lips to his, then leaned over him and looked at him. Into his handsome face, the bitter waters of captivity had worn. But he covered up their tracks with the determination so strong that he held the mastery of them even in his sleep. A more remarkable face in its quiet, resolute and guarded struggle with an unseen assailant was not to be beheld in all the wide dominions of sleep that night.  Then she withdrew her hand and kissed his lips once more and went away. So the sunrise came and the shadows of the leaves of the plane tree moved upon his face as softly as her lips had moved in praying for him. End of chapter. Book two, chapter 18 of A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. This liprivox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Richard Reimann, audiblyspeaking.com. Nine days. The marriage day was shining brightly and they were ready outside the closed door of the doctor's room where he was speaking with Charles Darnay. They were ready to go to church, the beautiful bride, Mr. Laurie and Miss Pross to whom the event through a gradual process of reconcilement to the inevitable would have been one of absolute bliss but for the yet lingering consideration that her brother Solomon should have been the bridegroom. And so said Mr. Laurie, who could not sufficiently admire the bride and who had been moving round her to take in every point of her quiet, pretty dress.  Lord bless me. How little I thought what I was doing. How lightly I valued the obligation I was conferring on my friend, Mr. Charles. You didn't mean it, remarked the matter of fact, Miss Pross. And therefore how could you know it? Nonsense. Really? Well, but don't cry, said the gentle Mr. Laurie. I am not crying, said Miss Pross. You are. I am my Pross. By this time, Mr. Laurie dared to be pleasant with her on occasion. You are just now. I saw you do it and I don't wonder at it. Such a present of plate as you have made them is enough to bring tears into anybody's eyes. There's not a fork or a spoon in the collection, said Miss Pross, that I didn't cry over last night after the box came till I couldn't see it. I am highly gratified, said Mr. Laurie, though upon my honor I had no intention of rendering those trifling articles of remembrance invisible to anyone. Dear me, this is an occasion that makes a man speculate on all he has lost. Dear, dear, dear, to think that there might have been a Mrs. Laurie any time these 50 years almost. Not at all, from Miss Pross. You think there never might have been a Mrs. Laurie? Ask the gentlemen of that name. Poo, rejoined Miss Pross. You were a bachelor in your cradle. Well, observed Mr. Laurie, beamingly adjusting his little wig, that seems probable too.  Then I think, said Mr. Laurie, that I was very unhandsomely dealt with and that I ought to have had a voice in the selection of my pattern. Enough. Now, my dear Lucy, drawing his arms soothingly round her waist, I hear them moving in the next room and Miss Pross and I, as two formal folks of business, are anxious not to lose the final opportunity of saying something to you that you wish to hear.  He shall be taken every conceivable care of during the next fortnight, while you are in Warwickshire and thereabouts, even Kelsen shall go to the wall, comparatively speaking, before him. And when, at the fortnight's end, he comes to join you and your beloved husband on your other fortnight's trip in Wales, you shall say that we have sent him to you in the best health and in the happiest frame. Now I hear somebody's step coming to the door. Let me kiss my dear girl with an old-fashioned bachelor blessing before somebody comes to claim his own. For a moment he held the fair face from him to look at the well-remembered expression on the forehead and then laid the bright golden hair against his little brown wig with a genuine tenderness and delicacy, which, if such things be old-fashioned, were as old as Adam. The door of the doctor's room opened and he came out with Charles Darnay. He was so deadly pale, which had not been the case when they went in together, that no vestige of color was to be seen in his face. But in the composure of his manner he was unaltered, except that to the shrewd glance of Mr. Lorry, it disclosed some shadowy indication that the old air of avoidance and dread had lately passed over him like a cold wind. He gave his arm to his daughter and took her downstairs to the chariot, which Mr. Lorry had hired in honor of the day. The rest followed in another carriage and soon, in a neighboring church where no strange eyes looked on, Charles Darnay and Lucy Manette were happily married. Besides the glancing tears that shone among the smiles of the little group when it was done, some diamonds, very bright and sparkling, glanced on the bride's hand, which were newly released from the dark obscurity of one of Mr. Lorry's pockets. They returned home to breakfast and all went well and in due course the golden hair that had mingled with the poor shoemaker's white locks in the Paris Garrett were mingled with them again in the morning sunlight on the threshold of the door at party. It was a hard party, though it was not for long, but her father cheered her and said at last, gently disengaging himself from her enfolding arms, take her, Charles, she is yours. And her agitated hand waved to them from a chaise window and she was gone. The corner being out of the way of the idle and curious and the preparations having been very simple and few, the doctor, Mr. Lorry and Ms. Pross were left quite alone. It was when they turned into the welcome shade of the cool old hall that Mr. Lorry observed a great change to have come over the doctor as if the golden arm uplifted there had struck him a poison blow. He had naturally repressed much and some revulsion might have been expected in him when the occasion for repression was gone, but it was the old scared lost look that troubled Mr. Lorry and through his absent manner of clasping his head and drearily wandering away into his own room when they got upstairs, Mr. Lorry was reminded of defarged the wine shopkeeper and the starlight ride. I think he whispered to Ms. Pross after anxious consideration. I think we had best not speak to him just now or at all disturb him. I must look in at Telsons. So I will go there at once and come back presently. Then we will take him a ride into the country and dine there and all will be well. It was easier for Mr. Lorry to look in at Telsons than to look out of Telsons. He was detained two hours. When he came back, he ascended the old staircase alone having asked no question of the servant going thus into the doctor's rooms, he was stopped by a low sound of knocking. Good God, he said with a start. What's that? Ms. Pross with a terrified face was at his ear.  What is to be told to Lady Bird? He doesn't know me and is making shoes. Mr. Lorry said what he could to calm her and went himself into the doctor's room. The bench was turned towards the light as it had been when he had seen the shoemaker at the work before and his head was bent down and he was very busy. Dr. Minette, my dear friend, Dr. Minette. The doctor looked at him for a moment, half inquiringly, half as if he were angry at being spoken to and bent over his work again. He had laid aside his coat and waistcoat. His shirt was open at the throat as it used to be when he did that work and even the old haggard, faded surface of face had come back to him. He worked hard impatiently. He worked hard impatiently as if in some sense of having been interrupted. Mr. Lorry glanced at the work in his hand and observed that it was a shoe of the old size and shape. He took up another that was lying by him and asked what it was. A young lady's walking shoe, he muttered without looking up. It ought to have been finished long ago, let it be. But Dr. Minette, look at me. He obeyed in the old mechanically submissive manner without pausing in his work. You know me, my dear friend, think again. This is not your proper occupation. Think, dear friend. Nothing would induce him to speak more. He looked up for an instant at a time when he was requested to do so, but no persuasion would extract a word from him. He worked and worked and worked in silence and words fell on him as they would have fallen on an echo-less wall or on the air. The only ray of hope that Mr. Lorry could discover was that he sometimes furtively looked up without being asked. In that, there seemed a faint expression of curiosity or perplexity as though he were trying to reconcile some doubts in his mind. Two things that once impressed themselves on Mr. Lorry as important above all others. The first, that this must be kept secret from Lucy. The second, that it must be kept secret from all who knew him. In conjunction with Ms. Pross, he took immediate steps towards the latter precaution by giving out that the doctor was not well and required a few days of complete rest. In aid of the kind deception to be practiced on his daughter, Ms. Pross was to write, describing his having been called away professionally and referring to an imaginary letter of two or three hurried lines in his own hand represented to have been addressed to her by the same post. These measures, advisable to be taken in any case, Mr. Lorry took in the hope of his coming to himself. If that should happen soon, he kept another course in reserve, which was to have a certain opinion that he thought the best on the doctor's case. In the hope of his recovery and of resort to this third course being thereby rendered practicable, Mr. Lorry resolved to watch him attentively with as little appearance as possible of doing so. He therefore made arrangements to have sent himself from Telsons for the first time in his life and took his post by the window in the same room. He was not long in discovering that it was worse than useless to speak to him. Since on being pressed, he became worried. He abandoned that attempt on the first day and resolved merely to keep himself always before him as a silent protest against the delusion into which he had fallen or was falling. He remained therefore in his seat near the window, reading and writing and expressing in as many pleasant and natural ways as he could think of, that it was a free place. Dr. Minette took what was given him to eat and drink and worked on that first day until it was too dark to see. Worked on half an hour after Mr. Lorry could not have seen for his life to read or write. When he put his tools aside as useless until morning, Mr. Lorry rose and said to him, will you go out? He looked down at the floor on either side of him in the old manor, looked up in the old manor and repeated in the old, low voice. Out? Yes, for a walk with me, why not, why not? He made no effort to say why not and said not a word more. But Mr. Lorry thought he saw as he leaned forward on his bench in the dusk with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands that he was in some misty way asking himself, why not? The sagacity of the man of business perceived an advantage here and was determined to hold it. Miss Prost and he divided the night into two watches and observed him at intervals from the adjoining room. He paced up and down for a long time before he lay down but when he did finally lay himself down, he fell asleep. In the morning he was up be times and went straight to his bench and to work. On the second day Mr. Lorry saluted him cheerfully by his name and spoke to him on topics that had been of late familiar to them. He returned no reply but it was evident that he heard what was said and that he thought about it however, confusedly. This encouraged Mr. Lorry to have Miss Prost in with her work several times during the day. At those times they quietly spoke of Lucy and of her father then present precisely in the usual manner as if there were nothing amiss. This was done without any demonstrative accompaniment not long enough or often enough to harass him and it lightened Mr. Lorry's friendly heart to believe that he looked up oftener and that he appeared to be stirred by some perception of inconsistency surrounding him. When it fell dark again Mr. Lorry asked him as before, Dear doctor, will you go out? As before he repeated, out. Yes, for a walk with me, why not? This time Mr. Lorry feigned to go out when he could extract no answer from him and after remaining absent for an hour returned. In the meanwhile the doctor had removed to the seat in the window and had sat there looking down at the plane tree but on Mr. Lorry's return he slipped away to his bench. The time went very slowly on and Mr. Lorry's hope darkened and his heart grew heavier again and grew yet heavier and heavier every day. The third day came and went, the fourth, the fifth, five days, six days, seven days, eight days, nine days. With a hope ever darkening and with a heart always growing heavier and heavier Mr. Lorry passed through this anxious time. The secret was well kept and Lucy was unconscious and happy but he could not fail to observe that the shoemaker whose hand had been a little out at first was growing dreadfully skillful and that he had never been so intent on his work and that his hands had never been so nimble and expert as in the dusk of the ninth evening. End of chapter. Book two chapter 19 of A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. Recording by Richard Reiman, audibly speaking.com. An opinion. Worn out by anxious watching, Mr. Lorry fell asleep at his post. On the 10th morning of his suspense, he was startled by the shining of the sun into the room where a heavy slumber had overtaken him when it was dark night. He rubbed his eyes and roused himself but he doubted when he had done so whether he was not still asleep. For going to the door of the doctor's room and looking in, he perceived that the shoemaker's bench and tools were put aside again and that the doctor himself sat reading at the window. He was in his usual morning dress and his face, which Mr. Lorry could distinctly see, though still very pale, was calmly studious and attentive. Even when he had satisfied himself that he was awake, Mr. Lorry felt giddily uncertain for some few moments whether the late shoemaking might not be a disturbed dream of his own for did not his eyes show him his friend before him in his accustomed clothing and aspect and employed as usual. It was there any sign within their range that the change of which he had so strong and impression had actually happened. It was but the inquiry of his first confusion and astonishment, the answer being obvious. If the impression were not produced by a real corresponding and sufficient cause, how came he, Jarvis Lorry, there? How came he to have fallen asleep in his clothes on the sofa in Dr. Manette's consulting room and to be debating these points outside the doctor's bedroom door in the early morning? Within a few minutes, Miss Prost stood whispering at his side. If he had had any particle of doubt left, her talk would have necessity have resolved it but he was by that time clear-headed and he had none. He advised that they should let the time go by until the regular breakfast hour and should then meet the doctor as if nothing unusual had occurred. If he appeared to be in his customary state of mind, Mr. Lorry would then consciously proceed to seek direction and guidance from the opinion he had been in his anxiety so anxious to obtain. Miss Prost, submitting herself to his judgment, the scheme was worked out with care. Having abundance of time for his usual methodical toilette, Mr. Lorry presented himself at the breakfast hour in his usual white linen and with his usual neat leg. The doctor was summoned in the usual way and came to breakfast. So far as it was possible to comprehend him without overstepping those delicate and gradual approaches which Mr. Lorry felt to be the only safe advance, he had first supposed that his daughter's marriage had taken place yesterday. An accidental illusion purposely thrown out to the day of the week and to the day of the month set him thinking and counting and evidently made him uneasy. In all other respects, however, he was so compositely himself that Mr. Lorry determined to have the aid he sought and that aid was his own. Therefore, when the breakfast was done and cleared away and he and the doctor were left together, Mr. Lorry said feelingly, my dear Mr. Minette, I am anxious to have your opinion, in confidence, on a very curious case in which I am deeply interested. That is to say, it is very curious to me. Perhaps to your better information, it may be less so. Glancing at his hands, which were discolored by his late work, the doctor looked troubled and listened attentively. He had already glanced at his hands more than once. Dr. Minette, said Mr. Lorry, touching him affectionately on the arm, the case is the case of a particularly dear friend of mine. Pray give your mind to it and advise me well for his sake and above all for his daughters, his daughters, my dear Minette.  Yes, be explicit, said the doctor, spare no detail. Mr. Lorry saw that they understood one another and proceeded. My dear Minette, it is the case of an old and a prolonged shock of great acuteness and severity to the affections. The feelings, the, the, as you express it, the mind, the mind, it is the case of a shock under which the sufferer was born down, one cannot say for how long, because I believe he cannot calculate the time himself and there are no other means of getting at it. It is the case of a shock from which the sufferer recovered by a process that he cannot trace himself as I once heard him publicly relate in a striking manner. It is the case of a shock from which he has recovered so completely as to be a highly intelligent man, capable of close application of mind and great exertion of body and of constantly making fresh additions to his stock of knowledge, which was already very large. But, unfortunately, there has been, he paused and took a deep breath, a slight relapse. The doctor in a low voice asked of how long duration? Nine days and nights. How did it show itself? I infer, glancing at his hands again, in the resumption of some old pursuit connected with the shock? That is the fact. Now, did you ever see him, asked the doctor, distinctly and collectively, though in the same low voice, engaged in that pursuit originally? Once. And when the relapse fell on him, was he in most respects or in all respects as he was then? I think in all respects. You spoke of his daughter. Does his daughter know of the relapse? No, it has been kept from her and I hope will always be kept from her. It is known only to myself and to one other who may be trusted. The doctor grasped his hand and murmured, That was very kind, that was very thoughtful. Mr. Laurie grasped his hand in return and neither of the two spoke for a little while. Now, my dear Minette, said Mr. Laurie at length, in his most considerate and most affectionate way, I am a mere man of business and unfit to cope with such intricate and difficult matters. I do not possess the kind of information necessary. I do not possess the kind of intelligence. I want guiding. There is no man in this world on whom I could so rely for right guidance as on you. Tell me, how does this relapse come about? Is there danger of another? Could a repetition of it be prevented? How should a repetition of it be treated? How does it come about at all? What can I do for my friend? No man ever can have been more desirous in his heart to serve a friend than I am to serve mine if I knew how. But I don't know how to originate in such a case. If your sagacity, knowledge and experience could put me on the right track, I might be able to do so much. Unenlightened and undirected, I can do so little. Pray discuss it with me. Pray enable me to see it a little more clearly and teach me how to be a little more useful. Dr. Minette sat meditating after these earnest words were spoken and Mr. Laurie did not press him. I think it probable, said the doctor, breaking silence with an effort, that the relapse you have described, my dear friend, was not quite unforeseen by its subject. Was it dreaded by him, Mr. Laurie ventured to ask? Very much, he said it with an involuntary shudder. You have no idea how such an apprehension weighs on the sufferer's mind and how difficult, how almost impossible it is for him to force himself to utter a word upon the topic that oppresses him. Would he, asked Mr. Laurie, be sensibly relieved if he could prevail upon himself to impart that secret brooding to anyone when it is on him? I think so. But it is, as I have told you, next to impossible. I even believe it, in some cases, to be quite impossible. Now, said Mr. Laurie, gently laying his hand on the doctor's arm again, after a short silence on both sides, till what would you refer this attack? I believe, returned Dr. Minette, that there had been a strong and extraordinary revival of the train of thought and remembrance that was the first cause of the malady. Some intense associations of a most distressing nature were vividly recalled, I think. It is probable that there had long been a dread lurking in his mind that those associations would be recalled, say, under certain circumstances, say, on a particular occasion. He tried to prepare himself in vain. Perhaps the effort to prepare himself made him less able to bear it. Would he remember what took place in the relapse? Asked Mr. Laurie with natural hesitation. The doctor looked decently round the room, shook his head, and answered in a low voice. Not at all. Now as to the future, hinted Mr. Laurie. As to the future, said the doctor, recovering firmness, I should have great hope. As it pleased heaven and its mercy to restore him so soon, I should have great hope. He, yielding under the pressure of a complicated something, long dreaded and long vaguely foreseen and contended against, and recovering aft