《A Tale of Two Cities》 Book3 CHAPTER
IV Calm in
Storm
by Charles Dickens
DOCTOR MANETTE did not
return until the morning of the fourth day of his absence. So much of what had happened in
that dreadful time as could be kept from the knowledge of Lucie was so well concealed from
her, that not until long afterwards, when France and she were far apart, did she know that
eleven hundred defenceless prisoners of both sexes and all ages had been killed by the
populace; that four days and nights had been darkened by this deed of horror; and that the
air around her had been tainted by the slain. She only knew that there had been an attack
upon the prisons, that all political prisoners had been in danger, and that some had been
dragged out by the crowd and murdered.
To Mr. Lorry, the Doctor communicated under an injunction of secrecy on which he had no
need to dwell, that the crowd had taken him through a scene of carnage to the prison of La
Force. That, in the prison he had found a self-appointed Tribunal sitting, before which
the prisoners were brought singly, and by which they were rapidly ordered to be put forth
to be massacred, or to be released, or (in a few cases) to be sent back to their cells.
That, presented by his conductors to this Tribunal, he had announced himself by name and
profession as having been for eighteen years a secret and unaccused prisoner in the
Bastille; that, one of the body so sitting in judgment had risen and identified him, and
that this man was Defarge.
That, hereupon he had ascertained, through the registers on the table, that his son-in-law
was among the living prisoners, and had pleaded hard to the Tribunal--of whom some members
were asleep and some awake, some dirty with murder and some clean, some sober and some
not--for his life and liberty. That, in the first frantic greetings lavished on himself as
a notable sufferer under the over-thrown system, it had been accorded to him to have
Charles Darnay brought before the lawless Court, and examined. That, he seemed on the
point of being at once released, when the tide in his favour met with some unexplained
check (not intelligible to the Doctor), which led to a few words of secret conference.
That, the man sitting as President had then informed Doctor Manette that the prisoner must
remain in custody, but should for his sake, be held inviolate in safe custody. That,
immediately, on a signal, the prisoner was removed to the interior of the prison again;
but, that lie, the Doctor, had then so strongly pleaded for permission to remain and
assure himself that his son-in-law was, through no malice or mischance, delivered to the
concourse whose murderous yells outside the gate had often drowned the proceedings, that
lie had obtained the permission, and had remained in that Hall of Blood until the danger
was over.
The sights he had seen there, with brief snatches of food and sleep by intervals, shall
remain untold. The mad job over the prisoners who were saved, had astounded him scarcely
less than the mad ferocity against those who were cut to pieces. One prisoner there was,
lie said, who had been discharged into the street free, but at whom a mistaken savage had
thrust a pike as lie passed out. Being besought to go to him and dress the wound, the
Doctor had passed out at the same gate, and had found him in the arms of a company of
Samaritans, who were seated on the bodies of their victims. With an inconsistency as
monstrous as anything in this awful nightmare, they had helped the healer, and tended the
wounded man with the gentlest solicitude--had made a litter for him and escorted him
carefully from the spot--had then caught up their weapons and plunged
anew into a butchery so dreadful, that the Doctor had covered his eyes with his hands, and
swooned away in the midst of it.
As Mr. Lorry received these confidences, and as he watched the face of his friend now
sixty-two years of age, a misgiving arose within him that such dread experiences would
revise the old danger. But, he had never seen his friend in hi, present aspect: he had
never at all known him in his present character. For the first time the Doctor felt, now,
that his suffering was strength and power. For the first time he left that in that sharp
fire, lie had slowly forged the iron which could break the prison door of his daughter's
husband, and deliver him. `It all tended to a good end, my friend; it was not mere waste
and ruin. As my
beloved child was helpful in restoring me to myself, I will be helpful now in restoring
the dearest part of herself to her; by the aid of Heaven I will do it!' Thus, Doctor
Manette. And when Jarvis Lorry saw the kindled eyes, the resolute face, the calm strong
look and bearing of the man whose life always seemed to him to have been stopped, like a
clock, for so many years, and then set going again with an energy which had lain dormant
during the cessation of its usefulness, he believed.
Greater things than the Doctor had at that time to contend with, would have yielded before
his persevering purpose. While he kept himself in his place, as a physician, whose
business was with all degrees of mankind, bond and free, rich and poor, bad and good, he
used his personal influence so wisely, that he was soon the inspecting physician of three
prisons, and among them of La Force. He could now assure Lucie that her husband was no
longer confined alone, but was mixed with the general body of prisoners; he saw her
husband weekly, and brought sweet messages to her, straight from his lips; sometimes her
husband himself sent a letter to her (though never by the Doctor's hand), but she was not
permitted to write to him: for, among the many wild suspicions of plots in the prisons,
the wildest of all pointed at emigrants who were known to have made friends or permanent
connections abroad.
This new life of the Doctor's was an anxious life, no doubt; still, the sagacious Mr.
Lorry saw that there was a new sustaining pride in it. Nothing unbecoming tinged the
pride; it was a natural and worthy one; but he observed it as a curiosity. The Doctor
knew, that up to that time, his imprisonment had been associated in the minds of his
daughter and his friend, with his personal affliction, deprivation, and weakness. Now that
this was changed, and he knew himself to be invested through that old trial with forces to
which they both looked for Charles's ultimate safety and deliverance, he became so far
exalted by the change, that he took the lead and direction, and required them as the weak,
to trust to him as the strong. The preceding relative positions of himself and Lucie were
reversed, yet only as the liveliest gratitude and affection could reverse them, for he
could have had no
pride but in rendering some service to her who had rendered so much to him. `All curious
to see,' thought Mr. Lorry, in his amiably shrewd way, `but all natural and right; so,
take the lead, my dear friend, and keep it; it couldn't be in better hands.'
But, though the Doctor tried hard, and never ceased trying, to get Charles Darnay set at
liberty, or at least to get him brought to trial, the public current of the time set too
strong and fast for him. The new era began; the king was tried, doomed, and beheaded; the
Republic of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death, declared for victory or death against
the world in arms; the black flag waved night and day from the great towers of Notre Dame;
three hundred thousand men, summoned to rise against the tyrants of the earth, rose from
all the varying soils of France, as if the dragon's teeth had been sown broadcast, and had
yielded fruit equally on hill and plain, on rock, in gravel, and alluvial mud, under the
bright sky of the South and under the clouds of the North, in fell and forest, in the
vineyards and the olive-grounds and among the cropped grass and the stubble of the corn,
along the fruitful banks of the broad rivers, and in the sand of the sea-shore. What
private solicitude could rear itself against the deluge of the Year One of Liberty--the
deluge rising from below, not falling from above, and with the windows of Heaven shut, not
opened!
There was no pause, no pity, no peace, no interval of relenting rest, no measurement of
time. Though days and nights circled as regularly as when time was young, and the evening
and morning were the first day, other count of time there was none. Hold of it was lost in
the raging fever of a nation, as it is in the fever of one patient. Now, breaking the
unnatural silence of a whole city, the executioner showed the people the head of the
king-and now, it seemed almost in the same breath, the head of his fair wife which had had
eight weary months of imprisoned widowhood and misery, to turn it grey.
And yet, observing the strange law of contradiction which obtains in all such cases, the
time was long, while it flamed by so fast. A revolutionary tribunal in the capital, and
forty or fifty thousand revolutionary committees all over the land; a law of the
Suspected, which struck away all security for liberty or life, and delivered over any good
and innocent person to any bad and guilty one; prisons gorged with people who had
committed no offence, and could obtain no hearing; these things became the established
order and nature of appointed things, and seemed to be ancient usage before they were many
weeks old. Above all, one hideous figure grew as familiar as if it had been before the
general gaze horn the foundations of the world--the figure of the sharp female called La
Guillotine.
It was the popular theme for jests; it was the best cure for headache, it infallibly
prevented the hair from turning grey, it imparted a peculiar delicacy to the complexion,
it was the National Razor which shaved close: who kissed La Guillotine, looked through the
little window and sneezed into the sack. It was the sign of the regeneration of the human
race. It superseded the Gross. Models of it were worn on breasts from which the Gross was
discarded, and it was bowed down to and believed in where the Gross was denied.
It sheared off heads so many, that it, and the ground it most polluted, were a rotten red.
It was taken to pieces, like a toy-puzzle for a young Devil, and was put together again
when the occasion wanted it. It hushed the eloquent, struck down the powerful, abolished
the beautiful and good. Twenty-two friends of high public mark, twenty-one living and one
dead, it had lopped the heads off, in one morning, in as many minutes. The name of the
strong man of Old Scripture had descended to the chief functionary who worked it; but, so
armed, he was stronger than his namesake, and blinder, and tore away the gates of God's
own Temple every day.
Among these terrors, and the brood belonging to them, the Doctor walked with a steady
head: confident in his power, cautiously persistent in his end, never doubting that he
would save Lucie's husband at last. Yet the current of the time swept by, so strong and
deep, and carried the time away so fiercely, that Charles had lain in prison one year and
three months when the Doctor was thus steady and confident. So much more wicked and
distracted had the Revolution grown in that December month, that the rivers of the South
were encumbered with the bodies of the violently drowned by night, and prisoners were shot
in lines and squares under the southern wintry sun. Still, the Doctor walked among the
terrors with a steady head. No man better known than he, in Paris at that day; no man in a
stranger situation. Silent, humane, indispensable in hospital and prison, using his art
equally among assassins and victims, he was a man apart. In the exercise of his skill, the
appearance and the story of the Bastille Captive removed him from all other men. He was
not suspected or brought in question, any more than if he had indeed been recalled to life
some eighteen years before, or were a Spirit moving among mortals. |
