`"He is not here," I said, supporting the boy, and thinking that he referred to

the brother.







`"He! Proud as these nobles are, he is afraid to see me. Where is the man who was

here? Turn my face to him."







`I did so, raising the boy's head against my knee. But, invested for the moment with

extraordinary power, he raised himself completely: obliging me to rise too, or I could not

have still supported him.







`"Marquis," said the boy, turned to him with his eyes opened wide, and his right

hand raised, "in the days when all these things are to be answered for, I summon you

and yours, to the last of your bad race, to answer for them. I mark this cross of blood

upon you, as a sign that I do it. In the days when all these things are to be answered

for, I summon your brother, the worst of the bad race, to answer for them separately. I

mark this cross of blood upon him, as a sign that I do it.







`Twice, he put his hand to the wound in his breast, and with forefinger drew a cross in

the air. He stood for an instant with the finger yet raised, and, as it with it, and I

laid him down dead. * * * *







`When I returned to the bedside of the young woman, I found her raving in precisely the

same order and continuity. I knew that this might last for many hours, and that it would

probably end in the silence of the grave.







`I repeated the medicines I had given her, and I sat at the side of the bed until the

night was far advanced. She never abated the piercing quality of her shrieks, never

stumbled in the distinctness or the order of her words. They were always "My husband,

my father, and my brother! One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten,

eleven, twelve. Hush!"







`This lasted twenty-six hours from the time when I first saw her. I had come and gone

twice, and was again sitting by her, when she began to falter. I did what little could be

done to assist that opportunity, and by-and-by she sank into a lethargy, and lay like the

dead.







`It was as if the wind and rain had lulled at last, after a long and fearful storm. I

released her arms, and called the woman to assist me to compose her figure and the dress

she had torn. It was then that I knew her condition to be that of one in whom the first

expectations of being a mother have arisen; and it was then that I lost the little hope I

had had of her.







`"Is she dead?" asked the Marquis, whom I will still describe as the elder

brother, coming booted into the room from his horse.







`"Not dead," said I; "but like to die."







`"what strength there is in these common bodies!" he said, looking down at her

with some curiosity.







`"There is prodigious strength," I answered him, "in sorrow and

despair."







`He first laughed at my words, and then frowned at them. He moved a chair with his foot

near to mine, ordered the woman away, and said in a subdued voice,







`"Doctor, finding my brother in this difficulty with these hinds, I recommended that

your aid should be invited. Your reputation is high, and, as a young man with your fortune

to make, you are probably mindful of your interest. The things that you see here, are

things to be seen, and not spoken of."







`I listened to the patient's breathing, and avoided answering.







` "Do you honour me with your attention, Doctor?







`"Monsieur," said I, "in my profession, the communications of patients are

always received in confidence." I was guarded in my answer, for I was troubled in my

mind with what I had heard and seen.







`Her breathing was so difficult to trace, that I carefully tried the pulse and the heart.

There was life, and no more. Looking round as I resumed my seat, I found the brothers

intent upon me. * * * *







`I write with so much difficulty, the cold is so severe, I am so fearful of being detected

and consigned to an underground cell and total darkness, that I must abridge this

narrative. There is no confusion or failure in my memory; it can recall, and could detail,

every word that was ever spoken between me and those brothers.







`She lingered for a week. Towards the last, I could understand some few syllables that she

said to me, by placing my ear close to her lips. She asked me where she was, and I told

her; who I was, and I told her. It was in vain that I asked her for her family name. She

faintly shook her head upon the pillow, and kept her secret, as the boy had done.







`I had no opportunity of asking her any question, until I had told the brothers she was

sinking fast, and could not live another day. Until then, though no one was ever presented

to her consciousness save the woman and myself, one or other of them had always jealously

sat behind the curtain at the head of the bed when I was there. But when it came to that,

they seemed careless what communication I might hold with her; as if--the thought passed

through my mind--I were dying too.







`I always observed that their pride bitterly resented the younger brother's (as I call

him) having crossed swords with a peasant, and that peasant a boy. The only consideration

that appeared to affect the mind of either of them was the consideration that this



was highly degrading to the family, and was ridiculous. As often as I caught the younger

brother's eyes, their expression reminded me that he disliked me deeply, fur knowing what

I knew from the boy. He was smoother and more polite to me than the elder; but I saw this.

I also saw that I was an incumbrance in the mind of the elder, too.







`My patient died, two hours before midnight--at a time, by my watch, answering almost to

the minute when I had first seen her. I was alone with her, when her forlorn young head

trooped gently on one side, and all her earthly wrongs and sorrows ended.







`The brothers were waiting in a room down-stairs, impatient to ride away. I had heard

them, alone at the bedside, striking their boots with their riding-whips, and loitering up

and down.







`"At last she is dead?" said the elder, when I went in.







`"She is dead," said I.







`"I congratulate you, my brother," were his words as he turned round.







`He had before offered me money, which I had postponed taking. He now gave me a rouleau of

gold. I took it from his hand, but laid it on the table. I had considered the question,

and had resolved to accept nothing.







`"Pray excuse me," said I. "Under the circumstances, no." `They

exchanged looks, but bent their heads to me as I bent mine to them, and we parted without

another word on either side. * * * *







`I am weary, weary, weary--worn down by misery. I cannot read what I have written with

this gaunt hand.







`Early in the morning, the rouleau of gold was left at m' door in a little box, with my

name on the outside. From the first, I had anxiously considered what I ought to do. I

decided, that day, to write privately to the Minister, stating the nature of the two eases

to which I had been summoned, and the place to which I had gone: in effect, stating all

the circumstances. I knew what Court influence was, and what the immunities of the Nobles

were, and I expected that the matter would never be heard of; but, I wished to relieve my

own mind. I had kept the matter a profound secret, even from my wife; and this, too, I

resolved to state in my letter. I had no apprehension whatever of my real danger; but I

was conscious that there might be danger for others, if others were compromised by

possessing the knowledge that I possessed.







`I was much engaged that day, and could not complete my letter that night. I rose long

before my usual time next morning to finish it. It was the last day of the year. The

letter was lying before me just completed, when I was told that a lady waited, who wished

to see me. * * * *







`I am growing more and more unequal to the task I have set myself. It is so cold, so dark,

my senses are so benumbed, and the gloom upon me is so dreadful.







`The lady was young, engaging, and handsome, but not marked for long life. She was in

great agitation. She presented herself to me as the wife of the Marquis St. Evr size="2">émonde. I connected the title

by which the boy had addressed the elder brother, with the initial letter embroidered on

the scarf, and had no difficulty in arriving at the conclusion that I had seen that

nobleman very lately.







`My memory is still accurate, but I cannot write the words of Our conversation. I suspect

that I am watched more closely than I was, and I know not at what times I may be watched.

She had in part suspected, and in part discovered, the main facts of the cruel story, of

her husband's share in it, and my being resorted to. She did not know that the girl was

dead. Her hope had been, she said in great distress, to show her, in secret, a woman's

sympathy. Her hope had been to avert the wrath of Heaven from a House that had long been

hateful to the suffering many.







`She had reasons for believing that there was a young sister living, and her greatest

desire was, to help that sister. I could tell her nothing but that there was such a

sister; beyond that, I knew nothing. Her inducement to come to me, relying on my

confidence, had been the hope that I could tell her the name and place of abode. Whereas,

to this wretched hour I am ignorant of both. * * * *







`These scraps of paper fail me. One was taken from me, with a warning, yesterday. I must

finish my record to-day.







`She was a good, passionate" title="a.有同情心的 vt.同情">compassionate lady, and not happy in her marriage. How could she be! The

brother distrusted and disliked her, and his influence was all opposed to her; she stood

in dread of him, and in dead of her husband too. When I handed her down to the door, there

was a child, a pretty boy from two to three years old, in her carriage.







`"For his sake, Doctor," she said, pointing to him in tears, "I would do

all I can to make what poor amends I can. He will never prosper in his inheritance

otherwise. I have a presentiment that if no other innocent atonement is made for this, it

will one day be required of him. What I have left to call my own--it is little beyond the

worth of a few jewels--I will make it the first charge of his life to bestow, with the

compassion and lamenting of his dead mother, on this injured family, if the sister can be

discovered."







`She kissed the boy, and said, caressing him, "It is for thine own dear sake. Thou

wilt be faithful, little Charles?" The child answered her bravely, "Yes!" I

kissed her hand, and she took him in her arms, and went away caressing him. I never saw

her more.







`As she had mentioned her husband's name in the faith that I knew it, I added no mention

of it to my letter. I sealed my letter, and, not trusting it out of my own hands,

delivered it myself that day.







`That night, the last night of the year, towards nine o'clock, a man in a black dress rang

at my gate, demanded to see me, and softly followed my servant, Ernest Defarge, a youth,

upstairs. When my servant came into the room where I sat with my wife--O my wife, beloved

of my heart! My fair young English wife!--we saw the man, who was supposed to be at the

gate, standing silent behind him.







`An urgent case in the Rue St. Honoré', he said. It would not detain me, he had a coach in

waiting.







`It brought me here, it brought me to my grave. When I was clear of the house, a black

muffler was drawn tightly over my mouth from behind, and my arms were pinioned. The two

brothers crossed the road from a dark corner, and identified me with a single gesture. The

Marquis took from his pocket the letter I had written, showed it me, burnt it in the light

of a lantern that was held, and extinguished the ashes with his foot. Not a word was

spoken. I was brought here, I was brought to my living grave.







`If it had pleased GOD to put it in the hard heart of either of the brothers, in all these

frightful years, to grant me any tidings of my dearest wife--so much as to let me know by

a word whether alive or dead--I might have thought that He had not quite abandoned them.

But, now I believe that the mark of the red cross is fatal to them, and that they have no

part in His mercies. And them and their descendants, to the last of their race, I,

Alexandre Manette, unhappy prisoner, do this last night of the year 1767, in my unbearable

agony, denounce to the times when all these things shall be answered for. I denounce them

to Heaven and to earth.'







A terrible sound arose when the reading of this document was done. A sound of craving and

eagerness that had nothing articulate in it but blood. The narrative called up the most

revengeful passions of the time, and there was not a head in the nation but must have

dropped before it.







Little need, in presence of that tribunal and that auditory, to show how the Defarges had

not made the paper public, with the other captured Bastille memorials borne in procession,

and had kept it, biding their time. Little need to show that this detested



family name had long been anathematised by Saint Antoine, and was wrought into the fatal

register. The man never trod ground whose virtues and Services would have sustained him in

that place that day, against such denunciation.







And all the worse for the doomed man, that the denouncer was a well-known citizen, his own

attached friend, the father of his wife. One of the frenzied aspirations of the populace

was, for imitations of the questionable public virtues of antiquity, and for sacrifices

and self-immolations on the people's altar. Therefore when the President said (else had

his own head quivered on his shoulders), that the good physician of the Republic would

deserve better still of the Republic by rooting out an obnoxious family of Aristocrats,

and would doubtless feel a sacred glow and joy in making his daughter a widow and her

child an orphan, there was wild excitement, patriotic fervour, not a touch of human

sympathy.







`Much influence around him, has that Doctor?' murmured Madame Defarge, smiling to The

Vengeance. `Save him now, my Doctor, save him!'







At every juryman's vote, there was a roar. Another and another. Roar and roar.







Unanimously voted. At heart and by descent an Aristocrat, an enemy of the Republic, a

notorious oppressor of the People. Back to the Conciergerie, and Death within

four-and-twenty hours!

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