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"It shall be done!"

His manner was so fervent and inspiring that Mr. Lorry caught the flame, and was quick as youth.

"You are a noble heart. Did I say we could depend upon no better man? Tell her to-night what you know of her danger as involving her child and her father. Dwell upon that, for she would lay her own fair head beside her husband's cheerfully." He faltered for an instant; then went on as before. "For the sake of her child and her father, press upon her the necessity of leaving Paris, with them and you, at that hour. Tell her that it was her husband's last arrangement. Tell her that more depends upon it than she dare believe or hope. You think that her father, even in this sad state, will submit himself to her; do you not?"

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"I am sure of it."

"I thought so. Quietly and steadily have all these arrangements made in the court-yard here, even to the taking of your own seat in the carriage. The moment I come to you, take me in and drive away.'

"I understand that I wait for you under all circumstances?"

"You have my certificate in your hand with the rest, you know, and will reserve my place. Wait for nothing but to have my place occupied, and then for England!"

"Why, then," said Mr. Lorry, grasping his eager but so firm and steady hand, "it does not all depend on one old man, but I shall have a young and ardent man at my side."

"By the help of Heaven you shall! Promise me solemnly that nothing will influence you to alter the course on which we now stand pledged to one another."

"Nothing, Carton."

"Remember these words to-morrow: change the course, or delay in it-for any reason-and no life can possibly be saved, and many lives must inevitably be sacrificed."

"I will remember them. I hope to do my part faithfully."

"And I hope to do mine. Now, good-by!" Though he said it with a grave smile of earnestness, and though he even put the old man's hand to his lips, he did not part from him then. He helped him so far to arouse the rocking figure before the dying embers as to get a cloak and hat put upon it, and to tempt it forth to find where the bench and work were hidden that it still moaningly besought to have. He walked on the other side of it, and protected it to the court-yard of the house where the afflicted heart -so happy in the memorable time when he had revealed his own desolate heart to it-outwatched the awful night. He entered the courtyard and remained there for a few moments alone, looking up at the light in the window of her room. Before he went away he breathed a blessing toward it, and a Farewell.

CHAPTER XIII.

FIFTY-TWO.

IN the black prison of the Conciergerie the doomed of the day awaited their fate. They were in number as the weeks of the year. Fifty

everlasting sea.

two were to roll that afternoon on the life-tide of the city to the boundless, Before their cells were quit of them new occupants were appointed; before their blood ran into the blood spilled yesterday, the blood that was to mingle with theirs to-morrow was already set apart.

Two score and twelve were told off. From the farmer-general of seventy, whose riches could not buy his life, to the seamstress of twenty, whose poverty and obscurity could not save her. Physical diseases, engendered in the vices and neglects of men, will seize on victims of all degrees; and the frightful moral disorder, born of unspeakable suffering, intolerable oppression, and heartless indifference, smote equally without distinction.

Charles Darnay, alone in a cell, had sustained himself with no flattering delusion since he came to it from the Tribunal. In every line of the narrative he had heard he had heard his condemnation. He had fully comprehended that no personal influence could possibly save him-that he was virtually sentenced by the millions, and that units could avail him nothing.

Nevertheless, it was not easy, with the face of his beloved wife fresh before him, to compose his mind to what it must bear. His hold on life was strong, and it was very, very hard to loosen; by gradual efforts and degrees unclosed a little here, it clenched the tighter there, and when he brought his strength to bear on that hand and it yielded, this was closed again. There was a hurry, too, in all his thoughts, a turbulent and heated working of his heart, that contended against resignation. If, for a mo

ment, he did feel resigned, then his wife and child, who had to live after him, seemed to protest and to make it a selfish thing.

But all this was at first. Before long the consideration that there was no disgrace in the fate he must meet, and that numbers went the same road wrongfully, and trod it firmly, every day, sprang up to stimulate him. Next followed the thought that much of the future peace of mind enjoyable by the dear ones depended on his quiet fortitude. So by degrees he calmed into the better state when he could raise his thoughts much higher, and draw comfort down. Before it had set in dark on the night of his condemnation he had traveled thus far on his last way. Being allowed to purchase the means of writing, and a light, he sat down to write until such time as the prison lamps should be extinguished.

Free and hap

showed itself in shining forms.
py, back in the old house in Soho (though it had
nothing in it like the real house), unaccountably
released and light of heart, he was with Lucie
again, and she told him it was all a dream, and
he had never gone away. A pause of forget-
fulness, and then he had even suffered, and had
come back to her, dead and at peace, and yet
there was no difference in him.
Another pause
of oblivion, and he awoke in the sombre morn-
ing, unconscious where he was or what had hap-
pened, until it flashed upon his mind, "This is
the day of my death!"

Thus had he come through the hours to the day when the fifty-two heads were to fall. And now, while he was composed and hoped that he could meet the end with quiet heroism, a new action began in his waking thoughts, which was very difficult to master.

He had never seen the instrument that was to terminate his life. How high it was from the ground, how many steps it had, where he would be stood, how he would be touched, whether the touching hands would be dyed red, which way his face would be turned, whether he would be the first, or might be the last: these and many similar questions, in no wise directed by his will, obtruded themselves over and over again countless times. Neither were they connected with fear; he was conscious of no fear. Rather they originated in a strange besetting desire to know what to do when the time came; a desire gigantically disproportionate to the few swift moments to which it referred; a wondering that was more like the wondering of some other spirit within his than his own.

He wrote a long letter to Lucie, showing her that he had known nothing of her father's imprisonment until he had heard of it from herself, and that he had been as ignorant as she of his father's and uncle's responsibility for that misery until the paper had been read. He had already explained to her that his concealment from herself of the name he had relinquished was the one condition-fully intelligible nowthat her father had attached to their betrothal, and was the one promise he had still exacted on the morning of their marriage. He entreated her, for her father's sake, never to seek to know whether he had become oblivious of the existence of the paper, or had had it recalled to him (for the moment, or for good), by the story of the Tower, on that old Sunday under the dear plane-tree in the garden. If he had preserved The hours went on as he walked to and fro, any definite remembrance of it, there could be and the clocks struck the numbers he would no doubt that he had supposed it destroyed with never hear again. Nine gone forever, ten gone the Bastile, when he had found no mention of forever, eleven gone forever, twelve coming on it among the relics of prisoners which the popu- to pass away. After a hard contest with that lace had discovered there, and which had been eccentric action of thought which had last perdescribed to all the world. He besought her-plexed him, he had got the better of it. He though he added that he knew it was needless to console her father, by impressing him, through every tender means she could think of, with the truth that he had done nothing for which he could justly reproach himself, but had uniformly forgotten himself for their joint sakes. Next to her preservation of his own last grateful love and blessing, and her overcoming of her sorrow, to devote herself to their dear child, he adjured her, as they would meet in Heaven, to comfort her father.

To her father himself he wrote in the same strain; but he told her father that he expressly confided his wife and child to his care. And he told him this, very strongly, with the hope of rousing him from any despondency or dangerous retrospect toward which he foresaw he might be tending.

walked up and down, softly repeating their names to himself. The worst of the strife was over. He could walk up and down, free from distracting fancies, praying for himself and for them.

Twelve gone forever.

He had been apprised that the final hour was Three, and he knew he would be summoned some time earlier, inasmuch as the tumbrils jolted heavily and slowly through the streets. Therefore he resolved to keep Two before his mind as the hour, and so to strengthen himself in the interval that he might be able, after that time, to strengthen others.

Walking regularly to and fro with his arms folded on his breast, a very different man from the prisoner who had walked to and fro at La Force, he heard One struck away from him To Mr. Lorry he commended them all, and without surprise. The hour had measured like explained his worldly affairs. That done, with most other hours. Devoutly thankful to Heavmany added sentences of grateful friendship and en for his recovered self-possession, he thought, warm attachment, all was done. He never"There is but another now," and turned to thought of Carton. His mind was so full of the others that he never once thought of him.

He had time to finish these letters before the lights were put out. When he lay down on his straw bed he thought he had done with this world.

But it beckoned him back in his sleep, and

walk again.

Footsteps in the stone passage, outside the door. He stopped.

The key was put in the lock, and turned. Before the door was opened, or as it opened, a man said in a low voice, in English: "He has never seen me here; I have kept out of his

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The door was quickly opened and closed, and there stood before him face to face, quiet, intent upon him, with the light of a smile on his features and a cautionary finger on his lip, Sydney Carton.

There was something so bright and remarkable in his look, that, for the first moment, the prisoner misdoubted him to be an apparition of his own imagining. But he spoke, and it was his voice; he took the prisoner's hand, and it was his real grasp.

"Write exactly as I speak."

"To whom do I address it?"

"To no one." Carton still had his hand in his breast.

"Do I date it ?"

"No."

The prisoner looked up at each question. Carton, standing over him with his hand in his breast, looked down.

"If you remember,"" said Carton, dictating, "the words that passed between us, long ago, you will readily comprehend this when you see it. You do remember them, I know. It is not

"Of all the people upon earth you least ex-in your nature to forget them."" pected to see me !" he said.

"I could not believe it to be you. I can scarcely believe it now. You are not"-the apprehension came suddenly into his mind-"a prisoner?"

"No. I am accidentally possessed of a power over one of the keepers here, and in virtue of it I stand before you. I come from her-your wife, dear Darnay.'

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The prisoner wrung his hand.

"I bring you a request from her." "What is it?"

"A most earnest, pressing, and emphatic entreaty, addressed to you in the most pathetic tones of the voice so dear to you, that you well remember."

The prisoner turned his face partly aside. "You have no time to ask me why I bring it, or what it means; I have no time to tell you. You must comply with it-take off those boots you wear, and draw on these of mine."

There was a chair against the wall of the cell, behind the prisoner. Carton, pressing forward, had already, with the speed of lightning, got him down into it, and stood over him barefoot.

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"It would be madness if I asked you to escape; but do I? When I ask you to pass out at that door, tell me it is madness and remain here. Change that cravat for this of mine, that coat for this of mine. While you do it, let me take this ribbon from your hair, and shake out your hair like this of mine!"

With wonderful quickness, and with a strength, both of will and action, that appeared quite supernatural, he forced all these changes upon him. The prisoner was like a young child in his hands.

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He was drawing his hand from his breast; the prisoner chancing to look up in his hurried wonder as he wrote, the hand stopped, closing upon something.

"Have you written forget them?" Carton asked.

"I have. Is that a weapon in your hand?" "No; I am not armed."

"What is it in your hand?"

"You shall know directly. Write on; there are but a few words more." He dictated again. "I am thankful that the time has come when I can prove them. That I do so, is no subject for regret or grief."" As he said these words with his eyes fixed on the writer, his hand slowly and softly moved down close to the writer's face.

The pen dropped from Darnay's fingers on the table, and he looked about him vacantly. "What vapor is that?" he asked. "Vapor?"

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Something that crossed me ?"

"I am conscious of nothing; there can be nothing here. Take up the pen and finish. Hurry, hurry!"

As if his memory were impaired, or his faculties disordered, the prisoner made an effort to rally his attention. As he looked at Carton with clouded eyes and with an altered manner of breathing, Carton - his hand again in his breast-looked steadily at him.

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Hurry, hurry!"

The prisoner bent over the paper once more. "If it had been otherwise;"" Carton's hand was again watchfully and softly stealing down; "I never should have used the longer opportunity. If it had been otherwise;'" the hand was at the prisoner's face; "I should but have had so much the more to answer for. If it had been otherwise—"" Carton looked at the pen and saw that it was trailing off into unintelligible signs.

Carton's hand moved back to his breast no more. The prisoner sprang up with a reproachful look, but Carton's hand was close and firm at his nostrils, and Carton's left arm caught him round the waist. For a few seconds he faintly struggled with the man who had come to lay down his life for him; but within a minute or so he was stretched insensible on the ground.

Quickly, but with hands as true to the purpose as his heart was, Carton dressed himself in the clothes the prisoner had laid aside, combed back his hair, and tied it with the ribbon the prisoner had worn. Then he softly called, "Enter there! Come in!" and the Spy presented himself.

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"You see?" said Carton, looking up at him, as he kneeled on one knee beside the insensible figure putting the paper in the breast: "is your hazard very great?"

"Mr. Carton," the Spy answered, with a timid snap of his fingers, "my hazard is not that, in the thick of business here, if you are true to the whole of your bargain."

"Don't fear me. I will be true to the death." "You must be, Mr. Carton, if the tale of fifty-two is to be right. Being made right by you in that dress I shall have no fear."

"Have no fear! I shall soon be out of the way of harming you, and the rest will soon be far from here, please God! Now get assistance and take me to the coach."

"You?" said the Spy, nervously.

"Him, man, with whom I have exchanged. You go out at the gate by which you brought me in ?"

"Of course."

"I was weak and faint when you brought me in, and I am fainter now you take me out. The parting interview has overpowered me. Such a thing has happened here often, and too often. Your life is in your own hands. Quick! Call assistance!"

"You swear not to betray me?" said the trembling Spy, as he paused for a last moment.

"Man, man!" returned Carton, stamping his foot; "have I sworn by no solemn vow already to go through with this that you waste the precious moments now? Take him yourself to the court-yard you know of, place him yourself in the carriage, show him yourself to Mr. Lorry, tell him yourself to give him no restorative but air, and to remember my words of last night, and his promise of last night, and drive away!"

The spy withdrew, and Carton seated himself at the table, resting his forehead on his hands. The Spy returned immediately, with two men.

"How, then?" said one of them, contemplating the fallen figure. "So afflicted to find that his friend has drawn a prize in the lottery of Sainte Guillotine?"

"A good patriot," said the other, "could hardly have been more afflicted if the Aristocrat had drawn a blank!"

They raised the unconscious figure, placed it on a litter they had brought to the door, and bent to carry it away.

"The time is short, Evrémonde," said the Spy, in a warning voice.

"I know it well," answered Carton. "Be

careful of my friend, I entreat you, and leave

me.

"Come, then, my children!" said Barsad. "Lift him, and come away!"

The door closed, and Carton was left alone. Straining his powers of listening to the utmost, he listened for any sound that might denote suspicion or alarm. There was none. Keys turned, doors clashed, footsteps passed along distant passages: no cry was raised, or hurry made, that seemed unusual. Breathing more freely in a little while, he sat down at the table, and listened again until the clocks struck Two.

Sounds that he was not afraid of, for he divined their meaning, then began to be audible. Several doors were opened in succession, and finally his own. A jailer, with a list in his hand, looked in, merely saying, "Follow me, Evrémonde!" and he followed into a large dark room at a distance. It was a dark winter day, and what with the shadows within, and what with the shadows without, he could but dimly discern the others who were brought there to have their arms bound. Some were standing; some seated. Some were lamenting, and in restless motion; but these were few. The great majority were silent and still, looking fixedly at the ground.

As he stood by the wall in a dim corner, while some of the fifty-two were brought in after him, one man stopped, in passing, to embrace him, as having a knowledge of him. It thrilled him with a great dread of discovery; but the man went on. A very few moments after that a young woman, with a slight girlish form, a sweet spare face in which there was no vestige of color, and large, widely-opened, patient eyes, rose from the seat where he had observed her sitting, and came to speak to him.

"Citizen Evrémonde," she said, touching him with her cold hand, "I am a poor little seamstress who was with you in La Force."

He murmured for answer, "True. I forget what you were accused of?"

"Plots. Though the just Heaven knows I am innocent of any. Is it likely? Who would think of plotting with a poor little weak creature like me?"

The forlorn smile with which she said it so touched him that tears started from his eyes.

“I am not afraid to die, Citizen Evrémonde, but I have done nothing! I am not unwilling to die, if the Republic, which is to do so much good to us poor, will profit by my death; but I do not know how that can be, Citizen Evrémonde. Such a poor weak little creature!"

As the last thing on earth that his heart was to warm and soften to, it warmed and softened to this pitiable girl.

"I heard you were released, Citizen Evrémonde. I hoped it was true?"

"It was. But I was again taken and condemned."

"If I may ride with you, Citizen Evrémonde, will you let me hold your hand? I am not afraid, but I am little and weak, and it will give me more courage.'

"And his wife and child. Hush! Yes." "Oh, you will let me hold your brave hand, stranger ?"

"Hush! Yes, my poor sister; to the last."

The same shadows that are falling on the prison are falling, in that same hour of the early afternoon, on the Barrier with the crowd about it, when a coach going out of Paris drives up to be examined.

"Who goes here? Whom have we within? Papers!"

The papers are handed out, and read. "Alexandre Manette. Physician. French. Which is he?"

This is he; this helpless, inarticulately-murmuring, wandering old man pointed out.

66

'Apparently the Citizen-Doctor is not in his right mind? The Revolution-fever will have been too much for him?"

Greatly too much for him.

"Hah! Many suffer with it. Lucie. His daughter. English. Which is she?"

This is she.

"Apparently it must be. Lucie, the wife of Evrémonde; is it not?" It is.

"Hah! Evrémonde has an assignation elsewhere. Lucie, her child. English. This is she?" She, and no other.

"Kiss me, child of Evrémonde. Now, thou hast kissed a good Republican; something new in thy family; remember it! Sydney Carton. Advocate. English. Which is he?"

He lies here, in this corner of the carriage. He, too, is pointed out.

66

Apparently the English advocate is in a swoon ?"

It is hoped he will recover in the fresher air. It is represented that he is not in strong health, and has separated sadly from a friend who is under the displeasure of the Republic.

"Is that all? It is not a great deal, that! Many are under the displeasure of the Republic, and must look out at the little window. Jarvis Lorry. Banker. English. Which is he?"

"I am he. Necessarily being the last." It is Jarvis Lorry who has replied to all the previous questions. It is Jarvis Lorry who has alighted and stands with his hand on the coachdoor, replying to a group of officials. They leisurely walk round the carriage and leisurely mount the box, to look at what little luggage it carries on the roof; the country-people hanging about press nearer to the coach-doors, and greedily stare in; a little child, carried by its mother, has its short arm held out for it, that it may touch the wife of an aristocrat who has gone to the Guillotine.

"Behold your papers, Jarvis Lorry, countersigned."

"One can depart, citizen ?"

"One can depart. Forward, my postillions! A good journey!"

"I salute you, citizens.—And the first danger passed!"

These are again the words of Jarvis Lorry, as As the patient eyes were lifted to his face he he clasps his hands and looks upward. There saw a sudden doubt in them, and then aston-is terror in the carriage, there is weeping, there ishment. He pressed the work-worn, hunger- is the heavy breathing of the insensible travworn young fingers, and touched his lips. eler. "Are you dying for him?" she whispered.

"Are we not going too slowly? Can they

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