A Tale of Two Cities

The Grindstone

Tellson’s Bank, established in the Saint Germain Quarter of Paris, was in a wing of a large house, approached by a courtyard and shut off from the street by a high wall and a strong gate.  The house belonged to a great nobleman who had lived in it until he made a flight from the troubles, in his own cook’s dress, and got across the borders.  A mere beast of the chase flying from hunters, he was still in his metempsychosis no other than the same Monseigneur, the preparation of whose chocolate for whose lips had once occupied three strong men besides the cook in question.

Monseigneur gone, and the three strong men absolving themselves from the sin of having drawn his high wages, by being more than ready and willing to cut his throat on the altar of the dawning Republic one and indivisible of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death, Monseigneur’s house had been first sequestrated, and then confiscated.  For, all things moved so fast, and decree followed decree with that fierce precipitation, that now upon the third night of the autumn month of September, patriot emissaries of the law were in possession of Monseigneur’s house, and had marked it with the tri-colour, and were drinking brandy in its state apartments.

A place of business in London like Tellson’s place of business in Paris, would soon have driven the House out of its mind and into the Gazette.  For, what would staid British responsibility and respectability have said to orange-trees in boxes in a Bank courtyard, and even to a Cupid over the counter?  Yet such things were.  Tellson’s had whitewashed the Cupid, but he was still to be seen on the ceiling, in the coolest linen, aiming (as he very often does) at money from morning to night.  Bankruptcy must inevitably have come of this young Pagan, in Lombard-street, London, and also of a curtained alcove in the rear of the immortal boy, and also of a looking-glass let into the wall, and also of clerks not at all old, who danced in public on the slightest provocation.  Yet, a French Tellson’s could get on with these things exceedingly well, and, as long as the times held together, no man had taken fright at them, and drawn out his money.

What money would be drawn out of Tellson’s henceforth, and what would lie there, lost and forgotten; what plate and jewels would tarnish in Tellson’s hiding-places, while the depositors rusted in prisons, and when they should have violently perished; how many accounts with Tellson’s never to be balanced in this world, must be carried over into the next; no man could have said, that night, any more than Mr. Jarvis Lorry could, though he thought heavily of these questions.  He sat by a newly-lighted wood fire (the blighted and unfruitful year was prematurely cold), and on his honest and courageous face there was a deeper shade than the pendent lamp could throw, or any object in the room distortedly reflect—­a shade of horror.

He occupied rooms in the Bank, in his fidelity to the House of which he had grown to be a part, like strong root-ivy.  It chanced that they derived a kind of security from the patriotic occupation of the main building, but the true-hearted old gentleman never calculated about that.  All such circumstances were indifferent to him, so that he did his duty.  On the opposite side of the courtyard, under a colonnade, was extensive standing—­for carriages—­where, indeed, some carriages of Monseigneur yet stood.  Against two of the pillars were fastened two great flaring flambeaux, and in the light of these, standing out in the open air, was a large grindstone:  a roughly mounted thing which appeared to have hurriedly been brought there from some neighbouring smithy, or other workshop.  Rising and looking out of window at these harmless objects, Mr. Lorry shivered, and retired to his seat by the fire.  He had opened, not only the glass window, but the lattice blind outside it, and he had closed both again, and he shivered through his frame.

From the streets beyond the high wall and the strong gate, there came the usual night hum of the city, with now and then an indescribable ring in it, weird and unearthly, as if some unwonted sounds of a terrible nature were going up to Heaven.

“Thank God,” said Mr. Lorry, clasping his hands, “that no one near and dear to me is in this dreadful town to-night.  May He have mercy on all who are in danger!”

Soon afterwards, the bell at the great gate sounded, and he thought, “They have come back!” and sat listening.  But, there was no loud irruption into the courtyard, as he had expected, and he heard the gate clash again, and all was quiet.

The nervousness and dread that were upon him inspired that vague uneasiness respecting the Bank, which a great change would naturally awaken, with such feelings roused.  It was well guarded, and he got up to go among the trusty people who were watching it, when his door suddenly opened, and two figures rushed in, at sight of which he fell back in amazement.

Lucie and her father!  Lucie with her arms stretched out to him, and with that old look of earnestness so concentrated and intensified, that it seemed as though it had been stamped upon her face expressly to give force and power to it in this one passage of her life.

“What is this?” cried Mr. Lorry, breathless and confused.  “What is the matter?  Lucie!  Manette!  What has happened?  What has brought you here?  What is it?”

With the look fixed upon him, in her paleness and wildness, she panted out in his arms, imploringly, “O my dear friend!  My husband!”

“Your husband, Lucie?”

“Charles.”

“What of Charles?”

“Here.

“Here, in Paris?”

“Has been here some days—­three or four—­I don’t know how many—­ I can’t collect my thoughts.  An errand of generosity brought him here unknown to us; he was stopped at the barrier, and sent to prison.”

The old man uttered an irrepressible cry.  Almost at the same moment, the beg of the great gate rang again, and a loud noise of feet and voices came pouring into the courtyard.

“What is that noise?” said the Doctor, turning towards the window.

“Don’t look!” cried Mr. Lorry.  “Don’t look out!  Manette, for your life, don’t touch the blind!”

The Doctor turned, with his hand upon the fastening of the window, and said, with a cool, bold smile: 

“My dear friend, I have a charmed life in this city.  I have been a Bastille prisoner.  There is no patriot in Paris—­in Paris?  In France—­who, knowing me to have been a prisoner in the Bastille, would touch me, except to overwhelm me with embraces, or carry me in triumph.  My old pain has given me a power that has brought us through the barrier, and gained us news of Charles there, and brought us here.  I knew it would be so; I knew I could help Charles out of all danger; I told Lucie so.—­What is that noise?” His hand was again upon the window.

“Don’t look!” cried Mr. Lorry, absolutely desperate.  “No, Lucie, my dear, nor you!” He got his arm round her, and held her.  “Don’t be so terrified, my love.  I solemnly swear to you that I know of no harm having happened to Charles; that I had no suspicion even of his being in this fatal place.  What prison is he in?”

“La Force!”

“La Force!  Lucie, my child, if ever you were brave and serviceable in your life—­and you were always both—­you will compose yourself now, to do exactly as I bid you; for more depends upon it than you can think, or I can say.  There is no help for you in any action on your part to-night; you cannot possibly stir out.  I say this, because what I must bid you to do for Charles’s sake, is the hardest thing to do of all.  You must instantly be obedient, still, and quiet.  You must let me put you in a room at the back here.  You must leave your father and me alone for two minutes, and as there are Life and Death in the world you must not delay.”

“I will be submissive to you.  I see in your face that you know I can do nothing else than this.  I know you are true.”

The old man kissed her, and hurried her into his room, and turned the key; then, came hurrying back to the Doctor, and opened the window and partly opened the blind, and put his hand upon the Doctor’s arm, and looked out with him into the courtyard.

Looked out upon a throng of men and women:  not enough in number, or near enough, to fill the courtyard:  not more than forty or fifty in all.  The people in possession of the house had let them in at the gate, and they had rushed in to work at the grindstone; it had evidently been set up there for their purpose, as in a convenient and retired spot.

But, such awful workers, and such awful work!

The grindstone had a double handle, and, turning at it madly were two men, whose faces, as their long hair flapped back when the whirlings of the grindstone brought their faces up, were more horrible and cruel than the visages of the wildest savages in their most barbarous disguise.  False eyebrows and false moustaches were stuck upon them, and their hideous countenances were all bloody and sweaty, and all awry with howling, and all staring and glaring with beastly excitement and want of sleep.  As these ruffians turned and turned, their matted locks now flung forward over their eyes, now flung backward over their necks, some women held wine to their mouths that they might drink; and what with dropping blood, and what with dropping wine, and what with the stream of sparks struck out of the stone, all their wicked atmosphere seemed gore and fire.  The eye could not detect one creature in the group free from the smear of blood.  Shouldering one another to get next at the sharpening-stone, were men stripped to the waist, with the stain all over their limbs and bodies; men in all sorts of rags, with the stain upon those rags; men devilishly set off with spoils of women’s lace and silk and ribbon, with the stain dyeing those trifles through and through.  Hatchets, knives, bayonets, swords, all brought to be sharpened, were all red with it.  Some of the hacked swords were tied to the wrists of those who carried them, with strips of linen and fragments of dress:  ligatures various in kind, but all deep of the one colour.  And as the frantic wielders of these weapons snatched them from the stream of sparks and tore away into the streets, the same red hue was red in their frenzied eyes;—­eyes which any unbrutalised beholder would have given twenty years of life, to petrify with a well-directed gun.

All this was seen in a moment, as the vision of a drowning man, or of any human creature at any very great pass, could see a world if it were there.  They drew back from the window, and the Doctor looked for explanation in his friend’s ashy face.

“They are,” Mr. Lorry whispered the words, glancing fearfully round at the locked room, “murdering the prisoners.  If you are sure of what you say; if you really have the power you think you have—­as I believe you have—­make yourself known to these devils, and get taken to La Force.  It may be too late, I don’t know, but let it not be a minute later!”

Doctor Manette pressed his hand, hastened bareheaded out of the room, and was in the courtyard when Mr. Lorry regained the blind.

His streaming white hair, his remarkable face, and the impetuous confidence of his manner, as he put the weapons aside like water, carried him in an instant to the heart of the concourse at the stone.  For a few moments there was a pause, and a hurry, and a murmur, and the unintelligible sound of his voice; and then Mr. Lorry saw him, surrounded by all, and in the midst of a line of twenty men long, all linked shoulder to shoulder, and hand to shoulder, hurried out with cries of—­“Live the Bastille prisoner!  Help for the Bastille prisoner’s kindred in La Force!  Room for the Bastille prisoner in front there!  Save the prisoner Evremonde at La Force!” and a thousand answering shouts.

He closed the lattice again with a fluttering heart, closed the window and the curtain, hastened to Lucie, and told her that her father was assisted by the people, and gone in search of her husband.  He found her child and Miss Pross with her; but, it never occurred to him to be surprised by their appearance until a long time afterwards, when he sat watching them in such quiet as the night knew.

Lucie had, by that time, fallen into a stupor on the floor at his feet, clinging to his hand.  Miss Pross had laid the child down on his own bed, and her head had gradually fallen on the pillow beside her pretty charge.  O the long, long night, with the moans of the poor wife!  And O the long, long night, with no return of her father and no tidings!

Twice more in the darkness the bell at the great gate sounded, and the irruption was repeated, and the grindstone whirled and spluttered.  “What is it?” cried Lucie, affrighted.  “Hush!  The soldiers’ swords are sharpened there,” said Mr. Lorry.  “The place is national property now, and used as a kind of armoury, my love.”

Twice more in all; but, the last spell of work was feeble and fitful.  Soon afterwards the day began to dawn, and he softly detached himself from the clasping hand, and cautiously looked out again.  A man, so besmeared that he might have been a sorely wounded soldier creeping back to consciousness on a field of slain, was rising from the pavement by the side of the grindstone, and looking about him with a vacant air.  Shortly, this worn-out murderer descried in the imperfect light one of the carriages of Monseigneur, and, staggering to that gorgeous vehicle, climbed in at the door, and shut himself up to take his rest on its dainty cushions.

The great grindstone, Earth, had turned when Mr. Lorry looked out again, and the sun was red on the courtyard.  But, the lesser grindstone stood alone there in the calm morning air, with a red upon it that the sun had never given, and would never take away.