A Tale of Two Cities

"What's on?" he asked, in a whisper, of the man he found himself next to.

"Nothing yet."

"What's coming on?"

"The Treason case."

"The quartering one, eh?"

"Ah!" returned the man, with a relish; "he'll be drawn on a hurdle
to be half hanged, and then he'll be taken down and sliced before
his own face, and then his inside will be taken out and burnt while
he looks on, and then his head will be chopped off, and he'll be
cut into quarters.  That's the sentence."

"If he's found Guilty, you mean to say?" Jerry added, by way of proviso.

"Oh! they'll find him guilty," said the other.  "Don't you be afraid of that."

Mr. Cruncher's attention was here diverted to the door-keeper, whom
he saw making his way to Mr. Lorry, with the note in his hand.  Mr.
Lorry sat at a table, among the gentlemen in wigs:  not far from a
wigged gentleman, the prisoner's counsel, who had a great bundle of
papers before him:  and nearly opposite another wigged gentleman with
his hands in his pockets, whose whole attention, when Mr. Cruncher
looked at him then or afterwards, seemed to be concentrated on the
ceiling of the court.  After some gruff coughing and rubbing of his
chin and signing with his hand, Jerry attracted the notice of
Mr. Lorry, who had stood up to look for him, and who quietly nodded
and sat down again.

"What's _he_ got to do with the case?" asked the man he had spoken with.

"Blest if I know," said Jerry.

"What have _you_ got to do with it, then, if a person may inquire?"

"Blest if I know that either," said Jerry.

The entrance of the Judge, and a consequent great stir and settling
down in the court, stopped the dialogue.  Presently, the dock became
the central point of interest.  Two gaolers, who had been standing
there, went out, and the prisoner was brought in, and put to the bar.

Everybody present, except the one wigged gentleman who looked at the
ceiling, stared at him.  All the human breath in the place, rolled at
him, like a sea, or a wind, or a fire.  Eager faces strained round
pillars and corners, to get a sight of him; spectators in back rows
stood up, not to miss a hair of him; people on the floor of the
court, laid their hands on the shoulders of the people before them,
to help themselves, at anybody's cost, to a view of him--stood
a-tiptoe, got upon ledges, stood upon next to nothing, to see every
inch of him.  Conspicuous among these latter, like an animated bit of
the spiked wall of Newgate, Jerry stood:  aiming at the prisoner the
beery breath of a whet he had taken as he came along, and discharging
it to mingle with the waves of other beer, and gin, and tea, and
coffee, and what not, that flowed at him, and already broke upon the
great windows behind him in an impure mist and rain.

The object of all this staring and blaring, was a young man of about
five-and-twenty, well-grown and well-looking, with a sunburnt cheek
and a dark eye.  His condition was that of a young gentleman.  He was
plainly dressed in black, or very dark grey, and his hair, which was
long and dark, was gathered in a ribbon at the back of his neck; more
to be out of his way than for ornament.  As an emotion of the mind
will express itself through any covering of the body, so the paleness
which his situation engendered came through the brown upon his cheek,
showing the soul to be stronger than the sun.  He was otherwise quite
self-possessed, bowed to the Judge, and stood quiet.

The sort of interest with which this man was stared and breathed at,
was not a sort that elevated humanity.  Had he stood in peril of a
less horrible sentence--had there been a chance of any one of its
savage details being spared--by just so much would he have lost in
his fascination.  The form that was to be doomed to be so shamefully
mangled, was the sight; the immortal creature that was to be so
butchered and torn asunder, yielded the sensation.  Whatever gloss
the various spectators put upon the interest, according to their
several arts and powers of self-deceit, the interest was, at the
root of it, Ogreish.

Silence in the court!  Charles Darnay had yesterday pleaded Not Guilty
to an indictment denouncing him (with infinite jingle and jangle) for
that he was a false traitor to our serene, illustrious, excellent,
and so forth, prince, our Lord the King, by reason of his having, on
divers occasions, and by divers means and ways, assisted Lewis, the
French King, in his wars against our said serene, illustrious,
excellent, and so forth; that was to say, by coming and going,
between the dominions of our said serene, illustrious, excellent, and
so forth, and those of the said French Lewis, and wickedly, falsely,
traitorously, and otherwise evil-adverbiously, revealing to the said
French Lewis what forces our said serene, illustrious, excellent, and
so forth, had in preparation to send to Canada and North America.
This much, Jerry, with his head becoming more and more spiky as the
law terms bristled it, made out with huge satisfaction, and so
arrived circuitously at the understanding that the aforesaid, and
over and over again aforesaid, Charles Darnay, stood there before him
upon his trial; that the jury were swearing in; and that
Mr. Attorney-General was making ready to speak.