A Tale of Two Cities

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."