FragmentWelcome to consult.... My heart is touched now, by many remembrances that have long fallen asleep, of my pretty young
mother (and I so old!), and by many associations of the days when
what we call the World was not so real with me, and my faults
were not confirmed in me.”
“I understand the feeling!” exclaimed Carton, with a bright
flush. “And you are the better for it?”
“I hope so.”
Carton terminated the conversation here, by rising to help him
on with his outer coat. “But you,” said Mr. Lorry, reverting to the
theme, “you are young.”
“Yes,” said Carton. “I am not old, but my young way was never
Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
f
A Tale of Two Cities
the way to age. Enough of me.”
“And of me, I am sure,” said Mr. Lorry. “Are you going out?”
“I’ll walk with you to her gate. You know my vagabond and
restless habits. If I should prowl about the streets a long time,
don’t be uneasy; I shall reappear in the morning. You go to the
Court tomorrow?”
“Yes, unhappily.”
“I shall be there, but only as one of the crowd. My Spy will find
a place for me. Take my arm, sir.”
Mr. Lorry did so, and they went down-stairs and out in the
streets. A few minutes brought them to Mr. Lorry’s destination.
Carton left him there; but lingered at a little distance, and turned
back to the gate again when it was shut, and touched it. He had
heard of her going to the prison every day. “She came out here,”
he said, looking about him, “turned this way, must have trod on
these stones often. Let me follow in her steps.”
It was ten o’clock at night when he stood before the prison of La
Force, where she had stood hundreds of times. A little wood-
sawyer, having closed his shop, was smoking his pipe at his shop-
door.
“Good night, citizen,” said Sydney Carton, pausing in going by;
for the man eyed him inquisitively.
“Good night, citizen.”
“How goes the Republic?”
“You mean the Guillotine. Not ill. Sixty-three today. We shall
mount to a hundred soon. Samson and his men complain
sometimes, of being exhausted. Ha, ha, ha! He is so droll, that
Samson. Such a barber!”
“Do you often go to see him—” “Shave? Always. Every day.
Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
f
A Tale of Two Cities
What a barber! You have seen him at work?”
“Never.”
“Go and see him when he has a good batch. Figure this to
yourself, citizen; he shaved the sixty-three today, in less than two
pipes. Less than two pipes. Word of honour!”
As the grinning little man held out the pipe he was smoking to
explain how he timed the execution, Carton was so sensible of a
rising desire to strike the life out of him, that he turned away.
“But you are not English,” said the wood-sawyer, “though you
wear English dress?”
“Yes,” said Carton, pausing again, and answering over his
shoulder.
“You speak like a Frenchman.”
“I am an old student here.”
“Aha, a perfect Frenchman! Good night, Englishman.”
“Good night, citizen.”
“But go and see that droll dog,” the little man persisted, calling
after him. “And take a pipe with you!”
Sydney had not gone far out of sight, when he stopped in the
middle of the street under a glimmering lamp, and wrote with his
pencil on a scrap of paper. Then, traversing with the decided step
of one who remembered the way well, several dark and dirty
streets—much dirtier than usual, for the best public thoroughfares
remained uncleansed in those times of terror—he stopped at a
chemist’s shop, which the owner was closing with his own hands.
A small, dim, crooked shop, kept in a tortuous, up-
021-61207839