A Tale of Two Cities by Dave Mckay, Charles Dickens (easy readers .txt) 📖

But what difference would it make? Others have been buried in the same way and in worse prisons before now."

"But never by me, countryman Defarge."

Defarge looked darkly at him as a way of giving his answer, and walked on saying not one word. The longer he went without talking, the less hope there was -- or so Darnay thought -- of him becoming any softer. For that reason, he quickly said:

"It is very important for me (and you know, brother, even better than I do, just how important it is) that I should be able to send word to Mr. Lorry, from Tellson's bank, an Englishman who is now in Paris. I want to give him word that I have been thrown in La Force Prison. Will you do that for me?"

"I will," Defarge said, without any change in his hard spirit, "do nothing for you. My job is to help my country and the people. I must serve both and protect them from you. I will do nothing for you."

Charles Darnay saw no hope in changing him, and his pride was hurt as well. As they walked on, without talking, he could not help but see that many prisoners must have been taken along those streets. Even the children did not show much interest in him. A few people turned their heads, and a few shook their fingers at him because they could see he was from the high class. Other than that, the thought of a man in good clothes going to prison was no more different to a man in working clothes going to work. In one narrow, dark, and dirty street an enthusiastic speaker was standing on a chair and talking to an interested crowd about the sins of the king and members of his family. The few words that Darnay heard were enough to let him know that the king was in prison and that the people acting for governments from all other countries had left Paris. On the way to Paris (apart from those few words in Beauvais) he had not been able to learn anything about what was happening. Being under two guards, and with people watching him everywhere it had been quite impossible.

But he knew now that he was in far more danger than he had planned for when leaving England. The danger around him had been growing quickly and he now knew that it might grow even more quickly in the days ahead. He knew that he would not have been brave enough to make the trip if he had known it would be like this. But still his fears were not as great now as they would be soon. As bad as the future looked, there was much about it that he still did not know, and where there was no understanding, there was always hope. The awful killing of thousands, that had been going on around the clock for days and nights now, taking the place of farm work, was so far from him knowing about it as it would have been if it was a hundred thousand years away.

He knew almost nothing about the "sharp female baby called Guillotine" at this time, as did most of the people. The awful acts that were going to be done soon were probably not even thought of in the heads of the people who would soon be doing them. So how could they have a place in the thoughts of Charles Darnay's kind and generous mind?

He could see that it would be a hard life in the prison, and that it would be cruel to be separated from his wife and child; but of more than this, he had nothing to clearly fear. With this on his mind -- which was enough to carry into a prison yard -- he arrived at La Force Prison.

A man with a fat face opened the metal door, and Defarge said to him, "The runaway Evremonde."

"What the devil! How many more will there be?” cried the fat face.

Defarge showed no interest in what the man said, and left Darnay there with him, taking the two freedom fighters with him as he left.

"What the devil, I say again!" the prison master said when he was left only with his wife and Charles Darnay. "How many more?"

His wife, not having an answer, just said, "One must be patient, my love!"

Three guards who came in answer to a bell that she was ringing, said much the same thing, and one added, "For the love of liberty!" which sounded like a strange thing to say in a prison!

La Force was a dark, dirty prison with very little hope in it. It had an awful smell of dirty sleep too, that seemed to strangely be a part of many places where there is poor care for those who live there.

"In secret too," the prison master said angrily, looking at the written paper. "As if I wasn't already too full!"

He angrily put the paper on a nail and made Charles Darnay wait another half hour, at times walking from side to side in the strong covered room, and at times resting on a stone seat. Either way he was there long enough for the prison master and his workers to see and remember this new prisoner.

"Come!" said the master, at last taking up his keys. "Come with me, runaway."

Through the half light of the prison, his new prisoner walked with him, from room to room, with many doors closing loudly behind them, until they came to a big, low room with a rounded stone roof, that was crowded with prisoners, both male and female. The women were sitting at a long table, reading, writing, knitting, and sewing; the men were, for the most part, standing behind the women or moving up and down the room.

In the way that we all think of prisoners as bad people, this new prisoner had a bad feeling about the others in the room. But the strangest thing of all the strange things he had seen on his ride to Paris was that they all stood up as one to receive him, with all the kindest actions of the best people of those times.

So strange did this action seem in such a dark, dirty prison, so out of place with all the sickness and pain of the place, that it was like Charles Darnay was standing in a room with a crowd of ghosts. A beautiful ghost, a proud ghost, a happy ghost, a smart ghost, a young ghost, an old ghost, all waiting to leave this empty place, all turning on him eyes that had been changed by the death they died when they came there.

He was so surprised that he could not move. The guard at his side and other guards moving about, who looked good enough for their job in any other prison, now looked awful next to the sad mothers and beautiful daughters who were there like ghosts of the young happy women and the older high class women they had been. All of this made Darnay feel that it was not really happening, that the long ride had made him sick, and what he was going through now was just a side effect of the sickness.

"In the name of your friends here in this room," said a man who looked like he should have been in a court, as he came forward, "I have the job of welcoming you to La Force, and of sharing our sadness with you on what awful changes have brought you here. May it soon end happily! It would not be kind of us to ask you this in a different place, but it is not wrong to ask it here: What is your name, and why are you here?"

Charles Darnay forced himself to speak, and answered as well as he could.

"I hope," said the man, following the head guard with his eyes as he moved around the room, "that you are not in secret?"

"I don't understand the meaning of those words, but I have heard them say that."

"Oh, how sad! We feel very bad for you! But be brave; others of us have been in secret at first, and it was only for a short time.” Then he added, speaking more loudly to the others, "I am sad to tell the room... in secret."

There were the sounds of people feeling sorry for Charles Darnay as he crossed the room to a metal door with little holes in it, where the guard waited for him. The soft loving voices of the women were the easiest to hear of the many voices that tried to encourage him. He turned at the door to thank them from his heart, when it closed under the guard's hand, and the ghosts were gone forever.

The door opened on some stone steps leading up from there. When they had climbed forty steps (The prisoner of half an hour had already counted them.) the guard opened a low black door, and they stepped into a small room. It was cold and wet, but not dark.

"Yours," said the guard.

"Why am I being left alone?"

"How should I know?"

"Can I buy a pen and ink, and some paper?"

"No one told me that you could. You will be visited, and you can ask then. For now, you must buy your food, and nothing more."

In the room was a chair, a table, and a straw mattress. As the guard looked over each of these things, and studied the four walls before leaving, the prisoner, leaning against the wall opposite to him had a strange thought about how fat the guard was, thinking that he looked like a man who had drowned and filled with water. His thoughts went on in the same crazy way after the guard had left, thinking first, "Now I have been left, as if I were dead.” He then stopped to look down at the mattress, with insects in it, and he thought, "Here in these insects is what will happen to my body after I die.” He walked from side to side in his room, counting the steps. "Five steps by four and a half, five by four and a half, five by four and a half.” The sound of the city was like a softly covered drum with wild voices added to it. "He made shoes, he made shoes, he made shoes.” The prisoner measured the room again, walking more quickly this time to take his thoughts away from what he had started to think. "The ghosts that became invisible when the door closed... There was one of them, a woman dressed in black, who was leaning back in a window seat, and she had a light showing on her golden hair. She looked like... Let us ride again through the lighted villages, where the people are all awake! ... He made shoes, he made shoes, he made shoes. ... Five steps by four and a half.” With such thoughts coming up from deep down in his mind, the prisoner walked faster and faster, choosing strongly not to quit counting. The sound of the city changed in one way. It still sounded like a softly covered drum, but for him, the wall of voices above the drum were now voices that he knew.

2. The Stone Wheel

Tellson's Bank in Paris was in a wing of a very big house in the richest part of town. People would come and go from a yard that was cut off from the street by a high wall and a strong gate. The house had been owned by a very rich leader from the court, who had lived there until he was forced to run for his life, wearing the clothes of his own cook. He was like a wild animal running from hunters until he was safely across the border, at which time he changed back into the same Sir whose lips had once needed three strong men, apart from his cook, to help him drink his chocolate.

Sir was now gone, and the three strong men had been forgiven for the sin of having been paid so well by him, by saying they were more than ready to cut his throat for the new government... the government that made everyone free and equal brothers, or dead. Sir's house had been first set apart and then taken over. Things moved so quickly, and one rule would be followed by another so quickly, that now, on the third night of the month of September, freedom fighters were living in Sir's house, had marked it with the three colours, and were drinking spirits in its best rooms.

A place of business in London that looked like Tellson's place of business in Paris would have been enough to make news in the papers and enough to make the "house" go crazy. What would the serious mind of English leaders think about growing orange trees in boxes in a bank's yard, or about having the shape of a young love angel hanging over the counter? That's how it