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

This is, in as few or fewer words, what the lawyer for the government said.

The President asked if the arguments against the prisoner were given openly or secretly.

"Openly, President."

"By whom?"

"Three voices. Ernest Defarge, wine seller of St. Antoine.”

"Good."

"Therese Defarge, his wife."

"Good."

"Alexander Manette, doctor."

A great cry from the crowd broke out, and in the middle of it was Doctor Manette, turned white and shaking, who was now standing where he had been sitting.

"President, I angrily disagree. This argument is false, a counterfeit. You know the prisoner to be the husband of my daughter. My daughter and those she loves are far more important to me than my own life. Who and where is the person who falsely says that I have spoken against the husband of my child?"

"Countryman Manette, be quiet. If you do not follow the rules of the court, you will make yourself an enemy of the Law. As to what you love more than life, nothing can be more important to a good countryman than the government of his country."

Loud shouts were again heard in the court. Doctor Manette sat down, with his eyes looking around and his lips shaking. His daughter moved closer to him. The hungry faced man on the jury rubbed his hands together and then returned the hand to his mouth that was always there.

Defarge came forward, when the court was quiet enough to hear him, and quickly told the story of the Doctor going to prison (He said he was only a boy working for the Doctor when it happened.) and of him being freed from prison and how he was when he arrived at his wine shop. The court moved quickly, so only these few words followed what Defarge had to say:

"You served the country well when we took control of that prison, did you not, countryman?"

"I believe I did."

Here, an enthusiastic woman shouted from the crowd: "You were one of the best freedom fighters there. Why not say so? You were on one of the cannons that day there, and you were one of the first to go into that awful prison when it fell. Countrymen, I speak the truth!"

It was The Punisher who, warmly encouraged by the crowd, was helping the court in this way. The President shook his bell, but The Punisher, still being encouraged by the others, shouted in a high voice, "I will not stop for the bell!" with others encouraging her for that too.

"Tell us what you did that day in the prison, countryman."

"I knew...” said Defarge, looking at his wife, who was standing at the bottom of the steps to where he was standing, looking up at him. "I knew the Doctor had been held in a room known as One Hundred and Five, North Tower. I knew it from himself. He knew himself only as One Hundred and Five North Tower when he made shoes under my care. I'm out there using my gun, and I say to myself, 'I'm going to see that room for myself when the prison falls.' It falls. I climb up to the room with another countryman who is one of the jury. A guard leads us. I look over the room very closely. In a hole in the fireplace, where a stone had been worked out and then returned, I find a written paper. This is that paper. I have made it my business to study other papers with Doctor Manette's writing on them, and this is the Doctor's writing. I am giving this paper, in the writing of Doctor Manette, to the President."

"Let it be read."

The room was deathly quiet. The prisoner looked lovingly at his wife as she turned to look with worry and care at her father. Doctor Manette looked at the reader; Madam Defarge never took her eyes off the prisoner, Defarge never took his eyes from his wife who was feeling quite proud and happy about what was happening; and all of the other eyes there were on the Doctor, who saw none of them. The paper was then read out to them all, as follows.

10. The Shadow Uncovered

I, Alexander Manette, a doctor born in Beauvais and living in Paris, write this sad story in my sad prison room, in the last month of the year 1767. I am writing it secretly, at times when no one is near, and I plan to hide it in the wall of the chimney, where I have worked hard and long to make a hiding place for it. Some kind hand may find it there when I and my sadness are dust.

The words are made with a rusty iron point, using coal from the chimney and blood to make ink. It is the last month of the tenth year that I have been here. All hope is gone now. I can tell from awful signs that I see in my own thinking that my mind will not stay clear for long, but I can say seriously that I am at this time in control of my right mind, that I can remember things very clearly, and that what I am writing here will be the truth, because I will be forced to answer for what I write here, even if others never read it, when I stand before God.

One cloudy night in the third week of December (I think it was the twenty-second.) in the year 1757, I was walking on a quiet part of the Seine River, near where the ships tie up, just to be out in the cold air, about one hour's walk from my home in the Street of the School of Medicine, when a coach came up behind me, moving very quickly. I moved to the side to let it pass, fearing that it might run me down, when a head was put out of the window and a voice called to the driver to stop.

The coach stopped as soon as the driver could pull up the horses, and the same voice called to me by name. I answered. The coach was then so far in front of me that two men had time to open the door and step out before I came up to it. I could see that they were both wearing coats, and seemed to be hiding their faces. As they stood side by side near the coach door, I also saw that they were both about my own age, or a little younger, and that they looked the same, in size, actions, voices, and (as far as I could see) faces too.

"Are you Doctor Manette?” asked one.

"I am."

"Doctor Manette, earlier from Beauvais," said the other, "the young doctor who has, in the past year or two, become well known and liked here in Paris?"

"I am that Doctor Manette that you are speaking about so kindly," I returned.

"We have been to your home," said the first, "and were not able to find you there; but we learned that you were walking in this direction, so we followed, in the hope of finding you. Will you please come with us in the coach?"

They both talked like I had no choice, and they both moved, as they were saying these words, so as to put me between themselves and the door of the coach. They had weapons and I did not.

"Sirs," I said, "forgive me, but when I go to help someone, I ask who wants my help, and what the problem is that I am being asked to fix."

The answer to this came from the one who had been second to answer. "Doctor, you are talking to people of high class. Our confidence in your ability as a doctor lets us know that you will be the best one to say what the problem is. That is enough. Now, will you please get into the coach?"

I could do nothing but obey, and I climbed in, saying nothing. They both climbed in after me, the last one jumping in after lifting the steps. The coach then turned and returned to its fast driving.

I am repeating this just as it happened. I have no fear that it is, word for word, the same as what was said and what happened, forcing my mind not to think of anything apart from what I am saying here. When I make some broken marks after this, it means that I have stopped for a while and put the paper in its hiding place.

The coach left the city through the north gate, and came out on a country road. About two miles from the city it turned off it onto a side road, and soon stopped at a house standing alone. All three of us stepped out of the coach and walked over a wet, soft walk way in a garden where an old fountain was running over with too much water. The house door was not opened quickly, in answer to the bell, and so one of the two men with me hit the man who opened it, across the face, with his heavy riding gloves.

There was nothing in his action to surprise me, for I had seen poor people hit more often than dogs. The other man, also being angry, hit the servant in the same way with his arm. The look and action of the men were so perfectly the same that I then understood that they were brothers who had been born at the same time.

From the time that we left the coach at the outside gate (which one of the brothers had opened to let us in before having it locked again), I had heard cries coming from a room at the top of the house. I was led straight to the room, the cries growing louder as we climbed the steps. I found her on a bed with a burning heat in her brain.

She was a beautiful young woman, clearly not more than twenty. Some of her hair had been pulled out, and her arms were tied to her sides with pieces of cloth. I saw that the cloths had all come from a man's clothes. On one of them, a beautiful scarf, I saw the pattern of a high class family, and the letter E.

I saw this soon after I arrived, because the woman, in her wild movements on the bed, had turned over on her face at the side of the bed and pulled the end of the scarf into her mouth. She was in danger of not being able to breathe because of it. My first act was to pull it out so she could breathe, and in moving the scarf, I saw the letter in the corner of it.

I turned her over carefully, put my hands on her breast to hold her down and to help her rest, as I looked into her face. Her eyes were big and wild, and she made very loud, high shouts, followed by the words, "My husband, my father, and my brother!" and then she counted up to twelve, and said, "Quiet!"

For a very short time she would stop to listen, and then she would start the loud, high shouts again, and she would repeat the words, "My husband, my father, and my brother!" and she would count to twelve and say, "Quiet!" There was no break in the noise, apart from the short time after she said "Quiet!" each time.

"How long has this lasted?” I asked.

To separate the brothers, I will call them the older and the younger. By older, I mean the one who seemed to be the leader. It was the older who answered, "Since about this time last night."

"She has a husband, a father, and a brother?”

"A brother."

"You're not her brother?"

"No," he answered with a look of hate.

"Has something happened that would lead her to the number twelve?"

The younger brother answered quickly, "With twelve o'clock?"

"Can you see, sirs," said I, still keeping my hands on her breast, "how little I can do, because of the way that you brought me? If I had known what I was coming to see, I could have come with the things I would need. As it is, we will lose time. There are no medicines to be found this far out of the city."

The older brother looked at the young one, who said proudly, "There is a box of medicines here," and he brought it from a little room and put it on the table.

I opened some of the bottles, smelled them, and put the tops to my lips. If I had wanted to use anything apart from hard drugs that would put a person to sleep, but which were poisons in themselves, I would not have used any of those.

"You don't trust them?” asked the younger brother.

"I'm going to use them," I answered, and said no more.

With much work, I forced the woman to swallow as much as I believed she needed. Because I needed to watch the effect of the drug, and because I would be giving her more soon, I sat down beside the bed. There was a shy, controlled woman (wife