1 The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens

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     7 

     8 Title: A Tale of Two Cities

     9        A story of the French Revolution

    10 

    11 	   Author: Charles Dickens

    12 

    13 

    14 The Period

    15 

    16 

    17 It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,

    18 it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness,

    19 it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity,

    20 it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness,

    21 it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair,

    22 we had everything before us, we had nothing before us,

    23 we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct

    24 the other way--in short, the period was so far like the present

    25 period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its

    26 being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree

    27 of comparison only.

    28 

    29 There were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a plain face,

    30 on the throne of England; there were a king with a large jaw and

    31 a queen with a fair face, on the throne of France.  In both

    32 countries it was clearer than crystal to the lords of the State

    33 preserves of loaves and fishes, that things in general were

    34 settled for ever.

    35 

    36 It was the year of Our Lord one thousand seven hundred and

    37 seventy-five.  Spiritual revelations were conceded to England at

    38 that favoured period, as at this.  Mrs. Southcott had recently

    39 attained her five-and-twentieth blessed birthday, of whom a

    40 prophetic private in the Life Guards had heralded the sublime

    41 appearance by announcing that arrangements were made for the

    42 swallowing up of London and Westminster.  Even the Cock-lane

    43 ghost had been laid only a round dozen of years, after rapping

    44 out its messages, as the spirits of this very year last past

    45 (supernaturally deficient in originality) rapped out theirs.

    46 Mere messages in the earthly order of events had lately come to

    47 the English Crown and People, from a congress of British subjects

    48 in America:  which, strange to relate, have proved more important

    49 to the human race than any communications yet received through

    50 any of the chickens of the Cock-lane brood.

    51 

    52 France, less favoured on the whole as to matters spiritual than

    53 her sister of the shield and trident, rolled with exceeding

    54 smoothness down hill, making paper money and spending it.

    55 Under the guidance of her Christian pastors, she entertained

    56 herself, besides, with such humane achievements as sentencing

    57 a youth to have his hands cut off, his tongue torn out with

    58 pincers, and his body burned alive, because he had not kneeled

    59 down in the rain to do honour to a dirty procession of monks

    60 which passed within his view, at a distance of some fifty or

    61 sixty yards.  It is likely enough that, rooted in the woods of

    62 France and Norway, there were growing trees, when that sufferer

    63 was put to death, already marked by the Woodman, Fate, to come

    64 down and be sawn into boards, to make a certain movable framework

    65 with a sack and a knife in it, terrible in history.  It is likely

    66 enough that in the rough outhouses of some tillers of the heavy

    67 lands adjacent to Paris, there were sheltered from the weather

    68 that very day, rude carts, bespattered with rustic mire, snuffed

    69 about by pigs, and roosted in by poultry, which the Farmer, Death,

    70 had already set apart to be his tumbrils of the Revolution.

    71 But that Woodman and that Farmer, though they work unceasingly,

    72 work silently, and no one heard them as they went about with

    73 muffled tread:  the rather, forasmuch as to entertain any suspicion

    74 that they were awake, was to be atheistical and traitorous.

    75 

    76 In England, there was scarcely an amount of order and protection

    77 to justify much national boasting.  Daring burglaries by armed

    78 men, and highway robberies, took place in the capital itself

    79 every night; families were publicly cautioned not to go out of

    80 town without removing their furniture to upholsterers' warehouses

    81 for security; the highwayman in the dark was a City tradesman in

    82 the light, and, being recognised and challenged by his fellow-

    83 tradesman whom he stopped in his character of "the Captain,"

    84 gallantly shot him through the head and rode away; the mail was

    85 waylaid by seven robbers, and the guard shot three dead, and then

    86 got shot dead himself by the other four, "in consequence of the

    87 failure of his ammunition:" after which the mail was robbed in

    88 peace; that magnificent potentate, the Lord Mayor of London, was

    89 made to stand and deliver on Turnham Green, by one highwayman,

    90 who despoiled the illustrious creature in sight of all his

    91 retinue; prisoners in London gaols fought battles with their

    92 turnkeys, and the majesty of the law fired blunderbusses in among

    93 them, loaded with rounds of shot and ball; thieves snipped off

    94 diamond crosses from the necks of noble lords at Court

    95 drawing-rooms; musketeers went into St. Giles's, to search for

    96 contraband goods, and the mob fired on the musketeers, and the

    97 musketeers fired on the mob, and nobody thought any of these

    98 occurrences much out of the common way.  In the midst of them,

    99 the hangman, ever busy and ever worse than useless, was in

   100 constant requisition; now, stringing up long rows of miscellaneous

   101 criminals; now, hanging a housebreaker on Saturday who had been

   102 taken on Tuesday; now, burning people in the hand at Newgate by

   103 the dozen, and now burning pamphlets at the door of Westminster Hall;

   104 to-day, taking the life of an atrocious murderer, and to-morrow of a

   105 wretched pilferer who had robbed a farmer's boy of sixpence.

   106 

   107 All these things, and a thousand like them, came to pass in

   108 and close upon the dear old year one thousand seven hundred

   109 and seventy-five.  Environed by them, while the Woodman and the

   110 Farmer worked unheeded, those two of the large jaws, and those

   111 other two of the plain and the fair faces, trod with stir enough,

   112 and carried their divine rights with a high hand.  Thus did the

   113 year one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five conduct their

   114 Greatnesses, and myriads of small creatures--the creatures of this

   115 chronicle among the rest--along the roads that lay before them.

   116 

   117 

   118 

   119 II

   120 

   121 The Mail

   122 

   123 

   124 It was the Dover road that lay, on a Friday night late in November,

   125 before the first of the persons with whom this history has business.

   126 The Dover road lay, as to him, beyond the Dover mail, as it lumbered

   127 up Shooter's Hill.  He walked up hill in the mire by the side of the

   128 mail, as the rest of the passengers did; not because they had the

   129 least relish for walking exercise, under the circumstances, but

   130 because the hill, and the harness, and the mud, and the mail, were

   131 all so heavy, that the horses had three times already come to a stop,

   132 besides once drawing the coach across the road, with the mutinous

   133 intent of taking it back to Blackheath.  Reins and whip and coachman

   134 and guard, however, in combination, had read that article of war

   135 which forbade a purpose otherwise strongly in favour of the argument,

   136 that some brute animals are endued with Reason; and the team had

   137 capitulated and returned to their duty.

   138 

   139 With drooping heads and tremulous tails, they mashed their way

   140 through the thick mud, floundering and stumbling between whiles,

   141 as if they were falling to pieces at the larger joints.  As often

   142 as the driver rested them and brought them to a stand, with a

   143 wary "Wo-ho! so-ho-then!" the near leader violently shook his

   144 head and everything upon it--like an unusually emphatic horse,

   145 denying that the coach could be got up the hill.  Whenever the

   146 leader made this rattle, the passenger started, as a nervous

   147 passenger might, and was disturbed in mind.

   148 

   149 There was a steaming mist in all the hollows, and it had roamed

   150 in its forlornness up the hill, like an evil spirit, seeking rest

   151 and finding none.  A clammy and intensely cold mist, it made its

   152 slow way through the air in ripples that visibly followed and

   153 overspread one another, as the waves of an unwholesome sea might

   154 do.  It was dense enough to shut out everything from the light of

   155 the coach-lamps but these its own workings, and a few yards of

   156 road; and the reek of the labouring horses steamed into it, as if

   157 they had made it all.

   158 

   159 Two other passengers, besides the one, were plodding up the hill

   160 by the side of the mail.  All three were wrapped to the cheekbones

   161 and over the ears, and wore jack-boots.  Not one of the three

   162 could have said, from anything he saw, what either of the other

   163 two was like; and each was hidden under almost as many wrappers

   164 from the eyes of the mind, as from the eyes of the body, of his

   165 two companions.  In those days, travellers were very shy of being

   166 confidential on a short notice, for anybody on the road might be

   167 a robber or in league with robbers.  As to the latter, when every

   168 posting-house and ale-house could produce somebody in "the Captain's"

   169 pay, ranging from the landlord to the lowest stable non-descript,

   170 it was the likeliest thing upon the cards.  So the guard of the

   171 Dover mail thought to himself, that Friday night in November, one

   172 thousand seven hundred and seventy-five, lumbering up Shooter's

   173 Hill, as he stood on his own particular perch behind the mail,

   174 beating his feet, and keeping an eye and a hand on the arm-chest

   175 before him, where a loaded blunderbuss lay at the top of six or

   176 eight loaded horse-pistols, deposited on a substratum of cutlass.

   177 

   178 The Dover mail was in its usual genial position that the guard

   179 suspected the passengers, the passengers suspected one another

   180 and the guard, they all suspected everybody else, and the coachman

   181 was sure of nothing but the horses; as to which cattle he could

   182 with a clear conscience have taken his oath on the two Testaments

   183 that they were not fit for the journey.

   184 

   185 "Wo-ho!" said the coachman.  "So, then!  One more pull and you're

   186 at the top and be damned to you, for I have had trouble enough to

   187 get you to it!--Joe!"

   188 

   189 "Halloa!" the guard replied.

   190 

   191 "What o'clock do you make it, Joe?"

   192 

   193 "Ten minutes, good, past eleven."