Book III - Chapter IV. Calm in Storm

by Charles Dickens

　　Doctor Manette did not return until the morning of the fourth day ofhis absence. So much of what had happened in that dreadful time ascould be kept from the knowledge of Lucie was so well concealed fromher, that not until long afterwards, when France and she were far apart,did she know that eleven hundred defenceless prisoners of both sexesand all ages had been killed by the populace; that four days andnights had been darkened by this deed of horror; and that the airaround her had been tainted by the slain. She only knew that therehad been an attack upon the prisons, that all political prisoners hadbeen in danger, and that some had been dragged out by the crowd andmurdered.

　　To Mr. Lorry, the Doctor communicated under an injunction of secrecyon which he had no need to dwell, that the crowd had taken himthrough a scene of carnage to the prison of La Force. That, in theprison he had found a self-appointed Tribunal sitting, before whichthe prisoners were brought singly, and by which they were rapidlyordered to be put forth to be massacred, or to be released, or (in afew cases) to be sent back to their cells. That, presented by hisconductors to this Tribunal, he had announced himself by name andprofession as having been for eighteen years a secret and unaccusedprisoner in the Bastille; that, one of the body so sitting injudgment had risen and identified him, and that this man was Defarge.

　　That, hereupon he had ascertained, through the registers on the table,that his son-in-law was among the living prisoners, and had pleadedhard to the Tribunal--of whom some members were asleep and some awake,some dirty with murder and some clean, some sober and some not--forhis life and liberty. That, in the first frantic greetings lavishedon himself as a notable sufferer under the overthrown system, it hadbeen accorded to him to have Charles Darnay brought before the lawlessCourt, and examined. That, he seemed on the point of being at oncereleased, when the tide in his favour met with some unexplained check(not intelligible to the Doctor), which led to a few words of secretconference. That, the man sitting as President had then informedDoctor Manette that the prisoner must remain in custody, but should,for his sake, be held inviolate in safe custody. That, immediately,on a signal, the prisoner was removed to the interior of the prisonagain; but, that he, the Doctor, had then so strongly pleaded forpermission to remain and assure himself that his son-in-law was,through no malice or mischance, delivered to the concourse whosemurderous yells outside the gate had often drowned the proceedings,that he had obtained the permission, and had remained in that Hall ofBlood until the danger was over.

　　The sights he had seen there, with brief snatches of food and sleepby intervals, shall remain untold. The mad joy over the prisonerswho were saved, had astounded him scarcely less than the mad ferocityagainst those who were cut to pieces. One prisoner there was, hesaid, who had been discharged into the street free, but at whom amistaken savage had thrust a pike as he passed out. Being besoughtto go to him and dress the wound, the Doctor had passed out at thesame gate, and had found him in the arms of a company of Samaritans,who were seated on the bodies of their victims. With an inconsistencyas monstrous as anything in this awful nightmare, they had helped thehealer, and tended the wounded man with the gentlest solicitude--had made a litter for him and escorted him carefully from the spot--had then caught up their weapons and plunged anew into a butchery sodreadful, that the Doctor had covered his eyes with his hands, andswooned away in the midst of it.

　　As Mr. Lorry received these confidences, and as he watched the faceof his friend now sixty-two years of age, a misgiving arose withinhim that such dread experiences would revive the old danger.

　　But, he had never seen his friend in his present aspect: he had neverat all known him in his present character. For the first time theDoctor felt, now, that his suffering was strength and power. For thefirst time he felt that in that sharp fire, he had slowly forged theiron which could break the prison door of his daughter's husband, anddeliver him. "It all tended to a good end, my friend; it was notmere waste and ruin. As my beloved child was helpful in restoring meto myself, I will be helpful now in restoring the dearest part ofherself to her; by the aid of Heaven I will do it!" Thus, DoctorManette. And when Jarvis Lorry saw the kindled eyes, the resoluteface, the calm strong look and bearing of the man whose life alwaysseemed to him to have been stopped, like a clock, for so many years,and then set going again with an energy which had lain dormant duringthe cessation of its usefulness, he believed.

　　Greater things than the Doctor had at that time to contend with,would have yielded before his persevering purpose. While he kepthimself in his place, as a physician, whose business was with alldegrees of mankind, bond and free, rich and poor, bad and good, heused his personal influence so wisely, that he was soon the inspectingphysician of three prisons, and among them of La Force. He could nowassure Lucie that her husband was no longer confined alone, but wasmixed with the general body of prisoners; he saw her husband weekly,and brought sweet messages to her, straight from his lips; sometimesher husband himself sent a letter to her (though never by the Doctor'shand), but she was not permitted to write to him: for, among the manywild suspicions of plots in the prisons, the wildest of all pointedat emigrants who were known to have made friends or permanentconnections abroad.

　　This new life of the Doctor's was an anxious life, no doubt; still,the sagacious Mr. Lorry saw that there was a new sustaining pride in it.Nothing unbecoming tinged the pride; it was a natural and worthy one;but he observed it as a curiosity. The Doctor knew, that up to thattime, his imprisonment had been associated in the minds of hisdaughter and his friend, with his personal affliction, deprivation,and weakness. Now that this was changed, and he knew himself to beinvested through that old trial with forces to which they both lookedfor Charles's ultimate safety and deliverance, he became so far exaltedby the change, that he took the lead and direction, and required themas the weak, to trust to him as the strong. The preceding relativepositions of himself and Lucie were reversed, yet only as theliveliest gratitude and affection could reverse them, for he couldhave had no pride but in rendering some service to her who hadrendered so much to him. "All curious to see," thought Mr. Lorry,in his amiably shrewd way, "but all natural and right; so, take thelead, my dear friend, and keep it; it couldn't be in better hands."

　　But, though the Doctor tried hard, and never ceased trying, to getCharles Darnay set at liberty, or at least to get him brought to trial,the public current of the time set too strong and fast for him.The new era began; the king was tried, doomed, and beheaded; theRepublic of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death, declared forvictory or death against the world in arms; the black flag wavednight and day from the great towers of Notre Dame; three hundredthousand men, summoned to rise against the tyrants of the earth, rosefrom all the varying soils of France, as if the dragon's teeth hadbeen sown broadcast, and had yielded fruit equally on hill and plain,on rock, in gravel, and alluvial mud, under the bright sky of theSouth and under the clouds of the North, in fell and forest, in thevineyards and the olive-grounds and among the cropped grass and thestubble of the corn, along the fruitful banks of the broad rivers,and in the sand of the sea-shore. What private solicitude could rearitself against the deluge of the Year One of Liberty--the delugerising from below, not falling from above, and with the windows ofHeaven shut, not opened!

　　There was no pause, no pity, no peace, no interval of relenting rest,no measurement of time. Though days and nights circled as regularlyas when time was young, and the evening and morning were the firstday, other count of time there was none. Hold of it was lost in theraging fever of a nation, as it is in the fever of one patient.Now, breaking the unnatural silence of a whole city, the executionershowed the people the head of the king--and now, it seemed almost inthe same breath, the head of his fair wife which had had eight wearymonths of imprisoned widowhood and misery, to turn it grey.

　　And yet, observing the strange law of contradiction which obtains inall such cases, the time was long, while it flamed by so fast.A revolutionary tribunal in the capital, and forty or fifty thousandrevolutionary committees all over the land; a law of the Suspected,which struck away all security for liberty or life, and deliveredover any good and innocent person to any bad and guilty one; prisonsgorged with people who had committed no offence, and could obtain nohearing; these things became the established order and nature ofappointed things, and seemed to be ancient usage before they weremany weeks old. Above all, one hideous figure grew as familiar as ifit had been before the general gaze from the foundations of theworld--the figure of the sharp female called La Guillotine.

　　It was the popular theme for jests; it was the best cure forheadache, it infallibly prevented the hair from turning grey, itimparted a peculiar delicacy to the complexion, it was the NationalRazor which shaved close: who kissed La Guillotine, looked throughthe little window and sneezed into the sack. It was the sign of theregeneration of the human race. It superseded the Cross. Models ofit were worn on breasts from which the Cross was discarded, and itwas bowed down to and believed in where the Cross was denied.

　　It sheared off heads so many, that it, and the ground it mostpolluted, were a rotten red. It was taken to pieces, like atoy-puzzle for a young Devil, and was put together again when theoccasion wanted it. It hushed the eloquent, struck down the powerful,abolished the beautiful and good. Twenty-two friends of high publicmark, twenty-one living and one dead, it had lopped the heads off,in one morning, in as many minutes. The name of the strong man ofOld Scripture had descended to the chief functionary who worked it;but, so armed, he was stronger than his namesake, and blinder, andtore away the gates of God's own Temple every day.

　　Among these terrors, and the brood belonging to them, the Doctorwalked with a steady head: confident in his power, cautiouslypersistent in his end, never doubting that he would save Lucie'shusband at last. Yet the current of the time swept by, so strong anddeep, and carried the time away so fiercely, that Charles had lain inprison one year and three months when the Doctor was thus steady andconfident. So much more wicked and distracted had the Revolutiongrown in that December month, that the rivers of the South wereencumbered with the bodies of the violently drowned by night, andprisoners were shot in lines and squares under the southern wintry sun.Still, the Doctor walked among the terrors with a steady head.No man better known than he, in Paris at that day; no man in astranger situation. Silent, humane, indispensable in hospital andprison, using his art equally among assassins and victims, he was aman apart. In the exercise of his skill, the appearance and thestory of the Bastille Captive removed him from all other men. He wasnot suspected or brought in question, any more than if he had indeedbeen recalled to life some eighteen years before, or were a Spiritmoving among mortals.