Two Cities

Chapter 58
Sidney Carton stopped in the street.He didn't know where to go. "Meet me at Tellson's Bank Building at nine," he thought. "Is it right for me to go out in the public eye at this moment? I think so. Better to remind them that someone like me exists. Such precautions are useful, and perhaps necessary preparations. Still, caution is the best thing to do, Be careful! I have to seriously think about it!"

He was walking toward a goal, but turned into the darkened street.He turned a corner or two, pondering the possible endings of his thoughts.He confirmed his first thought.Better yet, he finally made up his mind, "Let these people remember that there's a man like me here." Then he turned and walked towards Saint-Antoine.

Defarge had said that day that he was an innkeeper in the suburb of Saint-Antoine.Those who are familiar with the place can find his house without asking.After confirming the location of the house, Mr. Carlton walked out of the narrow street, went into a snack bar for dinner, and fell asleep after eating.For the first time in a long time he did not drink hard alcohol.From last night to now, he only drank a little light wine with low alcohol content.He had slowly poured the brandy into Mr. Lorry's fireplace the night before, and seemed to be a stranger to it ever since.

When he woke up with a clear head, it was already seven o'clock.He went to the street again.

On the way to St. Antoine he stopped at a shop window.There was a mirror there, and he straightened his crooked bow, coat collar, and disheveled hair a little, and went straight into the Defarge Hotel.

There happened to be no customers in the shop, just Jacques Three, who was always scratching his fingers and had a low voice.He had seen this man in the jury, who was standing in front of the cabinet, drinking and talking to the Defarges.Nemesis also talked with them as if they were full members of the hotel.

Carlton went in, sat down, and ordered a little wine in very broken French.Madame Defarge glanced at him casually, then took a serious look at him, then examined him for a moment, then went up to him herself and asked what he would like.

He repeats what he has said. "English?" asked Madame Defarge, raising her black eyebrows uncertainly.

He looked at her, as if the French word had taken him some trouble to understand, and replied, in that heavily foreign accent, "Yes, ma'am, yes, I am English."

Madame Defarge went back to the bar to get her wine.As he pretended to be poring over a Jacobin paper, trying to figure out what it meant, he heard her say, "I swear to you, absolutely like Evremonde!"

Defarge brought him wine and said "good evening." "what?"

"good evening."

"Ah! good evening, citizen," he poured into his glass. "Ah! Nice wine. To the Republic."

Defarge returned to the counter and said, "It's a bit like it." The proprietress put away her smile and retorted, "I said very similar." Jacques No. [-] peacemaker said, "That's because you always have that person in your heart, you know Well, proprietress." Fury smiled happily, "Well, you are right! You are looking forward to seeing him again tomorrow with great joy!"

Carlton pointed at the newspaper line by line with his finger and read it attentively and earnestly.Those few people put their arms on the rejection table and huddled together to talk quietly.They stared at him for a while in silence, without disturbing his concentration on the Jacobin editor, and then resumed their conversation.

"The proprietress is right," said Jacques Three. "Why should we stop here? There is still plenty of potential. Why stop here?" "Pause, pause," said Defarge, "get a place anyway." Let’s stop! Then where shall we stop?” “To cut the weeds and roots,” said the proprietress.

"Miao:" Jacques Three said in a low voice.Nemesis is also very much in favor.

"Extermination is a good theory, my wife," said Defarge, perplexed. "Generally speaking, I agree with it. But this doctor has suffered so much, and you know how he is today. When the manuscript was read out, You also looked at his face."

"I have examined his face," said the proprietress angrily and disdainfully. "Yes, I have examined his face. I have observed that it does not resemble the face of a true friend of the Republic. It is better to be on our guard against that face!"

"You can see, my wife," begged Defarge, "that his daughter's suffering is a painful torture for the doctor!"

"I have observed his daughter," repeated the landlady, "yes, I have observed his daughter, over and over again. I have observed it today, and I have observed it at other times. In the courtroom and at the prison I have observed it on the street. I just need to raise a finger—” She roughly raised her finger (the eyes of the spectators were always fixed on the newspaper), and chopped it on the shelf in front of her like an axe.

"Excellent female citizen," whispered the juror. "Almost an angel!" said Furies, giving her a hug. "As for you," the proprietress said unceremoniously to her husband, "thanks to the fact that you are not in charge of this matter. If it were up to you, you would have already gone to save that person by now."

"No!" retorted Defarge. "Even if lifting this cup could save him, I wouldn't lift it! But I want it to be over. I say, it's over."

"Look, Jacques," Madame Defarge raged, "look too, my little vengeance. Listen, you two! In my records I have also recorded other acts of tyranny and oppression in this family. Crime, and it must be eliminated absolutely, and it must be eradicated. You ask me if I am in charge."

"Yes," Defarge answered without asking. "The great day has just begun. When the Bastille was captured, he found today's manuscript and took it home. When the night was quiet, we read it together here and under this lamp. Ask him, is it Not so."

"Yes," agreed Defarge. "That night, after the manuscript was read, the lights were out, and it was already daylight beyond the shutters and fences. I told him then that I was going to reveal a secret to him. Ask him if that's the case."

"Yes," admitted Defarge for the second time. "I told him the secret. I beat my chest with these two hands and said to him, Defarge, I lived as a child among fishermen by the sea. That Bastille manuscript tells The peasant family who was bullied by Brother Evremonde is my family, Defarge, the sister of the young man who was wounded and unable to sit up, is my sister, the husband is my brother-in-law, the one who has not yet The child who was born is their child, the father is my father, and those who died are my blood relatives, and the burden of settling the blood debt falls on me. Ask him if that is the case."

"Yes," admitted Defarge again. "Then you go and tell Feng and Fire how to get here," replied the proprietress, "don't talk nonsense with me."

The two listening to her had a terrible taste in her absolutely fatal rage, and they both praised her words--the spectator, though not looking at her, did She felt that her face was already pale.Defarge was in the minority, and said something like "Remember the Marquise who sympathized with them," and his wife merely repeated the last sentence in reply, "Go and tell the wind and fire how to get That's it, don't talk nonsense with me."

A customer came in, and a few people dispersed.The English customer paid his bill, counted the change given to him with great difficulty, and asked, as a stranger, the way to the Palais des Nations.Madame Defarge led him to the door, leaning her arm on his, and showed him the way.British customers obviously responded: If you can grab that arm and lift it up, and then stab it deeply, it will definitely be called a great act of kindness.

However, he still walked on his own path, and was immediately swallowed up by the black shadow of the prison wall.It was not until the appointed time that he stepped out of the shadows and went to Mr. Lorry's house to attend the appointment.He found that the old gentleman had been walking up and down.Mr. Lorry said very anxiously that he had been with Lucy all the time, and had arrived only a few minutes ago.Lucy's father left the bank at four o'clock and still hadn't returned.Lucy held out some hope that his intervention would save Charles, though the chances were slim.He has been away for more than five hours, where will he go?
(End of this chapter)