A Tale of Two Cities

by Charles Dickens

It was in vain for Madame Defarge to struggle and to strike; Miss Pross, with the vigorous tenacity of love, always so much stronger than hate, clasped her tight, and even lifted her from the floor in the struggle that they had.

Miss Pross, with her head down, held her round the waist, and clung to her with more than the hold of a drowning woman.

Madame Defarge’s hands were at her bosom. Miss Pross looked up, saw what it was, struck at it, struck out a flash and a crash, and stood alone—blinded with smoke.

the marks of gripping fingers were deep in her face, and her hair was torn, and her dress (hastily composed with unsteady hands) was clutched and dragged a hundred ways.

“I feel,” said Miss Pross, “as if there had been a flash and a crash, and that crash was the last thing I should ever hear in this life.”

“If she don’t hear the roll of those dreadful carts, now very nigh their journey’s end,” said Mr. Cruncher, glancing over his shoulder, “it’s my opinion that indeed she never will hear anything else in this world.” And indeed she never did.

Ay! Louder, Vengeance, much louder, and still she will scarcely hear thee. Louder yet, Vengeance, with a little oath or so added, and yet it will hardly bring her.

Crash!—A head is held up, and the knitting-women who scarcely lifted their eyes to look at it a moment ago when it could think and speak, count One.

The murmuring of many voices, the upturning of many faces, the pressing on of many footsteps in the outskirts of the crowd, so that it swells forward in a mass, like one great heave of water, all flashes away. Twenty-Three.

If he had given any utterance to his, and they were prophetic, they would have been these: “I see Barsad, and Cly, Defarge, The Vengeance, the Juryman, the Judge, long ranks of the new oppressors who have risen on the destruction of the old, perishing by this retributive instrument, before it shall cease out of its present use. I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss, and, in their struggles to be truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long years to come, I see the evil of this time and of the previous time of which this is the natural birth, gradually making expiation for itself and wearing out.

and I hear him tell the child my story, with a tender and a faltering voice. “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”

When Dickens was twelve years old, his father was sent to debtors’ prison, forcing the young boy to leave school and seek factory work to help support his parents and seven siblings.

Although Dickens eventually began his literary career as a journalist, it is his endearing novels that have stood the test of time.