A Tale of Two Cities

by Charles Dickens

Mr. Jarvis Lorry,

We are quite a French House, as well as

an English one."

sea did what it liked, and what it liked was destruction.

The air among the houses was of so strong a piscatory flavour that one might have supposed sick fish went up to be dipped in it, as sick people went down to be dipped in the sea.

Miss Manette had arrived

young lady of not more than seventeen, in a riding-cloak, and still holding

twenty years ago. He married—an English lady—and I was one of the trustees. His affairs, like the affairs of many other French gentlemen and French families, were entirely in Tellson's hands.

you

have been the ward of Tellson's House

pass my whole life, miss, in turning an immense pecuniary Mangle."

she left you, at two years old, to grow to be blooming, beautiful, and happy, without the dark cloud upon you of living in uncertainty whether your father soon wore his heart out in prison, or wasted there through many lingering years."

no new discovery, of money, or of any other property; but—"

He is alive.

Your father has been taken to the house of an old servant in Paris, and we are going there: I, to identify him if I can: you, to restore him to life, love, duty, rest, comfort."

"he has been found under another name;

remove him—for a while at all events—out of France. Even

'Recalled to Life;'

this wine game

special companionship in

The time was to come, when that wine too would be spilled on the street-stones, and when the stain of it would be red upon many there.

mill which had worked them down,

prevalent everywhere. Hunger was pushed out of the tall houses, in

Hunger was repeated in every fragment of the small modicum

Hunger stared down from the smokeless chimneys,

Hunger was the inscription on the bak...

Hunger rattled its dry bones among the roasting chestnuts

Its abiding place was in all things

Depressed and slinking though they were, eyes of fire were not wanting among them; nor compressed lips, white with what they suppressed; nor foreheads knitted into the likeness of the gallows-rope they mused about enduring, or inflicting.

grim illustrations of Want. The

Nothing was represented in a flourishing condition, save tools and weapons;

smith's hammers were heavy, and the gunmaker's stock was murderous.

my Gaspard,

wine-shop keeper was a bull-necked, martial-looking man of thirty,

anything more on his head than his own crisply-curling short dark hair.

Madame Defarge, his wife,

stout woman of about his

own age, with a wat...

seldom seemed to look at...

large hand heavil...

and great composure o...

sensitive to cold,

wrapped in fur, and had a quantity of bright shawl twined about her head, though not to the concealment of her large earrings.

knitting was bef...

elderly gentleman and a young lady,

dominoes, three standing by the counter lengthening out a short supply of wine.

Mr. Jarvis Lorry and Miss Manette,

Monsieur Defarge bent down on one knee to the child of his old master,

had become a secret, angry, dangerous man.

uncontrollable and hopeless mass of decomposition