I, Alexander Manette, a doctor born in Beauvais and living in Paris, write this sad story in my sad prison room, in the last month of the year 1767. I am writing it secretly, at times when no one is near, and I plan to hide it in the wall of the chimney, where I have worked hard and long to make a hiding place for it. Some kind hand may find it there when I and my sadness are dust.
The words are made with a rusty iron point, using coal from the chimney and blood to make ink. It is the last month of the tenth year that I have been here. All hope is gone now. I can tell from awful signs that I see in my own thinking that my mind will not stay clear for long, but I can say seriously that I am at this time in control of my right mind, that I can remember things very clearly, and that what I am writing here will be the truth, because I will be forced to answer for what I write here, even if others never read it, when I stand before God.
One cloudy night in the third week of December (I think it was the twenty-second.) in the year 1757, I was walking on a quiet part of the Seine River, near where the ships tie up, just to be out in the cold air, about one hour's walk from my home in the Street of the School of Medicine, when a coach came up behind me, moving very quickly. I moved to the side to let it pass, fearing that it might run me down, when a head was put out of the window and a voice called to the driver to stop.
The coach stopped as soon as the driver could pull up the horses, and the same voice called to me by name. I answered. The coach was then so far in front of me that two men had time to open the door and step out before I came up to it. I could see that they were both wearing coats, and seemed to be hiding their faces. As they stood side by side near the coach door, I also saw that they were both about my own age, or a little younger, and that they looked the same, in size, actions, voices, and (as far as I could see) faces too.
"Are you Doctor Manette?” asked one.
"I am."
"Doctor Manette, earlier from Beauvais," said the other, "the young doctor who has, in the past year or two, become well known and liked here in Paris?"
"I am that Doctor Manette that you are speaking about so kindly," I returned.
"We have been to your home," said the first, "and were not able to find you there; but we learned that you were walking in this direction, so we followed, in the hope of finding you. Will you please come with us in the coach?"
They both talked like I had no choice, and they both moved, as they were saying these words, so as to put me between themselves and the door of the coach. They had weapons and I did not.
"Sirs," I said, "forgive me, but when I go to help someone, I ask who wants my help, and what the problem is that I am being asked to fix."
The answer to this came from the one who had been second to answer. "Doctor, you are talking to people of high class. Our confidence in your ability as a doctor lets us know that you will be the best one to say what the problem is. That is enough. Now, will you please get into the coach?"
I could do nothing but obey, and I climbed in, saying nothing. They both climbed in after me, the last one jumping in after lifting the steps. The coach then turned and returned to its fast driving.
I am repeating this just as it happened. I have no fear that it is, word for word, the same as what was said and what happened, forcing my mind not to think of anything apart from what I am saying here. When I make some broken marks after this, it means that I have stopped for a while and put the paper in its hiding place.
The coach left the city through the north gate, and came out on a country road. About two miles from the city it turned off it onto a side road, and soon stopped at a house standing alone. All three of us stepped out of the coach and walked over a wet, soft walk way in a garden where an old fountain was running over with too much water. The house door was not opened quickly, in answer to the bell, and so one of the two men with me hit the man who opened it, across the face, with his heavy riding gloves.
There was nothing in his action to surprise me, for I had seen poor people hit more often than dogs. The other man, also being angry, hit the servant in the same way with his arm. The look and action of the men were so perfectly the same that I then understood that they were brothers who had been born at the same time.
From the time that we left the coach at the outside gate (which one of the brothers had opened to let us in before having it locked again), I had heard cries coming from a room at the top of the house. I was led straight to the room, the cries growing louder as we climbed the steps. I found her on a bed with a burning heat in her brain.
She was a beautiful young woman, clearly not more than twenty. Some of her hair had been pulled out, and her arms were tied to her sides with pieces of cloth. I saw that the cloths had all come from a man's clothes. On one of them, a beautiful scarf, I saw the pattern of a high class family, and the letter E.
I saw this soon after I arrived, because the woman, in her wild movements on the bed, had turned over on her face at the side of the bed and pulled the end of the scarf into her mouth. She was in danger of not being able to breathe because of it. My first act was to pull it out so she could breathe, and in moving the scarf, I saw the letter in the corner of it.
I turned her over carefully, put my hands on her breast to hold her down and to help her rest, as I looked into her face. Her eyes were big and wild, and she made very loud, high shouts, followed by the words, "My husband, my father, and my brother!" and then she counted up to twelve, and said, "Quiet!"
For a very short time she would stop to listen, and then she would start the loud, high shouts again, and she would repeat the words, "My husband, my father, and my brother!" and she would count to twelve and say, "Quiet!" There was no break in the noise, apart from the short time after she said "Quiet!" each time.
"How long has this lasted?” I asked.
To separate the brothers, I will call them the older and the younger. By older, I mean the one who seemed to be the leader. It was the older who answered, "Since about this time last night."
"She has a husband, a father, and a brother?”
"A brother."
"You're not her brother?"
"No," he answered with a look of hate.
"Has something happened that would lead her to the number twelve?"
The younger brother answered quickly, "With twelve o'clock?"
"Can you see, sirs," said I, still keeping my hands on her breast, "how little I can do, because of the way that you brought me? If I had known what I was coming to see, I could have come with the things I would need. As it is, we will lose time. There are no medicines to be found this far out of the city."
The older brother looked at the young one, who said proudly, "There is a box of medicines here," and he brought it from a little room and put it on the table.
I opened some of the bottles, smelled them, and put the tops to my lips. If I had wanted to use anything apart from hard drugs that would put a person to sleep, but which were poisons in themselves, I would not have used any of those.
"You don't trust them?” asked the younger brother.
"I'm going to use them," I answered, and said no more.
With much work, I forced the woman to swallow as much as I believed she needed. Because I needed to watch the effect of the drug, and because I would be giving her more soon, I sat down beside the bed. There was a shy, controlled woman (wife of the man who had opened the door earlier), more or less hiding in a corner of the room. The house was wet and run down, with poor furniture. Someone had been staying there, but not for very long. Thick old curtains had been nailed over the windows, to stop some of the sound from her shouting. She did not stop her shouting, or the cry, "My husband, my father, and my brother!" before counting up to twelve, and then "Quiet!" Her movements were so wild that I left on the cloths that were holding her arms; but I did look at them to be sure they were not hurting her. The only help I could give was that my hand on the woman's breast had the effect of stopping her movements for a few minutes at a time. It had no effect on the cries; no clock could be more measured than her cries.
Because I believed that my hand had a good effect, I stayed by the side of the bed for half an hour, with the two brothers looking on, before the older one said:
"There is another person you should see."
I was surprised, and I asked, "Is it serious?"
"You had better see," he answered, without much thought, and he picked up a light.
* * * *
The other person was lying in a back room, on the other side of an open room over the barn where the horses were kept. Straw was kept there, piles of sticks for making fires, and a pile of apples in some sand. I had to go through this room to reach the other. I remember it all clearly and fully. Writing this now, near the end of the tenth year that I have been in this prison, I can see it all now as I saw it that night.
On some straw on the floor, with a pillow thrown under his head, lay a good looking poor boy -- a boy of not more than seventeen. He was on his back, with his teeth biting hard against each other. His right hand was holding strongly to his chest, and his angry eyes looked at the roof. I could not see where he had been hurt, before I went down on one knee over him; but then I saw that he was dying from having been stabbed by something with a sharp point.
"I am a doctor, my poor man," I said. "Let me look at it."
"I do not want it looked at," he answered. "Don't touch it."
It was under his hand, and I helped him to relax enough to move his hand away. It came from a sword, received from twenty to twenty-four hours before, but even if I had been there when it first happened, I would not have been able to save him. He was dying quickly. But as I looked at the older brother, I saw him looking down at this good-looking boy whose life was leaving him, as if he was looking at a dying bird or rabbit, but not like he was looking at another person like himself.
"How did this happen, sir?” I asked.
"He's a crazy young dog! A servant of the lowest class! He forced my brother into a fight, and he has fallen by my brother's sword, like a man."
There was no touch of kindness, sadness, or feeling as from one person to another in this answer. The speaker seemed to feel bad that this animal was dying there and in that way, and he believed it would have been better if he had died more in the way that others of his low class died; but he could not feel anything kind for the boy or for his death.
The boy's eyes had slowly moved to the brother and they now slowly moved to me.
"Doctor, they are very proud, these rich men; but we dogs are proud too at times. They take from us; they use us; they hit us, and kill us; but we have a little pride left, at times. She... Have you seen her, Doctor?"
The shouts and crying could be heard there, but not as loudly, because of the distance. He talked about the cries as if she was there with him in the room.
I said, "I have seen her."
"She is my sister, Doctor. They have done for years the awful things they are free to do, these rich men, to the good and holy spirit of our sisters. But our women are good girls. I know it, and I have heard my father say so. She was a good girl. She was to marry a good young man too, another one of his workers. We are all his workers... for that man who stands there. The other one is his brother. They are the worst of a bad class."
It was very difficult for the boy to speak, but his spirit was very strong, and helped him to go on.
"We were robbed by that man who stands there, as all we poor dogs are by those who think they are better than us: taxed without mercy, forced to work without pay, forced to use his windmill if we want to make flour, forced to feed dozens of his birds from what little food we can grow (but never free to have birds of our own), robbed from in every way until even if we were lucky enough to have a little meat, we had to eat it in fear, with the door locked and the windows closed, so his people would not see it and take it from us. We were so robbed and hunted, and were made so poor that our father told us it was an awful thing to bring a child into the world, and that we should most pray that our women might not be able to have children, so that our class could die out!"
I had never before seen a poor person opening up with all that they felt, like this. It was like a fire exploding from inside him. I knew that the poor must not be happy with things, but I had never seen it come out so into the open until I saw it in that dying boy.
"Still, Doctor, my sister married. The poor man was sick when she married him, but she married him so that he could come and live in our little house... our dog house, as that man would call it. She had not been married many weeks when that man's brother saw her and wanted her. He asked that man there to let him use her for a while, for her husband was nothing in their eyes. He was happy to help his brother, but my sister was a good and clean woman, and she hated his brother as much as I do. So what do you think they did to make her husband agree to their plan?"
The boy's eyes, which were looking into mine, slowly turned to the one looking at us, and I saw in the two faces that everything he said was true. I can see those opposite kinds of pride facing each other, even now, here in this prison: the rich man's pride, without feeling or interest; and the poor man's deep emotion, in wanting to punish those who had walked on him and his family.
"You know, Doctor, these high class people can, by law, tie us dogs to wagons and force us to pull them. They did that to him. You know they can keep us in their yards all night, quieting the frogs, so their high class sleep will not be troubled by the noise. They kept him out in the cold at night, and forced him back into the wagon ropes in the day. But he did not give in. No! Taken out of the wagon ropes one day at noon, to eat -- if he could find food -- he sobbed twelve times, once for every hit of the bell, and he died on her breast."
The only thing keeping the boy alive was how much he wanted to tell his story. He forced back the shadows of death, and he squeezed his right hand tighter over the hole in his chest.
"Then with agreement, and even help, from that man, his brother took her away to be used for his cruel games. They agreed to it even after learning what I know she must have told his brother, and what you will soon learn if you have not already learned it. I saw her pass me on the road. When I took the news home, our father's heart broke before he had time to speak even one of the words that filled it. I took my young sister (for I have another) to a place where this man could not reach her, and where she will, at least, never be his slave. Then I followed the brother here. Last night I climbed in. I may be a poor dog, but I had a sword in my hand. Where is the window? It was somewhere here."
The room was growing dark in his eyes; the world was closing in around him. I looked around and could see from the hat on the floor that there had been a fight.
"She heard me and ran in. I told her not to come near us until he was dead. He came in and first threw some pieces of money to me; then he hit me with a whip. I may be a poor dog, but I hit at him well enough to make him pull out his sword. Let him break into as many pieces as he likes, the sword that he dirtied with my low class blood. He pulled out his sword, and used it to the best of his ability to keep from being killed by me."
A short time before I had seen the broken pieces of a sword, lying in the straw. It was the weapon of a rich man. In another place was an old sword that seemed to have been a soldier's.
"Now, lift me up, Doctor. Lift me up. Where is he?"
"He is not here," I said, holding the boy up and thinking that he was talking about the brother.
"He! Proud as these rich people are, he is afraid to see me. Where is the man who was here? Turn my face toward him."
I did so, lifting the boy's head against my knee. But filled, for a while, with surprising strength, he lifted himself all the way up, forcing me to stand up too, if I was to still help him.
"Marquis," said the boy, who was turned toward him, with his eyes opened wide and his right hand lifted, "in the days when all these things are to be answered for, I call on you and your family, to the last of your bad class, to answer for them. I mark this cross of blood on you, as a sign that I do it. In the days when all these things are to be answered for, I call your brother, the worst of the bad class, to answer for them apart from you. I mark this cross of blood on him, as a sign that I do it."
Twice he put his hand to the hole in his chest. With a finger he made a cross in the air, then stopped for a second, his finger still lifted. As it dropped he dropped with it, and I put him down, dead.
***
When I returned to the young woman, I found her acting crazily in the same pattern of cries that she had been following before. I knew that this could go on for many hours, and that it could easily end in her dying.
I repeated the medicines that I had given her, and I sat by the side of the bed until well into the night. She never changed the high loud shouts, never changed the pattern of her words or stopped saying them clearly. They were always, "My husband, my father, and my brother! One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve. Quiet!"
This went on for twenty-six hours from the time when I first saw her. I had come and left twice, and was again sitting by her when she started to show signs of stopping. I did what I could to help her, and soon she fainted and lay like she was dead.
It was like the wind and rain had stopped at last, after a long and awful storm. I took the cloths off her arms and called the servant woman to help me make her body comfortable, and to smooth out the dress that she was wearing, for it had a tear in it. It was then that I learned that a baby had started to grow in her, and it was then that I lost what little hope I had had of her pulling through.
"Is she dead?” asked the Marquis whom I will still call the older brother, coming into the room from having been out riding his horse.
"Not dead," said I, "but close to it."
"What strength there is in their low class bodies!" he said, looking down at her with some interest.
"There is strength enough.” I answered him, "to make us afraid when one is so very sad and so without hope."
First he laughed at my words, and then he made an angry face. He moved a chair with his foot near to mine, told the servant woman to leave, and said in a quiet voice:
"Doctor, finding my brother in this trouble with the country people, I said that your help should be asked for. Many people think well of you, and, as a young man with a good future ahead of you, you must know what is best for you. The things that you see here are things to be seen, but not spoken of."
I listened to the woman's breathing and tried not to answer.
"Will you be so kind as to answer me, Doctor?"
"Sir," said I, "in my job what people say to me when I am helping them should always be between only me and them.” I was careful with my answer, because I was worried about what I had seen and heard.
Her breathing was so difficult to see that I carefully felt for movement in her heart. She was only just alive. Turning around as I returned to my chair, I found both of the brothers looking at me.
****
It is difficult for me to write, because it is so cold and because I'm afraid they'll find me and lock me in a room under the ground where there is no light at all. I must finish this quickly. There is no confusion in what I am saying. I clearly remember every little thing and every word that was spoken between me and those brothers.
She stayed alive for a week. Toward the end, I could understand a few words that she said to me, by putting my ear close to her lips. She asked me where she was, and I told her; who I was, and I told her. It was a waste of time that I asked her for her family name. She weakly shook her head on the pillow, and kept her secret, as the boy had done.
I had not been able to question her before I told the brothers she was dying and would not live another day. Before that, she never saw anyone but the servant woman and myself, and one or the other of them was always sitting behind the curtain at the head of the bed when I was there. But when it was time for her to die, they stopped worrying about me talking to her, as if -- as I gave some thought to it at the time -- I was going to die with her.
I always knew that it deeply hurt their pride that the younger brother (as I call him) had taken the trouble to fight with a servant, and with one who was little more than a child at that. Their only worry was that it would make them look weak in the eyes of others. Each time the younger brother looked at me, I could see in his eyes that he did not like me at all, because I knew what I had learned from the boy. He was smoother with his words than the older brother; and I could see this too. But I was a problem in the mind of the older brother too.
The young woman died two hours before midnight, at a time (by my watch) almost to the minute, of when I had first seen her. I was alone with her when her sad young head fell slowly to the side, and all the things that had hurt her could hurt her no more.
The brothers were waiting in a room below us, wanting to hurry off on a ride. I had heard them when only I was at the side of the bed, hitting their heavy shoes with their riding whips, and walking up and down.
"Is she dead at last?” asked the older one when I went in.
"She is dead," said I.
"Good for you, my brother," he said as he turned around.
He had earlier tried to give me money, but I had put off taking it. He now gave me a roll of gold coins. I took it from his hand, and put it on the table. I had been thinking about this and planned not to take anything from them.
"Please forgive me," I said. "But, because of what has happened, no."
They looked at each other, but dropped their heads to me as I dropped mine to them, and we separated without another word
****
I am tired, tired, tired from all that I am going through. I cannot even read what I have written with this thin hand.
Early in the morning, the roll of gold coins was left at my door in a little box, with my name on it. From the start I had worried about what I should do. I now planned to write to the government, telling about the two people I had been asked to care for, and where they were found -- in effect, telling the whole story. I knew how much control the high class people had with the government, and so I believed no action would be taken; but I wanted to be clear in my own mind that I had done what I could. I told no one, not even my wife, about what had happened. I planned to make this clear in my letter. I was not afraid of the danger that I was facing, but I knew that others could be in danger if they knew what I knew.
I was very busy that day, and did not finish my letter that night. I was up very early the next morning to finish it. It was the last day of the year. The letter was there on the table when I was told that a woman had come to see me.
****
It is getting harder and harder to finish this letter. It is so cold and dark, my mind is so slow, and the dark feelings around me are so awful.
The woman was young, interesting to talk to, and good looking, but she did not have long to live. She was very worried. She told me that she was the wife of the Marquis Evremonde. I put the name the boy used for the older brother and the letter on the expensive scarf together with this, and it was easy to see that she was talking about the same man that I had been with.
I can remember what we said, but I cannot write them here. I think I am being watched more closely now, and I never know when someone may come to the door.
She knew some of the information about the cruel story of the girl and her brother, and some of the information she had worked out for herself. She knew of her husband’s part in it, and about him sending for me. She did not know that the girl was dead. Her hope had been to secretly show her love as one woman to another. Her hope had been to stop God from being angry with a family that had been very cruel to others for a long time.
She believed that the girl had a younger sister who was still alive, and she wanted most to help that sister. I could tell her nothing but that there was such a sister; I knew nothing more than that. Her reason for coming and trusting me had been the hope that I could tell her the name of the girl and where she lives. But to this awful hour I do not know either.
****
I am running out of paper. One was taken from me yesterday with a warning. I must finish my letter today.
She was a good, kind woman, and she was not happy with her husband. How could she be! Her husband’s brother did not trust her and did not like her, and he did what he could to hurt her. She was afraid of him, and afraid of her husband too. When I walked her out the door, I found she had a child, a beautiful boy between two and three years old, in her coach.
“For him, Doctor,” she said, pointing to him in tears, “I want to make up for what has happened. He will never be happy with being part of this family if I do not. I have a feeling that if nothing can be done to pay for what has happened, one day he will have to pay for it. What I have left to call my own -- it is little more than the price of some jewelry -- I will make it the first job that he must do when he is able, in the name of his dead mother's love, to give this to the family of that girl, if the sister can be found."
She kissed the boy, and said, touching him softly, "It is for your own good. You will do it, won't you, Charles?” The child answered her bravely, "Yes!" I kissed her hand, and she took him in her arms and went away hugging him. I never saw her again.
Because she gave me her husband's name, believing that I already knew it, I did not give his name in my letter. I closed it, and not trusting anyone else to carry it for me, I took it to the government myself that day.
That night, the last night of the year, toward nine o'clock, a man dressed in black came to my gate, asking to see me, and he secretly followed my servant, a young boy named Ernest Defarge, up the steps when he came to tell me. When my servant came into the room where I was sitting with my wife -- Oh, my wife, the love of my life! My beautiful young English wife! -- we saw the man, who should have been out at the gate, standing quietly behind him.
He said there was a serious case that I needed to see. It would not take long, and he had a coach waiting for me.
It brought me here, to my death. When I was away from the house, a black scarf was tied tightly over my mouth from behind, and my arms were tied. The two brothers crossed the road from a dark corner, and showed that it was me with a movement of their hands. The Marquis took the letter I had written out of his pocket, showed it to me, and burned it in the flame from the lantern he was holding, then put out the last of the fire with his foot.
Not one word was said. I was brought here. I was brought to this living death.
If it had pleased God to put it in the hard heart of either of the brothers, in all these awful years, to send me any news from my sweet wife -- so much as to let me know if she was alive or dead -- I might have believed that he had not quite given up hope for them. But now, I believe that the mark of the red cross is death to them, and that they have no part in his mercy. Not to them, and not to any of their children, to the end of that family. I, Alexander Manette, sad prisoner, do this last night of the year 1767, in my great pain, mark them as evil until the time when they must give an answer for all these things. I mark them as evil before heaven and earth.
_______________
An awful noise came from the crowd after the reading of this letter. A sound of hunger and emotion that had no clear meaning apart from blood. The story called up the deepest feelings of hate at the time, and there was not a head in the country that they would not have dropped before it.
There was little need for that court and for that crowd to ask why the Defarges had not shown the papers before this. There was little need to show that this hated family name had long been marked by Saint Antoine and was knitted into their death list. No man has ever walked the earth whose good acts and emotions would have protected him in that place on that day against such a story.
And it was even worse for the man who was to die for it that the one who pointed him out was a countryman who everyone knew and loved; he was his own close friend; and he was the father of his wife. One of the crazy things that people from all countries and all times cry out for are great shows of service to the country, where one is prepared to die or to let a loved one die for it. So when the President said (partly because his own head would be in danger if he had not said it) that the good Doctor of the new government would be loved even more by the people for helping them to destroy a hated high class family, and that he would surely feel a holy happiness by having his daughter's husband and her child's father killed, the people went wild with happiness and enthusiasm for their country, without the smallest feeling for what the Doctor or his family were going through.
"Much effect around him, has that Doctor?” whispered Madam Defarge, smiling, to The Punisher. "Save him now, my Doctor. Save him now!"
As each member of the jury voted, there were loud shouts from the crowd. Another and another. Shouts and more shouts.
They all agreed. At heart and by family he was part of the rich class, an enemy of the people's government, one who had worked to bring pain to the people. He must go back to