IV. Calm in Storm
Doctor Manette did not return until the morning of the fourth day of hisabsence. So much of what had happened in that dreadful time as could bekept from the knowledge of Lucie was so well concealed from her, thatnot until long afterwards, when France and she were far apart, did sheknow that eleven hundred defenceless prisoners of both sexes and allages had been killed by the populace; that four days and nights had beendarkened by this deed of horror; and that the air around her had beentainted by the slain. She only knew that there had been an attack uponthe prisons, that all political prisoners had been in danger, and thatsome had been dragged out by the crowd and murdered.
To Mr. Lorry, the Doctor communicated under an injunction of secrecy onwhich he had no need to dwell, that the crowd had taken him through ascene of carnage to the prison of La Force. That, in the prison he hadfound a self-appointed Tribunal sitting, before which the prisoners werebrought singly, and by which they were rapidly ordered to be put forthto be massacred, or to be released, or (in a few cases) to be sent backto their cells. That, presented by his conductors to this Tribunal, hehad announced himself by name and profession as having been for eighteenyears a secret and unaccused prisoner in the Bastille; that, one of thebody so sitting in judgment had risen and identified him, and that thisman 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 pleaded hardto the Tribunal--of whom some members were asleep and some awake, somedirty with murder and some clean, some sober and some not--for his lifeand liberty. That, in the first frantic greetings lavished on himself asa notable sufferer under the overthrown system, it had been accordedto him to have Charles Darnay brought before the lawless Court, andexamined. That, he seemed on the point of being at once released, whenthe tide in his favour met with some unexplained check (not intelligibleto the Doctor), which led to a few words of secret conference. That,the man sitting as President had then informed Doctor Manette thatthe prisoner must remain in custody, but should, for his sake, be heldinviolate in safe custody. That, immediately, on a signal, the prisonerwas removed to the interior of the prison again; but, that he, theDoctor, had then so strongly pleaded for permission to remain andassure himself that his son-in-law was, through no malice or mischance,delivered to the concourse whose murderous yells outside the gate hadoften drowned the proceedings, that he had obtained the permission, andhad remained in that Hall of Blood until the danger was over.
The sights he had seen there, with brief snatches of food and sleep byintervals, shall remain untold. The mad joy over the prisoners who weresaved, had astounded him scarcely less than the mad ferocity againstthose who were cut to pieces. One prisoner there was, he said, who hadbeen discharged into the street free, but at whom a mistaken savage hadthrust a pike as he passed out. Being besought to go to him and dressthe wound, the Doctor had passed out at the same gate, and had found himin the arms of a company of Samaritans, who were seated on the bodiesof their victims. With an inconsistency as monstrous as anything in thisawful nightmare, they had helped the healer, and tended the wounded manwith the gentlest solicitude--had made a litter for him and escorted himcarefully from the spot--had then caught up their weapons and plungedanew into a butchery so dreadful, that the Doctor had covered his eyeswith his hands, and swooned away in the midst of it.
As Mr. Lorry received these confidences, and as he watched the face ofhis friend now sixty-two years of age, a misgiving arose within him thatsuch 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 the Doctorfelt, now, that his suffering was strength and power. For the first timehe felt that in that sharp fire, he had slowly forged the iron whichcould break the prison door of his daughter's husband, and deliver him.”It all tended to a good end, my friend; it was not mere waste and ruin.As my beloved child was helpful in restoring me to myself, I will behelpful now in restoring the dearest part of herself to her; by the aidof Heaven I will do it!” Thus, Doctor Manette. And when Jarvis Lorry sawthe kindled eyes, the resolute face, the calm strong look and bearingof the man whose life always seemed to him to have been stopped, like aclock, for so many years, and then set going again with an energy whichhad lain dormant during the cessation of its usefulness, he believed.
Greater things than the Doctor had at that time to contend with, wouldhave yielded before his persevering purpose. While he kept himselfin his place, as a physician, whose business was with all degreesof mankind, bond and free, rich and poor, bad and good, he used hispersonal influence so wisely, that he was soon the inspecting physicianof three prisons, and among them of La Force. He could now assure Luciethat her husband was no longer confined alone, but was mixed with thegeneral body of prisoners; he saw her husband weekly, and brought sweetmessages to her, straight from his lips; sometimes her husband himselfsent a letter to her (though never by the Doctor's hand), but she wasnot permitted to write to him: for, among the many wild suspicions ofplots in the prisons, the wildest of all pointed at emigrants who wereknown to have made friends or permanent connections abroad.
This new life of the Doctor's was an anxious life, no doubt; still, thesagacious 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 his daughterand his friend, with his personal affliction, deprivation, and weakness.Now that this was changed, and he knew himself to be invested throughthat old trial with forces to which they both looked for Charles'sultimate safety and deliverance, he became so far exalted by the change,that he took the lead and direction, and required them as the weak, totrust to him as the strong. The preceding relative positions of himselfand Lucie were reversed, yet only as the liveliest gratitude andaffection could reverse them, for he could have had no pride but inrendering some service to her who had rendered so much to him. ”Allcurious to see,” thought Mr. Lorry, in his amiably shrewd way, ”but allnatural and right; so, take the lead, my dear friend, and keep it; itcouldn'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 newera began; the king was tried, doomed, and beheaded; the Republic ofLiberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death, declared for victory or deathagainst the world in arms; the black flag waved night and day from thegreat towers of Notre Dame; three hundred thousand men, summoned to riseagainst the tyrants of the earth, rose from all the varying soilsof France, as if the dragon's teeth had been sown broadcast, andhad yielded fruit equally on hill and plain, on rock, in gravel, andalluvial mud, under the bright sky of the South and under the clouds ofthe North, in fell and forest, in the vineyards and the olive-groundsand among the cropped grass and the stubble of the corn, along thefruitful banks of the broad rivers, and in the sand of the sea-shore.What private solicitude could rear itself against the deluge of the YearOne of Liberty--the deluge rising from below, not falling from above,and with the windows of Heaven shut, not opened!
There was no pause, no pity, no peace, no interval of relenting rest, nomeasurement of time. Though days and nights circled as regularly as whentime was young, and the evening and morning were the first day, othercount of time there was none. Hold of it was lost in the raging feverof a nation, as it is in the fever of one patient. Now, breaking theunnatural silence of a whole city, the executioner showed the people thehead of the king--and now, it seemed almost in the same breath, thehead of his fair wife which had had eight weary months of imprisonedwidowhood 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. Arevolutionary 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 delivered overany good and innocent person to any bad and guilty one; prisons gorgedwith people who had committed no offence, and could obtain no hearing;these things became the established order and nature of appointedthings, and seemed to be ancient usage before they were many weeks old.Above all, one hideous figure grew as familiar as if it had been beforethe general gaze from the foundations of the world--the figure of thesharp female called La Guillotine.
It was the popular theme for jests; it was the best cure for headache,it infallibly prevented the hair from turning grey, it imparted apeculiar delicacy to the complexion, it was the National Razor whichshaved close: who kissed La Guillotine, looked through the little windowand sneezed into the sack. It was the sign of the regeneration of thehuman race. It superseded the Cross. Models of it were worn on breastsfrom which the Cross was discarded, and it was bowed down to andbelieved in where the Cross was denied.
It sheared off heads so many, that it, and the ground it most polluted,were a rotten red. It was taken to pieces, like a toy-puzzle for a youngDevil, and was put together again when the occasion wanted it. It hushedthe eloquent, struck down the powerful, abolished the beautiful andgood. Twenty-two friends of high public mark, twenty-one living and onedead, it had lopped the heads off, in one morning, in as many minutes.The name of the strong man of Old Scripture had descended to the chieffunctionary who worked it; but, so armed, he was stronger than hisnamesake, and blinder, and tore away the gates of God's own Temple everyday.
Among these terrors, and the brood belonging to them, the Doctor walkedwith a steady head: confident in his power, cautiously persistent in hisend, never doubting that he would save Lucie's husband at last. Yet thecurrent of the time swept by, so strong and deep, and carried the timeaway so fiercely, that Charles had lain in prison one year and threemonths when the Doctor was thus steady and confident. So much morewicked and distracted had the Revolution grown in that December month,that the rivers of the South were encumbered with the bodies of theviolently drowned by night, and prisoners were shot in lines and squaresunder the southern wintry sun. Still, the Doctor walked among theterrors with a steady head. No man better known than he, in Paris atthat day; no man in a stranger situation. Silent, humane, indispensablein hospital and prison, using his art equally among assassins andvictims, he was a man apart. In the exercise of his skill, theappearance and the story of the Bastille Captive removed him from allother men. He was not suspected or brought in question, any more than ifhe had indeed been recalled to life some eighteen years before, or werea Spirit moving among mortals.