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1Fifty-two In the black prison of the Conciergerie, the doomed of the day awaited their fate. They were in number as the
2weeks of the year. Fifty-two were to roll that afternoon on the life-tide of the city to the boundless everlasting sea.
3Before their cells were quit of them, new occupants were appointed; before their blood ran into the blood spilled
4yesterday, the blood that was to mingle with theirs to-morrow was already set apart. Two score and twelve were told off.
5From the farmer-general of seventy, whose riches could not buy his life, to the seamstress of twenty, whose poverty and
6obscurity could not save her. Physical diseases, engendered in the vices and neglects of men, will seize on victims of
7all degrees; and the frightful moral disorder, born of unspeakable suffering, intolerable oppression, and heartless
8indifference, smote equally without distinction. Charles Darnay, alone in a cell, had sustained himself with no
9flattering delusion since he came to it from the Tribunal. In every line of the narrative he had heard, he had heard his
10condemnation. He had fully comprehended that no personal influence could possibly save him, that he was virtually
11sentenced by the millions, and that units could avail him nothing. Nevertheless, it was not easy, with the face of his
12beloved wife fresh before him, to compose his mind to what it must bear. His hold on life was strong, and it was very,
13very hard, to loosen; by gradual efforts and degrees unclosed a little here, it clenched the tighter there; and when he
14brought his strength to bear on that hand and it yielded, this was closed again. There was a hurry, too, in all his
15thoughts, a turbulent and heated working of his heart, that contended against resignation. If, for a moment, he did feel
16resigned, then his wife and child who had to live after him, seemed to protest and to make it a selfish thing. But, all
17this was at first. Before long, the consideration that there was no disgrace in the fate he must meet, and that numbers
18went the same road wrongfully, and trod it firmly every day, sprang up to stimulate him. Next followed the thought that
19much of the future peace of mind enjoyable by the dear ones, depended on his quiet fortitude. So, by degrees he calmed
20into the better state, when he could raise his thoughts much higher, and draw comfort down. Before it had set in dark on
21the night of his condemnation, he had travelled thus far on his last way. Being allowed to purchase the means of
22writing, and a light, he sat down to write until such time as the prison lamps should be extinguished. He wrote a long
23letter to Lucie, showing her that he had known nothing of her father's imprisonment, until he had heard of it from
24herself, and that he had been as ignorant as she of his father's and uncle's responsibility for that misery, until the
25paper had been read. He had already explained to her that his concealment from herself of the name he had relinquished,
26was the one condition--fully intelligible now--that her father had attached to their betrothal, and was the one promise
27he had still exacted on the morning of their marriage. He entreated her, for her father's sake, never to seek to know
28whether her father had become oblivious of the existence of the paper, or had had it recalled to him (for the moment, or
29for good), by the story of the Tower, on that old Sunday under the dear old plane-tree in the garden. If he had
30preserved any definite remembrance of it, there could be no doubt that he had supposed it destroyed with the Bastille,
31when he had found no mention of it among the relics of prisoners which the populace had discovered there, and which had
32been described to all the world. He besought her--though he added that he knew it was needless--to console her father,
33by impressing him through every tender means she could think of, with the truth that he had done nothing for which he
34could justly reproach himself, but had uniformly forgotten himself for their joint sakes. Next to her preservation of
35his own last grateful love and blessing, and her overcoming of her sorrow, to devote herself to their dear child, he
36adjured her, as they would meet in Heaven, to comfort her father. To her father himself, he wrote in the same strain;
37but, he told her father that he expressly confided his wife and child to his care. And he told him this, very strongly,
38with the hope of rousing him from any despondency or dangerous retrospect towards which he foresaw he might be tending.
39To Mr. Lorry, he commended them all, and explained his worldly affairs. That done, with many added sentences of grateful
40friendship and warm attachment, all was done. He never thought of Carton. His mind was so full of the others, that he
41never once thought of him. He had time to finish these letters before the lights were put out. When he lay down on his
42straw bed, he thought he had done with this world. But, it beckoned him back in his sleep, and showed itself in shining
43forms. Free and happy, back in the old house in Soho (though it had nothing in it like the real house), unaccountably
44released and light of heart, he was with Lucie again, and she told him it was all a dream, and he had never gone away. A
45pause of forgetfulness, and then he had even suffered, and had come back to her, dead and at peace, and yet there was no
46difference in him. Another pause of oblivion, and he awoke in the sombre morning, unconscious where he was or what had
47happened, until it flashed upon his mind, "this is the day of my death!" Thus, had he come through the hours, to the day
48when the fifty-two heads were to fall. And now, while he was composed, and hoped that he could meet the end with quiet
49heroism, a new action began in his waking thoughts, which was very difficult to master. He had never seen the instrument
50that was to terminate his life. How high it was from the ground, how many steps it had, where he would be stood, how he
51would be touched, whether the touching hands would be dyed red, which way his face would be turned, whether he would be
52the first, or might be the last: these and many similar questions, in nowise directed by his will, obtruded themselves
53over and over again, countless times. Neither were they connected with fear: he was conscious of no fear. Rather, they
54originated in a strange besetting desire to know what to do when the time came; a desire gigantically disproportionate
55to the few swift moments to which it referred; a wondering that was more like the wondering of some other spirit within
56his, than his own. The hours went on as he walked to and fro, and the clocks struck the numbers he would never hear
57again. Nine gone for ever, ten gone for ever, eleven gone for ever, twelve coming on to pass away. After a hard contest
58with that eccentric action of thought which had last perplexed him, he had got the better of it. He walked up and down,
59softly repeating their names to himself. The worst of the strife was over. He could walk up and down, free from
60distracting fancies, praying for himself and for them. Twelve gone for ever. He had been apprised that the final hour
61was Three, and he knew he would be summoned some time earlier, inasmuch as the tumbrils jolted heavily and slowly
62through the streets. Therefore, he resolved to keep Two before his mind, as the hour, and so to strengthen himself in
63the interval that he might be able, after that time, to strengthen others. Walking regularly to and fro with his arms
64folded on his breast, a very different man from the prisoner, who had walked to and fro at La Force, he heard One struck
65away from him, without surprise. The hour had measured like most other hours. Devoutly thankful to Heaven for his
66recovered self-possession, he thought, "There is but another now," and turned to walk again. Footsteps in the stone
67passage outside the door. He stopped. The key was put in the lock, and turned. Before the door was opened, or as it
68opened, a man said in a low voice, in English: "He has never seen me here; I have kept out of his way. Go you in alone;
69I wait near. Lose no time!"
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