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A Tale of Two Cities

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Title: A Tale of Two Cities

Author: Charles Dickens

 
Release date: January 1, 1994 [eBook #98]
 Most recently updated: February 26, 2026

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/98

Credits: Judith Boss and David Widger

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A TALE OF TWO CITIES ***

A TALE OF TWO CITIES

A STORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

By Charles Dickens

CONTENTS

 Book the First--Recalled to Life

 CHAPTER I The Period
 CHAPTER II The Mail
 CHAPTER III The Night Shadows
 CHAPTER IV The Preparation
 CHAPTER V The Wine-shop
 CHAPTER VI The Shoemaker

 Book the Second--the Golden Thread

 CHAPTER I Five Years Later
 CHAPTER II A Sight
 CHAPTER III A Disappointment
 CHAPTER IV Congratulatory
 CHAPTER V The Jackal
 CHAPTER VI Hundreds of People
 CHAPTER VII Monseigneur in Town
 CHAPTER VIII Monseigneur in the Country
 CHAPTER IX The Gorgon's Head
 CHAPTER X Two Promises
 CHAPTER XI A Companion Picture
 CHAPTER XII The Fellow of Delicacy
 CHAPTER XIII The Fellow of no Delicacy
 CHAPTER XIV The Honest Tradesman
 CHAPTER XV Knitting
 CHAPTER XVI Still Knitting
 CHAPTER XVII One Night
 CHAPTER XVIII Nine Days
 CHAPTER XIX An Opinion
 CHAPTER XX A Plea
 CHAPTER XXI Echoing Footsteps
 CHAPTER XXII The Sea Still Rises
 CHAPTER XXIII Fire Rises
 CHAPTER XXIV Drawn to the Loadstone Rock

 Book the Third--the Track of a Storm

 CHAPTER I In Secret
 CHAPTER II The Grindstone
 CHAPTER III The Shadow
 CHAPTER IV Calm in Storm
 CHAPTER V The Wood-sawyer
 CHAPTER VI Triumph
 CHAPTER VII A Knock at the Door
 CHAPTER VIII A Hand at Cards
 CHAPTER IX The Game Made
 CHAPTER X The Substance of the Shadow
 CHAPTER XI Dusk
 CHAPTER XII Darkness
 CHAPTER XIII Fifty-two
 CHAPTER XIV The Knitting Done
 CHAPTER XV The Footsteps Die Out For Ever

Book the First--Recalled to Life

CHAPTER I.
The Period

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of
wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it
was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the
season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of
despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were
all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way--in
short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its
noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for
evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

There were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a plain face, on the
throne of England; there were a king with a large jaw and a queen with
a fair face, on the throne of France. In both countries it was clearer
than crystal to the lords of the State preserves of loaves and fishes,
that things in general were settled for ever.

It was the year of Our Lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five.
Spiritual revelations were conceded to England at that favoured period,
as at this. Mrs. Southcott had recently attained her five-and-twentieth
blessed birthday, of whom a prophetic private in the Life Guards had
heralded the sublime appearance by announcing that arrangements were
made for the swallowing up of London and Westminster. Even the Cock-lane
ghost had been laid only a round dozen of years, after rapping out its
messages, as the spirits of this very year last past (supernaturally
deficient in originality) rapped out theirs. Mere messages in the
earthly order of events had lately come to the English Crown and People,
from a congress of British subjects in America: which, strange
to relate, have proved more important to the human race than any
communications yet received through any of the chickens of the Cock-lane
brood.

France, less favoured on the whole as to matters spiritual than her
sister of the shield and trident, rolled with exceeding smoothness down
hill, making paper money and spending it. Under the guidance of her
Christian pastors, she entertained herself, besides, with such humane
achievements as sentencing a youth to have his hands cut off, his tongue
torn out with pincers, and his body burned alive, because he had not
kneeled down in the rain to do honour to a dirty procession of monks
which passed within his view, at a distance of some fifty or sixty
yards. It is likely enough that, rooted in the woods of France and
Norway, there were growing trees, when that sufferer was put to death,
already marked by the Woodman, Fate, to come down and be sawn into
boards, to make a certain movable framework with a sack and a knife in
it, terrible in history. It is likely enough that in the rough outhouses
of some tillers of the heavy lands adjacent to Paris, there were
sheltered from the weather that very day, rude carts, bespattered with
rustic mire, snuffed about by pigs, and roosted in by poultry, which
the Farmer, Death, had already set apart to be his tumbrils of
the Revolution. But that Woodman and that Farmer, though they work
unceasingly, work silently, and no one heard them as they went about
with muffled tread: the rather, forasmuch as to entertain any suspicion
that they were awake, was to be atheistical and traitorous.

In England, there was scarcely an amount of order and protection to
justify much national boasting. Daring burglaries by armed men, and
highway robberies, took place in the capital itself every night;
families were publicly cautioned not to go out of town without removing
their furniture to upholsterers' warehouses for security; the highwayman
in the dark was a City tradesman in the light, and, being recognised and
challenged by his fellow-tradesman whom he stopped in his character of
"the Captain," gallantly shot him through the head and rode away; the
mail was waylaid by seven robbers, and the guard shot three dead, and
then got shot dead himself by the other four, "in consequence of the
failure of his ammunition:" after which the mail was robbed in peace;
that magnificent potentate, the Lord Mayor of London, was made to stand
and deliver on Turnham Green, by one highwayman, who despoiled the
illustrious creature in sight of all his retinue; prisoners in London
gaols fought battles with their turnkeys, and the majesty of the law
fired blunderbusses in among them, loaded with rounds of shot and ball;
thieves snipped off diamond crosses from the necks of noble lords at
Court drawing-rooms; musketeers went into St. Giles's, to search
for contraband goods, and the mob fired on the musketeers, and the
musketeers fired on the mob, 

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