《A Tale of Two Cities》　Book2　CHAPTER
XXIV Drain to the Loadstone Rock
　　　　by Charles Dickens

In such risings of fire
and risings of sea--the firm earth shaken by the rushes of an angry ocean which had now no
ebb, but was always on the flow, higher and higher, to the tenor and wonder of the
beholders on the shore--three years of tempest were consumed. Three more birthdays of
little Lucie had been woven by the golden thread into the peaceful tissue of the life of
her home.



Many a night and many a day had its inmates listened to the echoes in the corner, with
hearts that failed them when they heard the thronging feet. For, the footsteps had become
to their minds as the footsteps of a people, tumultuous under a red flag and

with their country declared in danger, changed into wild beasts, by terrible enchantment
long persisted in.



Monseigneur, as a class, had dissociated himself from the phenomenon of his not being
appreciated: of his being so little wanted in France, as to incur considerable danger of
receiving his dismissal from it, and this life together. Like the fabled rustic who raised
the Devil with infinite pains, and was so terrified at the sight of him that he could ask
the Enemy no question, but immediately fled; so, Monseigneur, after boldly reading the
Lord's Prayer backwards for a great number of years, and performing many other potent
spells for compelling the Evil One, no sooner beheld him in his terrors than he took to
his noble heels.



The shining Bull's Eye of the Court was gone, or it would have been the mark for a
hurricane of national bullets. It had never been a good eye to see with--had long had the
mote in it of Lucifer's pride, Sardanapalus's luxury, and a mole's blindness--but it had
dropped out and was gone. The Court, from that exclusive inner circle to its outermost
rotten ring of intrigue, corruption, and dissimulation, was all gone together. Royalty was
gone; had been besieged in its Palace and `suspended,' when the last tidings came over.



The August of the year one thousand seven hundred and ninety-two was come, and Monseigneur
was by this time scattered far and wide.



As was natural, the head-quarters and great gathering-place of Monseigneur, in London, was
Tellson's Bank. Spirits are supposed to haunt the places where their bodies most resorted,
and Monseigneur without a guinea haunted the spot where his guineas used to be. Moreover,
it was the spot to which such French intelligence as was most to be relied upon, came
quickest. Again: Tellson's was a munificent house, and extended great liberality to old
customers who had fallen from their high estate. Again: those nobles who had seen the
coming storm in time, and anticipating plunder or confiscation, had made provident
remittances to Tellson's, were always to be heard of there by their needy brethren. To
which it must be added that every new comer from France reported himself and his tidings
at Tellson's, almost as a matter of course. For such variety of reasons,

Tellson's was at that time, as to French intelligence, a kind of High Exchange; and this
was so well known to the public, and the inquiries made there were in consequence so
numerous, that Tellson's sometimes wrote the latest news out in a line or so and posted it
in the Bank windows, for all who ran through Temple Bar to read.



On a steaming, misty afternoon, Mr. Lorry sat at his desk, and Charles Darnay stood
leaning on it, talking with him in a low voice. The penitential den once set apart for
interviews with the House, was now the news-Exchange, and was filled to overflowing. It
was within half an hour or so of the time of closing.



`But, although you are the youngest man that ever lived,' said Charles Darnay, rather
hesitating, `I must still suggest to you---'



`I understand. That I am too old?' said Mr. Lorry.



`Unsettled weather, a long journey, uncertain means of travelling, a disorganised country,
a city that may not be even safe for you.'



`My dear Charles,' said Mr. Lorry, with cheerful confidence, you touch some of the reasons
for my going: not for my staying away. It is safe enough for me; nobody will care to
interfere with an old fellow of hard upon four-score when there are so many people there
much better worth interfering with. As to its being a disorganised city, if it were not a
disorganised city there would be no occasion to send somebody from our House here to our
House there, who knows the city and the business, of old, and is in Tellson's confidence.
As to the uncertain travelling, the long journey, and the winter weather, if I were not
prepared to submit myself to a few inconveniences for the sake of Tellson's, after all
these years, who ought to be?'



`I wish I were going myself,' said Charles Darnay, somewhat restlessly, and like one
thinking aloud.



`Indeed! You are a pretty fellow to object and advise!' exclaimed Mr. Lorry. `You wish you
were going yourself? And you a Frenchman born? You are a wise counsellor.'



`My dear Mr. Lorry, it is because I am a Frenchman born, that the thought (which I did not
mean to utter here, however) has passed through my mind often. One cannot help thinking,
having had some sympathy for the miserable people, and having abandoned something to
them,' he spoke here in his former thoughtful manner, `that one might be listened to, and
might have the power to persuade to some restraint" title="n.抑制；管束；克制">restraint. Only last night, after you had left
us, when I was talking to Lucie---'



`When you were talking to Lucie,' Mr. Lorry repeated. `Yes. I wonder you are not ashamed
to mention the name of Lucie! Wishing you were going to France at this time of day!'



`However, I am not going,' said Charles Darnay, with a smile. `It is more to the purpose
that you say you are.'



`And I am, in plain reality. The truth is, my dear Charles,' Mr. Lorry glanced at the
distant House, and lowered his voice, `you can have no conception of the difficulty with
which our business is transacted, and of the peril in which our books and papers over
yonder are involved. The Lord above knows what the compromising consequences would be to
numbers of people, if some of our documents were seized or destroyed; and they might be,
at any time, you know, for who can say that Paris is not set a-fire to-day, or sacked
to-morrow! Now, a judiciousselection from these with the least possible delay, and the
burying of them, or otherwise getting of them out of harm's way, is within the power
(without loss of precious time) of scarcely any one but myself, if any one. And shall I
hang back, when Tellson's knows this and says this--Tellson's, whose bread I have eaten
these

sixty years--because I am a little stiff about the joints? Why, I am a boy, sir, to half a
dozen old codgers here!'



`How I admire the gallantry of your youthful spirit, Mr. Lorry.'



`Tut! Nonsense, sir!--And, my dear Charles,' said Mr. Lorry, glancing at the House again,
`you are to remember, that getting things out of Paris at this present time, no matter
what things, is next to an impossibility. Papers and precious matters were this very day
brought to us here (I speak in strict confidence; it is not business-like to whisper it,
even to you), by the strangest bearers you cap imagine, every one of whom had his head
hanging on by a single hair as he passed the Barriers. At another time, our parcels would
come and go, as easily as in business-like Old England; but now, everything is stopped.'



`And do you really go to-night?'



`I really go to-night, for the case has become too pressing to admit of delay.'



`And do you take no one with you?'



`All sorts of people have been proposed to me, but I will have nothing to say to any of
them. I intend to take Jerry. Jerry has been my body-guard on Sunday nights for a long
time past, and I am used to him. Nobody will suspect Jerry of being anything but an
English bull-dog, or of having any design in his head but to fly at anybody who touches
his master.'



`I must say again that I heartily admire your gallantry and youthfulness.'



`I must say again, nonsense, nonsense! When I have executed this little commission, I
shall, perhaps, accept Tellson's proposal to retire and live at my ease. Time enough,
then, to think about growing old.'



This dialogue had taken place at Mr. Lorry's usual desk, with Monseigneur swarming within
a yard or two of it, boastful of what he would do to avenge himself on the rascal-people
before long. It was too much the way of Monseigneur under his reverses as a refugee, and
it was much too much the way of native British orthodoxy, to talk of this terrible
Revolution as if it were the one only harvest ever known under the skies that had not been
sown--as if nothing had ever been done, or omitted to be done, that had led to it--as if
observers of the wretched millions in France, and of the misused and perverted resources
that should have made them prosperous, had not seen it inevitably coming, years before,
and had not in plain words recorded what they saw. Such vapouring, combined with the
extravagant plots of Monseigneur for the restoration of a state of things that had utterly
exhausted itself, and worn out Heaven and earth as well as itself, was hard to be endured
without some remonstrance by any sane man who knew the truth. And it was such vapouring
all about his ears, like a troublesome confusion of blood in his own head, added to a
latentuneasiness in his mind, which had already made Charles Darnay restless, and which
still kept him so.



Among the talkers, was Stryver, of the King's Bench Bar, far on his way to state
promotion, and, therefore, loud on the theme: broaching to Monseigneur, his devices for
blowing the people up and exterminating them from the face of the earth, and doing without
them: and for accomplishing many similar objects akin in their nature to the abolition of
eagles by sprinkling salt on the tails of the race. Him, Darnay heard with a particular
feeling of objection; and Darnay stood divided between going away that he might hear no
more, and remaining to interpose his word, when the thing that was to be went on to shape
itself out.



The House approached Mr. Lorry, and laying a soiled and unopened letter before him, asked
if he had yet discovered any traces of the person to whom it was addressed? The House laid
the letter down so close to Darnay that he saw the direction--the more quickly because it
was his own right name. The address, turned into English, ran:



`Very pressing. To Monsieur heretofore the Marquis St. Evrémonde, of France. Confided to the cares of Messrs. Tellson
and Go., Bankers, London, England.'



On the marriage morning, Dr. Manette had made it his one urgent and express request to
Charles Darnay, that the secret of this name should be--unless he, the Doctor, dissolved
the obligation--kept inviolate between them. Nobody else knew it to be his name; his own
wife had no suspicion of the fact; Mr. Lorry could have none.



`No,' said Mr. Lorry, in reply to the House; `I have referred it, I think, to everybody
now here, and no one can tell me where this gentleman is to be found.'



The hands of the clock verging upon the hour of closing the Bank, there was a general set
of the current of talkers past Mr. Lorry's desk. He held the letter out inquiringly; and
Monseigneur looked at it, in the person of this plotting and indignantrefugee; and
Monseigneur looked at it, in the person of that plotting and indignantrefugee; and This,
That, and The Other, all had something disparaging to say, in French or in English,
concerning the Marquis who was not to be found.



`Nephew, I believe--but in any case degenerate successor--of the polished Marquis who was
murdered,' said one. `Happy to say, I never knew him.'



`A craven who abandoned his post,' said another--this Monseigneur had been got out of
Paris, legs uppermost and half suffocated, in a load of hay--`some years ago.'



`Infected with the new doctrines,' said a third, eyeing the direction through his glass in
passing; `set himself in opposition to the last Marquis, abandoned the estates when he
inherited them, and left them to the ruffian herd. They will recompense him now, I hope,
as he deserves.'



`Hey?' cried the blatant Stryver. `Did he though? Is that the sort of fellow? Let us look
at his infamous name. D--n the fellow!'



Darnay, unable to restrain himself any longer, touched Mr. Stryver on the shoulder, and
said:



`I know the fellow.'



`Do you, by Jupiter?' said Stryver. `I am sorry for it.'



`Why?'



`Why, Mr. Darnay? D'ye hear what he did? Don't ask, why, in these times.'



`But I do ask why.'



`Then I tell you again, Mr. Darnay, I am sorry for it. I am sorry to hear you putting any
such extraordinary questions. Here is a fellow, who, infected by the most pestilent and
blasphemous code of devilry that ever was known, abandoned his property to the vilest scum
of the earth that ever did murder by wholesale, and you ask me why I am sorry that a man
who instructs youth knows him? Well, but I'll answer you. I am sorry because I believe
there is contamination in such a scoundrel. That's why.'



Mindful of the secret, Darnay with great difficulty checked himself, and said: `You may
not understand the gentleman.'



`I understand how to put you in a corner, Mr. Darnay,' said Bully Stryver, `and I'll do
it. If this fellow is a gentleman, I don't understand him. You may tell him so, with my
compliments. You may also tell him, from me, that after abandoning his worldly goods and
position to this butcherly mob, I wonder he is not at the head of them. But, no,
gentlemen,' said Stryver, looking all round, and snapping his fingers, `I know something
of human nature, and I tell you that you'll never find a fellow like this fellow, trusting
himself to the mercies of such precious protégés. No, gentlemen; he'll always show `em a clean pair of
heels very early

in the scuffle, and sneak away.'



With those words, and a final snap of his fingers, Mr. Stryver shouldered himself into
Fleet-street, amidst the general approbation of his hearers. Mr. Lorry and Charles Darnay
were left alone at the desk, in the general departure from the Bank.



`Will you take charge of the letter?' said Mr. Lorry. `You know where to deliver it?'



`I do.'