A Tale of Two Cities, Dave Mckay, Charles Dickens [most inspirational books of all time TXT] 📗

wear powdered, shaped hair, a coat with gold stitching, special shoes, and special white socks that reached to his knees. When hanging a prisoner, or pulling his body apart on the wheel -- The axe was not used at this time. -- Mr. Paris, as he was often called by others doing the same job in other French cities, did his job dressed in this beautiful way. And who in the crowd at Sir's party in the year of our Lord, 1780, could possibly have believed that any government with such a beautiful man, could not have lasted longer than the stars themselves?

Sir the Governor, having taken the weight off his four helpers by drinking his chocolate, had other workers throw open the doors of his holiest of holy places, so that he could explode out of it. And as he did, what acts of love and humble service, what bowing and shaking in front of him, what kissing up the people did to him. If there was anything they could do to show their love for God, they did it for Sir, which may be one reason of many why the worshippers of Sir the Governor never had time for God.

Giving a word of promise here and a smile there, a whisper to one happy slave, and a wave of the hand to another, the Governor moved happily through his rooms to the farthest borders of the circle of truth. There he turned and came back by the same way that he went, until he was safely back inside his secret room, protected by his chocolate angels once again.

The show being over, the movement of cloth and gold bells turned into a storm, as people crowded down the steps to leave. There was soon only one person left of all the crowd, and he, with his hat under his arm and his tobacco box in his hand, walked slowly by the mirrors on his way out.

Stopping at the last door on the way and turning toward the secret room, this person said, "I give you to Satan!"

With that, he shook the tobacco dust from his fingers as if he was shaking dust from his feet, and quietly walked down the steps.

He was a man of about sixty, well dressed, proud in his actions, and with a face like a thin mask. His face was so white that you almost could see through it. Each part of it was clear and sharp. The look on his face never changed. His nose was beautifully shaped, but just above each opening was a small concave place that would move in and out. It was the only part of his face that ever changed. At times they would change colour. When they moved quickly in and out, they added a cruel look to the whole face. When looking closely at his face, one could see that what made the little changes in the nose so strong was that the mouth and eyes were too perfectly horizontal and too thin. But on the whole, it was a good-looking face.

The owner of that face walked down the steps and into the yard, climbed into his coach, and left. Not many people had talked with him at the party. He had stood apart by himself. Even Sir the Governor had been warmer than him. It seemed, as the coach moved through the streets, that he liked to see the poor people jump out of the way of his horses, with many of them almost being knocked over. The driver acted like he was at war with the people in the street, and his master showed nothing in his words or actions to say that he had any problem with this dangerous way of driving. Others had often said, even in that city without ears and at that time when most were without a voice, that in the narrow streets without footpaths the hard driving of the coaches crippled many in a cruel way. But few cared enough for that to think of it a second time, and in this, like in everything else, the poor were left to live with their problems in whatever way they could.

With a wild noise and shaking and with no thought for the danger, the coach raced through the streets and around corners making women shout in fear before it, and making men pull each other and their children out of its way. At last, flying around a corner by a fountain, one of its front wheels hit something with a sound to make one sick. There was a loud cry from a number of voices, and the horses lifted themselves up on their back legs before falling over.

If it were not for the horses falling, the driver probably would not have stopped at all. Coaches would often drive off, leaving the people they had hit behind them; and why not? But the driver was afraid, and he jumped down quickly. All at once there were twenty different hands pulling at the ropes on the horses.

"What's wrong?” the man inside asked quietly, as he looked out. A tall man in a night hat had lifted something from under the feet of the horses and had put it at the foot of the fountain. Now he was down in the mud and wet, crying over it like a wild animal.

"I'm sorry Sir the Marquis!" said a humble man in rags. "It is a child."

"Why does he make that awful noise? Is it his child?"

"I'm sorry, Sir the Marquis... It is too bad... yes."

The fountain was some distance from the coach, as the street was much wider there. As the tall man jumped up from the ground and came running at the coach, Sir the Marquis put his hand, for a second, on the handle of his sword.

"Killed!" shouted the man at the top of his voice, as he put both arms straight above his head. Then, looking at Sir the Marquis, he said "Dead!"

The people pushed in and looked at Sir the Marquis. There was no anger showing in their many eyes, only an interest in seeing what would happen next. They did not say anything either. After the first shouts, they had been quiet, and stayed that way. The voice of the humble man who had first said that it was a child was flat and controlled. Sir the Marquis ran his eyes over them all like they were mice coming out of holes.

He took out his money bag.

"It is strange to me," he said, "that you people cannot take care of yourselves and of your children. One or the other of you is always in the way. How do I know what this has done to my horses? Here! Give him that."

He threw out a gold coin for the driver to pick up, and all of the heads pushed forward to look down at it as it fell. The tall man called out again, with a cry of great pain, "Dead!"

He was stopped by another man arriving, while the others moved back to make way for him. On seeing him, the poor man fell on his shoulder, crying loudly and pointing to the fountain, where some women were leaning over the shape that was lying there, and moving softly around it. They too were as quiet as the men.

"I know, I know," said the man who had just arrived. "Be brave, Gaspard! It is better for the poor thing to die so than to live. She has died in a second, without pain. Could she have lived for an hour as happily?"

"You are a wise man, you there," said the Marquis, smiling. "What do they call you?"

"They call me Defarge.” "What is your job?"

"Sir the Marquis, I sell wine."

"Pick that up, wise man and seller of wine," said the Marquis, throwing him another gold coin, "and spend it as you will. The horses there... are they okay?"

Without taking another look at the crowd, Sir the Marquis leaned back in the seat and was just leaving with the air of a man who has by accident broken some small thing, but who has easily been able to pay for it, when his rest was broken by a coin flying into the coach and hitting the floor.

"Stop!" said Sir the Marquis. "Hold the horses. Who threw that?"

He looked back at where Defarge the seller of wine had been standing, but the poor father was on his face on the footpath in that place, and the person standing there beside him now was a dark fat woman, and she was knitting.

"You dogs!" said the Marquis, but he said it smoothly, and with no change to his face apart from the two sides of the end of his nose as he breathed in and out. "I would gladly drive over any of you, and end your life. If I knew which one of you threw at the coach, and if that trouble maker was close enough, he would be killed under my wheels."

So scared were the people, and so long had they known what one could do to them, both under the law and outside it, that not a face or a hand or even an eye was lifted. Not one man. But the woman who was knitting lifted her head without fear and looked the Marquis in the eye. He was too proud to let her know that he saw it; his eyes of hate moved over her and over all the other rats. He then leaned back in his seat again, and gave the word, "Go on!"

He went on, and other coaches came after him: the government leader, the planner, the controller-general, the doctor, the lawyer, the church leader, the singer, the joke teller, the whole crowd from the party in one long line came racing by. The rats were out of their holes now, looking, and they stayed looking on for hours. Soldiers and police often moved between them and the vehicles, making a wall that they were to stay behind and that they could look through. The father had long ago carried away his child, and the women who had stayed by the dead child when it was lying at the foot of the fountain sat there now watching the water run, and the coaches roll by. The one woman who had stood up, knitting, was still knitting as faithful as death. The water from the fountain ran; the river ran; the day ran into evening; and so much life in the city ran into death, each obeying the rule that says time and movement of the ocean wait for no one. And before long the rats were sleeping close together again in their dark holes, while the party went on into the night. All things went on to where they should one day finish.

8. Sir in the Country

The land itself was beautiful. The corn was bright even if there was not much of it. There were cheaper grains growing where the corn should have been growing; and there were places with poor peas and poor beans and other rough vegetables growing in the place of wheat. With the plants, as with the people growing them, there seemed to be little enthusiasm for life, almost a wish to die off.

Sir the Marquis, in his heavy coach with four horses and two drivers, pushed slowly up a steep hill. A touch of colour on the cheeks of the Marquis did not prove that he was less than part of the highest class, for the colour was not coming from any feeling on his part. It was the effect of light from the sun, something that he could not control.

The sun, as it was going down, was so strong when they reached the top of the hill, that the man in the coach was covered with a deep red colour. "It will die out," said the Marquis, looking at his hands. "Soon."

And it is true that just then, the sun dropped below the line of the earth. When the heavy brake was put on the wheel, and it was going down the other side, with a burning smell and a cloud of dust, the red colour disappeared quickly. The sun and the Marquis both went down together. By the time the brake was taken off, the red colour was gone.

But the coach was yet to travel over some rough open country, through a little village at the bottom of the hill, with a big slow turn on the other side before going up again, past a church tower, a windmill, a forest for hunting, and a big tall rock with a building on it that was used as a prison. The Marquis looked ahead to all of these things as the air turned dark, with the look of one who was coming close to home.

The village had one poor street, with a poor building for making beer, a poor building for making leather, a poor building to drink beer in, a poor yard for horses, a poor fountain,