had never at all known him in his present character. For the first

time the Doctor felt, now, that his suffering was strength and

power. For the first time he felt that in that sharp fire, he had

slowly forged the iron which could 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 be helpful now in

restoring the dearest part of herself to her; by the aid of Heaven I

will do it!” Thus, Doctor Manette. And when Jarvis Lorry saw the

kindled eyes, the resolute face, the calm strong look and bearing of

the man whose life always seemed to him to have been stopped,

like a clock, for so many years, and then set going again with an

energy which had lain dormant during the cessation of its

usefulness, he believed.

Greater things than the Doctor had at that time to contend

with, would have yielded before his persevering purpose. While he

kept himself in his place, as a physician, whose business was with

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

all degrees of mankind, bond and free, rich and poor, bad and

good, he used his personal influence so wisely, that he was soon

the inspecting physician of three prisons, and among them of La

Force. He could now assure Lucie that her husband was no longer

confined alone, but was mixed with the general body of prisoners;

he saw her husband weekly, and brought sweet messages to her,

straight from his lips; sometimes her husband himself sent a letter

to her (though never by the Doctor’s hand), but she was not

permitted to write to him: for, among the many wild suspicions of

plots in the prisons, the wildest of all pointed at emigrants who

were known to have made friends or permanent connections

abroad.

This new life of the Doctor’s was an anxious life, no doubt; still,

the sagacious 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 that time, his imprisonment had been associated in the

minds of his daughter and his friend, with his personal affliction,

deprivation, and weakness. Now that this was changed, and he

knew himself to be invested through that old trial with forces to

which they both looked for Charles’s ultimate safety and

deliverance, he became so far exalted by the change, that he took

the lead and direction, and required them as the weak, to trust to

him as the strong. The preceding relative positions of himself and

Lucie were reversed, yet only as the liveliest gratitude and

affection could reverse them, for he could have had no pride but in

rendering some service to her who had rendered so much to him.

“All curious to see,” thought Mr. Lorry, in his amiably shrewd

way, “but all natural and right; so, take the lead, my dear friend,

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

and keep it; it couldn’t be in better hands.”

But, though the Doctor tried hard, and never ceased trying, to