get Charles Darnay set at liberty, or at least to get him brought to

trial, the public current of the time set too strong and fast for him.

The new era began; the king was tried, doomed and beheaded; the

Republic of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death, declared for

victory or death against the world in arms; the black flag waved

night and day from the great towers of Notre Dame; three

hundred thousand men, summoned to rise against the tyrants of

the earth, rose from all the varying soils of France, as if the

dragon’s teeth had been sown broadcast, and had yielded fruit

equally on hill and plain, on rock, in gravel, and alluvial mud,

under the bright sky of the South and under the clouds of the

North, in fell and forest, in the vineyards and the olive-grounds

and among the cropped grass and the stubble of the corn, along

the fruitful banks of the broad rivers, and in the sand of the

seashore. What private solicitude could rear itself against the

deluge of the Year One of Libertythe deluge rising from below,

not falling from above, and with the windows of Heaven shut, not

opened!

There was no pause, no pity, no peace, no interval of relenting

rest, no measurement of time. Though days and nights circled as

regularly as when time was young, and the evening and morning

were the first day, other count of time there was none. Hold of it

was lost in the raging fever of a nation, as it is in the fever of one

patient. Now, breaking the unnatural silence of a whole city, the

executioner showed the people the head of the kingand now, it

seemed almost in the same breath, the head of his fair wife which

had had eight weary months of imprisoned widowhood and

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

misery, to turn it grey.

And yet, observing the strange law of contradiction which

obtains in all such cases, the time was long, while it flamed by so

fast. A revolutionary tribunal in the capital, and forty or fifty

thousand revolutionary committees all over the land; a law of the

Suspected, which struck away all security for liberty or life, and

delivered over any good and innocent person to any bad and guilty

one; prisons gorged with people who had committed no offence,

and could obtain no hearing; these things became the established

order and nature of appointed things, and seemed to be ancient

usage before they were many weeks old. Above all, one hideous

figure grew as familiar as if it had been before the general gaze

from the foundations of the worldthe figure of the sharp female

called La Guillotine.

It was the popular theme for jests; it was the best cure for

headache, it infallibly prevented the hair from turning grey, it

imparted a peculiar delicacy to the complexion, it was the National

Razor which shaved close: who kissed La Guillotine, looked

through the window and sneezed into the sack. It was the sign of

the regeneration of the human race. It superseded the Cross.

Models of it were worn on breasts from which the Cross was

discarded, and it was bowed down to and believed in where the