Cross was denied.

It sheared off heads so many, that it, and the ground it most

polluted, were a rotten red. It was taken to pieces, like a toy-puzzle

for a young Devil, and was put together again when the occasion

wanted it. It hushed the eloquent, struck down the powerful,

abolished the beautiful and good. Twenty-two friends of high

public mark, twenty-one living and one dead, it had lopped the

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

heads off, in one morning, in as many minutes. The name of the

strong man of Old Scripture had descended to the chief

functionary who worked it; but, so armed, he was stronger than

his namesake, and blinder, and tore away the gates of God’s own

Temple every day.

Among these terrors, and the brood belonging to them, the

Doctor walked with a steady head; confident in his power,

cautiously persistent in his end, never doubting that he would

have Lucie’s husband at last. Yet the current of the time swept by,

so strong and deep, and carried the time away so fiercely, that

Charles had lain in prison one year and three months when the

Doctor was thus steady and confident. So much more wicked and

distracted had the Revolution grown in that December month,

that the rivers of the South were encumbered with the bodies of

the violently drowned by night, and prisoners were shot in lines

and squares under the southern wintry sun. Still, the Doctor

walked among the terrors with a steady head. No man better

known than he, in Paris at that day; no man in a stranger

situation. Silent, humane, indispensable in hospital and prison,

using his art equally among assassins and victim, he was a man

apart. In the exercise of his skill, the appearance and the story of

the Bastille Captive removed him from all other men. He was not

suspected or brought in question, any more than if he had indeed

been recalled to life some eighteen years before, or were a spirit

moving among mortals.

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Chapter XXXV

THE WOOD-SAWYER

O

ne year and three months. During all that time Lucie was

never sure, from hour to hour, but that the Guillotine

would strike off her husband’s head next day. Every day,

through the stony streets, the tumbrils now jolted heavily, filled

with Condemned. Lovely girls; bright women, brown-haired,

black-haired, and grey; youths; stalwart men and old; gentle born

and peasant born; all red wine for La Guillotine, all daily brought

into light from the dark cellars of the loathsome prisons, and

carried to her through the streets to slake her devouring thirst.

Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death;the last, much the easiest

to bestow, O Guillotine!

If the suddenness of her calamity, and the whirling wheels of

the time, had stunned the Doctor’s daughter into awaiting the