“Take off his head!” cried the audience. “An enemy to the

Republic!”

The President rang his bell to silence those cries, and asked the

prisoner whether it was not true that he had lived many years in

England?

Undoubtedly it was.

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Was he not an emigrant then? What did he call himself?

Not an emigrant, he hoped, within the sense and spirit of the

law.

Why not? the President desired to know.

Because he had voluntarily relinquished a title that was

distasteful to him, and a station that was distasteful to him, and

had left his countryhe submitted before the word emigrant in

the present acceptation by the Tribunal was in useto live by his

own industry in England, rather than on the industry of the

overladen people of France.

What proof had he of this?

He handed in the name of two witness; Theophile Gabelle, and

Alexandre Manette.

But he had married in England? the President reminded him.

True, but not an English woman.

A citizeness of France?

Yes. By birth.

Her name and family?

“Lucie Manette, only daughter of Doctor Manette, the good

physician who sits there” This answer had a happy effect upon the

audience. Cries in exaltation of the well-known good physician

rent the hall. So capriciously were the people moved, that tears

immediately rolled down several ferocious countenances which

had been glaring at the prisoner a moment before, as if with

impatience to pluck him out into the streets and kill him.

On these few steps of his dangerous way, Charles Darnay had

set his foot according to Doctor Manette’s reiterated instructions.

The same cautious counsel directed every step that lay before him,

and had prepared every inch of his road.

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The President asked, why had he returned to France when he

did, and not sooner?

He had not returned sooner, he replied, simply because he had

no means of living in France, save those he had resigned; whereas,

in England, he lived by giving instruction in the French language

and literature He had returned when he did, on the pressing and

written entreaty of a French citizen, who represented that his life

was endangered by his absence. He had come back, to save a

citizen’s life, and to bear his testimony, at whatever personal

hazard, to the truth. Was that criminal in the eyes of the Republic?

The populace cried enthusiastically, “No!” and the President

rang his bell to quiet them. Which it did not, for they continued to

cry “No!” until they left off, of their own will.