“Inform the Tribunal of what you did that day. within the

Bastille, citizen.”

“I knew,” said Defarge, looking down at his wife, who stood at

the bottom of the steps on which he was raised, looking steadily up

at him; “I knew that this prisoner, of whom I speak, had been

confined in a cell known as One Hundred and Five, North Tower.

I knew it from himself. He knew himself by no other name than

One Hundred and Five, North Tower, when he made shoes under

my care. As I serve my gun that day, I resolve, when the place

shall fall, to examine that cell. It falls. I mount to the cell, with a

fellow-citizen who is one of the Jury, directed by a gaoler. I

examine it, very closely. In a hole in the chimney, where a stone

has been worked out and replaced, I find a written paper. That is

that written paper. I have made it my business to examine some

specimens of the writing of Doctor Manette. This is the writing of

Doctor Manette. I confide this paper, in the writing of Doctor

Manette, to the hands of the President.”

“Let it be read.”

In the dead silence and stillnessthe prisoner under trial

looking lovingly at his wife, his wife only looking from him to look

with solicitude at her father, Doctor Manette keeping his eyes

fixed on the reader, Madame Defarge never taking hers from the

prisoner, Defarge never taking his from his feasting wife, and all

the other eyes there intent upon the Doctor, who saw none of

themthe paper was read as follows.

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

Chapter XL

THE SUBSTANCE OF THE SHADOW

“I

Alexandre Manette, unfortunate physician, native of

Beauvais, and afterwards resident in Pariswrite this

melancholy paper in my doleful cell in the Bastille,

during the last month of the year 1767. I write it at stolen intervals,

under every difficulty. I design to secrete it in the wall of the

chimney, where I have slowly and laboriously made a place of

concealment for it. Some pitying hand may find it there, when I

and my sorrows are dust.

“These words are formed by the rusty iron point with which I

write with difficulty in scrapings of soot and charcoal from the

chimney, mixed with blood, in the last month of the tenth year of

my captivity. Hope has quite departed from my breast. I know

from terrible warnings I have noted in myself that my reason will

not long remain unimpaired, but I solemnly declare that I am at

this time in the possession of my right mindthat my memory is

exact and circumstantialand that I write the truth as I shall

answer for these my last recorded words, whether they be ever

read by men or not, at the Eternal Judgment-seat.

“One cloudy moonlight night, in the third week of December (I

think the twenty-second of the month) in the year 1757, I was

walking on a retired part of the quay by the Seine for the