when you see it. You do remember them, I know. It is not in your

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

nature to forget them.’” He was drawing his hand from his breast;

the prisoner chancing to look up in his hurried wonder as he

wrote, the hand stopped, closing upon something.

“Have you written “forget them’?” Carton asked.

“I have. Is that a weapon in your hand?”

“No; I am not armed.”

“What is it in your hand?”

“You shall know directly. Write on; there are but a few words

more.” He dictated again. “‘I am thankful that the time has come,

when I can prove them. That I do so is no subject for regret or

grief.’” As he said these words with his eyes fixed on the writer, his

hand slowly and softly moved down close to the writer’s face.

The pen dropped from Darnay’s fingers on the table, and he

looked about him vacantly.

“What vapour is that?” he asked.

“Vapour?”

“Something that crossed me?”

“I am conscious of nothing; there can be nothing here. Take up

the pen and finish. Hurry, hurry!”

As if his memory were impaired, or his faculties disordered, the

prisoner made an effort to rally his attention. As he looked at

Carton with clouded eyes and with an altered manner of

breathing, Cartonhis hand again in his breastlooked steadily

at him.

“Hurry, hurry!”

The prisoner bent over the paper, once more.

“‘If it had been otherwise’”; Carton’s hand was again watchfully

and softly stealing down; “‘I never should have used the longer

opportunity. If it had been otherwise’”; the hand was at the

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

prisoner’s face; “‘I should but have had so much the more to

answer for. If it had been otherwise,’” Carton looked at the pen

and saw it was trailing off into unintelligible signs.

Carton’s hand moved back to his breast no more. The prisoner

sprang up with a reproachful look, but Carton’s hand was close

and firm to his nostrils, and Carton’s left arm caught him round

the waist. For a few seconds he faintly struggled with the man who

had come to lay down his life for him; but, within a minute or so,

he was stretched insensible on the ground.

Quickly, but with his hands as true to the purpose as his heart

was, Carton dressed himself in the clothes the prisoner had laid

aside, combed back his hair, and tied it with the ribbon the

prisoner had worn. Then, he softly called, “Enter there! Come in!”

and the Spy presented himself.

“You see?” said Carton, looking up, as he kneeled on one knee

beside the insensible figure, putting the paper in the breast; “is

your hazard very great?”

“M. Carton,” the Spy answered, with a timid snap of his fingers,