Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

them being handed into the coach by an arm in uniform, the eyes

connected with the arm looked, not an every day or an every night

look, at monsieur with the white head. “It is well. Forward!” from

the uniform. “Adieu!” from Defarge. And so, under a short grove

of feebler and feebler over-swinging lamps, out under the great

grove of stars.

Beneath that arch of unmoved and eternal lights; some, so

remote from this little earth that the learned tell us it is doubtful

whether their rays have even yet discovered it, as a point in space

where anything is suffered or done: the shadows of the night were

broad and black. All through the cold and restless interval, until

dawn, they once more whispered in the ears of Mr. Jarvis Lorry

sitting opposite the buried man who had been dug out, and

wondering what subtle powers were for ever lost to him, and what

were capable of restorationthe old inquiry:

“I hope you care to be recalled to life?”

And the old answer:

“I can’t say.”

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

BOOK THE SECOND

THE GOLDEN

THREAD

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

Chapter VII

FIVE YEARS LATER

T

ellson’s Bank by Temple Bar was an old-fashioned place,

even in the year one thousand seven hundred and eighty.

It was very small, very dark, very ugly, very

incommodious. It was an old-fashioned place, moreover, in the

moral attribute that the partners in the House were proud of its

smallness, proud of its darkness, proud of its ugliness, proud of its

incommodiousness. They were even boastful of its eminence in

those particulars, and were fired by an express conviction that, if it

were less objectionable, it would be less respectable. This was no

passive belief, but an active weapon which they flashed at more

convenient places of business. Tellson’s (they said) wanted no

elbow-room, Tellson’s wanted no light, Tellson’s wanted no

embellishment. Noakes and Co.’s might, or Snooks Brothers’

might; but Tellson’s, thank Heaven! Any one of these partners

would have disinherited his son on the question of rebuilding

Tellson’s. In this respect the House was much on a par with the

Country; which did very often disinherit its sons for suggesting

improvements in laws and customs that had long been highly

objectionable, but were only the more respectable.

Thus it had come to pass, that Tellson’s was the triumphant

perfection of inconvenience. After bursting open a door of idiotic

obstinacy with a weak rattle in its throat, you fell into Tellson’s

down two steps, and came to your senses in a miserable little shop,