“She pretty?”

“Is she not?”

“No.”

“Why, man alive, she was the admiration of the whole court?”

“Rot the admiration of the whole court! Who made the Old

Bailey a judge of beauty? She was a golden-haired doll!”

“Do you know, Sydney,” said Mr. Stryver, looking at him with

sharp eyes, and slowly drawing a hand across his florid face; “do

you know, I rather thought, at the time, that you sympathised with

the golden-haired doll, and were quick to see what happened to

the golden-haired doll?”

“Quick to see what happened! If a girl, doll or no doll, swoons

within a yard or two of a man’s nose, he can see it without a

perspective-glass. I pledge you, but I deny the beauty. And now I’ll

have no more drink; I’ll get to bed.”

When his host followed him out on the staircase with a candle,

to light him down the stairs, the day was coldly looking in through

its grimy windows. When he got out of the house, the air was cold

and sad, the dull sky overcast, the river dark and dim, the whole

scene like a lifeless desert. And wreaths of dust were spinning

round and round before the morning blast, as if the desert-sand

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

had risen far away, and the fine spray of it in its advance had

begun to overwhelm the city.

Waste forces within him, and a desert all around, this man

stood still on his way across a silent terrace, and saw for a

moment, lying in the wilderness before him, a mirage of

honourable ambition, self-denial, and perseverance. In the fair city

of this vision, there were airy galleries from which the loves and

graces looked upon him, gardens in which the fruits of life hung

ripening, waters of Hope that sparkled in his sight. A moment, and

it was gone. Climbing to a high chamber, in a well of houses, he

threw himself down in his clothes on a neglected bed, and its

pillow was wet with wasted tears.

Sadly, sadly, the sun rose; it rose upon no sadder sight than the

man of good abilities and good emotions, incapable of their

directed exercise, incapable of his own help and his own

happiness, sensible of the blight on him, and resigning himself to

let it eat him away.

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

Chapter XII

HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE

T

he quiet lodgings of Doctor Manette were in a streetcorner

not far from Soho-square. On the afternoon of a

certain fine Sunday when the waves of four months had

rolled over the trial for treason, and carried it, as to the public

interest and memory, far out to sea, Mr. Jarvis Lorry walked along

the sunny streets from Clerkenwell where he lived, on his way to

dine with the Doctor. After several relapses into the businessabsorption,