cause us real inconvenience. All very bad, very bad!”
The Marquis took a gentle little pinch of snuff, and shook his
head; as elegantly despondent as he could becomingly be of a
country still containing himself, that great means of regeneration.
“We have so asserted our station, both in the old time and in
the modern time also,” said the nephew, gloomily, “that I believe
our name to be more detested than any name in France.”
“Let us hope so,” said the uncle. “Detestation of the high is the
involuntary homage of the low.”
“There is not,” pursued the nephew, in his former tone, “a face
I can look at, in all this country round about us, which looks at me
with any deference on it but the dark deference of fear and
slavery.”
“A compliment,” said the Marquis, “to the grandeur of the
family, merited by the manner in which the family has sustained
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A Tale of Two Cities
its grandeur. Hah!” And he took another gentle little pinch of
snuff, and lightly crossed his legs.
But, when his nephew, leaning an elbow on the table, covered
his eyes thoughtfully and dejectedly with his hand, the fine mask
looked at him sideways with a stronger concentration of keenness,
closeness, and dislike, than was comportable with its wearer’s
assumption of indifference.
“Repression is the only lasting philosophy. The dark deference
of fear and slavery, my friend,” observed the Marquis, “will keep
the dogs obedient to the whip, as long as this roof,” looking up to
it, “shuts out the sky.”
That might not be so long as the Marquis supposed. If a picture
of the chateau as it was to be a very few years hence, and of fifty
like it as they too were to be a very few years hence, could have
been shown to him that night, he might have been at a loss to
claim his own from the ghastly, fire-charred, plunder-wrecked
ruins. As for the roof he vaunted, he might have found that
shutting out the sky in a new way—to wit, for ever, from the eyes
of the bodies into which its lead was fired, out of the barrels of a
hundred thousand muskets.
“Meanwhile,” said the Marquis, “I will preserve the honour and
repose of the family if you will not. But you must be fatigued. Shall
we terminate our conference for the night?”
“A moment more.”
“An hour, if you please.”
“Sir,” said the nephew, “we have done wrong, and are reaping
the fruits of wrong.”
“We have done wrong?” repeated the Marquis, with an
inquiring smile, and delicately pointing, first to his nephew, then
Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
f
A Tale of Two Cities
to himself.
“Our family; our honourable family, whose honour is of so
much account to both of us, in such different ways. Even in my
father’s time, we did a world of wrong, injuring every human
creature who came between us and our pleasure, whatever it was.
Why need I speak of my father’s time, when it is equally yours?
Can I separate my father’s twin-brother, joint inheritor, and next
successor, from himself?”
“Death has done that!” said the Marquis.
“And has left me,” answered the nephew, “bound to a system
that is frightful to me, responsible for it, but powerless in it;
seeking to execute the last request of my dear mother’s lips, and
obey the last look of my dear mother’s eyes, which implored me to
have mercy and to redress; and tortured by seeking assistance and
power in vain.”
“Seeking them from me, my nephew,” said the Marquis,
touching him on the breast with his forefinger—they were now
standing by the hearth—“you will for ever seek them in vain, be
assured.”
Every fine straight line in the clear whiteness of his face, was
cruelly, craftily, and closely compressed, while he stood looking
quietly at his nephew, with his snuff-box in his hand. once again
he touched him on the breast, as though his finger were the fine
point of a small sword,"};
