That same night of his release all the happiness of Darnay and Lucie was suddenly broken. Soldiers came and again arrested him. Defarge and his wife were the accusers this time, and he was to be retried.
The first one to bring this fresh piece of bad news to Mr. Lorry was Sydney Carton, the reckless and dissipated young lawyer. Probably he had heard, in London, of Lucie\'s trouble, and out of his love for her, which he always carried hidden in his heart, had come to Paris to try to aid her husband. He had arrived only to hear, at the same time, of the acquittal and the rearrest.
As Carton walked along the street thinking sadly of Lucie\'s new grief, he saw a man whose face and figure seemed familiar. Following, he soon recognized him as the English spy, Barsad, whose false testimony, years before in London, had come so near convicting Darnay when he was tried for treason. Barsad (who, as it happened, was now a turnkey in the very prison where Darnay was confined) had left London to become a spy in France, first on the side of the king and then on the side of the people.
At the time of this story England was so hated by France that if the people had known of Barsad\'s[Pg 376] career in London they would have cut off his head at once. Carton, who was well aware of this, threatened the spy with his knowledge and made him swear that if worst came to worst and Darnay were condemned, he would admit Carton to the cell to see him once before he was taken to execution. Why Carton asked this Barsad could not guess, but to save himself he had to promise.
Next day Darnay was tried for the second time. When the judge asked for the accusation, Defarge laid a paper before him.
It was a letter that had been found when the Bastille fell, in the cell that had been occupied for eighteen years by Doctor Manette. He had written it before his reason left him, and hidden it behind a loosened stone in the wall; and in it he had told the story of his own unjust arrest. Defarge read it aloud to the jury. And this was the terrible tale it told:
The Marquis de St. Evrémonde (the cruel uncle of Darnay), when he was a young man, had dreadfully wronged a young peasant woman, had caused her husband\'s death and killed her brother with his own hand. As the brother lay dying from the sword wound, Doctor Manette, then also a young man, had been called to attend him, and so, by accident, had learned the whole. Horrified at the wicked wrong, he wrote of it in a letter to the Minister of Justice. The Marquis whom it accused learned of this, and, to put Doctor Manette[Pg 377] out of the way, had him arrested secretly, taken from his wife and baby daughter and thrown into a secret cell of the Bastille, where he had lived those eighteen years, not knowing whether his wife and child lived or died. He waited ten years for release, and when none came, at last, feeling his mind giving way, he wrote the account, which he concealed in the cell wall, denouncing the family of Evrémonde and all their descendants.
The reading of this paper by Defarge, as may be guessed, aroused all the murderous passions of the people in the court room. There was a further reason for Madame Defarge\'s hatred, for the poor woman whom Darnay\'s uncle had so wronged had been her own sister! In vain old Doctor Manette pleaded. That his own daughter was now Darnay\'s wife made no difference in their eyes. The jury at once found Darnay guilty and sentenced him to die by the guillotine the next morning.
Lucie fainted when the sentence was pronounced. Sydney Carton, who had witnessed the trial, lifted her and bore her to a carriage. When they reached home he carried her up the stairs and laid her on a couch.
Before he went, he bent down and touched her cheek with his lips, and they heard him whisper: "For a life you love!"
They did not know until next day what he meant.
Carton had, in fact, formed a desperate plan to rescue Lucie\'s husband, whom he so much resembled[Pg 378] in face and figure, even though it meant his own death. He went to Mr. Lorry and made him promis............