Page 57 - A Tale of Two Cities

One cloudy night in December 1757, I was walking by the river in
Paris, when a carriage drove past me very fast. The carriage stopped
suddenly and two gentlemen got out and called to me.

‘You are Doctor Manette?’ they asked.

‘I am,’ I replied.
‘We have been looking for you,’ they said. ‘Will you please come with
us?’ The two gentlemen were greatly alike, in manner, voice and face, and
I saw at once that they were brothers. They spoke rudely, and would not let
me ask questions or return home first for my doctor’s bag.

I went with them in their carriage, and we drove out on a country road
to a house which was large but dirty and poorly cared for. As soon as we
arrived at the house, I could hear cries from a room upstairs. I followed
them to the room, where a beautiful young woman was lying on a bed,
very ill. Her eyes were wide and wild, and she cried again and again, ‘My
husband, my father and my brother!’
‘Do you have any medicines in the house?’ I asked. They brought me a
box of medicines, and I found something that I could give to the woman.

I had sat with her for half an hour, listening to her cries, when the older
brother said to me, ‘There is another patient.’
He took me now to a room in the outhouses, where their horses were
kept. There, a handsome young boy was lying on his back on some straw. I
could see at once that he was dying from a knife wound.

‘How did this happen, sir?’ I asked the older brother.

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