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atotc-weekly · 2 months ago

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Book the Third—The Track of a Storm

[X] Chapter XV. The Footsteps Die Out For Ever

Along the Paris streets, the death-carts rumble, hollow and harsh. Six tumbrils carry the day’s wine to La Guillotine. All the devouring and insatiate Monsters imagined since imagination could record itself, are fused in the one realisation, Guillotine. And yet there is not in France, with its rich variety of soil and climate, a blade, a leaf, a root, a sprig, a peppercorn, which will grow to maturity under conditions more certain than those that have produced this horror. Crush humanity out of shape once more, under similar hammers, and it will twist itself into the same tortured forms. Sow the same seed of rapacious license and oppression over again, and it will surely yield the same fruit according to its kind.

Six tumbrils roll along the streets. Change these back again to what they were, thou powerful enchanter, Time, and they shall be seen to be the carriages of absolute monarchs, the equipages of feudal nobles, the toilettes of flaring Jezebels, the churches that are not my father’s house but dens of thieves, the huts of millions of starving peasants! No; the great magician who majestically works out the appointed order of the Creator, never reverses his transformations. “If thou be changed into this shape by the will of God,” say the seers to the enchanted, in the wise Arabian stories, “then remain so! But, if thou wear this form through mere passing conjuration, then resume thy former aspect!” Changeless and hopeless, the tumbrils roll along.

As the sombre wheels of the six carts go round, they seem to plough up a long crooked furrow among the populace in the streets. Ridges of faces are thrown to this side and to that, and the ploughs go steadily onward. So used are the regular inhabitants of the houses to the spectacle, that in many windows there are no people, and in some the occupation of the hands is not so much as suspended, while the eyes survey the faces in the tumbrils. Here and there, the inmate has visitors to see the sight; then he points his finger, with something of the complacency of a curator or authorised exponent, to this cart and to this, and seems to tell who sat here yesterday, and who there the day before.

Of the riders in the tumbrils, some observe these things, and all things on their last roadside, with an impassive stare; others, with a lingering interest in the ways of life and men. Some, seated with drooping heads, are sunk in silent despair; again, there are some so heedful of their looks that they cast upon the multitude such glances as they have seen in theatres, and in pictures. Several close their eyes, and think, or try to get their straying thoughts together. Only one, and he a miserable creature, of a crazed aspect, is so shattered and made drunk by horror, that he sings, and tries to dance. Not one of the whole number appeals by look or gesture, to the pity of the people.

There is a guard of sundry horsemen riding abreast of the tumbrils, and faces are often turned up to some of them, and they are asked some question. It would seem to be always the same question, for, it is always followed by a press of people towards the third cart. The horsemen abreast of that cart, frequently point out one man in it with their swords. The leading curiosity is, to know which is he; he stands at the back of the tumbril with his head bent down, to converse with a mere girl who sits on the side of the cart, and holds his hand. He has no curiosity or care for the scene about him, and always speaks to the girl. Here and there in the long street of St. Honore, cries are raised against him. If they move him at all, it is only to a quiet smile, as he shakes his hair a little more loosely about his face. He cannot easily touch his face, his arms being bound.

On the steps of a church, awaiting the coming-up of the tumbrils, stands the Spy and prison-sheep. He looks into the first of them: not there. He looks into the second: not there. He already asks himself, “Has he sacrificed me?” when his face clears, as he looks into the third.

“Which is Evrémonde?” says a man behind him.

“That. At the back there.”

“With his hand in the girl’s?”

“Yes.”

The man cries, “Down, Evrémonde! To the Guillotine all aristocrats! Down, Evrémonde!”

“Hush, hush!” the Spy entreats him, timidly.

“And why not, citizen?”

“He is going to pay the forfeit: it will be paid in five minutes more. Let him be at peace.”

But the man continuing to exclaim, “Down, Evrémonde!” the face of Evrémonde is for a moment turned towards him. Evrémonde then sees the Spy, and looks attentively at him, and goes his way.

The clocks are on the stroke of three, and the furrow ploughed among the populace is turning round, to come on into the place of execution, and end. The ridges thrown to this side and to that, now crumble in and close behind the last plough as it passes on, for all are following to the Guillotine. In front of it, seated in chairs, as in a garden of public diversion, are a number of women, busily knitting. On one of the fore-most chairs, stands The Vengeance, looking about for her friend.

“Thérèse!” she cries, in her shrill tones. “Who has seen her? Thérèse Defarge!”

“She never missed before,” says a knitting-woman of the sisterhood.

“No; nor will she miss now,” cries The Vengeance, petulantly. “Thérèse.”

“Louder,” the woman recommends.

Ay! Louder, Vengeance, much louder, and still she will scarcely hear thee. Louder yet, Vengeance, with a little oath or so added, and yet it will hardly bring her. Send other women up and down to seek her, lingering somewhere; and yet, although the messengers have done dread deeds, it is questionable whether of their own wills they will go far enough to find her!

“Bad Fortune!” cries The Vengeance, stamping her foot in the chair, “and here are the tumbrils! And Evrémonde will be despatched in a wink, and she not here! See her knitting in my hand, and her empty chair ready for her. I cry with vexation and disappointment!”

As The Vengeance descends from her elevation to do it, the tumbrils begin to discharge their loads. The ministers of Sainte Guillotine are robed and ready. Crash!—A head is held up, and the knitting-women who scarcely lifted their eyes to look at it a moment ago when it could think and speak, count One.

The second tumbril empties and moves on; the third comes up. Crash!—And the knitting-women, never faltering or pausing in their Work, count Two.

The supposed Evrémonde descends, and the seamstress is lifted out next after him. He has not relinquished her patient hand in getting out, but still holds it as he promised. He gently places her with her back to the crashing engine that constantly whirrs up and falls, and she looks into his face and thanks him.

“But for you, dear stranger, I should not be so composed, for I am naturally a poor little thing, faint of heart; nor should I have been able to raise my thoughts to Him who was put to death, that we might have hope and comfort here to-day. I think you were sent to me by Heaven.”

“Or you to me,” says Sydney Carton. “Keep your eyes upon me, dear child, and mind no other object.”

“I mind nothing while I hold your hand. I shall mind nothing when I let it go, if they are rapid.”

“They will be rapid. Fear not!”

The two stand in the fast-thinning throng of victims, but they speak as if they were alone. Eye to eye, voice to voice, hand to hand, heart to heart, these two children of the Universal Mother, else so wide apart and differing, have come together on the dark highway, to repair home together, and to rest in her bosom.

“Brave and generous friend, will you let me ask you one last question? I am very ignorant, and it troubles me—just a little.”

“Tell me what it is.”

“I have a cousin, an only relative and an orphan, like myself, whom I love very dearly. She is five years younger than I, and she lives in a farmer’s house in the south country. Poverty parted us, and she knows nothing of my fate—for I cannot write—and if I could, how should I tell her! It is better as it is.”

“Yes, yes: better as it is.”

“What I have been thinking as we came along, and what I am still thinking now, as I look into your kind strong face which gives me so much support, is this:—If the Republic really does good to the poor, and they come to be less hungry, and in all ways to suffer less, she may live a long time: she may even live to be old.”

“What then, my gentle sister?”

“Do you think:” the uncomplaining eyes in which there is so much endurance, fill with tears, and the lips part a little more and tremble: “that it will seem long to me, while I wait for her in the better land where I trust both you and I will be mercifully sheltered?”

“It cannot be, my child; there is no Time there, and no trouble there.”

“You comfort me so much! I am so ignorant. Am I to kiss you now? Is the moment come?”

“Yes.”

She kisses his lips; he kisses hers; they solemnly bless each other. The spare hand does not tremble as he releases it; nothing worse than a sweet, bright constancy is in the patient face. She goes next before him—is gone; the knitting-women count Twenty-Two.

“I am the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.”

The murmuring of many voices, the upturning of many faces, the pressing on of many footsteps in the outskirts of the crowd, so that it swells forward in a mass, like one great heave of water, all flashes away. Twenty-Three.

—

They said of him, about the city that night, that it was the peacefullest man’s face ever beheld there. Many added that he looked sublime and prophetic.

One of the most remarkable sufferers by the same axe—a woman—had asked at the foot of the same scaffold, not long before, to be allowed to write down the thoughts that were inspiring her. If he had given any utterance to his, and they were prophetic, they would have been these:

“I see Barsad, and Cly, Defarge, The Vengeance, the Juryman, the Judge, long ranks of the new oppressors who have risen on the destruction of the old, perishing by this retributive instrument, before it shall cease out of its present use. I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss, and, in their struggles to be truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long years to come, I see the evil of this time and of the previous time of which this is the natural birth, gradually making expiation for itself and wearing out.

“I see the lives for which I lay down my life, peaceful, useful, prosperous and happy, in that England which I shall see no more. I see Her with a child upon her bosom, who bears my name. I see her father, aged and bent, but otherwise restored, and faithful to all men in his healing office, and at peace. I see the good old man, so long their friend, in ten years’ time enriching them with all he has, and passing tranquilly to his reward.

“I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in the hearts of their descendants, generations hence. I see her, an old woman, weeping for me on the anniversary of this day. I see her and her husband, their course done, lying side by side in their last earthly bed, and I know that each was not more honoured and held sacred in the other’s soul, than I was in the souls of both.

“I see that child who lay upon her bosom and who bore my name, a man winning his way up in that path of life which once was mine. I see him winning it so well, that my name is made illustrious there by the light of his. I see the blots I threw upon it, faded away. I see him, fore-most of just judges and honoured men, bringing a boy of my name, with a forehead that I know and golden hair, to this place—then fair to look upon, with not a trace of this day’s disfigurement—and I hear him tell the child my story, with a tender and a faltering voice.

“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”

The end.

#a tale of two cities #atotc weekly #charles dickens #november 26 #the track of a storm #'tis the end! thank you for coming along on the ride! i hope your reading experience was as fun* as mine :)#*heart wrenching; painful; tear filled; etc #see you next year~

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phireads · 20 days ago

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𝑀𝓎 𝐵𝑒𝓈𝓉 𝐵𝑜𝑜𝓀𝓈 𝑜𝒻 2024

2024 is finished, and with it, my year of reading! I managed to read more this year than in 2022 and 2023 combined. 38 books in total. That’s one re-read, one play, one graphic novel, 28 fiction works and 7 nonfiction works. I figured I might as well round up my top 10 (re-read not included):

10. Ethan Frome by Edith Warton

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Oof. Let me start by saying that I COMPLETELY understand why so many people (especially those who had to read it in school) hate this book. It’s dreary and melodramatic and largely uneventful. However, I loved it. I enjoyed the heavy-handed metaphor of the bleak Massachusetts winter and the pathetic intensity of the protagonists’ feelings. I loved how I felt smug for the whole book because I thought I’d seen the ending coming a mile away (I most certainly had not). Ethan was actually a very interesting character to me because he takes up the role of once-naive, now-begrudging spouse - a part usually played by a woman in classic lit. Honestly so depressing but completely brilliant. I will definitely read more of Wharton’s works. Also 10/10 would recommend reading during a snowfall.

9. Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I accidentally read this (the first book in the BTCGC series) after the second and I liked them both equally. In this book, the customers of the café are much more archetypal than in the second - presumably due to Kawaguchi wanting to bring something new to the sequel. Having a sister myself, the chapter with the sisters did make me cry a little. I feel like the third book might end up being quite stale, as with the fourth and fifth installments, as there’s only so many stories to be told. However, I’m definitely going to keep reading as I love Kazu and I want to see what happens to her.

8. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

After last year’s Great Expectations great disappointment, I was reluctant to take on another Dickens. Thankfully, I loved this. The principal characters felt so real and relatable - Sydney Carton my beloved <3333 - and I enjoyed the clear divergences between London and Paris and how they mirrored the divergences of Sydney and Charles. As a knitter, the knitting motif was very much noticed and appreciated as it demonstrated the quiet power which the working woman has always possessed throughout history. I will be reading more Dickens - possibly David Copperfield next since I like Dev Patel and want to see the film adaptation with him in.

7. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Alright, so despite the fact that I am studying German currently, I read Brian Murdoch’s English translation because I’m unfortunately not yet at the level where I can read books even semi-fluently. I found the translation very stilted and clumsy but I know that this is not the fault of Remarque so I’ve tried to put that aside when considering my rating. This book is remarkable (I would never forgive myself if I didn’t do that obvious pun just once) especially for how it fits into the political and military history of Germany. In 1928 (original date of publication), it was not acceptable to publish a book with such blatant anti-war messaging anywhere (in England too, you might be put on a watchlist) so Remarque’s publication of this novel was truly an act of bravery (which eventually got him exiled from his homeland). I think Paul was the perfect protagonist to choose. He’s sort of the medium between his friends - not too romantic, nor too solemn at the start of the novel - and he does serve well as an everyman narrator. I admire Remarque for not concealing the harsh, crude and often sickening realities of war. A truly incredible book. I will be watching the 2022 German language film (with Daniel Brühl) and then rereading this book in German once I am capable of it.

6. I’m Glad my Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Despite being nearly 100 years and over 5000 miles apart from All Quiet on the Western Front, in I’m Glad my Mom Died, Jennette McCurdy writes with a frankness very reminiscent of Erich María Remarque. This book was absolutely astounding. I’m not usually one for celebrity memoirs or Hollywood gossip but everything I’d heard about this book suggested it was so much more than just a vapid, cash-grabbing exposé. Like most children with access to Nickelodeon in the early 2010s, my sister and I were obsessed with iCarly so I was really interested in learning more about McCurdy beyond her character, Sam Puckett. The realities of child stardom depicted in the book did not shock me - with the amount of Netflix documentaries made about the topic in the last few years, how could it? No, what truly astounded and disgusted me was McCurdy’s relationship with the titular Mom. How anyone could do that to another person - let alone their own child - is completely beyond me. In this memoir, McCurdy writes with the sharpest truth and wit and I was genuinely so overwhelmingly happy when I read that she’s been given a fiction deal as a result of this book. I will absolutely be buying anything she publishes.

5. Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I’m not ashamed to say that I was really nervous to read Mansfield Park, not only because it was the last of Austen’s complete novels that I hadn’t read but also because I was disappointed with Northanger Abbey last year. As with Dickens, this year’s Austen was spectacular. Is Fanny Price a little annoying and self-righteous? Yes. But I think she has every reason to be (also, her being annoying was my perception so don’t come for me on that one). Mansfield Park was such an interesting setting - given how the proximity of the Bertrams and Crawfords augmented the drama. I know many people have qualms with the ending but I personally liked it - a quiet marriage, lacking overt passion was very realistic in Austen’s time and I like to think the couple's relationship will have blossomed over time from friendship and respect to real love.

4. Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This is my second - and so far favourite - Hardy. I just love how you can feel the amount of love Hardy has for his region of England, in the tender way that he describes the landscapes and the livelihoods of the people who live there. Bathsheba Everdene (what a name!) is a very well-written character. She begins the story naive and haughty and goes through hardships (to put it lightly) which make her more receptive to the world and people around her. As with Tess of the D’Urbervilles, this story could very easily become an unqualified man (Thomas Hardy) preaching about feminine morality. Somehow, neither book is this (in my opinion). I’m genuinely amazed by the sensitivity with which Hardy writes his female characters. I also really enjoyed Bathsheba’s suitors - hard-working Gabriel Oak, steady Mr Boldwood and dangerous Sergeant Troy. Speaking of Mr Boldwood, there’s a heart-wrenching tiktok edit of Michael Sheen playing the role in the 2015 film adaptation, set to Mitski’s Goodbye My Danish Sweetheart. I deleted tiktok shortly after watching this but I’m sure it’ll still be on there if anyone wants to behold a cinematic masterpiece, such as this. Regardless, I digress. This is a really wonderful book which I still think about regularly, even ten months later.

3. Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Perhaps the most incongruous book on this Top 10, Malibu Rising is the third book I’ve read from author Taylor Jenkins Reid. I enjoyed both The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and Daisy Jones and the Six but found them lacking the emotional catharsis which I was hoping for. For me, Malibu Rising did not disappoint. Jenkins Reid offers a more revealing emotional portrait of her characters while still remaining in her popular fiction style. This is the first of her fame-focussed books which properly examines the damaging effects of a life lead in the spotlight. I loved all the Riva siblings and enjoyed booing pantomime villain Mick Riva off the metaphorical stage. I honestly am already thinking about re-reading this but thankfully, I’ve lent my copy to a friend so I cannot yet be thwarted in my 2025 reading plans. Carrie Soto is Back will be bought and read at some point but I’ve heard that that is the final book in the Riva-verse so I don’t want it to be over.

2. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Oh, Daphne du Maurier, the woman you are. This is such an incredible book. It’s gothic, mystery, thriller, soft horror, coming-of-age, romance (kind of). Essentially, this is a Bluebeard story but it still feels so fresh and captivating, like an unsettling dream which you know you’ll never have again. I’ve heard many people say that the unnamed protagonist (I will always think of her as “Ich”, because of the German musical - which I have not watched/ listened to but it seems to be more popular on tumblr than the book) is insipid and annoying. To me, she’s such a compelling character and I love the way she develops and hardens through the novel - as would be only natural for a young woman in her situation. She’s me, your honour. This is one of those books that I wish I had written. The fact that the three most important characters in the novel (you can fight me on this) are women just floors me. I bought Jamaica Inn and will hopefully get around to that this year. If you like gothic novels, read this!

1. Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This was originally a five star read for me but as I sat writing this review, I realised it hasn’t stuck with me as a five star book should. Like with Ethan Frome, I completely understand if people don’t like it. Headshot follows eight teenage girls at a boxing championship in Reno, Nevada. It’s literary fiction - which, for me, can easily become convoluted and faux-intellectual - but there’s still a plot. The characters themselves are just incredible. I adored the insights which we’re given into their personalities and why each girl wants to win. My favourite character was without a doubt Rachel. She was very relatable to me. I also really liked how the girls thought of each other by full names - really demonstrating that desire to keep things professional and distant, demonstrating that desire to win.

That’s all! Here’s to more great books in 2025!

#mine #books #books 2024 #rita bullwinkel #daphne du maurier #taylor jenkins reid #thomas hardy #toshikazu kawaguchi #jennette mccurdy #erich maria remarque #charles dickens #jane austen #edith wharton

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