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[Assistant] No, to their lie, bill friends were contrary. All unavoidable is the doom of death.


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[Assistant] Cousins indeed, and by their uncle, cousins of comfort, kingdom, kindred, freedom, life.


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[Assistant] Lest that the process of thy kindness last longer telling than thy kindness did.


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[Assistant] That thou dost love my daughter from thy soul, So from thy soul's love didst thou love.


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[Assistant] Then to her, by the man that slew her brothers, a pair of bleeding hearts, thereon engrave Edward and York. Then happily will she weep.


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[Assistant] And bit her, wipe her weeping eyes with awe.


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[Assistant] Nay, then indeed she cannot choose but hate thee, having bought love with such a bloody spoil. Look.


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[Assistant] Who is it? Mondag out here. What do you want? Let me in. I haven't done anything. I'm alone, dammit. You swear it? I swear. The front door opened slowly.


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[Assistant] Faber peered out, looking very old in the light and very fragile and very much afraid.


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[Assistant] The old manon looked as if he had not been out of the house in years. He and the white plaster walls inside were much the same.


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[Assistant] There was white in the flesh of his mouth, and his cheeks and his hair was white, and his eyes had faded with white in the vague blueness there.


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[Assistant] Then his eyes touched on the book under Montag's arm, and he did not look so old any more, and not quite as fragile. Slowly his fear went.


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[Assistant] I'm sorry, one has to be so careful.


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[Assistant] He looked at the book under Montag's arm and could not stop. So is true.


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[Assistant] Montag stepped inside. The door shut.


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[Assistant] Faber backed up as if he feared the book might vanish if he took his eyes from it. Behind him the door to a bedroom stood open.


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[Assistant] And in that room a litter of machinery and steel tools were strewn upon a desktop.


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[Assistant] Montag had only a glimpse before Faber, seeing Montag's attention diverted, turned quickly and shut the bedroom door, and stood holding the knob with a trembling hand. His gaze returned unsteadily to Montag, who was now seated with the book in his lap.


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[Assistant] I stole it. Faber for the first time raised his eyes and looked directly into Montag's face.


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[Assistant] No, said Montek. My wife's dying. A friend of mine's already dead. Someone who may have been a friend was burnt less than 24 hours ago. You're the only one I knew might help me. To see. To see. Faber's hands itched on his knees.


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[Assistant] I'm not a religious man, but it's been a long time. Favour turned the pages stopping here and there to read.


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[Assistant] It's as good as I remember. Lord, how they change it in our parlors these days. Christ is one of the family now. I often wonder if God recognizes his own son the way we've dressed him up, or is it dressed him down?


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[Assistant] He's a regular peppermint stick now, all sugar crystal and saccharine when he isn't making veiled references to certain commercial products that every worshipper absolutely needs. Faber sniffed the book.


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[Assistant] Do you know that books smell like nutmeg or some spice from a foreign land? I loved to smell them when I was a boy. Lord, there was a lot of lovely books once before we let them go. Faber turned the pages.


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[Assistant] Mr. Montag, you are looking at a card.


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[Assistant] I saw the way things were going a long time back. I said nothing. I'm one of the innocents who could have spoken up and out when no one would listen to the guilty.


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[Assistant] Now, it's too late. Favour, close the Bible. Well, suppose you tell me why you came here. Nobody listens anymore.


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[Assistant] Faber examined Montag's thin blue jowled face. How did you get shaken up? What knocked the torch out of your hands? I don't know.


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[Assistant] We have everything we need to be happy, but we aren't happy. Something's missing. I looked around.


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[Assistant] The only thing I positively knew was gone was the books I'd burned in ten or twelve years.


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[Assistant] So, I thought the books might help.


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[Assistant] You're a hopeless romantic, said Faber. It would be funny if it were not serious.


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[Assistant] It's not books you need, it's some of the things that once were in books. The same things could be in the part or families today. The same infinite detail and awareness could be projected through the radios and televisors, but are not. No, no, it's not books at all you're looking for. Take it where you can find it, in old phonograph records, old motion pictures, and in old friends. Look for it in nature and


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[Assistant] Look for it in yourself. Books were only one


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[Assistant] Type of receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might forget. There's nothing magical in them at all.


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[Assistant] The magic is only in what books say, how they stitch the patches of the universe together into one garment for us.


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[Assistant] Of course you couldn't know this. Of course you still can't understand what I mean when I say all this. You are intuitively right. That's what counts. Three things are missing.


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[Assistant] Number one, do you know why books such as this are so important? Because they have quality. And what does that word quality mean?


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[Assistant] To me it means texture. This book has pores. It has features. This book can go under the microscope. You'll find life under the glass.


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[Assistant] Streaming past an infinite profusion.


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[Assistant] The more poor, the more truthfully recorded details of life per square inch you can get on a sheet of paper, the more literary you are. That's my definition anyway.


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[Assistant] Telling detail. Fresh detail. The good writers touch life often.


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[Assistant] The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies.


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[Assistant] So now, do you see why books are hated and feared? They show the pores in the face of life.


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[Assistant] The comfortable people want only wax moon faces, poreless, hairless, expressionless.


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[Assistant] We are living in a time when flowers are trying to live on flowers instead of growing on good rain and black loam.


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[Assistant] Even fireworks for all their prettiness come from the chemistry of the earth.


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[Assistant] Yet somehow we think we can grow feeding on flowers and fireworks without completing the cycle back to reality. Do you know the legend of Hercules and Antaeus?


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[Assistant] The giant wrestler whose strength was incredible so long as he stood firmly on the earth.


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[Assistant] But when he was held ruthless in midair by Hercules, he perished easily.


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[Assistant] If there isn't something in that legend for us today, in this city, in our time, then I am completely insane. Well, there we have the first thing I said we need. Quality, texture of information. And the second? Leisure. Oh, but we've plenty of off-hours. Off-hours, yes, but time to think. If you're not driving a hundred miles an hour at a clip where you can't think of anything else but the danger,


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[Assistant] Then you're playing some game or sitting in some room where you can't argue with a four-wall televisor. Why, the televisor is real. It is immediate. It has dimension. It tells you what to think and blasts it in. It must be right. It seems so right.


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[Assistant] It rushes you on so quickly to its own conclusions your mind hasn't time to protest. What nonsense! Only the family is people. I beg pardon. My wife says books aren't real. Thank God for that. You can shut them, say hold on a moment. You play God to it.


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[Assistant] But who has ever torn himself from the claw that encloses you when you drop a seed in a TV parlour? It grows you in each shape it wishes.


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[Assistant] It is an environment as real as the world. It becomes and is the truth. Books can be beaten down with reason.


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[Assistant] But with all that knowledge and skepticism, I have never been able to argue with a 100-piece symphony orchestra, full color, three dimensions, and being in and part of those incredible parlors.


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[Assistant] As you see, my parlor is nothing but four plaster walls. And here, he held out two small rubber plugs for my ears when I ride the subway jets.


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[Assistant] Denim's dentifrists, they toil not, neither do they spin, said Montag, eye shut. Where do we go from here? Would books help us?


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[Assistant] Only if the third necessary thing could be given us. Number one, as I said, quality of information. Number two, leisure to digest it. And number three, the right to carry out actions based on what we learn from the interaction of the first two.


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[Assistant] And I hardly think a very old man and a fireman turned sour could do much this late in the game.


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[Assistant] That's the good part of dying. When you've nothing to lose, you, you run any risk you want.


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[Assistant] You said an interesting thing, laughed Faber, without having read it. Are things like that in books? But it came off the top of my mind.


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[Assistant] All the better. You didn't fancy it up for me or anyone, even yourself. Montag leaned forward. This afternoon I thought that if it turned out that books were worthwhile, we might get a press in and print some extra copies. We? You and I. Oh no! Faber sat up. But let me tell you my plan. If you insist on telling me, I must ask you to leave. But aren't you interested?


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[Assistant] Not if you start talking the sort of talk that might get me burnt for my trouble.


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[Assistant] The only way I could possibly listen to you would be if somehow the farm and structure itself could be burnt. Now if you suggest that we print extra books and


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[Assistant] Arrange to have them hidden in farmers houses all over the country.


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[Assistant] So that seeds of suspicion would be sown among those arsonists. Bravo, I'd say. Plant the books.


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[Assistant] Turn in an alarm and see the fireman's houses burn. Is that what you mean?


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[Assistant] Faber raised his brows and looked at Montag as if he were seeing a new man. I was joking. If you thought it would be a plan worth trying, I'd have to take your word it would help. You can't guarantee things like that. After all, when we had all the books we needed,


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[Assistant] We still insisted on finding the highest cliff to jump off, but we do need a breather.


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[Assistant] We do need knowledge and perhaps in a thousand years we might pick smaller cliffs to jump off.


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[Assistant] The books are here to remind us what asses and fools we are.


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[Assistant] There Caesar's praetorian guard whispering as the parade roars down the avenue.


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[Assistant] Most of us, uh, can't rush around, talk to everyone, know all the cities of the world, we, we haven't time, money, or that many friends.


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[Assistant] The things you're looking for, Montag, are in the world, but the only way the average chap will


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[Assistant] Never see ninety-nine percent of them is in a book. Don't ask for guarantees, and don't look to be saved in any one thing, person, machine, or library. Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were headed for the shore.


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[Assistant] Faber got up and began to pace the room. Well, asked Montag.


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[Assistant] Are you absolutely serious? Absolutely. It's an insidious plan, if I do say so myself. Faber glanced nervously at his bedroom door. To see the firehouses burn across the land, destroyed as hotbeds of treason. The salamander devours his tail. Oh God! I've a list of fireman's residences everywhere, with some sort of underground


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[Assistant] Can't trust people, that's the dirty part. You and I and who else will set the fires?


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[Assistant] Aren't there professors like yourself, former writers, historians, linguists, dead or ancient? The older the better, they'll go unnoticed, you know dozens admit it.


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[Assistant] Oh, there are many actors alone who haven't acted Pirandello or Shaw or Shakespeare for years because their plays are too aware of the world.


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[Assistant] But that would just nibble the edges. The whole culture shot through.


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[Assistant] The skeleton needs melting and reshaping. Good God, it isn't as simple as just picking up a book you laid down half a century ago. Remember, the firemen are rarely necessary.


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[Assistant] The public itself stopped reading of its own accord.


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[Assistant] You farm and provide a circus now, then, at which buildings are set off and crowds gather for the pretty blaze. But it's a small sideshow, indeed.


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[Assistant] And hardly necessary to keep things in line.


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[Assistant] So few want to be rebels anymore. And out of those few most like myself, scare easily.


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[Assistant] Can you dance faster than the white clown? Shout louder than Mr. Gimmick and the parlor families? If you can, you'll win your way, Montag, in any event. You're a fool. People are having fun. Committing suicide, murdering.


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[Assistant] A bomber flight had been moving east all the time they talked, and only now did the two men stop and listen, feeling the great jet sounds tremble inside themselves. Patience, Montague. Let the war turn off the families.


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[Assistant] Our civilization is flinging itself to pieces. Stand back from the centrifuge. There has to be someone ready when it blows up. What?


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[Assistant] Men quoting Milton, saying, I remember Sophocles, reminding the survivors that man has a good side too.


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[Assistant] They will only gather up their stones to hurl at each other. Montag go home, go to bed.


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[Assistant] Why waste your final hours racing about your cage denying you're a squirrel? Then you don't care anymore. I care so much, I'm sick! And you won't help me?


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[Assistant] Montag stood there and waited for the next thing to happen. His hands by themselves, like two men working together, began to rip the pages from the book.


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[Assistant] The hands tore the fly leaf and then the first and then the second page. Idiot! What are you doing? Faber sprang up as if he had been struck.


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[Assistant] He fell against Montag. Montag warded him off and let his hands continue. Six more pages fell to the floor. He picked them up and wadded the paper under Faber's gaze. Don't! Oh, don't! said the old man. Who can stop me? I'm a fireman. I can burn you. The old man stood looking at him. You wouldn't.


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[Assistant] I could. The book. Don't tear it anymore. Faber sank into a chair, his face very white, his mouth trembling. Don't make me feel any more tired.


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[Assistant] What do you want? I need you to teach me.


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[Assistant] Montag put the book down. He began to unwod the crumpled paper and flattened out as the old man watched tiredly. Faber shook his head as if he were waking up. Montag, have you any money?


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[Assistant] Bring it. I know a man who printed our college paper half a century ago.


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[Assistant] That was the year I came to class at the start of the new semester.


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[Assistant] How like a beautiful statue of ice it was melting in the sun.


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[Assistant] I remember the newspapers dying like huge maws.


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[Assistant] No one wanted them back, and no one missed them.


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[Assistant] And then the government seeing how advantageous it was to have people reading only about passionate lips and the fist in the stomach.


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[Assistant] Circle the situation with your fire-readers. So Montag, there's this unemployed printer. We might start a few books, and wait on the war to break the pattern and give us the push we need. A few bombs and the families in the walls of all the houses, like harlequin rats, will shut up. In the silence, our stage whisper might carry.


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[Assistant] They both stood looking at the book on the table.


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[Assistant] I've tried to remember, said Montag, but hell, it's gone when I turn my head. God, how I want something to say to the Captain.


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[Assistant] He's ready enough so he has all the answers, or seems to have.


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[Assistant] His voice is like butter. I'm afraid he'll talk me back the way I was. Only a week ago, pumping a kerosene hose, I thought, God, what fun. The old man uttered, Those who don't build must burn. It's as old as history and juvenile delinquents.


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[Assistant] So that's what I am. There's some of it in all of it.


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[Assistant] Monty moved toward the front door. Can you help me in any way tonight with the fire, Captain? I need an umbrella to keep off the rain.


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[Assistant] I'm so damned afraid I'll drown if he gets me again.


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[Assistant] The old man said nothing but glanced once more nervously at his bedroom. Montag caught the glance. Well? The old man took a deep breath, held it, and let it out. He took another, eyes closed, his mouth tight, and at last exhaled.


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[Assistant] The old man turned at last and said, Come along. I would actually have let you walk right out of my house. I am a cowardly old fool.


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[Assistant] Faber opened the bedroom door and let Montag into a small chamber where stood a table upon which a number of metal tools lay among a welter of microscopic wire-hairs, tiny coils, bobbins, and crystals. What's this? asked Montag.


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[Assistant] Proof of my terrible cowardice. I've lived alone so many years throwing images on walls with my imagination. Fiddling with electronics, radio transmission has been my hobby. My cowardice is of such a passion


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[Assistant] Complimenting the revolutionary spirit that lives in its shadow, I was forced to design this. He picked up a small green metal object, no larger than a .22 bullet.


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[Assistant] I paid for all this. How? Playing the stock market, of course. The last refuge in the world for the dangerous intellectual out of a job.


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[Assistant] Well, I played the market and built all this and I've waited, I've waited trembling half a lifetime for someone to speak to me. I dared speak to no one.


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[Assistant] That day in the park when we sat together I knew that some day you might drop by with fire or friendship. It was hard to guess. I've had this little item ready for months. But I almost let you go. I'm that afraid. It looks like a seashell radio. And something more. It listens.


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[Assistant] If you put it in your ear, Montag, I can sit comfortably home, warming my frightened bones, and hear and analyze the fireman's world, find its weaknesses, without danger. I'm the Queen Bee, safe in the hive. You will be the drone, the traveling air.


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[Assistant] Eventually I could put out ears into all parts of the city, with various men listening and evaluating. If the drones die, I'm still safe at home, tending my fright with a maximum of comfort and a minimum of chance. See how safe I play it? How contemptible I am? Montag plays the green bullet in his ear.


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[Assistant] The old man inserted a similar object in his own ear and moved his lips. Montag! The voice was in Montag's head. I hear you.


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[Assistant] The old man left. You're coming over fine too.


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[Assistant] Faber whispered, but the voice in Montag's head was clear. Go to the firehouse when it's time. I'll be with you. Let's listen to this Captain Bady together.


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[Assistant] He could be one of us. God knows. I'll give you things to save. We'll give him a good show.


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[Assistant] You hate me for this electronic cowardice of mine? Here I am sending you out into the night while I stay behind the lines with my damned ears listening for you to get your head chopped off.


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[Assistant] We all do what we do, said Montag. He put the Bible in the old man's hands. Here, I'll chance turning in a substitute. Tomorrow,


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[Assistant] I'll see the unemployed printer, yes. That much I can do. Good night, Professor.


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[Assistant] Not good night. I'll be with you the rest of the night, a vinegar gnat tickling your ear when you need me. But good night, and good luck anyway. The door opened and shut. Montag was in the dark street again, looking at the world.


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[Assistant] Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight!


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[Assistant] As then, really existence. I cannot doubt it. Yet I am lost in surprise and admiration.


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[Assistant] Sometimes I endeavored to gain from Frankenstein the particulars of his creature's formation, but on this point he was impenetrable. Are you mad, my friend? said he.


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[Assistant] Would you also create for yourself and the world a demoniacal enemy? Peace. Peace.


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[Assistant] Frankenstein discovered that I made notes concerning his history.


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[Assistant] I would not that a mutilated one should go down to posterity. Thus has a week passed away.


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[Assistant] While I have listened to the strangest tale that ever imagination formed.


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[Assistant] My thoughts and every feeling of my soul have been drunk up by the interest for my guest, which this tale and his own elevated and gentle manners have created. I wish to soothe him.


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[Assistant] Yet can I counsel one so infinitely miserable, so destitute of every hope of consolation, to live? Oh no!


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[Assistant] The only joy that he can now know will be when he composes his shattered spirit to peace and death. Yet he enjoys one comfort, the offspring of solitude and delirium.


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[Assistant] He believes that when in dreams he holds converse with his friends and arrives from that communion consolation for his miseries or excitements to his vengeance, that they are not the creations of his fancy, but the beings themselves who visit him from the regions or remote world.


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[Assistant] This faith gives a solemnity to his reveries that render them to me almost as imposing and interesting as truth.


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[Assistant] Our conversations are not always confined to his own history and misfortunes.


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[Assistant] On every point of general literature he displays unbounded knowledge and a quick and piercing apprehension. His eloquence is forcible and touching.


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[Assistant] Nor can I hear him when he relates a pathetic incident or endeavors to move the passions of pity or love without tears.


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[Assistant] What a glorious creature must he have been in the days of his prosperity when he is thus noble and godlike in ruin. He seems to feel his own worth and the greatness of his fall. Then younger, said he.


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[Assistant] I believed myself destined for some great enterprise. My feelings are profound.


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[Assistant] But I possessed a coolness of judgment that fitted me for illustrious achievements.


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[Assistant] This sentiment of the worth of my nature supported me when others would have been oppressed, for I deemed it criminal to throw away in useless grief those talents that might be useful to my fellow creatures. When I reflected on the work I had completed


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[Assistant] No lesser one than the creation of a sensitive and rational animal, I could not rank myself with a herd of common projectors.


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[Assistant] But this thought which supported me in the commencement of my career now serves only to plunge me lower in the dust. All my speculations and hopes are as nothing.


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[Assistant] And like the archangel who aspired to omnipotence, I am chained in an eternal hell. My imagination was vivid.


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[Assistant] If my powers of analysis and application were intense,


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[Assistant] By the union of these qualities, I conceived the idea and executed the creation of a man.


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[Assistant] Even now, I cannot recollect without passion my reveries while the work was incomplete.


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[Assistant] From my infancy I was imbued with high hopes and a lofty ambition. But how am I sung?


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[Assistant] Oh, my friend, if you had known me as I once was, you would not recognize me in this state of degradation.


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[Assistant] A high destiny seemed to bear me on until I fell, never, never again to rise.


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[Assistant] I have longed for a friend. I have sought one who would sympathize with and love me.


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[Assistant] Behold, on these desert seas I have found such a one.


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[Assistant] But I fear I have gained him only to know his value and lose him. I would reconcile him to life but he repulses the idea. I thank you Walton, he said.


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[Assistant] For your kind intentions to waltz so miserable a wretch.


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[Assistant] But when you speak of new ties and fresh affections, think you that any can replace those who are gone? Can any man be to me as Cleval was? Or any woman another Elizabeth?


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[Assistant] Even where the affections are not strongly moved by any superior excellence, the companions of our childhood always possess a certain power over our minds, which hardly any later friend can obtain.


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[Assistant] They know our infantile dispositions, which however they may be afterwards modified are never eradicated.


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[Assistant] And they can judge our actions with more certain conclusions as to the integrity of our motives.


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[Assistant] A sister or a brother can never, unless indeed such symptoms have been shown early, suspect the other of fraud or false dealing, when another friend, however strongly he may be attached, may, in spite of himself, be contemplated with suspicion. But I enjoyed friends.


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[Assistant] And wherever I am, the soothing voice of my Elizabeth and the conversation of Clareval will be ever whispered in my ear. They are dead.


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[Assistant] And but one feeling in such a solitude can persuade me to preserve my life.


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[Assistant] If I were engaged in any high undertaking or design, fraught with extensive utility to my fellow creatures, then could I live to fulfill it. But such is not my destiny.


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[Assistant] I must pursue and destroy the being to whom I gave existence.


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[Assistant] Then my lot on earth will be fulfilled and I may die. My beloved sister, September 2nd, I write to you encompassed by peril


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[Assistant] And ignorant whether I'm ever doomed to see again, dear England, and the dearer friends that inhabit it.


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[Assistant] I am surrounded by mountains of ice which admit of no escape and threaten every moment to crush my vessel.


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[Assistant] The brave fellows whom I have persuaded to be my companions look towards me for aid, but I have none to bestow.


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[Assistant] There is something terribly appalling in our situation, yet my courage and hopes do not desert me.


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[Assistant] Yet it is terrible to reflect that the lives of all these men are endangered through me.


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[Assistant] If we are lost, my mad schemes are the cause. And what, Margaret, will be the state of your mind?


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[Assistant] Years will pass, and you will have visitings of despair and yet be tortured by hope. Oh, my beloved sister.


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[Assistant] The sickening failing of your heartfelt expectations is in prospect more terrible to me than my own death. But you have a husband and lovely children. You may be happy. Heaven bless you and make you so.


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[Assistant] My unfortunate guest regards me with a tenderest compassion. He endeavours to fill me with hope and talks as if life were a possession which he valued.


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[Assistant] He reminds me how often the same accidents have happened to other navigators who've attempted this sea, and in spite of myself he fills me with cheerful auguries. Even the sailors feel the power of his eloquence. When he speaks, they no longer despair.


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[Assistant] He rouses their energies and while they hear his voice, they believe these vast mountains of ice are molehills which will vanish before the resolutions of man. These feelings are transitory.


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[Assistant] Each day of expectation delayed fills them with fear, and I almost dread a mutiny caused by this despair.


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[Assistant] September 5th. A scene has just passed of such uncommon interest that


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[Assistant] Although it is highly probable that these papers may never reach you, yet I cannot forbear recording it.


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[Assistant] We are still surrounded by mountains of ice, still in imminent danger of being crushed in their conflict.


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[Assistant] A feverish fire still glimmers in his eyes, but he is exhausted, and when suddenly roused to any exertion he speedily sinks again into apparent lifelessness.


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[Assistant] I mentioned in my last letter the fears I entertained of a mutiny.


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[Assistant] His eyes half closed and his limbs hanging listlessly.


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[Assistant] I was roused by half a dozen of the sailors who demanded admission into the cabin. They entered and their leader addressed me.


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[Assistant] He told me that he and his companions had been chosen by the other sailors to come in deputation to me to make me a requisition which, injustice, I could not refuse.


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[Assistant] We were immured in ice and should probably never escape, but they feared that if, as was possible, the ice should dissipate and a free passage be opened,


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[Assistant] I should be rash enough to continue my voyage and lead them into fresh dangers after they might happily have surmounted this.


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[Assistant] They insisted therefore that I should engage with a solemn promise that if the vessel should be freed, I would instantly direct my course southwards. This speech troubled me.


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[Assistant] I had not despaired nor had I yet conceived the idea of returning if set free, yet could I in justice or even in possibility refuse this demand. I hesitated before I answered when Frankenstein


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[Assistant] Who had at first been silent and indeed appeared hardly to have force enough to attend, now roused himself.


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[Assistant] His eyes sparkled, and his cheeks flushed with momentary vigor. Turning towards the men, he said, What do you mean? What do you demand of your captain?


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[Assistant] You were hereafter to be hailed as the benefactors of your species.


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[Assistant] And now, behold, with the first imagination of danger, or, if you will, the first mighty and terrific trial of your courage, you shrink away.


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[Assistant] And are content to be handed down as men who had not strength enough to endure cold and peril. And so, poor souls.


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[Assistant] They were chilly and returned to their warm firesides. Why, that requires not this preparation.


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[Assistant] You need not have come thus far and dragged your captain to the shame of a defeat merely to prove yourselves cowards. Oh, be men. Or be more than men.


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[Assistant] Be steady to your purposes and firm as a rock.


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[Assistant] This ice is not made of such stuff as your hearts may be.


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[Assistant] It is mutable and cannot withstand you if you say that it shall not.


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[Assistant] Do not return to your families with a stigma of disgrace marked on your brows. Return as heroes who have fought and conquered.


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[Assistant] And who know not what it is to turn their backs on the foe.


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[Assistant] He spoke this with a voice so modulated to the different feelings expressed in his speech.


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[Assistant] I told them to retire and consider of what had been said, that I would not lead them farther north if they strenuously desired the contrary, but that I hoped that with reflection their courage would return. They retired, and I turned towards my friend.


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[Assistant] But he was sunk in languor and almost deprived of life. How all this will terminate I know not.


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[Assistant] But I had rather die than return shamefully, my purpose unfulfilled. Yet I fear such will be my fate.


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[Assistant] The men, unsupported by ideas of glory and honor,


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[Assistant] Thus are my hopes blasted by cowardice and indecision. I come back ignorant and disappointed. It requires more philosophy than I possess to bear this injustice with patience. September 12th. It is past. I am returning to England. I have lost my hopes of utility and glory. I have lost my friend.


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[Assistant] But I will endeavor to detail these bitter circumstances to you, my dear sister.


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[Assistant] And while I am wafted towards England and towards you, I will not despond. September 9th.


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[Assistant] The ice began to move and roaring like thunder were heard at a distance as the islands split and cracked in every direction.


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[Assistant] We were in the most imminent peril but as we could only remain passive, my chief attention was occupied by my unfortunate guest.


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[Assistant] Whose illness increased in such a degree that he was entirely confined to his bed.


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[Assistant] The ice cracked behind us and was driven with force towards the north.


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[Assistant] At nine in the morning, Mildred's bed was empty.


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[Assistant] Montag got up quickly, his heart pumping, and ran down the hall and stopped at the kitchen door.


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[Assistant] Toast popped out of the silver toaster, was seized by a spidery metal hand that drenched it with melted butter.


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[Assistant] She was an expert at lip reading from ten years of apprenticeship at seashell ear thimbles. She nodded again.


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[Assistant] His wife said, I don't know why I should be so hungry. You? I'm hungry. Last night he began. Didn't sleep well. I feel terrible, she said. God, I'm hungry. I can't figure it. Last night he said again.


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[Assistant] She watched his lips casually. What about last night? Don't you remember? What? Did we have a wild party or something? Feel like I've a hangover. God, I'm hungry. Who was here? A few people, he said. That's what I thought. She chewed her toast.


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[Assistant] Sorry stomach, but I'm hungry as all get out. Hope I didn't do anything foolish at the party. No, he said quietly.


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[Assistant] The toaster spidered out a piece of buttered bread for him. He held it in his hand, feeling obligated. You don't look so hot yourself, said his wife.


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[Assistant] People don't talk enough about what a poet you are with your language in.


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[Assistant] 451. And, and your love of description. Your, and your love of smells.


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[Assistant] This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.


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[Assistant] How the Republic of Rome, after centuries of unrest and revolution, became an empire.


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[Assistant] When the Roman armies returned from these many victorious campaigns, they were received with great jubilation.


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[Assistant] Alas and alack, this sudden glory did not make the country any happier. On the contrary,


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[Assistant] had been proud of the simplicity which had characterized the lives of her famous men


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[Assistant] The New Republic felt ashamed of the shabby coats and the high principles which had been fashionable in the days of its grandfathers.


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[Assistant] Rome had become the mistress of practically all the land around the Mediterranean.


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[Assistant] In those early days of history, a prisoner of war lost his freedom and became a slave.


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[Assistant] The Carthaginian women and children were sold into bondage together with their own slaves, and a like fate awaited the obstinate inhabitants of Greece and Macedonia and Spain and Syria when they dared to revolt against the Roman power.


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[Assistant] Two thousand years ago, a slave was merely a piece of machinery. Nowadays, a rich man invests his money in factories. The rich people of Rome, senators, generals, and war profiteers, invested theirs in land and in slaves.


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[Assistant] The land they bought or took in the newly acquired provinces.


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[Assistant] The slaves, they bought in open market wherever they happened to be cheapest.


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[Assistant] During most of the third and second centuries before Christ, there was a plentiful supply, and as a result the landowners worked their slaves until they dropped dead in their tracks, when they bought new ones at the nearest bargain counter of Corinthian or Carthaginian captives. And now behold the fate of the freeborn farmer.


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[Assistant] He had done his duty toward Rome, and he had fought her battles without complaint.


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[Assistant] But when he came home after 10, 15, or 20 years, his lands were covered with weeds, and his family had been ruined.


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[Assistant] He sowed and planted and waited for the harvest. He carried his grain to the market together with his cattle and his poultry to find that the large landowners who worked their estates with slaves could underbid him all along the line. For a couple of years he tried to hold his own. Then he gave up in despair. He left the country and he went to the nearest city.


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[Assistant] But he shared his misery with thousands of other disinherited beings.


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[Assistant] They crouched together in filthy hovels in the suburbs of the large cities.


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[Assistant] They were apt to get sick and die from terrible epidemics. They were all profoundly discontented


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[Assistant] They were always willing to listen to those plausible spellbinders who gather around a public grievance like so many hungry vultures, and soon they became a grave menace to the safety of the state. The class of the newly rich shrugged its shoulders. We have our army and our policemen, they argued. They will keep the mob in order.


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[Assistant] And they hid themselves behind the high walls of their pleasant villas and cultivated their gardens and read the poems of a certain Homer.


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[Assistant] Which a Greek slave had just translated into very pleasing Latin hexameters.


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[Assistant] Cornelia, the daughter of Scipio Africanus, had been married to a Roman by the name of Gracchus. She had two sons, Tiberius and Gaius. When the boys grew up, they had entered politics and tried to bring about certain much needed reforms.


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[Assistant] A census had shown that most of the land of the Italian peninsula was owned by two thousand noble families.


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[Assistant] Tiberius Gracchus, having been elected a Tribune


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[Assistant] Try to help the free men. He revived two ancient laws which restricted the number of acres which a single owner might possess. In this way, he hoped to revive the valuable old class of small and independent freeholders. The newly rich called him a robber and an enemy of the state.


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[Assistant] There were street riots. A party of thugs was hired to kill the popular tribune.


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[Assistant] Ten years later, his brother Gaius tried the experiment of reforming a nation against the expressed wishes of a strong privileged class. He passed a poor law, which was meant to help the destitute farmers.


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[Assistant] Eventually it made the greater part of the Roman citizens into professional beggars.


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[Assistant] He established colonies of destitute people in distant parts of the empire, but these settlements failed to attract the right sort of people. Before Gaius Gracchus could do more harm, he too was murdered, and his followers were either killed or exiled. The first two reformers had been gentlemen.


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[Assistant] The two who came after were of a very different stamp. They were professional soldiers. One was called Marius. The name of the other was Sulla. Both enjoyed a large personal following.


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[Assistant] Mithridates, king of a country along the shores of the Black Sea, and a Greek on his mother's side.


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[Assistant] The Senate equipped an army to march against the King of Pontus and punish him for his crime. But who was to be commander in chief?


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[Assistant] Selah, said the Senate, because he is consul. Marius, said the mob, because he has been consul five times, and because he is the champion of our rights. Possession is nine points of the law.


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[Assistant] Sala happened to be an actual command of the army. He went east to defeat Mithridates, and Marius fled to Africa.


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[Assistant] There, he waited until he heard that Sala had crossed into Asia.


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[Assistant] He then returned to Italy, gathered a motley crew of malcontents, marched on Rome and entered the city with his professional highwaymen, spent five days and five nights slaughtering the enemies of the senatorial party, got himself elected consul, and promptly died from the excitement of the last fortnight.


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[Assistant] There followed four years of disorder. Then Sulla, having defeated Mithridates, announced that he was ready to return to Rome and settle a few old scores of his own.


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[Assistant] He was as good as his word. For weeks, his soldiers were busy executing those of their fellow citizens who were suspected of democratic sympathies.


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[Assistant] One day they got hold of a young fellow who had been often seen in the company of Marius. They were going to hang him when someone interfered.


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[Assistant] The boy is too young, he said, and they let him go.


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[Assistant] His name was Julius Caesar You shall meet him again on the next page.


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[Assistant] As for Sulla, he became dictator, which meant sole and supreme ruler of all the Roman possessions.


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[Assistant] He ruled Rome for four years, and he died quietly in his bed, having spent the last year of his life tenderly raising his cabbages, as was the custom of so many Romans who had spent a lifetime killing their fellow men. But conditions did not grow better.


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[Assistant] On the contrary, they grew worse. Another general, Gnaeus Pompeius, or Pompey, a close friend of Sulla, went east to renew the war against the ever troublesome Mithridates.


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[Assistant] He drove that energetic potentate into the mountains, where Mithridates took poison and killed himself, well knowing what fate awaited him as a Roman captive.


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[Assistant] Next, he reestablished the authority of Rome over Syria, destroyed Jerusalem,


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[Assistant] Roamed through Western Asia trying to revive the myth of Alexander the Great, and at last, in the year 62, returned to Rome with a dozen shiploads of defeated kings and princes and generals.


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[Assistant] Who presented his city with the sum of forty million dollars in plunder.


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[Assistant] Only a few months before, the town had almost fallen into the hands of a good-for-nothing young aristocrat by the name of Cataline, who had gambled away his money and hoped to reimburse himself for his losses by a little plundering.


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[Assistant] Cicero, a public-spirited lawyer, had discovered the plot, had warned the Senate, and had forced Kathleen to flee.


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[Assistant] But there were other young men with similar ambitions, and it was no time for idle talk. Pompey organized a triumvirate, which was to take charge of affairs. He became the leader of this vigilante committee. Gaius Julius Caesar, who had made a reputation for himself as governor of Spain, was the second in command.


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[Assistant] The third was an indifferent sort of person by the name of Crassus. He had been elected because he was incredibly rich, having been a successful contractor of war supplies.


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[Assistant] As for Caesar, who was by far the ablest of the three, he decided that he needed a little more military glory to become a popular hero.


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[Assistant] He crossed the Alps and conquered that part of the world, which is now called France.


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[Assistant] Then he hammered a solid wooden bridge across the Rhine and invaded the land of the wild Teutons. Finally, he took ship and visited England.


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[Assistant] Heaven knows where he might have ended if he had not been forced to return to Italy. Pompey, so he was informed, had been appointed dictator for life.


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[Assistant] This of course meant that Caesar was to be placed on the list of the retired officers, and the idea did not appeal to him.


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[Assistant] He remembered that he had begun life as a follower of Marius. He decided to teach the senators and their dictator another lesson. He crossed the Rubicon River, which separated the province of Cisalpine Gaul from Italy. Everywhere he was received as the friend of the people.


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[Assistant] Without difficulty, Caesar entered Rome and Pompey fled to Greece. Caesar followed him and defeated his followers near Pharsalus. Pompey sailed across the Mediterranean and escaped to Egypt. When he landed, he was murdered by Order of Young King Ptolemy. A few days later, Caesar arrived. He found himself caught in a trap.


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[Assistant] Both the Egyptians and the Roman garrison, which had remained faithful to Pompey, attacked his camp.


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[Assistant] Here you see a picture of Caesar crossing the bridge going west.


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[Assistant] Fortune was with Caesar. He succeeded in setting fire to the Egyptian fleet.


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[Assistant] Incidentally, the sparks of the burning vessels fell on the roof of the famous library of Alexandria, which was just off the waterfront, and destroyed it. Next, he attacked the Egyptian army, drove the soldiers into the Nile, drowned Ptolemy,


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[Assistant] And established a new government under Cleopatra, the sister of the late king.


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[Assistant] Just then word reached him that Pharnaces, the son and heir of Mithridates, had gone on the warpath.


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[Assistant] Caesar marched northward, defeated Pharnaces in war which lasted five days, sent word of his victory to Rome in the famous sentence, vini vidi vici, which is Latin for, I came, I saw, I conquered.


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[Assistant] And returned to Egypt where he fell desperately in love with Cleopatra, who followed him to Rome when he returned to take charge of the government in the year 46.


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[Assistant] He marched at the head of not less than four different victory parades, having won four different campaigns.


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[Assistant] Then Caesar appeared in the Senate to report upon his adventures, and the grateful Senate made him dictator for ten years. It was a fatal step.


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[Assistant] The new dictator made serious attempts to reform the Roman state.


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[Assistant] He conferred the rights of citizenship upon distant communities, as had been done in the early days of Roman history.


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[Assistant] Half a hundred young aristocrats formed a plot to save the Republic. On the Ides of March,


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[Assistant] The 15th of March, according to that new calendar which Caesar had brought with him from Egypt, Caesar was murdered when he entered the Senate. Once more Rome was without a master.


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[Assistant] Here you see a picture of the great Roman Empire, a map with a wall drawn around the Roman Empire which extends through most of Europe and part of Northern Africa.


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[Assistant] There were two men who tried to continue the tradition of Caesar's glory. One was Antony, his former secretary. The other was Octavian, Caesar's grand nephew and heir to his estate. Octavian remained in Rome.


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[Assistant] But Antony went to Egypt to be near Cleopatra with whom he too had fallen in love as seems to have been the habit of Roman generals. A war broke out between the two.


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[Assistant] In the battle of Actium, Octavian defeated Antony. Antony killed himself, and Cleopatra was left alone to face the enemy.


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[Assistant] She tried very hard to make Octavian her third Roman conquest.


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[Assistant] He was a very wise young man, and he did not repeat the mistake of his famous uncle. He knew how people will shy at words.


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[Assistant] He was very modest in his demands when he returned to Rome.


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[Assistant] He did not want to be a dictator. He would be entirely satisfied with the title of the Honorable. But when the Senate a few years later addressed him as Augustus, the illustrious, he did not object, and a few years later the man in the street called him Caesar, or Kaiser.


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[Assistant] While the soldiers, accustomed to regard Octavian as their commander-in-chief, referred to him as the Chief, the Imperator, or Emperor.


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[Assistant] The Republic had become an empire, but the average Roman was hardly aware of the fact.


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[Assistant] In 14 AD, his position as the absolute ruler of the Roman people had become so well established that he was made an object of that divine worship which hitherto had been reserved for the gods. And his successors were true emperors, the absolute rulers of the greatest empire the world has ever seen.


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[Assistant] He did not care who ruled him, provided the new master gave him a chance to live quietly and without the noise of eternal street riots. Octavian assured his subjects forty years of peace.


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[Assistant] He had contemplated an invasion of the northwestern wilderness, which was inhabited by the Teutons.


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[Assistant] But Varus, his general, had been killed with all his men in the Teutoburg woods, and after that the Romans made no further attempts to civilize these wild people.


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[Assistant] They concentrated their efforts upon the gigantic problem of internal reform, but it was too late to do much good.


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[Assistant] Two centuries of revolution and foreign war had repeatedly killed the best men among the younger generations. It had ruined the class of the free farmers.


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[Assistant] It had introduced slave labor, against which no free man could hope to compete.


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[Assistant] It had turned the cities into beehives inhabited by pauperized and unhealthy mobs of runaway peasants.


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[Assistant] It had created a large bureaucracy, petty officials who were underpaid and who were forced to take graft in order to buy bread and clothing for their families. Worst of all, it had accustomed people to violence, to bloodshed, to a barbarous pleasure in the pain and suffering of others.


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[Assistant] Outwardly, the Roman state during the first century of our era was a magnificent political structure, so large that Alexander's empire became one of its minor provinces.


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[Assistant] Underneath this glory there lived millions upon millions of poor and tired human beings, toiling like ants who have built a nest underneath a heavy stone. They worked for the benefit of someone else. They shared their food with the animals of the fields. They lived in stables. They died without hope.


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[Assistant] It was the 753rd year since the founding of Rome.


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[Assistant] Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus Augustus was living in the palace of the Palatine Hill, busily engaged upon the task of ruling his empire.


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[Assistant] In a little village of distant Syria, Mary, the wife of Joseph the carpenter,


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[Assistant] was tending her little boy born in a stable of Bethlehem this is a strange world


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[Assistant] Recorded by Michelle Crandall, Fremont, California, January 2009.


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[Assistant] More months to the number of twelve had come and gone, and Mr. Charles Darnay was established in England as a higher teacher of the French language, who was conversant with French literature. In this age, he would have been a professor. In that age, he was a tutor.


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[Assistant] He read with young men who could find any leisure and interest for the study of a living tongue spoken all over the world.


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[Assistant] And he cultivated a taste for its stores of knowledge and fancy.


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[Assistant] He could write of them besides in sound English and render them into sound English.


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[Assistant] Such masters were not at that time easily found.


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[Assistant] Princes that had been and kings that were to be were not yet of the teacher class and no ruined nobility had dropped out of Telson's ledgers to turn cooks and carpenters.


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[Assistant] As a tutor whose attainments made the student's way unusually pleasant and profitable, and as an elegant translator who brought something to his work besides mere dictionary knowledge, young Mr. Darnay soon became known and encouraged.


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[Assistant] He was well acquainted moreover with the circumstances of his country, and those were of ever-growing interest.


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[Assistant] So with great perseverance and untiring industry, he prospered.


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[Assistant] In London, he had expected neither to walk on pavements of gold nor to lie on beds of roses. If he had had any such exalted expectation, he would not have prospered.


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[Assistant] He had expected labor and he found it and did it and made the best of it. In this, his prosperity consisted.


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[Assistant] A certain portion of his time was passed at Cambridge, where he read with undergraduates as a sort of tolerated smuggler who drove a contraband trade in European languages instead of conveying Greek and Latin through the Custom House. The rest of his time he passed in London.


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[Assistant] Now from the days when it was always summer in Eden, to these days when it is mostly winter in fallen latitudes,


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[Assistant] The world of a man has invariably gone one way, Charles Darnay's way, the way of the love of a woman.


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[Assistant] He had loved Lucy Manette from the hour of his danger.


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[Assistant] He had never heard a sound so sweet and dear as the sound of her compassionate voice.


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[Assistant] He had never seen a face so tenderly beautiful as hers when it was confronted with his own on the edge of the grave that had been dug for him.


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[Assistant] But he had not yet spoken to her on the subject.


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[Assistant] The assassination at the deserted chateau far away beyond the heaving water and the long, long, dusty roads.


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[Assistant] The solid stone chateau, which had itself become the mere mist of a dream, had been done a year.


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[Assistant] And he had never yet, by so much as a single spoken word, disclosed to her the state of his heart. That he had his reasons for this he knew full well.


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[Assistant] It was again a summer day when, lately arrived in London from his college occupation, he turned into the quiet corner in Soho.


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[Assistant] Bent on seeking an opportunity of opening his mind to Dr. Manette.


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[Assistant] It was the close of the summer day, and he knew Lucy to be out with Miss Pross.


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[Assistant] He found the doctor reading in his armchair at a window.


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[Assistant] The energy which had at once supported him under his old sufferings and aggravated their sharpness had been gradually restored to him.


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[Assistant] He was now a very energetic man indeed with great firmness of purpose, strength of resolution, and vigor of action.


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[Assistant] In his recovered energy, he was sometimes a little fitful and sudden, as he had at first been in the exercise of his other recovered faculties.


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[Assistant] But this had never been frequently observable, and had grown more and more rare.


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[Assistant] We have been counting on your return these three or four days past.


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[Assistant] Mr. Stryver and Sydney Carton were both here yesterday, and both made you out to be more than due.


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[Assistant] I am obliged to them for their interest in the matter, he answered.


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[Assistant] And it'll coldly as to them, though very warmly as to the doctor. Miss Manette is well.


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[Assistant] Said the doctor, as he stopped short, and your return will delight us all.


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[Assistant] She has gone out on some household matters but will soon be home. Dr. Manette, I knew she was from home.


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[Assistant] The happiness, Dr. Manette, of being so intimate here.


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[Assistant] He was stayed by the doctors putting out his hand to stop him.


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[Assistant] When he had kept it so a little while he said, drawing it back, is Lucy the topic? She is.


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[Assistant] It is hard for me to speak of her at any time.


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[Assistant] It is very hard for me to hear her spoken of in that tone of yours, Charles Darnay.


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[Assistant] It is a tone of fervent admiration, true homage, and deep love, Dr. Manette," he said deferentially.


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[Assistant] There was another blank silence before her father rejoined. I believe it. I do you justice. I believe it.


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[Assistant] You anticipate what I would say, though you cannot know how earnestly I say it, how earnestly I feel it, without knowing my secret heart and the hopes and fears and anxieties with which it has long been laden. Dear Dr. Manette,


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[Assistant] I love your daughter fondly, dearly, disinterestedly, devotedly. If ever there were love in the world, I love her. You have loved yourself. Let your old love speak for me.


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[Assistant] The doctor sat with his face turned away and his eyes bent on the ground.


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[Assistant] At the last words, he stretched out his hand again, hurriedly, and cried, Not that sir.


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[Assistant] Let that be. I adjure you, do not recall that.


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[Assistant] His cry was so like a cry of actual pain that it rang in Charles Darnay's ears long after he had ceased. He motioned with the hand he had extended, and it seemed to be an appeal to Darnay to pause. The latter so received it and remained silent. I ask your pardon, said the doctor in a subdued tone after some moments. I do not doubt your loving, Lucy.


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[Assistant] He turned towards him in his chair, but did not look at him or raise his eyes.


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[Assistant] It would be ungenerous to affect not to know that your self denial is to be referred to your consideration for her father. Her father thanks you. He offered his hand, but his eyes did not go with it. I know, said Darnay respectfully.


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[Assistant] How can I fail to know, Dr. Manette, I, who have seen you together from day to day, that between you and Miss Manette, there is an affection so unusual, so touching, so belonging to the circumstances in which it has been nurtured, and that it can have few parallels, even in the tenderness between a father and child?


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[Assistant] I know, Dr. Manette, how can I fail to know that mingled with the affection and duty of a daughter who has become a woman, there is in her heart towards you all the love and reliance of infancy itself.


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[Assistant] I know that as in her childhood she had no parent, so she is now devoted to you with all the constancy and fervor of her present years and character.


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[Assistant] United to the trustfulness and attachment of the early days in which you were lost to her.


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[Assistant] I know perfectly well that if you had been restored to her from the world beyond this life,


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[Assistant] You could hardly be invested in her sight with a more sacred character than that in which you are always with her.


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[Assistant] I know that when she's clinging to you, the hands of a baby, girl, and woman all in one are round your neck.


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[Assistant] I know that in loving you she sees and loves her mother at her own age, sees and loves you at my age, loves her mother broken hearted, loves you through your dreadful trial and in your blessed restoration. I have known this night and day since I have known you in your home. Her father sat silent with his face bent down. His breathing was a little quickened, but he repressed all other signs of agitation. Dear Dr. Manette,


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[Assistant] Always knowing this, always seeing her and you with this hallowed light about you, I have forborn. And forborn as long as it was in the nature of man to do it.


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[Assistant] I have felt and do even now feel that to bring my love, even mine, between you, is to touch your history with something not quite so good as itself. But I love her. Heaven is my witness that I love her. I believe it, answered her father mournfully. I have thought so before now. I believe it.


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[Assistant] But do not believe, said Darnay, upon whose ear the mournful voice struck with a reproachful sound, that if my fortune were so cast as that, being one day so happy as to make her my wife, I must at any time put any separation between her and you. I could or would be the word of what I now say. Besides that,


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[Assistant] I should know it to be hopeless. I should know it to be a baseness. If I had any such possibility, even at a remote distance of years, harbored in my thoughts and hidden in my heart, if it ever had been there, if it ever could be there, I could not now touch this honored hand." He laid his own upon it as he spoke.


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[Assistant] Like you, a voluntary exile from France. Like you, driven from it by its distractions, oppressions, and miseries. Like you, striving to live away from it by my own exertions, and trusting in a happier future.


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[Assistant] I look only to sharing your fortunes, sharing your life and home, and being faithful to you to the death.


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[Assistant] Not to divide with Lucy her privilege as your child, companion, and friend, but to come in aid of it and bind her closer to you if such a thing can be. His touch still lingered on her father's hand. Answering the touch for a moment, but not coldly, her father rested his hands upon the arms of his chair.


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[Assistant] Is it the immediate object of this confidence that you may at once ascertain that with my knowledge?


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[Assistant] Not even so. I might not have the hopefulness to do it for weeks. I might mistaken or not mistaken have that hopefulness tomorrow. Do you seek any guidance from me? I ask none, sir.


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[Assistant] I well understand that even if Miss Manette held me at this moment in her innocent heart, do not think I have the presumption to assume so much. I could retain no place in it against her love for her father. If that be so, do you see what on the other hand is involved in it?


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[Assistant] Charles Darnay, mysteries arise out of close love, as well as out of wide division.


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[Assistant] In the former case, they are subtle and delicate and difficult to penetrate.


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[Assistant] My daughter Lucy is, in this one respect, such a mystery to me.


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[Assistant] I can make no guess at the state of her heart.


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[Assistant] May I ask, sir, if you think she is... As he hesitated, her father supplied the rest. Is sought by any other suitor? It is what I meant to say. Her father considered a little before he answered.


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[Assistant] You have seen Mr. Carton here yourself. Mr. Stryver is here too occasionally.


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[Assistant] If it be at all, it can only be by one of these. Or both, said Dane. I had not thought of both. I should not think either, likely. You want a promise from me? Tell me what it is.


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[Assistant] It is that if Miss Manette should bring to you at any time, on her own part, such a confidence as I have ventured to lay before you, you will bear testimony to what I have said and to your belief in it.


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[Assistant] I hope you may be able to think so well of me as to urge no influence against me.


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[Assistant] I say nothing more of my stake in this. This is what I ask.


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[Assistant] I believe your object to be purely and truthfully as you have stated it. I believe your intention is to perpetuate


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[Assistant] And not to weaken the ties between me and my other and far dearer self. If she should ever tell me that you are essential to her perfect happiness, I will give her to you. If there were. The young man had taken his hand gratefully. Their hands were joined as the doctor spoke.


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[Assistant] Fancies, any reasons, any apprehensions, anything whatsoever, new or old, against the man she really loved.


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[Assistant] The direct responsibility thereof not lying on his head, they should all be obliterated for her sake. She is everything to me. More to me than suffering. More to me than wrong. More to me. Well, this is idle talk.


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[Assistant] So strange was the way in which he faded into silence and so strange his fixed look when he had ceased to speak that Darnay felt his own hand turn cold in the hand that slowly released and dropped it. You said something to me, said Dr. Manette, breaking into a smile. What was it you said to me?


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[Assistant] He was at a loss how to answer until he remembered having spoken of a condition.


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[Assistant] Your confidence in me ought to be returned with full confidence on my part.


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[Assistant] My present name, though but slightly changed from my mother's, is not, as you will remember, my own. I wish to tell you what that is and why I am in England. Stop, said the doctor of Beauvais. I wish it.


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[Assistant] For an instant, the doctor even had his two hands at his ears.


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[Assistant] It was dark when Charles Darnay left him, and it was an hour later and darker when Lucy came home. She hurried into the room alone.


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[Assistant] Passing lightly across the intermediate room, she looked in at his door and came running back frightened, crying to herself, with her blood all chilled. What shall I do? What shall I do? Her uncertainty lasted but a moment.


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[Assistant] She hurried back and tapped at his door and softly called to him.


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[Assistant] The noise ceased at the sound of her voice, and he presently came out to her, and they walked up and down together for a long time.


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[Assistant] She came down from her bed to look at him in his sleep that night.


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[Assistant] He slept heavily, and his tray of shoemaking tools and his old, unfinished work were all as usual.


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[Assistant] Chapter 11. A Companion Picture.


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[Assistant] Said Mr. Stryford on that self same night or morning to his jackal, Mix another bowl of punch, I have something to say to you.


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[Assistant] Sydney had been working double tides that night, and the night before, and the night before that, and a good many nights in succession, making a grand clearance among Mr. Striever's papers before the setting in of the long vacation.


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[Assistant] The clearance was effected at last. The striver arrears were handsomely fetched up. Everything was got rid of until November should come with its fogs atmospheric and fogs legal and bring grist to the mill again.


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[Assistant] Sydney was none the livelier and none the soberer for so much application.


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[Assistant] It had taken a deal of extra wet toweling to pull him through the night. A correspondingly extra quantity of wine had preceded the toweling, and he was in a very damaged condition as he now pulled his turban off and threw it into the basin in which he had steeped it at intervals for the last six hours.


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[Assistant] Now look here, I am going to tell you something that will rather surprise you, and that perhaps will make you think me not quite as shrewd as you usually do think me. I intend to marry. Do you? Yes, and not for money. What do you say now? I don't feel disposed to say much. Who is she? Guess. Do I know her? Guess.


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[Assistant] I am not going to guess at five o'clock in the morning with my brains frying and sputtering in my head. If you want me to guess, you must ask me to dinner.


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[Assistant] Well then, I'll tell you," said Stryver, coming slowly into a sitting posture.


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[Assistant] I rather despair of making myself intelligible to you, because you are such an insensible dog.


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[Assistant] And you, returned Sydney, busy concocting the punch, are such a sensitive and poetical spirit.


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[Assistant] Come, rejoins Stryver, laughing boastfully. Though I don't prefer any claim to being the soul of romance, for I hope I know better. Still, I am a tenderer sort of fellow than you. You are a luckier, if you mean that.


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[Assistant] I don't mean that. I mean I am a man of more, more. Say gallantry while you are about it, suggested Carton. Well, I'll say gallantry.


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[Assistant] But before I go on, said Stryver, shaking his head in his bullying way, I'll have this out with you.


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[Assistant] You've been at Dr. Manette's house as much as I have, or more than I have.


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[Assistant] Why, I have been ashamed of your moroseness there. Your manners have been of that silent and sullen and hang-dog kind, that upon my life and soul I have been ashamed of you, Sidney.


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[Assistant] It should be very beneficial to a man in your practice at the bar to be ashamed of anything. Return Sydney, you ought to be much obliged to me. You shall not get off in that way.


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[Assistant] Rejoin striver, shouldering the rejoinder at him.


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[Assistant] No, Sydney, it's my duty to tell you and I tell you to your face to do you good.


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[Assistant] That you are a devilish ill-conditioned fellow in that sort of society. You are a disagreeable fellow. Sydney drank a bumper of the punch he had made and laughed.


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[Assistant] Look at me, said Stryver, squaring himself. I have less need to make myself agreeable than you have, being more independent in circumstances. Why do I do it? I never saw you do it yet, muttered Carton. I do it because it's politic. I do it on principle. And look at me. I get on.


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[Assistant] You don't get on with your account of your matrimonial intentions, answered Carton with a careless air.


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[Assistant] I wish you would keep to that. As to me, will you never understand that I am incorrigible? You have no business to be incorrigible.


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[Assistant] Now don't let my announcement of the name make you uncomfortable, Sidney.


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[Assistant] Said Mr. Stryver, preparing him with ostentatious friendliness for the disclosure he was about to make.


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[Assistant] Because I know you don't mean half, you say, and if you meant it all it would be of no importance. I make this little preface because you once mentioned the young lady to me in slighting terms. I did. Certainly, and in these chambers.


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[Assistant] Sidney Carton looked at his punch and looked at his complacent friend, drank his punch and looked at his complacent friend. You made mention of the young lady as a golden haired doll. The young lady is Miss Manette.


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[Assistant] If you had been a fellow of any sensitiveness or delicacy of feeling in that kind of way, Sydney, I might have been a little resentful of your employing such a designation. But you are not. You want that sense all together.


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[Assistant] Therefore I am no more annoyed when I think of the expression than I should be annoyed by a man's opinion of a picture of mine who had no eye for pictures or of a piece of music of mine who had no ear for music.


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[Assistant] Sidney Carton drank the punch at a great rate, drank it by bumpers, looking at his friend. Now you know all about it, Sid, said Mr. Stryver.


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[Assistant] I don't care about fortune. She is a charming creature. And I have made up my mind to please myself. On the whole, I think I can afford to please myself.


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[Assistant] She will have in me a man already pretty well off, and a rapidly rising man, and a man of some distinction.


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[Assistant] You take it more easily than I fancied you would, and are less mercenary on my behalf than I thought you would be.


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[Assistant] Though, to be sure, you know well enough by this time that your ancient chum is a man of pretty strong will.


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[Assistant] Yes, Sidney, I have had enough of this style of life, with no other as a change from it.


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[Assistant] I feel that it is a pleasant thing for a man to have a home when he feels inclined to go to it. When he doesn't, he can stay away.


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[Assistant] And I feel that Miss Manette will tell well in any station, and will always do me credit. So, I have made up my mind.


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[Assistant] And now, Sidney, old boy, I want to say a word to you about your prospects. You are in a bad way, you know. You really are in a bad way.


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[Assistant] You don't know the value of money. You live hard. You'll knock up one of these days and be ill and poor. You really ought to think about a nurse.


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[Assistant] The prosperous patronage with which he said it made him look twice as big as he was and four times as offensive.


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[Assistant] Now let me recommend you, pursues driver, to look it in the face. I have looked it in the face, in my different way. Look it in the face, you, in your different way. Marry! Provide somebody to take care of you.


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[Assistant] Never mind you're having no enjoyment of women's society, nor understanding of it, nor tact for it.


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[Assistant] Find out somebody. Find out some respectable woman with a little property.


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[Assistant] Somebody in the land lady away, or lodging letting way, and marry her against a rainy day. That's the kind of thing for you. Now think of it, Sydney. I'll think of it, said Sydney.


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[Assistant] Chapter 12 The Fellow of Delicacy


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[Assistant] Mr. Stryver, having made up his mind to that magnanimous bestowal of good fortune on the doctor's daughter, resolved to make her happiness known to her before he left town for the long vacation.


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[Assistant] After some mental debating of the point, he came to the conclusion that it would be as well to get all the preliminaries done with, and they could then arrange at their leisure, whether he should give her his hand a week or two before Mickelma's term, or in the little Christmas vacation between it and Hillary.


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[Assistant] As to the strength of his case, he had not a doubt about it, but clearly saw his way to the verdict.


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[Assistant] Argued with the jury on substantial worldly grounds, the only grounds ever worth taking into account, it was a plain case, and had not a weak spot in it.


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[Assistant] He called himself for the plaintiff. There was no getting over his evidence. The counsel for the defendant threw up his brief, and the jury did not even turn to consider.


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[Assistant] After trying it, Striva CJ was satisfied that no plainer case could be.


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[Assistant] Accordingly, Mr. Stryver inaugurated the long vacation with a formal proposal to take Miss Manette to Vauxhall Gardens.


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[Assistant] That failing to Ranley, that unaccountably failing to, it behooved him to present himself in Soho, and there declare his noble mind.


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[Assistant] Towards Soho, therefore, Mr. Stryver shouldered his way from the temple, while the bloom of the long vacation's infancy was still upon it.


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[Assistant] Anybody who had seen him projecting himself into Soho while he was yet on St. Dunstan's side of Temple Bar, bursting in his full-blown way along the pavement to the jostlement of all weaker people, might have seen how safe and strong he was.


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[Assistant] His way taking him past Tellson's and he both banking at Tellson's and knowing Mr. Lorry as the intimate friend of the Manettes, it entered Mr. Stryver's mind to enter the bank and revealed to Mr. Lorry the brightness of the Soho horizon.


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[Assistant] So he pushed open the door with the weak rattle in its throat.


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[Assistant] Stumbled down the two steps, got past the two ancient cashiers, and shouldered himself into the musty back closet, where Mr. Lorry sat, at great books ruled for figures, with perpendicular iron bars to his window, as if that were ruled for figures too, and everything under the clouds were a sum.


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[Assistant] Hello, said Mr. Stryver. How do you do? I hope you are well.


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[Assistant] It was Stryver's grand peculiarity that he always seemed too big for any place or space. He was so much too big for Telsen's that old clerks in distant corners looked up with looks of remonstrance, as though he squeezed them against the wall.


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[Assistant] The house itself, magnificently reading the paper quite in the far-off perspective, lowered displeased, as if the strive ahead had been butted into its responsible waistcoat.


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[Assistant] The discreet Mr. Lorry said, in a sample tone of the voice he would recommend under the circumstances, How do you do, Mr. Stryver? How do you do, sir? And shook hands.


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[Assistant] There was a peculiarity in his manner of shaking hands, always to be seen in any clerk at Tellson's who shook hands with a customer when the house pervaded the air.


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[Assistant] He shook in a self-abnegating way as one who shook for Telson and co. Can I do anything for you, Mr. Stryver? asked Mr. Lorry in his business character.


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[Assistant] Why, no thank you. This is a private visit to yourself, Mr. Lorry. I have come for a private word.


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[Assistant] Oh indeed, said Mr. Lorry, bending down his ear, while his eyes strayed to the house afar off. I am going.


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[Assistant] Said Mr. Stryver, leaning his arms confidently on the desk.


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[Assistant] Whereupon, although it was a large double one, there appeared to be not half desk enough for him.


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[Assistant] I am going to make an offer of myself in marriage to your agreeable little friend, Miss Manette, Mr. Laurie. Oh dear me, cried Mr. Laurie.


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[Assistant] Oh dear you, sir. What may your meaning be, Mr. Lorry?


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[Assistant] My meaning, answered the man of business, is, of course, friendly and appreciative, and that it does you the greatest credit and, in short, my meaning is everything you could desire. But, really, you know, Mr. Stryver,


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[Assistant] Mr. Lorry paused and shook his head at him in the oddest manner, as if he were compelled against his will to add internally


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[Assistant] You know, there really is so much too much of you.


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[Assistant] Well, said Striva, slapping the desk with his contentious hand, opening his eyes wider and taking a long breath.


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[Assistant] If I understand you, Mr. Lottie, I'll be hanged.


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[Assistant] Mr. Lottie adjusted his little wig at both ears as a means towards the end and bit the feather of a pen.


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[Assistant] Damn it all, sir! said Stryver, staring at him. Am I not eligible?


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[Assistant] Oh dear, yes, yes. Oh yes, you're eligible, said Mr. Lorry. If you say eligible, you are eligible. Am I not prosperous? asked Stryver.


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[Assistant] Oh, if you come to Prosperous, you are prosperous, said Mr. Lorry. And advancing.


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[Assistant] If you come to advancing, you know," said Mr. Lorry, delighted to be able to make another admission, nobody can doubt that. Then what on earth is your meaning, Mr. Lorry? demanded Stryver, perceptibly crestfallen. Well, I... Were you going there now? asked Mr. Lorry. Straight? said Stryver, with a plump of his fist on the desk.


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[Assistant] Now I'll put you in a corner, forensically shaking a forefinger at him. You are a man of business and bound to have a reason. State your reason. Why wouldn't you go? Because.


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[Assistant] Said Mr. Lorry, I wouldn't go on such an object without having some cause to believe that I should succeed.


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[Assistant] Mr. Lorry glanced at the distant house and glanced at the angry striver.


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[Assistant] Here's a man of business, a man of years, a man of experience in a bank, said Stryver. And having summed up three leading reasons for complete success, he says there's no reason at all. Says it with his head on.


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[Assistant] Mr. Stryver remarked upon the peculiarity as if it would have been infinitely less remarkable if he had said it with his head off. When I speak of success.


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[Assistant] I speak of success with the young lady, and when I speak of causes and reasons to make success probable, I speak of causes and reasons that will tell as such with the young lady.


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[Assistant] The young lady, my good sir, said Mr. Lorry, mildly tapping the striver arm. The young lady, the young lady goes before all.


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[Assistant] Then you mean to tell me, Mr. Lorry," said Stryver, squaring his elbows, that it is your deliberate opinion that the young lady at present in question is a mincing fool? Not exactly so. I mean to tell you, Mr. Stryver," said Mr. Lorry, reddening.


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[Assistant] And that if I know any man, which I hope I do not, whose taste was so coarse, and whose temper was so overbearing, that he could not restrain himself from speaking disrespectfully of that young lady at this desk, not even Telsons should prevent my giving him a piece of my mind.


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[Assistant] The necessity of being angry in a suppressed tone had put Mr. Stryver's blood vessels into a dangerous state when it was his turn to be angry.


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[Assistant] Mr. Lorry's veins, methodical as their courses could usually be, were in no better state now it was his turn. That is what I mean to tell you, sir, said Mr. Lorry. Pray let there be no mistake about it.


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[Assistant] Mr. Stryver sucked the end of a ruler for a little while and then stood hitting a tune out of his teeth with it, which probably gave him the toothache. He broke the awkward silence by saying,


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[Assistant] This is something new to me, Mr. Lorry. You deliberately advise me not to go up to Soho and offer myself. Myself? Striver of the King's Bench Bar?


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[Assistant] Do you ask me for my advice, Mr. Stryver? Yes, I do. Very good. Then I give it, and you have repeated it correctly.


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[Assistant] And all I can see of it is, laughed Strava with a vexed laugh.


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[Assistant] That this, haha, beats everything past, present, and to come. Now, understand me.


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[Assistant] Pursued Mr. Lolly. As a man of business, I am not justified in saying anything about this matter. For, as a man of business, I know nothing of it.


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[Assistant] But as an old fellow who has carried Miss Manette in his arms, who is the trusted friend of Miss Manette and of her father too, and who has a great affection for them both, I have spoken. The confidence is not of my seeking recollect. Now, you'll think I may not be right.


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[Assistant] Not I, said Stryver, whistling. I can't undertake to find third parties in common sense. I can only find it for myself.


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[Assistant] I suppose sense in certain quarters. You suppose mincing bread and butter nonsense. It's new to me, but you are right, I dare say.


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[Assistant] What I suppose, Mr. Stryver, I claim to characterize for myself. And understand me, sir, said Mr. Lorry, quickly flushing again. I will not, not even, at Tilson's.


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[Assistant] It might be painful to you to find yourself mistaken.


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[Assistant] It might be painful to Dr. Manette to have the task of being explicit with you.


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[Assistant] It might be very painful to miss Manette to have the task of being explicit with you.


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[Assistant] You know the terms upon which I have the honor and happiness to stand with the family.


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[Assistant] If you please, committing you in no way, representing you in no way.


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[Assistant] I will undertake to correct my advice by the exercise of a little new observation and judgment expressly brought to bear upon it.


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[Assistant] If you should then be dissatisfied with it, you can but test its soundness for yourself.


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[Assistant] If on the other hand you should be satisfied with it and it should be what it now is, it may spare all sides what is best spared. What do you say? How long would you keep me in town?


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[Assistant] Oh, it is only a question of a few hours. I could go to Soho in the evening and come to your chambers afterwards. Then I say yes, said Stryver.


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[Assistant] I won't go up there now. I am not so hot upon it as that comes to. I say yes, and I shall expect you to look in tonight. Good morning.