A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
IN THREE BOOKS.
BY CHARLES DICKENS.

BOOK THE THIRD. THE TRACK OF A STORM.

CHAPTER II. THE GRINDSTONE.

TELLSON'S Bank, established in the Saint
Germain Quarter of Paris, was in a wing of a
large house, approached by a court-yard and
shut off from the street by a high wall and a
strong gate. The house belonged to a great
nobleman who had lived in it until he made a
flight from the troubles, in his own cook's dress,
and got across the borders. A mere beast of the
chase flying from hunters, he was still in his
metempsychosis no other than the same Monseigneur,
the preparation of whose chocolate for
whose lips had once occupied three strong men
besides the cook in question.

Monseigneur gone, and the three strong men
absolving themselves from the sin of having
drawn his high wages, by being more than
ready and willing to cut his throat on the altar
of the dawning Republic one and indivisible
of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death,
Monseigneur's house had been first sequestrated,
and then confiscated. For, all things moved so
fast, and decree followed decree with that fierce
precipitation, that now upon the third night of
the autumn month of September, patriot
emissaries of the law were in possession of
Monseigneur's house, and had marked it with the
tricolor, and were drinking brandy in its state
apartments.

A place of business in London like Tellson's
place of business in Paris, would soon have
driven the House out of its mind and into the
Gazette. For, what would staid British
responsibility and respectability have said to
orange-trees in boxes in a Bank court-yard, and
even to a Cupid over the counter? Yet such
things were. Tellson's had whitewashed the
Cupid, but he was still to be seen on the ceiling,
in the coolest linen, aiming (as he very often
does) at money from morning to night.
Bankruptcy must inevitably have come of this
young Pagan, in Lombard-street, London, and
also of a curtained alcove in the rear of the
immortal boy, and also of a looking-glass let into
the wall, and also of clerks not at all old who
danced in public on the slightest provocation.
Yet, a French Tellson's could get on with these
things exceedingly well, and, as long as the
times held together, no man had taken fright
at them, and drawn out his money.

What money would be drawn out of Tellson's
henceforth, and what would lie there, lost and
forgotten; what plate and jewels would tarnish
in Tellson's hiding-places, while the depositors
rusted in prisons, and when they should have
violently perished; how many accounts with
Tellson's, never to be balanced in this world, must
be carried over into the next; no man could
have said, that night, any more than Mr. Jarvis
Lorry could, though he thought heavily of
these questions. He sat by a newly lighted
wood fire (the blighted and unfruitful year
was prematurely cold), and on his honest
and courageous face there was a deeper shade
than the pendent lamp could throw, or any
object in the room distortedly reflect—a shade of
horror.

He occupied rooms in the Bank, in his fidelity
to the House of which he had grown to be a
part, like strong root-ivy. It chanced that they
derived a kind of security from the patriotic
occupation of the main building, but the
true-hearted old gentleman never calculated about
that. All such circumstances were indifferent to
him, so that he did his duty. On the opposite
side of the court-yard, under a colonnade, was
extensive standing for carriages—where,
indeed, some carriages of Monseigneur yet stood.
Against two of the pillars were fastened two
great flaring flambeaux, and, in the light of
these, standing out in the open air, was a large
grindstone: a roughly mounted thing which
appeared to have hurriedly been brought there
from some neighbouring smithy, or other
workshop. Rising and looking out of window
at these harmless objects, Mr. Lorry
shivered, and retired to his seat by the fire.
He had opened, not only the glass window,
but the lattice blind outside it, and he had
closed both again, and he shivered through his
frame.

From the streets beyond the high wall and the
strong gate, there came the usual night hum of
the city, with now and then an indescribable
ring in it, weird and unearthly, as if some
unwonted sounds of a terrible nature were going
up to Heaven.

"Thank God," said Mr. Lorry, clasping his