Charles Evrémonde, called Darnay, was
accused by the public prosecutor as an aristocrat
and an emigrant, whose life was forfeit to the
Republic, under the decree which banished all
emigrants on pain of Death. It was nothing
that the decree bore date since his return to
France. There he was, and there was the
decree; he had been taken in France, and his
head was demanded.

"Take off his head!" cried the audience.
"An enemy to the Republic!"

The President rang his bell to silence those
cries, and asked the prisoner whether it was not
true that he had lived many years in England?

Undoubtedly it was.

Was he not an emigrant then? What did he
call himself?

Not an emigrant, he hoped, within the sense
and spirit of the law.

Why not? the President desired to know.

Because he had voluntarily relinquished a
title that was distasteful to him, and a station
that was distasteful to him, and had left his country
—he submitted before the word emigrant in its
present acceptation by the Tribunal was in use
—to live by his own industry in England, rather
than on the industry of the overladen people of
France.

What proof had he of this?

He handed in the names of two witnesses:
Theophile Gabelle, and Alexandre Manette.

But he had married in England? the President
reminded him.

True, but not an English woman.

A citizeness of France?

Yes. By birth.

Her name and family?

"Lucie Manette, only daughter of Doctor
Manette, the good physician who sits there."

This answer had a happy effect upon the
audience. Cries in exaltation of the well-known
good physician rent the hall. So capriciously
were the people moved, that tears immediately
rolled down several ferocious countenances which
had been glaring at the prisoner a moment
before, as if with impatience to pluck him out
into the streets and kill him.

On these few steps of his dangerous way,
Charles Darnay had set his foot according to
Doctor Manette's reiterated instructions. The
same cautious counsel directed every step that
lay before him, and had prepared every inch of
his road.

The President asked why had he returned to
France when he did, and not sooner?

He had not returned sooner, he replied,
simply because he had no means of living in
France, save those he had resigned; whereas, in
England, he lived by giving instruction in the
French language and literature. He had
returned when he did, on the pressing and written
entreaty of a French citizen, who represented
that his life was endangered by his absence.
He had come back, to save a citizen's life, and
to bear his testimony, at whatever personal
hazard, to the truth. Was that criminal in the
eyes of the Republic?

The populace cried enthusiastically, "No!"
and the President rang his bell to quiet them.
Which it did not, for they continued to cry "No!"
until they left off, of their own will.

The President required the name of that
Citizen? The accused explained that the citizen
was his first witness. He also referred with
confidence to the citizen's letter, which had been
taken from him at the Barrier, but which he
did not doubt would be found among the
papers then before the President.

The Doctor had taken care that it should be
there—had assured him that it would be there
—and at this stage of the proceedings it was
produced and read. Citizen Gabelle was called to
confirm it, and did so. Citizen Gabelle hinted,
with infinite delicacy and politeness, that in the
pressure of business imposed on the Tribunal
by the multitude of enemies of the Republic
with which it had to deal, he had been slightly
overlooked in his prison of the Abbaye—in fact,
had rather passed out of the Tribunal's patriotic
remembrance—until three days ago; when he had
been summoned before it, and had been set at
liberty on the Jury's declaring themselves
satisfied that the accusation against him was
answered, as to himself, by the surrender of the
citizen Evrémonde, called Darnay.

Doctor Manette was next questioned. His
high personal popularity, and the clearness
of his answers, made a great impression;
but, as he proceeded, as he showed that the
Accused was his first friend on his release
from his long imprisonment; that, the accused
had remained in England, always faithful and
devoted to his daughter and himself in their
exile; that, so far from being in favour with the
Aristocrat government there, he had actually been
tried for his life by it, as the foe of England and
a friend of the United States—as he brought
these circumstances into view, with the greatest
discretion and with the straightforward force of
truth and earnestness, the Jury and the
populace became one. At last, when he appealed
by name to Monsieur Lorry, an English
gentleman then and there present, who, like himself,
had been a witness on that English trial and
could corroborate his account of it, the Jury
declared that they had heard enough, and that
they were ready with their votes if the President
were content to receive them.

At every vote (the Jurymen voted aloud and
individually), the populace set up a shout of
applause. All the voices were in the prisoner's
favour, and the President declared him free.

Then, began one of those extraordinary scenes
with which the populace sometimes gratified
their fickleness, or their better impulses to-
wards generosity and mercy, or which they
regarded as some set-off against their swollen
account of cruel rage. No man can decide now
to which of these motives such extraordinary
scenes were referable; it is probable, to a
blending of all the three, with the second
predominating. No sooner was the acquittal
pronounced, than tears were shed as freely as
blood at another time, and such fraternal