"You have a visitor, you see," said Monsieur
Defarge.

"What did you say?"

"Here is a visitor."

The shoemaker looked up as before, but without
removing a hand from his work.

"Come!" said Defarge. "Here is monsieur,
who knows a well-made shoe when he sees one.
Show him that shoe you are working at. Take
it, monsieur."

Mr. Lorry took it in his hand.

"Tell monsieur what kind of shoe it is, and
the maker's name."

There was a longer pause than usual, before
the shoemaker replied:

"I forget what it was you asked me. What
did you say?"

"I said, couldn't you describe the kind of
shoe, for monsieur's information?"

"It is a lady's shoe. It is a young lady's
walking-shoe. It is in the present mode. I
never saw the mode. I have had a pattern in
my hand." He glanced at the shoe, with some
little passing touch of pride.

"And the maker's name?" said Defarge.

Now that he had no work to hold, he laid the
knuckles of the right hand in the hollow of the
left, and then the knuckles of the left hand in
the hollow of the right, and then passed a hand
across his bearded chin, and so on in regular
changes, without a moment's intermission. The
task of recalling him from the vacancy into
which he always sank when he had spoken, was
like recalling some very weak person from a
swoon, or endeavouring, in the hopeof some
disclosure, to stay the spirit of a fast-dying man.

"Did you ask me for my name?"

"Assuredly I did."

"One Hundred and Five, North Tower."

"Is that all?"

"One Hundred and Five, North Tower."

With a weary sound that was not a sigh, nor
a groan, he bent to work again, until the silence
was again broken.

"You are not a shoemaker by trade?" said
Mr. Lorry, looking steadfastly at him.

His haggard eyes turned to Defarge as if he
would have transferred the question to him; but
as no help came from that quarter, they turned
back on the questioner when they had sought
the ground.

"I am not a shoemaker by trade? No, I was
not a shoemaker by trade. I—I learnt it here.
I taught myself. I asked leave to——"

He lapsed away, even for minutes, ringing
those measured changes on his hands the whole
time. His eyes came slowly back, at last, to
the face from which they had wandered; when
they rested on it, he started, and resumed, in the
manner of a sleeper that moment awake, reverting
to a subject of last night.

"I asked leave to teach myself, and I got it
with much difficulty after a long while, and I
have made shoes ever since."

As he held out his hand for the shoe that had
been taken from him, Mr. Lorry said, still looking
steadfastly in his face:

"Monsieur Manette, do you remember nothing
of me?"

The shoe dropped to the ground, and he sat
looking fixedly at the questioner.

"Monsieur Manette;" Mr. Lorry laid his
hand upon Defarge's arm; "do you remember
nothing of this man? Look at him. Look at
me. Is there no old banker, no old business, no
old servant, no old time, rising in your mind,
Monsieur Manette?"

As the captive of many years sat looking
fixedly, by turns at Mr. Lorry and at Defarge,
some long-obliterated marks of an actively
intent intelligence in the middle of the forehead,
gradually forced themselves through the black
mist that had fallen on him. They were over-
clouded again, they were fainter, they were
gone; but, they had been there. And so exactly
was the expression repeated on the fair young
face of her who had crept along the wall to a
point where she could see him, and where she
now stood looking at him, with hands which at
first had been only raised in frightened
compassion, if not even to keep him off and shut out
the sight of him, but which were now extending
towards him, trembling with eagerness to
lay the spectral face upon her warm young
breast, and love it back to life and hope—so
exactly was the expression repeated (though in
stronger characters) on her fair young face, that
it looked as though it had passed, like a moving
light, from him to her.

Darkness had fallen on him in its place. He
looked at the two, less and less attentively, and
his eyes in gloomy abstraction sought the
ground and looked about him in the old way.
Finally, with a deep long sigh, he took the shoe
up, and resumed his work.

"Have you recognised him, monsieur?" asked
Defarge, in a whisper.

"Yes; for a moment. At first I thought it
quite hopeless, but I have unquestionably seen,
for a single moment, the face that I once knew
well. Hush! Let us draw further back.
Hush!"

She had moved from the wall of the garret,
very near to the bench on which he sat. There
was something awful in his unconsciousness of
the figure that could have put out its hand and
touched him as he stooped over his labour.

Not a word was spoken, not a sound was
made. She stood, like a spirit, beside him, and
he bent over his work.

It happened, at length, that he had occasion
to change the instrument in his hand, for his
shoemaker's knife. It lay on that side of him
which was not the side on which she stood. He
had taken it up, and was stooping to work again,
when his eyes caught the skirt of her dress. He
raised them, and saw her face. The two
spectators started forward, but she stayed them with
a motion of her hand. She had no fear of
his striking at her with the knife, though they
had.

He stared at her with a fearful look, and after
a while his lips began to form some words,
though no sound proceeded from them. By