The Grindstone

Tellson’s Bank, established in the Saint Germain

Quarter of Paris, was in a wing of a large house,
approached by a courtyard 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
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emissaries of the law were in possession of Monseigneur’s
house, and had marked it with the tri-colour, 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 courtyard, 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 Lombardstreet,
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 hidingplaces,
while the depositors rusted in prisons, and when
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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 newlylighted
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, lie 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
courtyard, 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
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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 hands, ‘that
no one near and dear to me is in this dreadful town tonight.
May He have mercy on all who are in danger!’
Soon afterwards, the bell at the great gate sounded, and
he thought, ‘They have come back!’ and sat listening. But,
there was no loud irruption into the courtyard, as he had
expected, and he heard the gate clash again, and all was
quiet.
The nervousness and dread that were upon him
inspired that vague uneasiness respecting the Bank, which
a great change would naturally awaken, with such feelings
roused. It was well guarded, and he got up to go among
the trusty people who were watching it, when his door
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suddenly opened, and two figures rushed in, at sight of
which he fell back in amazement.
Lucie and her father! Lucie with her arms stretched out
to him, and with that old look of earnestness so
concentrated and intensified, that it seemed as though it
had been stamped upon her face expressly to give force
and power to it in this one passage of her life.
‘What is this?’ cried Mr. Lorry, breathless and confused.
‘What is the matter? Lucie! Manette! What has happened?
What has brought you here? What is it?’
With the look fixed upon him, in her paleness and
wildness, she panted out in his arms, imploringly, ‘O my
dear friend! My husband!’
‘Your husband, Lucie?’
‘Charles.’
‘What of Charles?’
‘Here.
‘Here, in Paris?’
‘Has been here some days—three or four—I don’t
know how many— I can’t collect my thoughts. An errand
of generosity brought him here unknown to us; he was
stopped at the barrier, and sent to prison.’
The old man uttered an irrepressible cry. Almost at the
same moment, the beg of the great gate rang again, and a
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loud noise of feet and voices came pouring into the
courtyard.
‘What is that noise?’ said the Doctor, turning towards
the window.
‘Don’t look!’ cried Mr. Lorry. ‘Don’t look out!
Manette, for your life, don’t touch the blind!’
The Doctor turned, with his hand upon the fastening
of the window, and said, with a cool, bold smile:
‘My dear friend, I have a charmed life in this city. I
have been a Bastille prisoner. There is no patriot in
Paris—in Paris? In France—who, knowing me to have
been a prisoner in the Bastille, would touch me, except to
overwhelm me with embraces, or carry me in triumph.
My old pain has given me a power that has brought us
through the barrier, and gained us news of Charles there,
and brought us here. I knew it would be so; I knew I
could help Charles out of all danger; I told Lucie so.—
What is that noise?’ His hand was again upon the window.
‘Don’t look!’ cried Mr. Lorry, absolutely desperate.
‘No, Lucie, my dear, nor you!’ He got his arm round her,
and held her. ‘Don’t be so terrified, my love. I solemnly
swear to you that I know of no harm having happened to
Charles; that I had no suspicion even of his being in this
fatal place. What prison is he in?’
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‘La Force!’
‘La Force! Lucie, my child, if ever you were brave and
serviceable in your life—and you were always both—you
will compose yourself now, to do exactly as I bid you; for
more depends upon it than you can think, or I can say.
There is no help for you in any action on your part tonight;
you cannot possibly stir out. I say this, because what
I must bid you to do for Charles’s sake, is the hardest thing
to do of all. You must instantly be obedient, still, and
quiet. You must let me put you in a room at the back
here. You must leave your father and me alone for two
minutes, and as there are Life and Death in the world you
must not delay.’
‘I will be submissive to you. I see in your face that you
know I can do nothing else than this. I know you are
true.’
The old man kissed her, and hurried her into his room,
and turned the key; then, came hurrying back to the
Doctor, and opened the window and partly opened the
blind, and put his hand upon the Doctor’s arm, and
looked out with him into the courtyard.
Looked out upon a throng of men and women: not
enough in number, or near enough, to fill the courtyard:
not more than forty or fifty in all. The people in
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possession of the house had let them in at the gate, and
they had rushed in to work at the grindstone; it had
evidently been set up there for their purpose, as in a
convenient and retired spot.
But, such awful workers, and such awful work!
The grindstone had a double handle, and, turning at it
madly were two men, whose faces, as their long hair
Rapped back when the whirlings of the grindstone
brought their faces up, were more horrible and cruel than
the visages of the wildest savages in their most barbarous
disguise. False eyebrows and false moustaches were stuck
upon them, and their hideous countenances were all
bloody and sweaty, and all awry with howling, and all
staring and glaring with beastly excitement and want of
sleep. As these ruffians turned and turned, their matted
locks now flung forward over their eyes, now flung
backward over their necks, some women held wine to
their mouths that they might drink; and what with
dropping blood, and what with dropping wine, and what
with the stream of sparks struck out of the stone, all their
wicked atmosphere seemed gore and fire. The eye could
not detect one creature in the group free from the smear
of blood. Shouldering one another to get next at the
sharpening-stone, were men stripped to the waist, with
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the stain all over their limbs and bodies; men in all sorts of
rags, with the stain upon those rags; men devilishly set off
with spoils of women’s lace and silk and ribbon, with the
stain dyeing those trifles through and through. Hatchets,
knives, bayonets, swords, all brought to be sharpened,
were all red with it. Some of the hacked swords were tied
to the wrists of those who carried them, with strips of
linen and fragments of dress: ligatures various in kind, but
all deep of the one colour. And as the frantic wielders of
these weapons snatched them from the stream of sparks
and tore away into the streets, the same red hue was red in
their frenzied eyes;—eyes which any unbrutalised
beholder would have given twenty years of life, to petrify
with a well-directed gun.
All this was seen in a moment, as the vision of a
drowning man, or of any human creature at any very great
pass, could see a world if it were there. They drew back
from the window, and the Doctor looked for explanation
in his friend’s ashy face.
‘They are,’ Mr. Lorry whispered the words, glancing
fearfully round at the locked room, ‘murdering the
prisoners. If you are sure of what you say; if you really
have the power you think you have—as I believe you
have—make yourself known to these devils, and get taken
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to La Force. It may be too late, I don’t know, but let it
not be a minute later!’
Doctor Manette pressed his hand, hastened bareheaded
out of the room, and was in the courtyard when Mr.
Lorry regained the blind.
His streaming white hair, his remarkable face, and the
impetuous confidence of his manner, as he put the
weapons aside like water, carried him in an instant to the
heart of the concourse at the stone. For a few moments
there was a pause, and a hurry, and a murmur, and the
unintelligible sound of his voice; and then Mr. Lorry saw
him, surrounded by all, and in the midst of a line of
twenty men long, all linked shoulder to shoulder, and
hand to shoulder, hurried out with cries of—‘Live the
Bastille prisoner! Help for the Bastille prisoner’s kindred in
La Force! Room for the Bastille prisoner in front there!
Save the prisoner Evremonde at La Force!’ and a thousand
answering shouts.
He closed the lattice again with a fluttering heart,
closed the window and the curtain, hastened to Lucie, and
told her that her father was assisted by the people, and
gone in search of her husband. He found her child and
Miss Pross with her; but, it never occurred to him to be
surprised by their appearance until a long time afterwards,
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when he sat watching them in such quiet as the night
knew.
Lucie had, by that time, fallen into a stupor on the floor
at his feet, clinging to his hand. Miss Pross had laid the
child down on his own bed, and her head had gradually
fallen on the pillow beside her pretty charge. O the long,
long night, with the moans of the poor wife! And O the
long, long night, with no return of her father and no
tidings!
Twice more in the darkness the bell at the great gate
sounded, and the irruption was repeated, and the
grindstone whirled and spluttered. ‘What is it?’ cried
Lucie, affrighted. ‘Hush! The soldiers’ swords are
sharpened there,’ said Mr. Lorry. ‘The place is national
property now, and used as a kind of armoury, my love.’
Twice more in all; but, the last spell of work was feeble
and fitful. Soon afterwards the day began to dawn, and he
softly detached himself from the clasping hand, and
cautiously looked out again. A man, so besmeared that he
might have been a sorely wounded soldier creeping back
to consciousness on a field of slain, was rising from the
pavement by the side of the grindstone, and looking about
him with a vacant air. Shortly, this worn-out murderer
descried in the imperfect light one of the carriages of
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Monseigneur, and, staggering to that gorgeous vehicle,
climbed in at the door, and shut himself up to take his rest
on its dainty cushions.
The great grindstone, Earth, had turned when Mr.
Lorry looked out again, and the sun was red on the
courtyard. But, the lesser grindstone stood alone there in
the calm morning air, with a red upon it that the sun had
never given, and would never take away.