akorn - Mighty Old Tales Retold

A Tale of Two Cities - Chapter XIX

A Tale of Two Cities
Chapter XIX
The Fellow of No Delicacy
IF Sydney Carton ever shone anywhere, he certainly never shone in the house of Doctor Manette. He had been there often, during a whole year, and had always been the same moody and morose lounger there. When he cared to talk, he talked well; but, the cloud of caring for nothing, which overshadowed him with such a fatal darkness, was very rarely pierced by the light within him.

A Tale of Two Cities - Chapter XVIII

A Tale of Two Cities
Chapter XVIII
The Fellow of Delicacy
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.
Excerpt From: Charles Dickens. “A Tale of Two Cities.

A Tale of Two Cities - Chapter XVII

A Tale of Two Cities
Chapter XVII
A Companion Picture
“SYDNEY,” said Mr. Stryver, on that self-same night, or morning, to his jackal; “mix another bowl of punch; I have something to say to you.”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. Stryver’s papers before the setting in of the long vacation.

A Tale of Two Cities - Chapter XVI

A Tale of Two Cities
Chapter XVI
Two Promises
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.

A Tale of Two Cities - Chapter XV

A Tale of Two Cities
Chapter XV
The Gorgon's Head
IT was a heavy mass of building, that chateau of Monsieur the Marquis, with a large stone courtyard before it, and two stone sweeps of staircase meeting in a stone terrace before the principal door. A stony business altogether, with heavy stone balustrades, and stone urns, and stone flowers, and stone faces of men, and stone heads of lions, in all directions. As if the Gorgon’s head had surveyed it, when it was finished, two centuries ago.

A Tale of Two Cities - Chapter XIV

A Tale of Two Cities
Chapter XIV
Monseigneur in the Country
A BEAUTIFUL landscape, with the corn bright in it, but not abundant. Patches of poor rye where corn should have been, patches of poor peas and beans, patches of most coarse vegetable substitutes for wheat. On inanimate nature, as on the men and women who cultivated it, a prevalent tendency towards an appearance of vegetating unwillingly—a dejected disposition to give up, and wither away.

A Tale of Two Cities - Chapter XIII

A Tale of Two Cities
Chapter XIII
Monseigneur in Town
MONSEIGNEUR, one of the great lords in power at the Court, held his fortnightly reception in his grand hotel in Paris. Monseigneur was in his inner room, his sanctuary of sanctuaries, the Holiest of Holiests to the crowd of worshippers in the suite of rooms without. Monseigneur was about to take his chocolate.

A Tale of Two Cities - Chapter XII

A Tale of Two Cities
Chapter XII
Hundreds of People
THE quiet lodgings of Doctor Manette were in a quiet street-corner not far from Soho-square. On the afternoon of a certain fine Sunday when the waves of four months had roiled over the trial for treason, and carried it, as to the public interest and memory, far out to sea, Mr. Jarvis Lorry walked along the sunny streets from Clerkenwell where he lived, on his way to dine with the Doctor.

A Tale of Two Cities - Chapter XI

A Tale of Two Cities
Chapter XI
The Jackal
THOSE were drinking days, and most men drank hard. So very great is the improvement Time has brought about in such habits, that a moderate statement of the quantity of wine and punch which one man would swallow in the course of a night, without any detriment to his reputation as a perfect gentleman, would seem, in these days, a ridiculous exaggeration.

A Tale of Two Cities - Chapter X

A Tale of Two Cities
Chapter X
Congratulatory
FROM the dimly-lighted passages of the court, the last sediment of the human stew that had been boiling there all day, was straining off, when Doctor Manette, Lucie Manette, his daughter, Mr. Lorry, the solicitor for the defence, and its counsel, Mr. Stryver, stood gathered round Mr. Charles Darnay—just released—congratulating him on his escape from death.