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"Let it be read."

In a dead silence and stillness--the prisoner under trial looking

lovingly at his wife, his wife only looking from him to look with

solicitude at her father, Doctor Manette keeping his eyes fixed

on the reader, Madame Defarge never taking hers from the

prisoner, Defarge never taking his from his feasting wife, and

all the other eyes there intent upon the Doctor, who saw none of

them--the paper was read, as follows.

CHAPTER X. The Substance of the Shadow

"I, Alexandre Manette, unfortunate physician, native of Beauvais,

and afterwards resident in Paris, write this melancholy paper in

my doleful cell in the Bastille, during the last month of the

year, 1767. I write it at stolen intervals, under every

difficulty. I design to secrete it in the wall of the chimney,

where I have slowly and laboriously made a place of concealment

for it. Some pitying hand may find it there, when I and my

sorrows are dust.