Pagina 791 de 896

"If it had pleased God to put it in the hard heart of either of

the brothers, in all these frightful years, to grant me any

tidings of my dearest wife--so much as to let me know by a word

whether alive or dead--I might have thought that He had not quite

abandoned them. But, now I believe that the mark of the red cross

is fatal to them, and that they have no part in His mercies. And

them and their descendants, to the last of their race, I,

Alexandre Manette, unhappy prisoner, do this last night of the

year 1767, in my unbearable agony, denounce to the times when all

these things shall be answered for. I denounce them to Heaven and

to earth."

A terrible sound arose when the reading of this document was

done. A sound of craving and eagerness that had nothing

articulate in it but blood. The narrative called up the most

revengeful passions of the time, and there was not a head in the

nation but must have dropped before it.