A Tale of Two Cities

In his statement, Manette identifies himself and explains that he writes this in the tenth year of his imprisonment, using ink made of “scrapings of soot and charcoal from the chimney, mixed with blood” (331).

Manette then describes how, as he was walking one evening in 1757, two men in a carriage stopped him. The men have a patient they wish Manette to see, and since they are armed, Manette has no choice but to go with them.

The carriage travels to a mansion, where the men take Manette to see a young woman who is delirious, tied to a bed, and who cries out continuously for her husband, father, and brother. Manette questions the two men (whom he now realizes are twin brothers) on the woman’s illness and is eventually taken to see another patient: a “handsome peasant boy” (335) a few years younger than the woman, dying of a sword wound.

Manette asks how the boy was injured, and the “elder” brother (that is, the Marquis) explains that the boy insisted on dueling with his brother:

There was no touch of pity, sorrow, or kindred humanity, in this answer. The speaker seemed to acknowledge that it was inconvenient to have that different order of creature dying there, and that it would have been better if he had died in the usual obscure routine of his vermin kind (336).