“What is that?” she cried suddenly.

There was a knock at the door; four armed men in red caps entered the room.

“Evremonde,” said the first, “you are again the prisoner of the Republic!”

“Why?” he asked, with his wife and child clinging to him.

“You will know to-morrow.”

“One word,” entreated the doctor, “who has denounced him?”

“The Citizen Defarge, and another.”

“What other?”

“Citizen,” said the man, with a strange look, “you will be answered to-morrow.”

V.—­Condemned

The news that Darnay had been again arrested was brought to Mr. Lorry later in the evening, and the man who brought it was Sydney Carton.  He had come to Paris, he said, on business; his business was now completed, he was about to return, and he had obtained his leave to pass.

“Darnay,” he said, “cannot escape condemnation this time.”

“I fear not,” answered Mr. Lorry.

“I have found,” continued Carton, “that the Old Bailey spy who charged Darnay with high treason years ago is now in the service of the Republic and is a turnkey at the prison of the Conciergerie where Darnay is confined.  By threatening to denounce him as a spy of Pitt, I have secured that I shall gain access to Darnay in the prison if the trial should go against him.”

“But access to him,” said Mr. Lorry, “will not save him.”

“I never said it would.”

Mr. Lorry looked at him mystified, and once more noted his strange resemblance to the man whose fate was to be decided on the morrow.

Carton stood next day in an obscure corner among the crowd when Charles Evremonde, called Darnay, appeared again before the judges.

“Who denounces the accused?” asked the president.

“Ernest Defarge, wine-vendor.”

“Good.”

“Alexandre Manette, physician.”

“President,” cried the doctor, pale and trembling, “I indignantly protest to you.”

“Citizen Manette, be silent!  Call Citizen Defarge.”

Rapidly Defarge told his story.  He had been among the leaders in the taking of the Bastille.  When the citadel had fallen, he had gone to the cell One Hundred and Five, North Tower, and had searched it.  In a hole in the chimney he had found a paper in the handwriting of Dr. Manette.

“Let it be read,” said the president.

In this paper Dr. Manette had written the history of his imprisonment.  In the year 1757 he had been taken secretly by two nobles to visit two poor people who were on the point of death.  One was a woman whom one of the nobles had forcibly carried off from her husband; the other, her brother, whom the seducer had mortally wounded.  The doctor had come too late; both the woman and her brother died.  The doctor refused a fee, and, to relieve his mind, wrote privately to the government stating the circumstances of the crime.  One night he was called out of his home on a false pretext, and taken to the Bastille.