“Citizen Evremonde,” she said, “I am a poor little seamstress, who was with you in La Force.”

He murmured an answer.

“I heard you were released.”

“I was, and was taken again and condemned.”

“If I may ride with you, will you let me hold your hand?”

As the patient eyes were lifted to his face, he saw a sudden doubt in them.

“Are you dying for him?” she whispered.  “Oh, you will let me hold your hand?”

“Hush!  Yes, my poor sister, to the last.”

That afternoon a coach going out of Paris drove up to the Barrier.  “Papers!” demanded the guard.  The papers are handed out and read.

“Alexandre Manette, Lucie Manette, her child.  Jarvis Lorry, banker, English.  Sydney Carton, advocate, English.  Which is he?”

He lies here, in a corner, apparently in a swoon.  He is in bad health.

“Behold your papers, countersigned.”

“One can depart, citizen?”

“One can depart.”

The ministers of Sainte Guillotin are robed and ready.  Crash!—­and the women who sit with their knitting in front of the guillotine count one.  Crash!—­and the women count two.

The supposed Evremonde descends with the seamstress from the tumbril, and joins the fast-thinning throng of victims before the crashing engine that constantly whirrs up and falls.  The spare hand does not tremble as he grasps it.  She goes next before him—­is gone.  The knitting women count twenty-two.

The murmuring of many voices, the pressing on of many footsteps in the outskirts of the crowd, so that it swells forward like one great heave of water, all flashes away.  Twenty-three.

They said of him about the city that night that it was the peacefulest man’s face ever beheld there.  Had he given utterance to his thoughts at the foot of the scaffold, they would have been these: 

“I see the lives for which I lay down my life, peaceful, useful, prosperous, and happy in that England which I shall see no more.  I see her with a child upon her bosom, who bears my name.  I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in the hearts of their descendants, generations hence.

“It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”

* * * * *

BENJAMIN DISRAELI

Coningsby

      Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, was not only a great
     figure in English politics in the nineteenth century; he was
     also a novelist of brilliant powers.  Born in London on
     December 21, 1804, the son of Isaac D’Israeli, the future
     Prime Minister of England was first articled to a solicitor;
     but he quickly turned from this to politics.  Disraeli was
     leader of the Conservative Party in the House of Commons in