was Stryver, of the King’s Bench Bar, far on his way to state promotion, and, therefore, loud on the theme: broaching to Monseigneur his devices for blowing the people up and exterminating them from the face of the earth, and doing without them: and for accomplishing many similar objects akin in their nature to the abolition of eagles by sprinkling salt on the tails of the race. Him, Darnay heard with a particular feeling of objection; and Darnay stood divided between going away that he might hear no more, and remaining to interpose his word, when the thing that was to be went on to shape itself out.
The House approached Mr. Lorry, and laying a soiled and unopened letter before him, asked if he had yet discovered any traces of the person to whom it was addressed? The House laid the letter down so close to Darnay that he saw the direction—the more quickly because it was his own right name. The address, turned into English, ran:
“Very pressing. To Monsieur heretofore the Marquis St. Evrémonde, of France. Confided to the cares of Messrs. Tellson and Co., Bankers, London, England.”
On the marriage morning, Doctor Manette had made it his one urgent and express request to Charles Darnay, that the secret of this name should be—unless he, the Doctor, dissolved the obligation—kept inviolate between them. Nobody else knew it to be his name; his own wife had no suspicion of the fact; Mr. Lorry could have none.
“No,” said Mr. Lorry, in reply to the House; “I have referred it, I think, to everybody now here, and no one can tell me where this gentleman is to be found.”
The hands of the clock verging upon the hour of closing the Bank, there was a general set of the current of talkers past Mr. Lorry’s desk. He held the letter out inquiringly; and Monseigneur looked at it, in the person of this plotting and indignant refugee; and Monseigneur looked at it, in the person of that plotting and indignant refugee; and This, That, and The Other, all had something disparaging to say, in French or in English, concerning the Marquis who was not to be found.
“Nephew, I believe—but in any case degenerate successor—of the polished Marquis who was murdered,” said one. “Happy to say, I never knew him.”
“A craven who abandoned his post,” said another—this Monseigneur had been got out of Paris, legs uppermost and half suffocated, in a load of hay—“some years ago.”
“Infected with the new doctrines,” said a third, eyeing the direction through his glass in passing; “set himself in opposition to the last Marquis, abandoned the estates when he inherited them, and left them to the ruffian herd. They will recompense him now, I hope, as he deserves.”
“Hey?” cried the blatant Stryver. “Did he though? Is that the sort of fellow? Let us look at his infamous name. D—n the fellow!”
Darnay, unable to restrain himself any longer, touched Mr. Stryver on the shoulder, and said:
“I know the fellow.”
“Do you, by Jupiter?” said Stryver. “I am sorry for it.”
“Why?”
“Why, Mr. Darnay? D’ye hear what he did? Don’t ask why, in these times.”
“But I do ask why.”
“Then I tell you again, Mr. Darnay, I am sorry for it. I am sorry to hear you putting any such extraordinary questions. Here is a fellow, who, infected by the most pestilent and blasphemous code of deviltry that ever was known, abandoned his property to the vilest scum of the earth that ever did murder by wholesale, and you ask me why I am sorry that a man who instructs youth knows him? Well, but I’ll answer you. I am sorry because I believe there is contamination in such a scoundrel. That’s why.”
Mindful of the secret, Darnay with great difficulty checked himself, and said: “You may not understand the gentleman.”
“I understand how to put you in a corner, Mr. Darnay,” said Bully Stryver, “and I’ll do it. If this fellow is a gentleman, I don’t understand him. You may tell him so, with my compliments. You may also tell him, from me, that after abandoning his worldly goods and position to this butcherly mob, I wonder he is not at the head of them. But, no, gentlemen,” said Stryver, looking all round, and snapping his fingers, “I know something of human nature, and I tell you that you’ll never find a fellow like this fellow, trusting himself to the mercies of such precious protégés. No, gentlemen; he’ll always show ’em a clean pair of heels very