And all the worse for the doomed man, that the denouncer was

a well-known citizen, his own attached friend, the father of his

wife. One of the frenzied aspirations of the populace was, for

imitations of the questionable public virtues of antiquity, and for

sacrifices and self-immolations on the people’s altar. Therefore

when the President said (else had his own head quivered on his

shoulders), that the good physician of the Republic would deserve

better still of the Republic by rooting out an obnoxious family of

Aristocrats, and would doubtless feel a sacred glow and joy in

making his daughter a widow and her child an orphan, there was

wild excitement, patriotic fervour, not a touch of human

sympathy.

“Much influence around him, has that Doctor?” murmured

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

Madame Defarge, smiling to The Vengeance. “Save him now, my

Doctor, save him!”

At every juryman’s vote, there was a roar. Another and another.

Roar and roar.

Unanimously voted. At heart and by descent an Aristocrat, an

enemy of the Republic, a notorious oppressor of the People. Back

to the Conciergerie, and Death within four-and-twenty hours!

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

ChapterXLI

DUSK

T

he wretched wife of the innocent man thus doomed to die.

fell under the sentence, as if she had been mortally