《双城记》(A Tale of Two Cities)是英国作家查尔斯狄更斯所著的一部以法国大革命为背景所写成的长篇历史小说,情节感人肺腑,是世界文学经典名著之一,故事中将巴黎、伦敦两个大城市连结起来,围绕着曼马内特医生一家和以德法日夫妇为首的圣安东尼区展开故事。小说里描写了贵族如何败坏、如何残害百姓,人民心中积压对贵族的刻骨仇恨,导致了不可避免的法国大革命,本书的主要思想是为了爱而自我牺牲。书名中的“双城”指的是巴黎与伦敦。
CONTENTS
BOOK THE FIRST-Recalled to Life
Chapter 1-The Period
Chapter 2-The Mail
Chapter 3-The Night Shadows
Chapter 4-The Preparation
Chapter 5-The Wine-Shop
Chapter 6-The Shoemaker
BOOK THE SECOND-The Golden Thread
Chapter 1-Five Years Later
Chapter 2-A Sight
Chapter 3-A Disappointment
Chapter 4-Congratulatory
Chapter 5-The Jackal
Chapter 6-Hundreds of People
Chapter 7-Monseigneur in Town
Chapter 8-Monseigneur in the Country
Chapter 9-The Gorgon’s Head
Chapter 10-Two Promises
Chapter 11-A Companion Picture
Chapter 12-The Fellow of Delicacy
Chapter 13-The Fellow of No Delicacy
Chapter 14-The Honest Tradesman
Chapter 15-Knitting
Chapter 16-Still Knitting
Chapter 17-One Night
Chapter 18-Nine Days
Chapter 19-An Opinion
Chapter 20-A Plea
Chapter 21-Echoing Footsteps
Chapter 22-The Sea Still Rises
Chapter 23-Fire Rises
Chapter 24-Drawn to the Loadstone Rock
BOOK THE THIRD-The Track of a Storm
Chapter 1-In Secret
Chapter 2-The Grindstone
Chapter 3-The Shadow
Chapter 4-Calm in Storm
Chapter 5-The Wood-Sawyer
Chapter 6-Triumph
Chapter 7-A Knock at the Door
Chapter 8-A Hand at Cards
Chapter 9-The Game Made
Chapter 10-The Substance of the Shadow
Chapter 11-Dusk
Chapter 12-Darkness
Chapter 13-Fifty-two
Chapter 14-The Knitting Done
Chapter 15-The Footsteps Die Out For Ever
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Chapter 1 The Period
IT WAS the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
There were a king with a large jaw, and a queen with a plain face, on the throne of England; there were a king with a large jaw, and a queen with a fair face, on the throne of France. In both countries it was clearer than crystal to the lords of the State preserves of loaves and fishes, that things in general were settled for ever.
It was the year of Our Lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy five. Spiritual revelations were conceded to England at that favoured period, as at this. Mrs. Southcott had recently attained her fiveandtwentieth blessed birthday, of whom a prophetic private in the Life Guards had heralded the sublime appearance by announcing that arrangements were made for the swallowing up of London and Westminster. Even the Cocklane ghost had been laid only a round dozen of years, after rapping out its messages, as the spirits of this very year last past supernaturally deficient in originality rapped out theirs. Mere messages in the earthly order of events had lately come to the English Crown and People, from a congress of British subjects in America: which, strange to relate, have proved more important to the human race than any communications yet received through any of the chickens of the Cock lane brood.
France, less favoured on the whole as to matters spiritual than her sister of the shield and trident, rolled with exceeding smoothness down hill, making paper money and spending it. Under the guidance of her Christian pastors, she entertained herself, besides, with such humane achievements as sentencing a youth to have his hands cut off, his tongue torn out with pincers, and his body burned alive, because he had not kneeled down in the rain to do honour to a dirty procession of monks which passed within his view, at a distance of some fifty or sixty yards. It is likely enough that, rooted in the woods of France and Norway, there were growing trees, when that sufferer was put to death, already marked by the Woodman, Fate, to come down and be sawn into boards, to make a certain movable framework with a sack and a knife in it,terrible in history.It is likely enough that in the rough outhouses of some tillers of the heavy lands adjacent to Paris,there were sheltered from the weather that very day, rude carts, bespattered with rustic mire, snuffed about by pigs, and roosted in by poultry, which the Farmer, Death, had already set apart to be his tumbrils of the Revolution. But that Woodman and that Farmer, though they work unceasingly, work silently, and no one heard them as they went about with muffled tread: he rather, forasmuch as to entertain any suspicion that they were awake, was to be atheistical and traitorous.