Strona 645 z 896

"All curious to see," thought Mr. Lorry, in his amiably shrewd

way, "but all natural and right; so, take the lead, my dear

friend, and keep it; it couldn't be in better hands."

But, though the Doctor tried hard, and never ceased trying, to

get Charles Darnay set at liberty, or at least to get him brought

to trial, the public current of the time set too strong and fast

for him. The new era began; the king was tried, doomed, and

beheaded; the Republic of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or

Death, declared for victory or death against the world in arms;

the black flag waved night and day from the great towers of Notre

Dame; three hundred thousand men, summoned to rise against the

tyrants of the earth, rose from all the varying soils of France,

as if the dragon's teeth had been sown broadcast, and had yielded

fruit equally on hill and plain, on rock, in gravel, and alluvial

mud, under the bright sky of the South and under the clouds of

the North, in fell and forest, in the vineyards and the

olive-grounds and among the cropped grass and the stubble of the

corn, along the fruitful banks of the broad rivers, and in the

sand of the sea-shore.