The preceding relative
positions of himself and Lucie were reversed, yet only as the
liveliest gratitude and affection could reverse them, for he could
have had no pride but in rendering some service to her who had
rendered so much to him. "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.
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