e to settle all these affairs
and to dispose of the property, which he felt it wrong for him to hold;
but in the peace and happiness of his life in England he put it off and
did nothing further.

And this neglect of Darnay's--as important things neglected are apt to
prove--came before long to be the cause of terrible misfortune and agony
to them all.

II

DARNAY CAUGHT IN THE NET

While these things were happening in London, the one city of this tale,
other very different events were occurring in the other city of the
story--Paris, the French capital.

The indifference and harsh oppression of the court and the nobles toward
the poor had gone on increasing day by day, and day by day the latter
had grown more sullen and resentful. All the while the downtrodden
people of Paris were plotting secretly to rise in rebellion, kill the
king and queen and all the nobles, seize their riches and govern France
themselves.

The center of this plotting was Defarge, the keeper of the wine shop,
who had cared for Doctor Manette when he had first been released from
prison. Defarge and those he trusted met and planned often in the very
room where Mr. Lorry and Lucie had found her father making shoes. They
kept a record of all acts of cruelty toward the poor committed by the
nobility, determining that, when they themselves should be strong
enough, those thus guilty should be killed, their fine houses burned,
and all their descendants put to death, so that not even their names
should remain in France. This was a wicked and awful determination, but
these poor, wretched people had been made to suffer all their lives,
and their parents before them, and centuries of oppression had killed
all their pity and made them as fierce as wild beasts that only wait for
their cages to be opened to destroy all in their path.

They were afraid, of course, to keep any written list of persons whom
they had thus condemned, so Madame Defarge, the wife of the wine seller,
used to knit the names in fine stitches into a long piece of knitting
that she seemed always at work on.

Madame Defarge was a stout woman with big coarse hands and eyes that
never seemed to look at any one, yet saw everything that happened. She
was as strong as a man and every one was somewhat afraid of her. She was
even crueler and more resolute than her husband. She would sit knitting
all day long in the dirty wine shop, watching and listening, and
knitting in the names of peopl