n the side of the king and then on the side of the
people.

At the time of this story England was so hated by France that if the
people had known of Barsad's career in London they would have cut off
his head at once. Carton, who was well aware of this, threatened the spy
with his knowledge and made him swear that if worst came to worst and
Darnay were condemned, he would admit Carton to the cell to see him once
before he was taken to execution. Why Carton asked this Barsad could not
guess, but to save himself he had to promise.

Next day Darnay was tried for the second time. When the judge asked for
the accusation, Defarge laid a paper before him.

It was a letter that had been found when the Bastille fell, in the cell
that had been occupied for eighteen years by Doctor Manette. He had
written it before his reason left him, and hidden it behind a loosened
stone in the wall; and in it he had told the story of his own unjust
arrest. Defarge read it aloud to the jury. And this was the terrible
tale it told:

The Marquis de St. Evremonde (the cruel uncle of Darnay), when he was a
young man, had dreadfully wronged a young peasant woman, had caused her
husband's death and killed her brother with his own hand. As the brother
lay dying from the sword wound, Doctor Manette, then also a young man,
had been called to attend him, and so, by accident, had learned the
whole. Horrified at the wicked wrong, he wrote of it in a letter to the
Minister of Justice. The Marquis whom it accused learned of this, and,
to put Doctor Manette out of the way, had him arrested secretly, taken
from his wife and baby daughter and thrown into a secret cell of the
Bastille, where he had lived those eighteen years, not knowing whether
his wife and child lived or died. He waited ten years for release, and
when none came, at last, feeling his mind giving way, he wrote the
account, which he concealed in the cell wall, denouncing the family of
Evremonde and all their descendants.

The reading of this paper by Defarge, as may be guessed, aroused all the
murderous passions of the people in the court room. There was a further
reason for Madame Defarge's hatred, for the poor woman whom Darnay's
uncle had so wronged had been her own sister! In vain old Doctor Manette
pleaded. That his own daughter was now Darnay's wife made no difference
in their eyes. The jury at once found Darnay guilty and sentenced him to
die by the guillotine the next morning.

Lucie