- Defarge greets the white-haired shoemaker; he responds vaguely.
- The very voice of Dr. Manette seems to have shriveled inside of him.
- The lesson of this chapter, in case you haven’t guessed, is that prison is a very, very unhappy place.
- Don’t go there.
- We’re not kidding. Just look at Dr. Manette.
- Defarge asks the doctor if he can bear a little more light in the room.
- The doctor replies that he must bear it if Defarge chooses to open a window.
- Apparently they’re not so into free will and choice and all that good stuff in prison.
- We repeat: prison is bad.
- It’s so bad, in fact, that Dr. Manette seems to think that he never left it.
- Defarge introduces Mr. Lorry, but Dr. Manette seems to have forgotten him completely.
- In fact, when he’s asked what his own name is, Dr. Manette replies, "One Hundred and Five, North Tower."
- After an awkward pause, Mr. Lorry asks if Dr. Manette has been a shoemaker all his life.
- The doctor replies that he actually learned how to make shoes in prison.
- Flustered, Mr. Lorry asks if he remembers nothing about a banker from long ago.
- For a moment, Dr. Manette thinks he remembers something…but it’s too far off, too long ago.
- Lucie moves slowly forward. She stops in front of his workbench.
- Startled, he asks who she is. Slowly, he reaches up and touches her golden hair.
- (Sigh. It’s a tear-jerker, we promise you.)
- He recognizes the hair…it’s her hair.
- Slowly, he begins to remember. Lucie puts her arms around him and promises to tell him some other time who her mother and father were.
- For now, though, she promises to take care of him.
- France, she declares, is too wicked a country for them to stay in. They’ll return to England, where she can honor the man who is her father properly.
- Dr. Manette begins to cry.
- Relieved, Defarge and Mr. Lorry begin to prepare for the journey.
- As they leave the room, Lucie asks her father if he remembers coming to this place. He doesn’t.
- In fact, he doesn’t remember anything but being in prison. Everything after that is a blank.
- As they pass through the gates of Paris, a guardsman asks for the doctor’s traveling papers.
- Defarge whispers to him as he shows him the papers; the man looks in astonishment at the doctor.
- Rolling away in the carriage, Mr. Lorry remembers again the conversation he imagined with a dead man. Does the doctor really want to be recalled to life?