A Tale of Two Cities
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A Tale of Two Cities Volume II, Chapter Twenty – A Plea Summary
- The first person to visit Lucie and Charles after they get married is Sydney Carton.
- Are you really surprised?
- Charles is. He’s even more surprised when Sydney makes a rather strange request: he wants to be Charles’ friend.
- There’s not exactly a ton of love lost between the two men, remember?
- Nonetheless, Sydney wants to be pals.
- More specifically, he wants to be able to pop over to their house without any warning, just like an old family friend would.
- Charles doesn’t seem especially inclined to agree, but Sydney reminds him of how Sydney saved Charles’ life in court.
- OK, he’s got Charles there.
- Charles agrees to be friends.
- That doesn’t mean, however, that he has to like it.
- Later in the day, he grumbles to Lucie about Carton’s strange request.
- Astonishingly, Lucie gets a bit angry at him for saying mean things about Carton.
- She tells Charles to remember that they’re very, very happy together – and that Carton is very, very unhappy.
- As she says, it’s hard for happy people to judge unhappy people. It just doesn’t seem fair.
- Charles seems pretty wowed by the wonderfulness of his wife.
- That, my friends, is alliteration. See all those "w"s in the line above? The fancy technical term for phrases that have several words which start with the same letter is "alliteration."
- But that’s beside the point. We were discussing Lucie and Charles:
- The two newlyweds agree to always be kind to poor old Sydney.
- Lucie kisses Charles and thanks him for his kindness.
- Charles kisses Lucie and blesses her for her compassion.
- Life, in other words, is pretty perfect.
