Повесть о двух городах / A Tale of Two Cities

For he was furnished with that completeness that if the coach-lamps had been blown and stormed out, which did occasionally happen, he had only to shut himself up inside, keep the flint and steel sparks well off the straw, and get a light with tolerable safety and ease (if he were lucky) in five minutes.

�Tom!’ softly over the coach roof.

�Hallo, Joe.’

�Did you hear the message?’

�I did, Joe.’

�What did you make of it, Tom?’

�Nothing at all, Joe.’

�That’s a coincidence, too,’ the guard mused, �for I made the same of it myself.

’

Jerry, left alone in the mist and darkness, dismounted meanwhile, not only to ease his spent horse, but to wipe the mud from his face, and shake the wet out of his hat-brim, which might be capable of holding about half a gallon. After standing with the bridle over his heavily-splashed arm, until the wheels of the mail were no longer within hearing and the night was quite still again, he turned to walk down the hill.

�After that there gallop from Temple Bar,[15 - Temple Bar – архитектурный ансамбль в Лондоне, построенный тамплиерами (рыцарями храма); в этом месте традиционно располагались адвокатские конторы и юридические организации.] old lady, I won’t trust your fore-legs till I get you on the level,’ said this hoarse messenger, glancing at his mare.

�“Recalled to life.’ That’s a Blazing strange message. Much of that wouldn’t do for you, Jerry! I say, Jerry! You’d be in a Blazing bad way, if recalling to life was to come into fashion, Jerry!’

III

The Night Shadows

A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it! Something of the awfulness, even of Death itself, is referable to this.

No more can I turn the leaves of this dear book that I loved, and vainly hope in time to read it all.