After reading · Part III · Chapter 10

Part III · Chapter 10Doctor Manette’s Manuscript

Reading boundary Start: I, Alexandre Manette, unfortunate physician, native of Beauvais, and afterwards resident in Paris Stop after: Back to the Conciergerie, and Death within four-and-twenty hours!

Summary

Manette’s 1767 manuscript recounts his abduction by two Evrémonde brothers ten years earlier. They take him to a dying peasant woman and her mortally wounded brother. The young man says the elder Marquis oppressed the family and aided the woman’s abduction; the younger brother abducted her and fatally wounded her brother. The woman, ravaged by fever, repeatedly cries for her husband, father, and brother before dying.

The nobles display no remorse and try to buy Manette’s silence. He reports the crimes to a royal minister but is soon imprisoned without charge; his wife is told nothing. In his despair he denounces the brothers and their descendants. In court, Madame Defarge reveals that the abused peasants were her family. The jury condemns Darnay as an aristocrat by descent and orders his execution within twenty-four hours.

Who’s who

Alexandre Manette — Physician abducted to treat the Evrémondes’ victims and then silenced in the Bastille.
The Evrémonde twins — Powerful brothers who treat peasant suffering as their privilege.
The peasant siblings — A dying woman and wounded young man destroyed by the brothers’ abuses.
Madame Defarge — The surviving sister of the victimized family.
Charles Darnay — Descendant condemned for the family crimes despite renouncing them.