[00:10.61]Reading
[00:11.65]A TALE OF TWO CITIES
[00:14.68]On a cold November night in 1775,
[00:19.04]Miss Lucie Manette,
[00:21.00]who had grown up in England,
[00:22.67]traveled to France to meet her father,
[00:25.13]whom she thought was dead.
[00:27.09]Eighteen year before, her father, Doctor Manette attended to a young peasant boy and girl,
[00:34.85]who had been wounded and died at the hands of two brothers of the Marquis St Evremonde.
[00:40.80]Dr Manette wrote a letter about this crime to the government,
[00:45.45]but instead of justice being done,
[00:48.09]the doctor was thrown in prison for more than eighteen years.
[00:52.17]Such was the situation in France before the revolution of 1789.
[00:57.81]The rich could do so they liked,
[01:00.37]while the peasants suffered.
[01:02.01]Freed from prison, Dr Manette stayed at the wine shop of Ernest Defarge,
[01:07.58]his former servant.
[01:09.33]he wine shop, in one of the poorest suburbs of Paris,
[01:13.85]was the hot spot for the French revolution.
[01:17.01]Mr defarge and his wife, madame defarge, were key leaders and officials of the revolution.
[01:24.17]Madame Defarge hated the Evremonde family and wanted revenge for her sister and brother, who were murdered.
[01:32.40]Lucie brought her father to England.
[01:35.35]On the boat, she met Charles Darnay.
[01:38.38]Darnay, 30 years old, worked in London as a teacher of French.
[01:43.63]He had left France because he hated the cruel deeds of his family,
[01:48.07]the St Evremondes, and the way they treated the peasants.
[01:52.20]He gave up his fortune and tried to forget his roots.
[01:55.93]When Darnay met Lucie, they fell in love.
[01:59.07]Meanwhile Sydney carton, one of Darnay’s friends also loved Lucie.
[02:05.31]Strangely the two men looked so such alike that people thought they were twins.
[02:11.47]Cartons, whose life was a failure, knew he could not marry Lucie.
[02:17.14]He promised that as a friend he would do anything for her.
[02:21.30]Lucie married Darnay the following year and they lived a happy life in London.
[02:26.76]Several years later, in 1792,
[02:31.12]Darnay received a letter from a former servant of the Evremondes,
[02:35.66]asking him for help.
[02:37.52]Darnay, who had been avoiding France for fear of what might happen to him there because of his background,
[02:44.60]realized that he must go.
[02:46.77]A revolution had taken place.
[02:49.40]The peasants were killing many belonging to the old order.
[02:53.22]Upon arrival, Darnay was immediately arrested as an enemy of the people and thrown into prison.
[03:00.19]He tried to explain that he was not like his uncle and father,
[03:04.61]saying he was on the peasants’ side and wanted to help them.
[03:09.18]Dr Manette tried to use his influence to save him,
[03:12.71]but Ernest Deafarge produced a paper and read it to the court.
[03:18.06]It was an account, written by Dr Manette in the tenth year of his stay in prison,
[03:23.49]about the bed behaviour of Darnay’s uncle.
[03:26.13]He hid it in a chimney and had forgotten all about it.
[03:30.39]In the letter Dr Manette said that all members of the St Evermondes must answer for the wrongs done to the peasant boy and girl.
[03:39.04]The court found Darnay guilty and sentenced him to death for things his family had done.
[03:45.80]A few hours before he was put to death,
[03:48.96]Darnay was visited by Carton in prison.
[03:52.31]Carton changed clothes with Darnay to take his place.
[03:56.25]He made this final sacrifice to help Lucie and save his friend.
[04:01.11]Lucie, Dr Manette and Darnay escaped to London,
[04:05.76]while Carton was taken to the guillotine
[04:08.92]Just before he died, he thought to himself that his final act was far better than anything else he had ever done in his life.
[04:16.97]“It is a far, far better thing that I do,
[04:20.21]than I have ever done;
[04:22.35]it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known |