 look, at monsieur with the white head. It is well. Forward! from the
uniform. Adieu! from Defarge. And so, under a short grove of feebler and feebler
over-swinging lamps, out under the great grove of stars.
    Beneath that arch of unmoved and eternal lights; some, so remote from this
little earth that the learned tell us it is doubtful whether their rays have
even yet discovered it, as a point in space where anything is suffered or done:
the shadows of the night were broad and black. All through the cold and restless
interval, until dawn, they once more whispered in the ears of Mr. Jarvis Lorry -
sitting opposite the buried man who had been dug out, and wondering what subtle
powers were for ever lost to him, and what were capable of restoration - the old
inquiry:
    »I hope you care to be recalled to life?«
    And the old answer:
    »I can't say.«
 

                                Book the Second

                               The Golden Thread

                                   Chapter I

                                Five Years Later

Tellson's Bank by Temple Bar was an old-fashioned place, even in the year one
thousand seven hundred and eighty. It was very small, very dark, very ugly, very
incommodious. It was an old-fashioned place, moreover, in the moral attribute
that the partners in the House were proud of its smallness, proud of its
darkness, proud of its ugliness, proud of its incommodiousness. They were even
boastful of its eminence in those particulars, and were fired by an express
conviction that, if it were less objectionable, it would be less respectable.
This was no passive belief, but an active weapon which they flashed at more
convenient places of business. Tellson's (they said) wanted no elbow-room,
Tellson's wanted no light, Tellson's wanted no embellishment. Noakes and Co.'s
might, or Snooks Brothers' might; but Tellson's, thank Heaven! -
    Any one of these partners would have disinherited his son on the question of
rebuilding Tellson's. In this respect the House was much on a par with the
Country; which did very often disinherit its sons for suggesting improvements in
laws and customs that had long been highly objectionable, but were only the more
respectable.
    Thus it had come to pass, that Tellson's was the triumphant perfection of
inconvenience. After bursting open a door of idiotic obstinacy with a weak
rattle in its throat, you fell into Tellson's down two steps, and came to your
senses in a miserable little shop, with two little counters
