The Best and Worst of Times — A Tale of Two Cities

Two kings with large jaws and two queens sit on their thrones, both certain that things are settled for ever. The year is 1775. In France, the courts sentence a youth to have his hands cut off, his tongue torn out with pincers, and his body burned alive for failing to kneel at a passing procession of monks fifty yards away. In the woods, the Woodman, Fate, has already marked the trees that will be sawn into boards for the guillotine's frame. The Farmer, Death, has set aside the muddy farm carts that will serve as tumbrils. No one who mattered thought any of it worth noticing.

In England, the order is equally imaginary. Highwaymen rob mail coaches and leave four guards dead. The Lord Mayor himself is stopped on Turnham Green and stripped of his possessions in sight of his retinue. Prisoners fight their turnkeys; soldiers fire blunderbusses into both sides. The hangman strings long rows of criminals on Saturday who were taken on Tuesday and burns pamphlets at Westminster Hall on the same schedule. No one in authority regards any of it as unusual.

The Woodman and the Farmer work unheeded, and to suspect them was to be atheistical and traitorous. Two cities, two crowns, and the hangman all conduct their business in the superlative degree of comparison only, certain the roads ahead are settled. The small creatures of this chronicle are already on those roads.