A Tale of Two Cities

The night before her marriage to Darnay, Lucie sits at home with her father. She presses him on whether he truly feels comfortable with her marrying, reassuring him that “no new affections […] will ever interpose between [them]” (195).

Manette in turn tells his daughter that he would not be happy knowing that he stood between Lucie and the life she deserves. Pointing to the moon, he describes how he used to stare at it in prison, mentally drawing lines across it to occupy himself. His thoughts also turned often to his wife and child, wondering whether they were alive and what the future held in store for them: “I have cast up the years of her age, year after year. I have seen her married to a man who knew nothing of my fate. I have altogether perished from the remembrance of the living, and in the next generation my place was a blank” (196). Lucie grows distressed, but her father continues, explaining that at other times he imagined his grown daughter coming to his cell and leading him out of it to a home where his memory is respected and passed on to his descendants. When Lucie says that she hopes she is “that child” (196), Manette blesses her, and assures her that his happiness far exceeds anything he imagined while in prison.