over the table, and a long winding-sheet in the candle dripping
Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
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A Tale of Two Cities
down upon him.
Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
f
A Tale of Two Cities
Chapter XI
THE JACKAL
T hose were drinking days, and most men drank hard. So
very great is the improvement Time has brought about in
such habits, that a moderate statement of the quantity of
wine and punch which one man would swallow in the course of a
night, without any detriment to his reputation as a perfect
gentleman, would seem, in these days, a ridiculous exaggeration.
The learned profession of the law was certainly not behind any
other learned profession in its Bacchanalian propensities; neither
was Mr. Stryver, already fast shouldering his way to a large and
lucrative practice, behind his compeers in this particular, any
more than in the drier parts of the legal race.
A favourite at the Old Bailey, and eke at the Sessions, Mr.
Stryver had begun cautiously to hew away the lower staves of the
ladder on which he mounted. Sessions and Old Bailey had now to
summon their favourite, specially, to their longing arms; and
shouldering itself towards the visage of the Lord Chief Justice in
the Court of King’s Bench, the florid countenance of Mr. Stryver
might be daily seen, bursting out of the bed of wigs, like a great
sunflower pushing its way at the sun from among a rank gardenful
of flaring companions.
It had once been noted at the Bar, that while Mr. Stryver was a
glib man, and an unscrupulous, and a ready, and a bold, he had
not that faculty of extracting the essence from a heap of
statements, which is among the most striking and necessary of the
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A Tale of Two Cities
advocate’s accomplishments. But, a remarkable improvement
came upon him as to this. The more business he got, the greater
his power seemed to grow of getting at its pith and marrow; and
however late at night he sat carousing with Sydney Carton, he
always had his points at his fingers’ ends in the morning.
Sydney Carton, idlest and most unpromising of men, was
Stryver’s great ally. What the two drank together, between Hilary
term and Michaelmas, might have floated a king’s ship. Stryver
never had a case in hand, anywhere, but Carton was there, with
his hands in his pockets, staring at the ceiling of the court; they
went the same Circuit, and even there they prolonged their usual
orgies late into the night, and Carton was rumoured to be seen at
broad day, going home stealthily and unsteadily to his lodgings,
like a dissipated cat. At last, it began to get about, among such as
were interested in the matter, that although Sydney Carton would
never be a lion, he was an amazingly good jackal, and that he
rendered suit and service to Stryver in that humble capacity.
“Ten o’clock, sir,” said the man at the tavern, whom he had
charged to wake him—“ten o’clock, sir.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Ten o’clock, sir.”
“What do you mean? Ten o’clock at night?”
“Yes, sir. Your honour told me to call you.”
“Oh! I remember. Very well, very well.”
After a few dull efforts to get to sleep again, which the man
dexterously combated by stirring the fire continuously for five
minutes, he got up, toss"};
