A Tale of Two Cities

Lucie Manette, long believing herself to be an orphan, meets with London banker Jarvis Lorry in the Royal George Hotel in Dover and finds out her father, Dr. Alexandre Manette, is alive and has been held for the last 18 years as a political prisoner in the Bastille. The three are reunited in an attic garret in Paris, close to the wine shop run by Ernest Defarge, the doctor's former servant, and his wife, Thérèse. The doctor is found to be making shoes, a skill he learned in prison as a distraction that, for him, has become an obsession. The doctor is brought to England, where for five years, Lucie devotedly restores him to his former self. A trial at the Old Bailey, in which Lucie and her father are witnesses for the Crown, introduces into their lives two men - so like each other in feature, so unlike each other in manner - Charles Darnay, a self-exiled French aristocrat, and Sidney Carton, a gifted but profligate lawyer. Both men fall in love with Lucie. Carton confesses his love to L