A Tale of Two Cities quotes

“ ‘Recalled to life.’ That’s a blazing strange message. Much of that wouldn’t do for you, Jerry! I say, Jerry!

You’d be in a blazing bad way, if recalling to life was to come into fashion, Jerry!

”

A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.

A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret;

But, though the bank was almost always with him, and though the coach (in a confused way, like the presence of pain under an opiate) was always with him, there was another current of impression that never ceased to run, all through the night.

He was on his way to dig someone out of a grave.

Now, which of the multitude of faces that showed themselves before him was the true face of the buried person, the shadows of the night did not indicate;

He had a healthy colour in his cheeks, and his face, though lined, bore few traces of anxiety.

But, perhaps the confidential bachelor clerks in Tellson’s Bank were principally occupied with the cares of other people; and perhaps secondhand cares, like secondhand clothes, come easily off and on.

Completing his resemblance to a man who was sitting for his portrait, Mr. Lorry dropped off to sleep. The arrival of his breakfast roused him, and he said to the drawer, as he moved his chair to it:

Lorry’s thoughts seemed to cloud too. When it was dark, and he sat before the coffee-room fire, awaiting his dinner as he had awaited his breakfast, his mind was busily digging, digging, digging, in the live red coals.

A bottle of good claret after dinner does a digger in the red coals no harm, otherwise than as it has a tendency to throw him out of work.

Mr.

No; you have been the ward of Tellson’s House since, and I have been busy with the other business of Tellson’s House since.

Feelings! I have no time for them, no chance of them. I pass my whole life, miss, in turning an immense pecuniary Mangle.

”

She repeated in the same tone, sunk to a whisper, “

I have been free, I have been happy, yet his Ghost has never haunted me!

”

“A likely thing, too!” replied the strong woman. “

If it was ever intended that I should go across salt water, do you suppose Providence would have cast my lot in an island?

”

and one tall joker so besmirched, his head more out of a long squalid bag of a nightcap than in it, scrawled upon a wall with his finger dipped in muddy wine-lees—blood.

The time was to come, when that wine too would be spilled on the street-stones, and when the stain of it would be red upon many there.

And now that the cloud settled on Saint Antoine, which a momentary gleam had driven from his sacred countenance, the darkness of it was heavy—cold, dirt, sickness, ignorance, and want, were the lords in waiting on the saintly presence—nobles of great power all of them;

Their conference was very short, but very decided. Almost at the first word, Monsieur Defarge started and became deeply attentive. It had not lasted a minute, when he nodded and went out. The gentleman then beckoned to the young lady, and they, too, went out.

Madame Defarge knitted with nimble fingers and steady eyebrows, and saw nothing.

Mr. Jarvis Lorry and Miss Manette, emerging from the wine-shop thus, joined Monsieur Defarge in the doorway to which he had directed his own company just before.

The faintness of the voice was pitiable and dreadful. It was not the faintness of physical weakness, though confinement and hard fare no doubt had their part in it. Its deplorable peculiarity was, that it was the faintness of solitude and disuse.

It was like the last feeble echo of a sound made long and long ago.

So entirely had it lost the life and resonance of the human voice, that it affected the senses like a once beautiful colour faded away into a poor weak stain. So sunken and suppressed it was, that it was like a voice underground.

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—!

But indeed, at that time, putting to death was a recipe much in vogue with all trades and professions, and not least of all with Tellson’s.

Death is Nature’s remedy for all things, and why not Legislation’s?

Accordingly, the forger was put to Death; the utterer of a bad note was put to Death; the unlawful opener of a letter was put to Death; the purloiner of forty shillings and sixpence was put to Death;

Cramped in all kinds of dim cupboards and hutches at Tellson’s, the oldest of men carried on the business gravely. When they took a young man into Tellson’s London house, they hid him somewhere till he was old.

They kept him in a dark place, like a cheese, until he had the full Tellson flavour and blue-mould upon him.

Then only was he permitted to be seen, spectacularly poring over large books, and casting his breeches and gaiters into the general weight of the establishment.

“

Bust me, if she ain’t at it agin!

”

“It’s hard in the law to spile a man, I think.

It’s hard enough to kill him, but it’s wery hard to spile him, sir.

”

“Not at all,” returned the ancient clerk. “

Speak well of the law. Take care of your chest and voice, my good friend, and leave the law to take care of itself.

I give you that advice.”

Only his daughter had the power of charming this black brooding from his mind.

She was the golden thread that united him to a Past beyond his misery, and to a Present beyond his misery:

and the sound of her voice, the light of her face, the touch of her hand, had a strong beneficial influence with him almost always. Not absolutely always, for she could recall some occasions on which her power had failed;

“Then you shall likewise know why.

I am a disappointed drudge, sir. I care for no man on earth, and no man on earth cares for me.

”

“Do you particularly like the man?” he muttered, at his own image; “why should you particularly like a man who resembles you? There is nothing in you to like; you know that. Ah, confound you! What a change you have made in yourself!

A good reason for taking to a man, that he shows you what you have fallen away from, and what you might have been!

Change places with him, and would you have been looked at by those blue eyes as he was, and commiserated by that agitated face as he was? Come on, and have it out in plain words! You hate the fellow.”

Those 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, …

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;

A moment, and it was gone. Climbing to a high chamber in a well of houses, he threw himself down in his clothes on a neglected bed, and its pillow was wet with wasted tears.

Sadly, sadly, the sun rose; it rose upon no sadder sight than the man of good abilities and good emotions, incapable of their directed exercise, incapable of his own help and his own happiness, sensible of the blight on him, and resigning himself to let it eat him away.

“Do dozens come for that purpose?”

It was characteristic of this lady (as of some other people before her time and since) that whenever her original proposition was questioned, she exaggerated it.

“Dear me!” said Mr. Lorry, as the safest remark he could think of.

“

Never imagine anything. Have no imagination at all.

”

“It’s plain enough, I should think, why he may be. It’s a dreadful remembrance. Besides that, his loss of himself grew out of it.

Not knowing how he lost himself, or how he recovered himself, he may never feel certain of not losing himself again.

That alone wouldn’t make the subject pleasant, I should think.”

“

A multitude of people, and yet a solitude!

” said Darnay, when they had listened for a while.

Of his pleasures, general and particular, Monseigneur had the other truly noble idea, that the world was made for them. The text of his order (altered from the original by only a pronoun, which is not much) ran: “

The earth and the fullness thereof are mine, saith Monseigneur.

”

Peasant women kept the unfashionable babies close, and brought them up, and charming grandmammas of sixty dressed and supped as at twenty.

The leprosy of unreality disfigured every human creature in attendance upon Monseigneur.

In the outermost room were half a dozen exceptional people who had had, for a few years, some vague misgiving in them that things in general were going rather wrong.

But, the comfort was, that all the company at the grand hotel of Monseigneur were perfectly dressed.

If the Day of Judgment had only been ascertained to be a dress day, everybody there would have been eternally correct.

Such frizzling and powdering and sticking up of hair, such delicate complexions artificially preserved and mended, such gallant swords to look at, and such delicate honour to the sense of smell, would surely keep anything going, forever and ever.

… state, the tax for the church, the tax for the lord, tax local and tax general, were to be paid here and to be paid there, according to solemn inscription in the little village, until the wonder was, that there was any village left unswallowed.

Few children were to be seen, and no dogs.

As to the men and women, their choice on earth was stated in the prospect—Life on the lowest terms that could sustain it, down in the little village under the mill; or captivity and Death in the dominant prison on the crag.

“He has paid all, Monseigneur. He is dead.”

“Well! He is quiet. Can I restore him to you?”

“Alas, no, Monseigneur! But he lies yonder, under a little heap of poor grass.”

“Let us hope so,” said the uncle. “

Detestation of the high is the involuntary homage of the low.

”

“

Repression is the only lasting philosophy.

The dark deference of fear and slavery, my friend,” observed the Marquis, “will keep the dogs obedient to the whip, as long as this roof,” looking up to it, “shuts out the sky.”

Once again he touched him on the breast, as though his finger were the fine point of a small sword, with which, in delicate finesse, he ran him through the body, and said,

“My friend, I will die, perpetuating the system under which I have lived.”

When he had said it, he took a culminating pinch of snuff, and put his box in his pocket.

That fountain suggested the Paris fountain, the little bundle lying on the step, the women bending over it, and the tall man with his arms up, crying, “Dead!”

“I am cool now,” said Monsieur the Marquis, “and may go to bed.”

So, leaving only one light burning on the large hearth, he let his thin gauze curtains fall around him, and heard the night break its silence with a long sigh as he composed himself to sleep.

What did all this portend, and what portended the swift hoisting-up of Monsieur Gabelle behind a servant on horseback, and the conveying away of the said Gabelle (double-laden though the horse was), at a gallop, like a new version of the German ballad of Leonora?

It portended that there was one stone face too many, up at the château.

The Gorgon had surveyed the building again in the night, and had added the one stone face wanting; the stone face for which it had waited through about two hundred years.

It was like a fine mask, suddenly startled, made angry, and petrified. Driven home into the heart of the stone figure attached to it, was a knife. Round its hilt was a frill of paper, on which was scrawled:

“Drive him fast to his tomb. This, from Jacques.”

“Halloa!” said Mr. Stryver. “How do you do? I hope you are well!”

It was Stryver’s grand peculiarity that he always seemed too big for any place, or space.

He was so much too big for Tellson’s, that old clerks in distant corners looked up with looks of remonstrance, as though he squeezed them against the wall.

“Well!” said Stryver, slapping the desk with his contentious hand, opening his eyes wider, and taking a long breath, “if I understand you, Mr. Lorry, I’ll be hanged!”

Mr. Lorry adjusted his little wig at both ears as a means towards that end, and bit the feather of a pen.

“D⸺n it all, sir!” said Stryver, staring at him, “am I not eligible?”

Stryver shouldering him towards the door, with an appearance of showering generosity, forbearance, and goodwill, on his erring head. “Make the best of it, my dear sir,” said Stryver; “say no more about it; thank you again for allowing me to sound you; good night!”

Mr. Lorry was out in the night, before he knew where he was. Mr. Stryver was lying back on his sofa, winking at his ceiling.

“Don’t be afraid to hear me. Don’t shrink from anything I say.

I am like one who died young. All my life might have been.

”

Time was, when a poet sat upon a stool in a public place, and mused in the sight of men.

Mr. Cruncher, sitting on a stool in a public place, but not being a poet, mused as little as possible, and looked about him.

It fell out that he was thus engaged in a season when crowds were few, and belated women few, and when his affairs in general were so unprosperous as to awaken a strong suspicion in his breast that Mrs.

The devoutest person could have rendered no greater homage to the efficacy of an honest prayer than he did in this distrust of his wife.

It was as if a professed unbeliever in ghosts should be frightened by a ghost story.

“And mind you!” said Mr. Cruncher. “No games tomorrow! If I, as a honest tradesman, succeed in providing a jinte of meat or two, none of your not touching of it, and sticking to bread.

“What do you make, madame?”

“For instance,” returned Madame Defarge, composedly, “shrouds.”

The man moved a little further away, as soon as he could, and the mender of roads fanned himself with his blue cap: feeling it mightily close and oppressive.

“It is a long time,” repeated his wife; “and when is it not a long time?

Vengeance and retribution require a long time; it is the rule.

”

“

But when it is ready, it takes place, and grinds to pieces everything before it. In the meantime, it is always preparing, though it is not seen or heard.

That is your consolation. Keep it.”

“We shall have helped it,” returned madame, with her extended hand in strong action. “

Nothing that we do, is done in vain. I believe, with all my soul, that we shall see the triumph.

But even if not, even if I knew certainly not, show me the neck of an aristocrat and tyrant, and still I would—”

“You think there never might have been a Mrs. Lorry?” asked the gentleman of that name.

“Pooh!” rejoined Miss Pross; “you were a bachelor in your cradle.”

“Well!” observed Mr. Lorry, beamingly adjusting his little wig, “that seems probable, too.”

A wonderful corner for echoes, it has been remarked, that corner where the Doctor lived.

Ever busily winding the golden thread which bound her husband, and her father, and herself, and her old directress and companion, in a life of quiet bliss, Lucie sat in the still house in the tranquilly resounding corner, listening to the echoing footsteps of years.

Carton was the first stranger to whom little Lucie held out her chubby arms, and he kept his place with her as she grew. The little boy had spoken of him, almost at the last. “Poor Carton! Kiss him for me!”

Mr. Stryver shouldered his way through the law, like some great engine forcing itself through turbid water, and dragged his useful friend in his wake, like a boat towed astern.

As the boat so favoured is usually in a rough plight, and mostly under water, so, Sydney had a swamped life of it.

The sea of black and threatening waters, and of destructive upheaving of wave against wave, whose depths were yet unfathomed and whose forces were yet unknown.

The remorseless sea of turbulently swaying shapes, voices of vengeance, and faces hardened in the furnaces of suffering until the touch of pity could make no mark on them.

But, in the ocean of faces where every fierce and furious expression was in vivid life, there were two groups of faces—each seven in number—so fixedly contrasting with the rest, that never did sea roll which bore more memorable wrecks with it.

In both, there were several knots of loungers, squalid and miserable, but now with a manifest sense of power enthroned on their distress. The raggedest nightcap, awry on the wretchedest head, had this crooked significance in it: “

I know how hard it has grown for me, the wearer of this, to support life in myself; but do you know how easy it has grown for me, the wearer of this, to destroy life in you?

” Every lean bare arm, that had been without work before, had this work always ready for it now, that it could strike. The fingers of the knitting women were vicious, with the experience that they could tear.

“I know how hard it has grown for me, the wearer of this, to support life in myself; but do you know how easy it has grown for me, the wearer of this, to destroy life in you?”

Every lean bare arm, that had been without work before, had this work always ready for it now, that it could strike.

The fingers of the knitting women were vicious, with the experience that they could tear. There was a change in the appearance of Saint Antoine;

but do you know how easy it has grown for me, the wearer of this, to destroy life in you?” Every lean bare arm, that had been without work before, had this work always ready for it now, that it could strike.

The fingers of the knitting women were vicious, with the experience that they could tear.

There was a change in the appearance of Saint Antoine; the image had been hammering into this for hundreds of years, and the last finishing blows had told mightily on the expression.

nevertheless, Monseigneur as a class had, somehow or other, brought things to this.

Strange that Creation, designed expressly for Monseigneur, should be so soon wrung dry and squeezed out!

There must be something shortsighted in the eternal arrangements, surely! Thus it was, however;

nevertheless, Monseigneur as a class had, somehow or other, brought things to this. Strange that Creation, designed expressly for Monseigneur, should be so soon wrung dry and squeezed out!

There must be something shortsighted in the eternal arrangements, surely!

Thus it was, however;

But, the fierce figures were steadily wending East, West, North, and South, be that as it would; and whosoever hung, fire burned.

The altitude of the gallows that would turn to water and quench it, no functionary, by any stretch of mathematics, was able to calculate successfully.

As was natural, the headquarters and great gathering-place of Monseigneur, in London, was Tellson’s Bank.

Spirits are supposed to haunt the places where their bodies most resorted, and Monseigneur without a guinea haunted the spot where his guineas used to be.

Moreover, it was the spot to which such French intelligence as was most to be relied upon, came quickest. Again: Tellson’s was a munificent house, and extended great liberality to old customers who had fallen from their high estate. Again:

Yes.

Like the mariner in the old story, the winds and streams had driven him within the influence of the Loadstone Rock, and it was drawing him to itself, and he must go.

Everything that arose before his mind drifted him on, faster and faster, more and more steadily, to the terrible attraction.

“

We have new laws, Evrémonde, and new offences, since you were here.

” He said it with a hard smile, and went on writing.

“

Emigrants have no rights, Evrémonde,

” was the stolid reply. The officer wrote until he had finished, read over to himself what he had written, sanded it, and handed it to Defarge, with the words “In secret.”

The prison of La Force was a gloomy prison, dark and filthy, and with a horrible smell of foul sleep in it.

Extraordinary how soon the noisome flavour of imprisoned sleep, becomes manifest in all such places that are ill cared for!

“In secret, too,” grumbled the gaoler, looking at the written paper. “As if I was not already full to bursting!”

So strangely clouded were these refinements by the prison manners and gloom, so spectral did they become in the inappropriate squalor and misery through which they were seen, that Charles Darnay seemed to stand in a company of the dead.

Ghosts all! The ghost of beauty, the ghost of stateliness, the ghost of elegance, the ghost of pride, the ghost of frivolity, the ghost of wit, the ghost of youth, the ghost of age, all waiting their dismissal from the desolate shore, all turning on him eyes that were changed by the death they had died in coming there.

It struck him motionless.

Shortly, this worn-out murderer descried in the imperfect light one of the carriages of Monseigneur, and, staggering to that gorgeous vehicle, climbed in at the door, and shut himself up to take his rest on its dainty cushions.

The great grindstone, Earth, had turned when Mr. Lorry looked out again, and the sun was red on the courtyard.

But, the lesser grindstone stood alone there in the calm morning air, with a red upon it that the sun had never given, and would never take away.

The great grindstone, Earth, had turned when Mr. Lorry looked out again, and the sun was red on the courtyard.

But, the lesser grindstone stood alone there in the calm morning air, with a red upon it that the sun had never given, and would never take away.

I hope you are pretty well!” She also bestowed a British cough on Madame Defarge; but, neither of the two took much heed of her.

“Is that his child?” said Madame Defarge, stopping in her work for the first time, and pointing her knitting-needle at little Lucie as if it were the finger of Fate.

“Yes, madame,” answered Mr. Lorry; “this is our poor prisoner’s darling daughter, and only child.”

“Your husband is not my business here,” returned Madame Defarge, looking down at her with perfect composure. “

It is the daughter of your father who is my business here.

”

“We have borne this a long time,” said Madame Defarge, turning her eyes again upon Lucie. “

Judge you! Is it likely that the trouble of one wife and mother would be much to us now?

”

But, he had never seen his friend in his present aspect: he had never at all known him in his present character. For the first time the Doctor felt, now, that his suffering was strength and power.

For the first time he felt that in that sharp fire, he had slowly forged the iron which could break the prison door of his daughter’s husband, and deliver him.

“It all tended to a good end, my friend; it was not mere waste and ruin. As my beloved child was helpful in restoring me to myself, I will be helpful now in restoring the dearest part of herself to her;

What private solicitude could rear itself against the deluge of the Year One of Liberty—the deluge rising from below, not falling from above, and with the windows of Heaven shut, not opened!

There was no pause, no pity, no peace, no interval of relenting rest, no measurement of time.

Though days and nights circled as regularly as when time was young, and the evening and morning were the first day, other count of time there was none.

There was no pause, no pity, no peace, no interval of relenting rest, no measurement of time. Though days and nights circled as regularly as when time was young, and the evening and morning were the first day, other count of time there was none.

Hold of it was lost in the raging fever of a nation, as it is in the fever of one patient.

Now, breaking the unnatural silence of a whole city, the executioner showed the people the head of the king—and now, it seemed almost in the same breath, the head of his fair wife which had had eight weary months of imprisoned widowhood and misery, to …

it was the best cure for headache, it infallibly prevented the hair from turning grey, it imparted a peculiar delicacy to the complexion, it was the National Razor which shaved close: who kissed La Guillotine, looked through the little window and sneezed into the sack.

It was the sign of the regeneration of the human race. It superseded the Cross.

Models of it were worn on breasts from which the Cross was discarded, and it was bowed down to and believed in where the Cross was denied.

It sheared off heads so many, that it, and the ground it most polluted, were a rotten red. It was taken to pieces, like a toy-puzzle for a young Devil, and was put together again when the occasion wanted it.

It hushed the eloquent, struck down the powerful, abolished the beautiful and good.

Twenty-two friends of high public mark, twenty-one living and one dead, it had lopped the heads off, in one morning, in as many minutes. The name of the strong man of Old Scripture had descended to the chief functionary who worked it;

In seasons of pestilence, some of us will have a secret attraction to the disease—a terrible passing inclination to die of it.

And all of us have like wonders hidden in our breasts, only needing circumstances to evoke them.

The passage to the Conciergerie was short and dark; the night in its vermin-haunted cells was long and cold. Next day, fifteen prisoners were put to the bar before Charles Darnay’s name was called.

“Twenty years back, yes; at this time of my life, no.

For, as I draw closer and closer to the end, I travel in the circle, nearer and nearer to the beginning. It seems to be one of the kind smoothings and preparings of the way.

My heart is touched now, by many remembrances that had long fallen asleep, of my pretty young mother (and I so old!), and by many associations of the days when what we call the World was not so real with me, and my faults were …

“Yes,” said Carton. “

I am not old, but my young way was never the way to age.

Enough of me.”

Before that unjust Tribunal, there was little or no order of procedure, ensuring to any accused person any reasonable hearing.

There could have been no such Revolution, if all laws, forms, and ceremonies, had not first been so monstrously abused, that the suicidal vengeance of the Revolution was to scatter them all to the winds.

Every eye was turned to the jury. The same determined patriots and good republicans as yesterday and the day before, and tomorrow and the day after.

“

I had never before seen the sense of being oppressed, bursting forth like a fire.

I had supposed that it must be latent in the people somewhere; but, I had never seen it break out, until I saw it in the dying boy.

… ‘Marquis,’ said the boy, turned to him with his eyes opened wide, and his right hand raised, ‘in the days when all these things are to be answered for, I summon you and yours, to the last of your bad race, to answer for them.

I mark this cross of blood upon you, as a sign that I do it.

In the days when all these things are to be answered for, I summon your brother, the worst of the bad race, to answer for them separately. I mark this cross of blood upon him, as a sign that I do it.’

“

It was as if the wind and rain had lulled at last, after a long and fearful storm.

I released her arms, and called the woman to assist me to compose her figure and the dress she had torn. It was then that I knew her condition to be that of one in whom the first expectations of being a mother have arisen;

“That’s well. I have known such energy as yours do great things before now—though never,” he added, with a smile and a sigh together, “such great things as this. But try!

Of little worth as life is when we misuse it, it is worth that effort. It would cost nothing to lay down if it were not.

”

“It is so,” assented Defarge once more.

“Then tell Wind and Fire where to stop,” returned madame; “but don’t tell me.”

Both her hearers derived a horrible enjoyment from the deadly nature of her wrath—the listener could feel how white she was, without seeing her—and both highly commended it.

The hours went on as he walked to and fro, and the clocks struck the numbers he would never hear again.

Nine gone forever, ten gone forever, eleven gone forever, twelve coming on to pass away.

After a hard contest with that eccentric action of thought which had last perplexed him, he had got the better of it. He walked up and down, softly repeating their names to himself. The worst of the strife was over.

“O you will let me hold your brave hand, stranger?”

“Hush! Yes, my poor sister; to the last.”

The same shadows that are falling on the prison, are falling, in that same hour of the early afternoon, on the Barrier with the crowd about it, when a coach going out of Paris drives up to be examined.

leisurely, the new horses come into visible existence, one by one; leisurely, the new postilions follow, sucking and plaiting the lashes of their whips; leisurely, the old postilions count their money, make wrong additions, and arrive at dissatisfied results.

All the time, our overfraught hearts are beating at a rate that would far outstrip the fastest gallop of the fastest horses ever foaled.

At length the new postilions are in their saddles, and the old are left behind. We are through the village, up the hill, and down the hill, and on the low watery grounds.

he is beginning to revive, and to speak intelligibly; he thinks they are still together; he asks him, by his name, what he has in his hand. O pity us, kind Heaven, and help us! Look out, look out, and see if we are pursued.

The wind is rushing after us, and the clouds are flying after us, and the moon is plunging after us, and the whole wild night is in pursuit of us; but, so far, we are pursued by nothing else.