"No, Miss Manette; all through it, I have known myself to be quiteundeserving. And yet I have had the weakness, and have still theweakness, to wish you to know with what a sudden mastery you kindledme, heap of ashes that I am, into fire- a fire, however, inseparablein its nature from myself, quickening nothing, lighting nothing, doingno service, idly burning away."

"Since it is my misfortune, Mr. Carton, to have made you moreunhappy than you were before you knew me--"

"The utmost good that I am capable of now, Miss Manette, I have comehere to realise. Let me carry through the rest of my misdirected life,the remembrance that I opened my heart to you, last of all theworld; and that there was something left in me at this time whichyou could deplore and pity."

"Which I entreated you to believe, again and again, mostfervently, with all my heart, was capable of better things, Mr.Carton!"

"Entreat me to believe it no more, Miss Manette. I have provedmyself, and I know better. I distress you; I draw fast to an end. Willyou let me believe, when I recall this day, that the last confidenceof my life was reposed in your pure and innocent breast, and that itlies there alone, and will be shared by no one?"

"Be under no apprehension, Miss Manette, of my ever resuming thisconversation by so much as a passing word. I will never refer to itagain. If I were dead, that could not be surer than it ishenceforth. In the hour of my death, I shall hold sacred the onegood remembrance- and shall thank and bless you for it- that my lastavowal of myself was made to you, and that my name, and faults, andmiseries were gently carried in your heart. May it otherwise belight and happy!"

He was so unlike what he had ever shown himself to be, and how much he every daykept down and perverted, that Lucie Manette wept mournfully for him ashe stood looking back at her.

"Be comforted!" he said, "I am not worth such feeling, Miss Manette.An hour or two hence, and the low companions and low habits that Iscorn but yield to, will render me less worth such tears as those,than any wretch who creeps along the streets. Be comforted! But,within myself, I shall always be, towards you, what I am now, thoughoutwardly I shall be what you have heretofore seen me. The lastsupplication but one I make to you, is, that you will believe thisof me."