Повесть о двух городах / A Tale of Two Cities

If you’ll excuse me, as very much your elder, for saying so, I really don’t know that it is your business.’

�Business! Bless you, I have no business,’ said Mr. Carton.

�It is a pity you have not, sir.’

�I think so, too.’

�If you had,’ pursued Mr. Lorry, �perhaps you would attend to it.’

�Lord love you, no! – I shouldn’t,’ said Mr. Carton.

�Well, sir!’ cried Mr. Lorry, thoroughly heated by his indifference, �business is a very good thing, and a very respectable thing.

And, sir, if business imposes its restraints and its silences and impediments, Mr. Darnay as a young gentleman of generosity knows how to make allowance for that circumstance. Mr. Darnay, good night, God bless you, sir! I hope you have been this day preserved for a prosperous and happy life. – Chair there!’

Perhaps a little angry with himself, as well as with the barrister, Mr. Lorry bustled into the chair, and was carried off to Tellson’s. Carton, who smelt of port wine, and did not appear to be quite sober, laughed then, and turned to Darnay:

�This is a strange chance that throws you and me together.

This must be a strange night to you, standing alone here with your counterpart on these street stones?’

�I hardly seem yet,’ returned Charles Darnay, �to belong to this world again.’

�I don’t wonder at it; it’s not so long since you were pretty far advanced on your way to another. You speak faintly.’

�I begin to think I am faint.

’

�Then why the devil don’t you dine? I dined, myself, while those numskulls were deliberating which world you should belong to – this, or some other. Let me show you the nearest tavern to dine well at.’

Drawing his arm through his own, he took him down Ludgate-hill[59 - Ludgate-hill – улица в центре Лондона, где в XVII–XIX веках находилась долговая тюрьма.] to Fleet-street, and so, up a covered way, into a tavern.

Here, they were shown into a little room, where Charles Darnay was soon recruiting his strength with a good plain dinner and good wine: while Carton sat opposite to him at the same table, with his separate bottle of port before him, and his fully half-insolent manner upon him.

�Do you feel, yet, that you belong to this terrestrial scheme again, Mr. Darnay?’

�I am frightfully confused regarding time and place; but I am so far mended as to feel that.