A Tale of Two Cities
/ə ˌteɪl əv ˌtuː ˈsɪtiz/
/ə ˌteɪl əv ˌtuː ˈsɪtiz/
- a novel (1859) by Charles Dickens, set in London and Paris at the time of the French Revolution. Charles Darnay is a young French aristocrat who disagrees with the cruel way his family has been treating poor people. He moves to London and falls in love with Lucie, the daughter of an old doctor who had been put in prison by Darnay's family. Darnay marries Lucie before going back to France to rescue an old servant, but he is arrested there and condemned to death. He is saved by an Englishman, Sidney Carton, who is also in love with Lucie. The two men look very similar, and Sidney takes Charles's place on the scaffold (= the structure on which people are killed in public). The book ends with his thoughts as he walks to his death, which form one of the most famous sentences in English literature: “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”
查尔斯·狄更斯的小说（1859 年），以法国大革命时期的伦敦和巴黎为背景。查尔斯·达尔内是一位年轻的法国贵族，他不同意他的家族对待穷人的残酷方式。他搬到伦敦并爱上了露西，她是一位被达尔内家人关进监狱的老医生的女儿。达尔内与露西结婚，然后返回法国营救一名老仆人，但他在那里被捕并被判处死刑。他被一位英国人西德尼·卡顿救了，他也爱上了露西。这两个人看起来非常相似，西德尼取代了查尔斯在脚手架上的位置（=人们在公共场合被杀害的结构）。这本书的结尾是他走向死亡时的想法，这构成了英国文学中最著名的句子之一：“这是我所做的一件比我做过的更好的事情；这是我从未体验过的更好的休息。”