Charles Darnay was arrested again. Lucie, his wife was very worried.

“This is a desperate time,” said Sydney Carton. “We need to have a friend in the prison that will help us, and I think that Basard here will be that friend.”

“Why should I be your friend?” asked John Basard.

“I could begin telling people that you were and may still be a spy for England, the enemy of France. What do you say?”

“You are my sister’s friend,” Basard argued. “I’m sure you wouldn’t want to upset her.”

“I think the best thing to be done for her is to get rid of her brother,” said Sydney calmly. “I have another reason that you should help me. I think I know your friend in the wine shop.”

“No, no, that’s not possible. He is French!”

“He spoke very good French, but there was something strange about him. I think it may have been Cly.”

Now Basard laughed.

“No, no, Cly has been dead and buried for several years. He was buried in London, I helped to put his body in the coffin, and I can show you his burial certificate.”

Suddenly, Jerry Cruncher stood up, next to Basard.

“If you put him in his coffin, who took him out of it?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that he was never in it! All you buried was rocks and earth!”

Sydney Carton rubbed his chin. “If we tell people that you have been talking to another England spy, and one who is supposed to be dead. I am sure that you will go to the guillotine, Basard. What do you say now?”

“What do you want?”

“Can you go in and out of the prison whenever you want?”

“Yes, I can. The guards know me and trust me.”

“Come into the other room with me. I need to talk to you in private now,” said Carton.

Jerry and then Basard were sent out.

Left in the room now were Carton and Lorry, sitting and looking into the fire.

“You are a good man and a true friend,” said Carton. “I am sorry that I could not do more than one visit to Charles.”

Then Sydney Carton continued.

“You are an old man, Mr. Lorry, and many people respect you. You have lived a useful life, and you will be missed when you are gone.”

“I have only done my job,” replied Mr. Lorry. “I am just an old bachelor, and nobody will miss me when I die.”

“Lucie will cry for you, and little Lucie will cry for you, too.”

“Yes, that’s true, thank God!”

“If nobody cried for you, then that would make all your years of work a waste of time, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes, you are right, Mr. Carton.”

You know you have to read “between the lines” to get the most out of anything. I want to persuade you to do something equally important in the course of your reading. I want to persuade you to “write between the lines”. Unless you do, you are not likely to do the most efficient kind of reading.

I insist, quite bluntly, that marking up a book is not an act of damage but of love. There are two ways in which one can own a book. The first is the property right you establish by paying for it, just as you pay for clothes and furniture. But this act of buying is only the first step to possession. Full ownership comes only when you have made it a part of yourself, and the best way to make yourself a part of it is by writing in it. A comparison may make the point clear. You buy a piece of beef and transfer it from the butcher's icebox to your own. But you do not own the beef in the most important sense until you eat it and get it into your blood. I am arguing that books, too, must be absorbed in your blood to do you any good.

There are three kinds of book owners. The first has all the standard sets and bestsellers — unread, untouched. The second has a great many books — a few of them read through, most of them dipped into, but all of them as clean and shiny as the day they were bought. The third has a few books or many — every one of them worn, shaken and loosened by continual use, marked and scribbled (涂写) in from front to back.

Why is marking up a book necessary to reading it? First, it keeps you awake.(And I don’t mean only conscious; I mean wide awake. ) In the second place, reading, if it is active, is thinking, and thinking tends to express itself in words, spoken or written. The marked book is usually the thought­through book. Finally, writing helps you remember the thoughts you had, or the thoughts the author expressed.