“And has left me,” answered the nephew, “bound to a system that is frightful to me, responsible for it, but powerless in it; seeking to execute the last request of my dear mother’s lips, and obey the last look of my dear mother’s eyes, which implored me to have mercy and to redress; and tortured by seeking assistance and power in vain.”
“Seeking them from me, my nephew,” said the Marquis, touching him on the breast with his forefinger-they were now standing by the hearth-”you will for ever seek them in vain, be assured.”
Every fine straight line in the clear whiteness of his face, was cruelly, craftily, and closely compressed, while he stood looking quietly at his nephew, with his snuff-box in his hand. 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.”
…………………….
“If it ever becomes mine, it shall be put into some hands better qualified to free it slowly (if such a thing is possible) from the weight that drags it down, so that the miserable people who cannot leave it and who have been long wrung to the last point of endurance, may, in another generation, suffer less; but it is not for me. There is a curse on it, and on all this land.”
This passage takes place when Charles Darnay comes to see his Uncle, the Monseigneur Marquis, and they have a long discussion. After the Marquis is dead and Darnay gets his inheritance, he wants to give it up to a better cause to help the family’s name. The Marquis won’t have it though, and argues with Darnay. The two men part without resolving the conflict, and the next morning the Monseigneur is found dead.
This sounds very suspicious to me, especially since Darnay wanted the Marquis’s money and then he suddenly wound up dead. It makes sense that Darnay killed him, because then he could do whatever he wanted with the money without the Marquis standing in the way.
1. Do you think Darnay is guilty, && whyy?
2. Darnay’s innocence has been questioned before, in court in the beginning of the book. Do you think this makes it more likely that he was guilty, that it gives people more of a reason to believe he would do bad things?
-Alyssaaa=)
megan– I would be willing to guess that Darnay did kill him, for the exact same reason that you have already said about his innocence being questioned in the beginning. Although, he did just get married to Lucie and usually when people just get married they’re good.
