A Disappointement: Miss Manette Testifies

Miss Manette tells the court of her encounter with the prisoner. "He told me he was travelling on business of a delicate and difficult nature, which might get people into trouble, and that he was therefore travelling under an assumed name". She tells of the jest made by the prisoner, namely that "perhaps George Washington would gain almost as great a name in history as George the Third". Her father, Dr Manette, is then called to testfiy.

Jerry Cruncher, meanwhile, has taken "quite a lunch of rust off his fingers" during the trial, which sparks the question, where does all this rust come from?

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Five Years Later: Start of the Golden Thread (Book 2)

In the opening of Book 2 we witness Dickens both as storyteller and social commentator. He paints an unflattering portrait of Tellson's Bank in terms of its "ugliness" and "incommodiousness". His reference to the "Barmecide room" with a great dining table that is never used, comes from the term "Barmecide" used in the Arabian nights and refers to "something illusory or imaginary and therefore disappointing" (source: worldwidewords). We are introduced to Jerry, the odd-job man employed at Tellson's Bank. "They hanged at Tyburn in those days" writes Dickens; the spectre of capital punishment always lurking in the background of the novel. He refers to the punishment device known as a pillory (the Charing Cross pillory being a famous one, where onlookers would throw rotten food, cats and other objects at the victim), sardonically as a "wise old institution" and the whipping post as another "dear old institution". He attacks the custom of profiteering from people's problems as follows: "people then paid to see the play at the Old Bailey, just as they paid to see the play in Bedlam" (refers to Bethlem Royal Hospital). The trial we are party to is a trial for Treason committed by Charles Darnay, and the crowd's interest in it is described as "ogreish". Charles' demeanour is very composed, even in the knowledge he is being "mentally hanged, beheaded and quartered by everybody there".