Plot Summary
Book II, Chapter 6 of A Tale of Two Cities, titled "Hundreds of People," opens four months after Charles Darnay's treason trial. On a fine Sunday afternoon, walks from Clerkenwell to the Manettes' quiet lodgings near Soho Square, where he has become a trusted family friend. paints a vivid picture of the corner where Dr. Manette lives—a secluded, cheerful spot surrounded by green plane-trees, with curious acoustic properties that make it "a wonderful place for echoes."
Arriving before the Doctor and Lucie return, Lorry explores the three rooms on their floor. He notices Lucie's tasteful decorations, the Doctor's consulting room, and—in the bedroom corner—the disused shoemaker's bench and tools from the Bastille, still kept close at hand. He wonders aloud why the Doctor would preserve such a painful reminder, and is sharply interrupted by Miss Pross, Lucie's fiercely devoted companion.
Miss Pross complains that "hundreds of people" are always coming after her "Ladybird," though in truth only a few visitors appear. In their private conversation, Lorry probes whether Dr. Manette ever speaks of his imprisonment. Miss Pross reveals that the Doctor never discusses it openly, but that Lucie sometimes hears him pacing his room at night—"walking up and down, walking up and down"—reliving his years in prison. Lucie joins him silently until he is composed, never pressing him to explain.
After dinner under the plane-tree, Charles Darnay arrives and mentions a discovery at the Tower of London: an old dungeon whose walls were covered in prisoners' inscriptions, including the word "DIG" carved by a condemned man. Beneath the stone, workers found the ashes of a hidden letter. Dr. Manette reacts violently, clutching his head, though he quickly attributes his distress to raindrops startling him. Mr. Lorry catches a disturbing look on the Doctor's face—the same expression he wore in the courtroom passages.
Sydney Carton arrives during tea, making "only Two" visitors despite Miss Pross's prediction of hundreds. As a thunderstorm builds, Lucie confesses that she sometimes imagines the corner's echoing footsteps as "the footsteps of the people who are to come into my life, and my father's." Carton seizes the image with brooding intensity: "There is a great crowd bearing down upon us, Miss Manette, and I see them—by the Lightning." The chapter ends with a tremendous storm, and Mr. Lorry departing with Jerry Cruncher, remarking it has been "almost a night to bring the dead out of their graves"—a line that foreshadows both the revolution to come and Jerry's secret activities as a resurrection man.
Analysis
This chapter is the thematic heart of Book II's early movement, weaving together 's signature techniques of foreshadowing, symbolism, and domestic realism. The title "Hundreds of People" operates on two levels: Miss Pross's comic exaggeration about Lucie's suitors and the prophetic vision of the revolutionary crowds who will eventually engulf these characters' lives. The echoing footsteps—audible yet invisible—become a powerful metaphor for historical forces gathering beyond the characters' sight.
Dr. Manette's shoemaker's bench serves as a physical emblem of psychological trauma, a subject handles with remarkable sensitivity. Miss Pross's account of the Doctor's nocturnal pacing—rendered through hypnotic repetition—captures the cyclical nature of his suffering. His violent reaction to Darnay's story about the hidden prisoner's letter hints at a buried secret connecting the Doctor to the very kind of imprisonment Darnay describes, a connection that will prove pivotal later in the novel.
The storm that closes the chapter is both literal and allegorical. Carton's vision of crowds rushing toward them "fast, fierce, and furious" collapses the boundary between weather and revolution, between personal destiny and historical catastrophe. Lorry's parting words to Jerry about raising the dead link back to the novel's opening theme of resurrection and point forward to darker applications of that idea in both London and Paris.