Book II - Chapter XVII. One Night Practice Quiz — A Tale of Two Cities
by Charles Dickens — tap or click to flip
Practice Quiz: Book II - Chapter XVII. One Night
What event is about to happen the day after this chapter takes place?
Lucie Manette's wedding to Charles Darnay.
Where do Lucie and Doctor Manette sit during their evening conversation?
Under the plane-tree in their quiet courtyard in Soho.
What does Lucie promise her father about her marriage?
That her marriage will never come between them — she would be unhappy if it parted them "even by the length of a few of these streets."
How does Doctor Manette say his future looks through Lucie's marriage?
"Far brighter, Lucie, seen through your marriage, than it could have been — nay, than it ever was — without it."
What has been Doctor Manette's greatest anxiety regarding Lucie?
That her life should not be "wasted" or "struck aside from the natural order of things" for his sake.
What does Doctor Manette describe doing to the moon while in prison?
Counting how many horizontal and perpendicular lines he could draw across the moon at its full — twenty each way — as a sign of his dull, lethargic mental state.
What did Doctor Manette wonder about while imprisoned in the Bastille?
Whether his unborn child was alive, whether it was a son who would avenge him, or a daughter who would grow to be a woman, possibly never knowing his story.
What are the two visions of his daughter that Doctor Manette describes?
A motionless phantom between his cell window and door, and a more real imagined child who came to his cell and led him out to show him her loving home.
What does the imagined daughter show Doctor Manette in his prison fantasies?
A home full of loving remembrance, where his picture hangs in her room, he is in her prayers, and her children have been taught to pity him.
How does Lucie respond when her father describes imagining a daughter who "knew nothing" of him?
"Even to hear that you had such thoughts of a daughter who never existed, strikes to my heart as if I had been that child."
Who are the only attendees planned for the wedding?
Mr. Lorry as the sole guest and Miss Pross as the only bridesmaid.
What change will the marriage bring to the household's living arrangements?
No change — the marriage makes no alteration to their place of residence. They simply took over the upper rooms formerly belonging to a mysterious invisible lodger.
Why does Doctor Manette half-object at supper?
He objects to the "loving little plot" that keeps Charles Darnay away on this last evening before the wedding.
What drives Lucie to visit her father's room at three in the morning?
"Unshaped fears" — an instinctive, unnamed worry about her father's emotional state.
How does Dickens describe Doctor Manette's sleeping face?
As showing a "quiet, resolute, and guarded struggle with an unseen assailant" — the suppressed marks of long captivity visible even in sleep.
What does Dickens say about moonlight at the beginning of the chapter?
That moonlight is "always sad, as the light of the sun itself is — as the light called human life is — at its coming and its going."
What is the significance of the plane-tree in this chapter?
The plane-tree represents the domestic peace and stability of the Manette household. Father and daughter sit beneath it for their final private evening, and its leaf-shadows close the chapter by moving across the Doctor's sleeping face at sunrise.
Why is this chapter titled "One Night"?
Because it covers a single night — the last evening Lucie and her father spend together before her marriage — from sunset through moonrise to the stillness of three a.m. and finally to sunrise.
What does the chapter foreshadow about Doctor Manette?
His psychological relapse after the wedding: the "unseen assailant" visible in his sleeping face and Lucie's "unshaped fears" hint that Lucie's departure will trigger his return to compulsive shoemaking.
How does the closing image of the chapter mirror its opening?
The chapter opens with the sun setting with a "brighter glory" on father and daughter under the plane-tree; it closes at sunrise with the plane-tree's leaf-shadows moving across the Doctor's face "as softly as her lips had moved in praying for him."