“Be merciful to my husband for the sake of my chee-ild,” cried Lucy, passionately, pushing Nancy forward.
“Never!” growled Madame La Farge, pushing Nancy back.
“Don’t, Isabelle, you hurt,” objected Nancy, but quailed into silence at Isabelle’s terrible look.
The audience was almost hysterical.
The part where Carton rescues D’Arnay and changes places with him, important climax though it is in the book, was omitted by the dramatist, because it had no opportunity for Isabelle. D’Arnay arrived in Carton’s clothes, many inches too small for him, and explained to Lucy what had occurred. So she and her child and her husband escape.
The curtains were closed now, and the audience stirred as if to rise. Isabelle rushed forth.
“Sit still,” she commanded, “it isn’t over yet.”
There was a long wait, and much hammering back on the stage. Then the curtains parted again on the big realistic moment of the drama. Suspended at back was what at first glance looked to be a wooden window frame. It was suspended from above by ropes, which disappeared over the gallery which ran around the garage. Under this frame was a wooden saw-horse, and beneath that a pail. Only a look sufficed to show that this was La Belle Dame sans Merci, the guillotine.
A ragged rabble appeared at back, shouting and shaking fists. Then—led forward by D’Arnay and the able Margie who had been Dr. Manet, Lorry, and the Judge—came the blind-folded figure of the hero, Carton. They led him to the foot of that terrible machine of destruction, and after several vain promptings from the gallery above, Carton cried in a loud, manly voice:
“It’s a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest I go to, than I have ever known.”