A Tale of Two Cities
/ə ˌteɪl əv ˌtuː ˈsɪtiz/
/ə ˌteɪl əv ˌtuː ˈsɪtiz/
- a novel (1859) by Charles Dickens, set in London and Paris at the time of the French Revolution. Charles Darnay is a young French aristocrat who disagrees with the cruel way his family has been treating poor people. He moves to London and falls in love with Lucie, the daughter of an old doctor who had been put in prison by Darnay's family. Darnay marries Lucie before going back to France to rescue an old servant, but he is arrested there and condemned to death. He is saved by an Englishman, Sidney Carton, who is also in love with Lucie. The two men look very similar, and Sidney takes Charles's place on the scaffold (= the structure on which people are killed in public). The book ends with his thoughts as he walks to his death, which form one of the most famous sentences in English literature:
《两个城市的故事：查尔斯·狄更斯的小说（1859年）”，法国大革命时期在伦敦和巴黎出版。查尔斯·达奈（Charles Darnay）是一位年轻的法国贵族，他不同意他的家人对待穷人的残酷方式。他搬到伦敦，爱上露西（Lucie），露西是一位老医生的女儿，而后者已被达内（Darnay）的家人关进监狱。达奈（Darnay）与露西（Lucie）结婚，然后回到法国营救一位老仆人，但他在法国被捕并被判处死刑。他被英国人西德尼·卡顿（Sidney Carton）救出，他也爱上露西（Lucie）。这两个人看起来非常相似，而悉尼（Sidney）取代了查尔斯（Charles）在脚手架上的位置。这本书以他走向死亡的思想为结尾，构成了英国文学中最著名的句子之一：