Here we see another instance of a man being "recalled to life,"as Doctor Manette was in Book I. Dickens describes Darnay as being a dead man, and the crowd, which buzzes like "a cloud of great blue-flies"would over a dead body, views him as such. The dead man is saved this time, not by Mr. Lorry or Lucie, but by an unlikely source — Sydney Carton, the disinterested and disreputable-looking lawyer who spends most of his time staring at the ceiling.
Carton's apparent lack of interest in his surroundings recalls Madame Defarge's attention to her knitting; both characters appear to see nothing, yet the reader senses that they notice more than most. Carton, for example, not only discerns the striking resemblance between himself and Darnay, but also observes Lucie's faint before the other characters. Such actions suggest that Carton is a more complicated man than his outward appearance initially suggests.
