Book the First: Chapter 1, SQUID

"France, less favoured on the whole as to matters spiritual than her sister of the shield and trident, rolled with exceeding smoothness down hill, making paper money and spending it. Under the guidance of her Christian pastors, she entertained herself, besides, with such humane achievements as sentencing a youth to have his hands cut because he had not kneeled down in the rain to do honour to a dirty procession of monks which passed within his view, at a distance of some fifty or sixty yards. It is likely enough that, rooted in the woods of France and Norway, there were growing trees, when the sufferer was put to death, already marked by the Woodman, Fate, to come down and be sawn into boards, to make a certain movable framework with a sack and knife in it, terrible in history." Book 1, Chapter 1, Paragraph 4.

This quote works to further introduce the setting and the Gothic nature of this opening chapter by showing us the state of affairs in France. The quote starts by saying how most people in France seem to be spiritually inferior compared to the sister of the shield and trident which is referring to England's roman name of Brittannia. Dickens also talks about France's rapid decline as France is growing in considerable debt from the various military investments in hopes to rival England as a international power. He moves on to talk of the corruption of the French government by the Church or the Christian pastors by showing us the wrongful torture and death of Chevalier Francois de la Barre. Dickens expands on these dark times in France when he mentions the guillotine from which many met their wrongful end.