Rafaello Busoni

The great church's wonderful Christmas chimes had not rung for years, because no one had brought an offering for the Christ Child that was great enough to deserve the music of the chimes.

After eighteen years as a political prisoner in the Bastille, the aging Doctor Manette is finally released and reunited with his daughter in England. There the lives of two very different men, Charles Darnay, an exiled French aristocrat, and Sydney Carton, a disreputable but brilliant English lawyer, become enmeshed through their love for Lucie Manette. From the tranquil roads of London, they are drawn against their will to the vengeful, bloodstained...

When the children of the Great Walled Country follow a stranger's advice and seek their own Christmas presents instead of giving gifts to each other, they find no presents.