March (happily) to the scaffold.

I remember, in France, there was an Englishman, a noble Englishman, and he lost his head. No matter. It was a far, far better thing he did. Twenty or so years earlier, somewhere in the German states, there was a sorrowful young man. He shot himself above the right eye at the stroke of midnight. He died the next morning, leaving a terribly bloody mess on the floor. That was very selfish of him.

Is it really fair? Charles did not lose his head. Albert was not shot, especially not by himself. What is more, Charles and Lucie lived happily ever after, and Albert and Charlotte lived miserably ever after. Still, those dead ones are dead for the sake of these living ones, both by their own volition. But wait! Is that really true?

It is not. Only the Englishman (call him Sydney) did that. The sorrowful German youth (call him Werther) died only for himself. Not for a single moment was he interested in sacrifice, only in the childish angst of not getting his way. When he pulled the trigger, he was not killing himself, but all the world around him (as per Chesterton's view of suicide) and ensuring (as he well knew, regardless of any delusion otherwise) that he would hurt others greatly, especially Albert and Charlotte. So the difference is that Sydney Carton cared for Lucie far more than himself, and Werther thought he loved Charlotte, in fact only loving himself.

Reportedly following the publication of Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther, there were a few suicides attributed partly to the influence of the book. These people missed the point. Sydney Carton, though fictional, understood. Please understand.