Doctor Alexandre Manette is a character in Charles Dickens' novel, A Tale of Two Cities. He is Lucie's father. a brilliant physician, and spent eighteen years "in secret" as a prisoner in the Bastille prior to the French Revolution. He is imprisoned because in the course of his medical practice he learns of abusive actions by two members of the aristocratic Evrémonde family. While realizing the power at court of nobles such as the Evrémondes, Manette reports them to a minister of the royal government. He is seized from his young family and imprisoned under a lettre de cachet.