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A Tale of Two Cities
raised a gallows forty feet high, poisoning the water.”
The mender of roads looked through rather than at the low
ceiling, and pointed as if he saw the gallows somewhere in the sky.
“All work is stopped, all assemble there, nobody leads the cows
out, the cows are there with the rest. At midday, the roll of drums.
Soldiers have marched into the prison in the night, and he is in the
midst of many soldiers. He is bound as before, and in his mouth
there is a gag—tied so, with a tight string, making him look almost
as if he laughed.” He suggested it, by creasing his face with his two
thumbs, from the corners of his mouth to his ears. “On the top of
the gallows is fixed the knife, blade upwards, with its point in the
air. He is hanged there forty feet high—and is left hanging,
poisoning the water.”
They looked at one another, as he used his blue cap to wipe his
face, on which the perspiration had started afresh while he
recalled the spectacle.
“It is frightful, messieurs. How can the women and the children
draw water! Who can gossip of an evening, under that shadow!
Under it, have I said? When I left the village, Monday evening as
the sun was going to bed, and looked back from the hill, the
shadow struck across the church, across the mill, across the
prison—seemed to strike across the earth, messieurs, to where the
sky rests upon it!”
The hungry man gnawed one of his fingers as he looked at the
other three, and his finger quivered with the craving that was on
him.
“That’s all, messieurs. I left at sunset (as I had been warned to
do), and I walked on, that night and half next day, until I met (as I
was warned I should) this comrade. With him, I came on, now
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riding and now walking, through the rest of yesterday and through
last night. And here you see me!”
After a gloomy silence, the first Jacques said, “Good! You have
acted and recounted faithfully. Will you wait for us a little, outside
the door?”
“Very willingly,” said the mender of roads, whom Defarge
escorted to the top of the stairs, and, leaving seated there,
returned.
The three had risen, and their heads were together when he
came back to the garret.
“How say you, Jacques?” demanded Number One. “To be
registered?”
“To be registered, as doomed to destruction,” returned Defarge.
“Magnificent!” croaked the man with craving, “The chateau,
and all the race?” inquired the first.
“The chateau and all the race,” returned Defarge.
“Extermination.”
The hungry man repeated, in a rapturous croak, “Magnificent!”
and began gnawing another finger.
“Are you sure,” asked Jacques Two, of Defarge, “that no
embarrassment can rise from our manner of keeping the register?
Without doubt it is safe, for no one beyond ourselves can decipher
it; but shall we always be able to decipher it—or, I ought to say,
will she?”
“Jacques,” returned Defarge, drawing himself up, “if madame
my wife undertook to keep the register in her memory alone, she
would not lose a word of it—not a syllable of it. Knitted, in her own
stitches and her own symbols, it will always be as plain to her as
the sun. Confide in Madame Defarge. It would be easier for the
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weakest poltroon that lives, to erase himself from existence, than
to erase one letter of his name or crimes from the knitted register
of Madame Defarge.”
There was a murmur of confidence and approval, and then the
man who hungered, asked: “Is this rustic to be sent back soon? I
hope so. He is very simple; is he not a little dangerous?”
“He knows nothing,” said Defarge; “at least nothing more than
would easily elevate himself to a gallows of the same height. I
charge myself with him; let him remain with me; I will take care of
him, and set him on his road. He wishes to see the fine world—the
King, the Queen, and Court; let him see them on Sunday.”
“What?” exclaimed the hungry man, staring. “Is it a good sign,
that he wishes to see Royalty and Nobility?”
“Jacques,” said Defarge; “judiciously show a cat milk, if you
wish her to thirst for it. Judiciously show a dog his natural prey, if
you wish him to bring it down one day.”
Nothing more was said, and the mender of roads, being found
already dozing on the topmost stair, was advised to lay himself
down on the pallet-bed and take some rest. He needed no
persuasion, and was soon asleep.
Worse quarters than Defarge’s wine-shop, could easily have
been found in Paris for a provincial slave of that degree. Saving for
a mysterious dread of madame by which he was constantly
haunted, his life was very new and agreeable. But, madame sat all
day at her counter, so expressly unconscious of him, and so
particularly determined not to perceive that his being there had
any connexion with anything below the surface, that he shook in
his wooden shoes whenever his eye lighted on her. For, he
contended with himself that it was impossible to foresee what that
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lady might pretend next; and he felt assured that if she should
take into her brightly ornamented head to pretend that she had
seen him do a murder and afterwards flay the victim, she would
infallibly go through with it until the play was played out.
Therefore, when Sunday came, the mender of roads was not
enchanted (though he said he was) to find that madame was to
accompany monsieur and himself to Versailles. It was additionally
disconcerting to have madame knitting all the way there, in a
public conveyance; it was additionally disconcerting yet, to have
madame in the crowd in the afternoon, still with her knitting in
her hands as the crowd waited to see the carriage of the King and
Queen.
“You work hard, madame,” said a man near her.
“Yes,” answered Madame Defarge; “I have a good deal to do.”
“What do you make, madame?”
“Many things.”
“For instance—”
“For instance,” returned Madame Defarge, composedly,
“shrouds.”
The man moved a little further away, as soon as he could, and
the mender of roads fanned himself with his blue cap: feeling it
mightily close and oppressive. If he needed a King and Queen to
restore him, he was fortunate in having his remedy at hand; for,
soon the large-faced King and the fair-faced Queen came in their
golden coach, attended by the shining Bull’s Eye of their Court, a
glittering multitude of laughing ladies and fine lords; and in jewels
and silks and powder and splendour and elegantly spurning
figures and handsomely disdainful faces of both sexes, the mender
of roads bathed himself, so much to his temporary intoxicating,
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A Tale of Two Cities
that he cried Long live the King, Long live the Queen, Long live
everybody and everything! as if he had never heard of ubiquitous
Jacques in his time. Then, there were gardens, courtyards,
terraces, fountains, green banks, more King and Queen, more
Bull’s Eye, more lords and ladies, more Long live they all! until he
absolutely wept with sentiment. During the whole of this scene,
which lasted some three hours, he had plenty of shouting and
weeping and sentimental company, and throughout Defarge held
him by the collar, as if to restrain him from flying at the objects of
his brief devotion and tearing them to pieces.
“Bravo!” said Defarge, clapping him on the back when it was
over, like a patron; “you are a good boy!”
The mender of roads was now coming to himself, and was
mistrustful of having made a mistake in his late demonstrations;
but no.
“You are the fellow we want,” said Defarge, in his ear; “you
make these fools believe that it will last for ever. Then, they are
the more insolent, and it is the nearer ended.”
“Hey!” cried the mender of roads, reflectively; “that’s true.”
“These fools know nothing. While they despise your breath, and
would stop it for ever and ever, in you or in a hundred like you
rather than in one of their own horses or dogs, they only know
what your breath tells them. Let it deceive them then, a little
longer; it cannot deceive them too much.”
Madame Defarge looked superciliously at the client, and
nodded in confirmation.
“As to you,” said she, “you would shout and shed tears for
anything, if it made a show and a noise. Say! Would you not?”
“Truly, madame, I think so. For the moment.”
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“If you were shown a great heap of dolls, and were set upon
them to pluck them to pieces and despoil them for your own
advantage, you would pick out the richest and gayest. Say! Would
you not?”
“Truly yes, Madame.”
“Yes. And if you were shown a flock of birds, unable to fly, and
were set upon them to strip them of their feathers for your own
advantage, you would set upon the birds of the finest feather:
would you not?”
“It is true, madame.”
“You have seen both dolls and birds today,” said Madame
Defarge, with a wave of her hand towards the place where they
had last been apparent; “now go home!”
Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
A Tale of Two Cities
Chapter XXII
STILL KNITTING
Madame Defarge and monsieur her husband returned
amicably to the bosom of Saint Antoine, while a speck
in a blue cap toiled through the darkness, and through
the dust, and down the weary miles of avenue by the wayside,
slowly tending towards that point of the compass where the
chateau of Monsieur the Marquis, now in his grave, listened to the
whispering trees. Such ample leisure had the stone faces, now, for
listening to the trees and to the fountain, that the few village
scarecrows who, in their quest for herbs to eat and fragments of
dead stick to burn, strayed within sight of the great stone
courtyard and terrace staircase, had it borne in upon their starved
fancy that the expression of the faces was altered. A rumour just
lived in the village—had a faint and bare existence there, as its
people had—that when the knife struck home, the faces changed,
from faces of pride to faces of anger and pain; also, that when that
dangling figure was hauled up forty feet above the fountain, they
changed again, and bore a cruel look of being avenged, which they
would henceforth bear for ever. In the stone face over the great
window of the bed-chamber where the murder was done, two fine
dints were pointed out in the sculptured nose, which everybody
recognised, and which nobody had seen of old; and on the scarce
occasions when two or three ragged peasants emerged from the
crowd to take a hurried peep at Monseigneur the Marquis
petrified, a skinny finger would not have pointed to it for a minute,
Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
A Tale of Two Cities
before they all started away among the moss and leaves, like the
more fortunate hares who could find a living there.
Chateau and hut, stone face and dangling figure, the red stain
on the stone floor, and the pure water in the village well—
thousands of acres of land—a whole province of France—all
France itself—lay under the night sky, concentrated into a faint
hairbreadth line. So does a whole world, with all its greatnesses
and littlenesses, lie in a twinkling star. And as mere human
knowledge can split a ray of light and analyse the manner of its
composition, so, sublimer intelligences may read in the feeble
shining of this earth of ours, every thought and act, every vice and
virtue, of every responsible creature on it.
The Defarges, husband and wife, came lumbering under the
starlight, in their public vehicle, to that gate of Paris whereunto
their journey naturally tended. There was the usual stoppage at
the barrier guardhouse, and the usual lanterns came glancing
forth for the usual examination and inquiry. Monsieur Defarge
alighted; knowing one or two of the soldiery there, and one of the
police. The latter he was intimate with, and affectionately
embraced.
When Saint Antoine had again enfolded the Defarges in his
dusky wings, and they, having finally alighted near the Saint’s
boundaries, were picking their way on foot through the black mud
and offal of his streets, Madame Defarge spoke to her husband:
“Say then, my friend; what did Jacques of the police tell thee?”
“Very little tonight, but all he knows. There is another spy
commissioned for our quarter. There may be many more, for all
that he can say, but he knows of one.”
“Eh well!” said Madame Defarge, raising her eye brows with a
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cool business air. “It is necessary to register him. How do they call
that man?”
“He is English.”
“So much the better. His name?”
“Barsad,” said Defarge, making it French by pronunciation.
But he had been so careful to get it accurately, that he then spelt it
with perfect correctness.
“Barsad,” repeated madame. “Good. Christian name?”
“John.”
“John Barsad,” repeated madame, after murmuring it once to
herself. “Good. His appearance; is it known?”
“Age, about forty years; height, about five feet nine; black hair;
complexion dark; generally, rather handsome visage; eyes dark;
face thin, long, and sallow; nose aquiline, but not straight, having a
peculiar inclination towards the left cheek; expression, therefore,
sinister.”
“Eh, my faith. It is a portrait!” said madame, laughing. “He
shall be registered tomorrow.”
They turned into the wine-shop, which was closed (for it was
midnight), and where Madame Defarge immediately took her post
at her desk, counting the small moneys that had been taken
during her absence, examined the stock, went through the entries
in the book, made other entries of her own, checked the serving-
man in every possible way, and finally dismissed him to bed. Then
she turned out the contents of the bowl of money for the second
time, and began knotting them up in her handkerchief, in a chain
of separate knots, for safe keeping through the night. All this
while, Defarge, with his pipe in his mouth, walked up and down,
complacently admiring, but never interfering; in which condition,
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indeed, as to the business and his domestic affairs, he walked up
and down through life.
The night was hot, and the shop, close shut and surrounded by
so foul a neighbourhood, was ill-smelling. Monsieur Defarge’s
olfactory sense was by no means delicate, but the stock of wine
smelt stronger than it ever tasted, and so did the stock of rum and
brandy and aniseed. He whiffed the compound of scents away, as
he put down his smoked-out pipe.
“You are fatigued,” said madame, raising her glance as she
knotted the money. “There are only the usual odours.”
“I am a little tired,” her husband acknowledged.
“You are a little depressed too,” said madame, whose quick
eyes had never been so intent on the accounts, but they had had a
ray or two for him. “Oh, the men, the men!”
“But my dear!” began Defarge.
“But my dear!” repeated madame, nodding firmly; “but my
dear! You are faint of heart tonight, my dear!”
“Well, then,” said Defarge, as if a thought were wrung out of his
breast, “it is a long time.”
“It is a long time,” repeated his wife; “and when is it not a long
time? Vengeance and retribution require a long time; it is the
rule.”
“It does not take a long time to strike a man with lightning,”
said Defarge.
“How long,” demanded madame, composedly, “does it take to
make and store the lightning? Tell me.”
Defarge raised his head thoughtfully, as if there were
