something in that too.
“It does not take a long time,” said madame. “for an earthquake
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to swallow a town. Eh well! Tell me how long it takes to prepare
the earthquake?”
“A long time, I suppose,” said Defarge.
“But when it is ready, it takes place, and grinds to pieces
everything before it. In the meantime, it is always preparing,
though it is not seen or heard. That is your consolation. Keep it.”
She tied a knot with flashing eyes, as if it throttled a foe.
“I tell thee,” said madame, extending her right hand, for
emphasis, “that although it is a long time on the road, it is on the
road and coming. I tell thee it never retreats, and never stops. I tell
thee it is always advancing. Look around and consider the lives of
all the world that we know, consider the rage and discontent to
which the Jacquerie addresses itself with more and more of
certainty every hour. Can such things last? Bah! I mock you.”
“My brave wife,” returned Defarge, standing before her with
his head a little bent, and his hands clasped at his back, like a
docile and attentive pupil before his catechist, “I do not question
all this. But it has lasted a long time, and it is possible—you know
well, my wife, it is possible—that it may not come, during our
lives.”
“Eh well! How then?” demanded madame, tying another knot,
as if there were another enemy strangled.
“Well!” said Defarge, with a half complaining and half
apologetic shrug. “We shall not see the triumph.”
“We shall have helped it,” returned madame, with her extended
hand in strong action. “Nothing that we do, is done in vain. I
believe with all my soul, that we shall see the triumph. But even if
not, even if I knew certainly not, show me the neck of an aristocrat
and tyrant, and still I would—” Then madame, with her teeth set,
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tied a very terrible knot indeed.
“Hold!” cried Defarge, reddening a little as if he felt charged
with cowardice; “I too, my dear, will stop at nothing.”
“Yes! But it is your weakness that you sometimes need to see
your victim and your opportunity, to sustain you. Sustain yourself
without that. When the time comes, let loose a tiger and a devil;
but wait for the time with the tiger and the devil chained—not
shown—yet always ready.”
Madame enforced the conclusion of this piece of advice by
striking her little counter with her chain of money as if she
knocked its brains out, and then gathering the heavy handkerchief
under her arm in a serene manner, and observing that it was time
to go to bed.
Next noontide saw the admirable woman in her usual place in
the wine-shop knitting away assiduously. A rose lay beside her,
and if she now and then glanced at the flower, it was with no
infraction of her usual preoccupied air. There were a few
customers, drinking or not drinking, standing or seated, sprinkled
about. The day was very hot, and heaps of flies, who were
extending their inquisitive and adventurous perquisitions into all
the glutinous little glasses near madame, fell dead at the bottom.
Their decease made no impression on the other flies out
promenading, who looked at them in the coolest manner (as if they
themselves were elephants, or something as far removed), until
they met the same fate. Curious to consider how heedless flies
are!—perhaps they thought as much at Court that sunny summer
day.
A figure entering at the door threw a shadow on Madame
Defarge which she felt to be a new one. She laid down her
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knitting, and began to pin her rose in her head-dress, before she
looked at the figure.
It was curious. The moment Madame Defarge took up the rose,
the customers ceased talking, and began gradually to drop out of
the wine-shop.
“Good day, madame,” said the newcomer.
“Good day, monsieur.”
She said it aloud, but added to herself, as she resumed her
knitting: “Hah! Good day, age about forty, height about five feet
nine, black hair, generally rather handsome visage, complexion
dark, eyes dark, thin long and sallow face, aquiline nose but not
straight, having a peculiar inclination towards the left cheek which
imparts a sinister expression! Good day, one and all!”
“Have the goodness to give me a little glass of old cognac, and a
mouthful of cool fresh water, madame.”
Madame complied with a polite air.
“Marvellous cognac this, madame!”
It was the first time it had ever been so complimented, and
Madame Defarge knew enough of its antecedents to know better.
She said, however, that the cognac was flattered, and took up her
knitting. The visitor watched her fingers for a few moments, and
took the opportunity of observing the place in general.
“You knit with great skill, madame.”
“I am accustomed to it.”
“A pretty pattern too!”
“You think so?” said madame, looking at him with a smile.
“Decidedly. May one ask what it is for?”
“Pastime,” said madame, still looking at him with a smile, while
her fingers moved nimbly.
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“Not for use?”
“That depends. I may find a use for it one day. If I do—well,”
said madame, drawing a breath and nodding her head with a stern
kind of coquetry, “I’ll use it!”
It was remarkable; but, the taste of Saint Antoine seemed to be
decidedly opposed to a rose on the head-dress of Madame Defarge.
Two men had entered separately, and had been about to order
drink, when, catching sight of that novelty, they faltered, made a
pretence of looking about as if for some friend who was not there,
and went away. Nor, of those who had been there when this visitor
entered, was there one left. They had all dropped off. The spy had
kept his eyes open, but had been able to detect no sign. They had
lounged away in a poverty-stricken, purposeless, accidental
manner, quite natural and unimpeachable.
“John,” thought madame, checking off her work as her fingers
knitted, and her eyes looked at the stranger. “Stay long enough,
and I shall knit ‘Barsad’ before you go.
“You have a husband, madame?”
“I have.”
“Children?”
“No children.”
“Business seems bad?”
“Business is very bad; the people are so poor.”
“Ah, the unfortunate, miserable people! So oppressed, too—as
you say.”
“As you say,” madame retorted, correcting him, and deftly
knitting an extra something into his name that boded him no good.
“Pardon me; certainly it was I who said so, but you naturally
think so. Of course.”
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“I think?” returned madame, in a high voice. “I and my
husband have enough to do to keep this wine-shop open, without
thinking. All we think, here, is how to live. That is the subject we
think of, and it gives us, from morning to night, enough to think
about, without embarrassing our heads concerning others. I think
for others? No, no.”
The spy, who was there to pick up any crumbs he could find or
make, did not allow his baffled state to express itself in his sinister
face; but stood with an air of gossiping gallantry, leaning his elbow
on Madame Defarge’s little counter, and occasionally sipping his
cognac.
“A bad business this, madame, of Gaspard’s execution. Ah! the
poor Gaspard!” With a sigh of great compassion.
“My faith!” returned madame, coolly and lightly, “if people use
knives for such purposes, they have to pay for it. He knew
beforehand what the price of his luxury was; he has paid the
price.”
“I believe,” said the spy, dropping his soft voice to a tone that
invited confidence, and expressing an injured revolutionary
susceptibility in every muscle of his wicked face: “I believe there is
much compassion and anger in this neighbourhood, touching the
poor fellow? Between ourselves.”
“Is there?” asked madame, vacantly.
“Is there not?”
“—Here is my husband!” said Madame Defarge.
As the keeper of the wine-shop entered at the door, the spy
saluted him by touching his hat, and saying, with an engaging
smile, “Good day, Jacques!” Defarge stopped short, and stared at
him.
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“Good day, Jacques!” the spy repeated; with not quite so much
confidence, or quite so easy a smile under the stare.
“You deceive yourself, monsieur,” returned the keeper of the
wine-shop. “You mistake me for another. That is not my name. I
am Ernest Defarge.”
“It is all the same,” said the spy, airily, but discomfited too:
“good day!”
“Good day!” answered Defarge, drily.
“I was saying to madame, with whom I had the pleasure of
chatting when you entered, that they tell me there is—and no
wonder!—much sympathy and anger in Saint Antoine, touching
the unhappy fate of poor Gaspard.”
“No one has told me so,” said Defarge, shaking his head. “I
know nothing of it.”
Having said it, he passed behind the little counter, and stood
with his hand on the back of the wife’s chair, looking over that
barrier at the person to whom they were both opposed, and whom
either of them would have shot with the greatest satisfaction.
The spy, well used to his business, did not change his
unconscious attitude, but drained his little glass of cognac, took a
sip of fresh water, and asked for another glass of cognac. Madame
Defarge poured it out for him, took to her knitting again, and
hummed a little song over it.
“You seem to know the quarter well; that is to say, better than I
do?” observed Defarge.
“Not at all, but I hope to know it better. I am so profoundly
interested in its miserable inhabitants.”
“Hah!” muttered Defarge.
“The pleasure of conversing with you, Monsieur Defarge,
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recalls to me,” pursued the spy, “that I have the honour of
cherishing some interesting associations with your name.”
“Indeed!” said Defarge, with much indifference.
“Yes, indeed. When Dr. Manette was released, you, his old
domestic, had the charge of him, I know. He was delivered to you.
You see I am informed of the circumstances?”
“Such is the fact, certainly,” said Defarge. He had had it
conveyed to him, in an accidental touch of his wife’s elbow as she
knitted and warbled, that he would do best to answer, but always
with brevity.
“It was to you,” said the spy, “that his daughter came; and it
was from your care that his daughter took him, accompanied by a
neat brown monsieur; how is he called?—in a little wig—Lorry—of
the bank of Tellson and Company—over to England.”
“Such is the fact,” repeated Defarge.
“Very interesting remembrances!” said the spy. “I have known
Dr. Manette and his daughter, in England.”
“Yes?” said Defarge.
“You don’t hear much about them now?” said the spy.
“No,” said Defarge.
“In effect,” madame struck in, looking up from her work and
her little song, “we never hear about them. We received the news
of their safe arrival, and perhaps another letter, or perhaps two;
but, since then, they have gradually taken their road in life—we,
ours—and we have held no correspondence.”
“Perfectly so, madame,” replied the spy. “She is going to be
married.”
“Going?” echoed madame. “She was pretty enough to have
been married long ago. You English are cold, it seems to me.”
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“Oh! You know I am English.”
“I perceive your tongue is,” returned madame, “and what the
tongue is, I suppose the man is.”
He did not take the identification as a compliment; but he made
the best of it, and turned it off with a laugh. After sipping his
cognac to the end, he added:
“Yes, Miss Manette is going to be married. But not to an
Englishman; to one who, like herself, is French by birth. And
speaking of Gaspard (ah, poor Gaspard! It was cruel, cruel!), it is a
curious thing that she is going to marry the nephew of Monsieur
the Marquis, for whom Gaspard was exalted to that height of so
many feet; in other words, the present Marquis. But he lives
unknown in England, he is no Marquis there; he is Mr. Charles
Darnay. D’Aulnais is the name of his mother’s family.”
Madame Defarge knitted steadily, but the intelligence had a
palpable effect upon her husband. Do what he would, behind the
little counter, as to the striking of a light and the lighting of his
pipe, he was troubled, and his hand was not trustworthy. The spy
would have been no spy if he had failed to see it, or to record it in
his mind.
Having made, at least, this one hit, whatever it might prove to
be worth, and no customers coming in to help him to any other,
Mr. Barsad paid for what he had drunk, and took his leave: taking
occasion to say, in a genteel manner, before he departed, that he
looked forward to the pleasure of seeing Monsieur and Madame
Defarge again. For some minutes after he had emerged into the
outer presence of Saint Antoine, the husband and wife remained
exactly as he had left them, lest he should come back.
“Can it be true,” said Defarge, in a low voice, looking down at
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his wife as he stood smoking with his hand on the back of her
chair: “what he has said of Mam’selle Manette?”
“As he has said it,” returned madame, lifting her eyebrows a
little, “it is probably false. But it may be true.”
“If it is—” Defarge began, and stopped.
“If it is?” repeated his wife.
“—And if it does come, while we live to see it triumph—I hope,
for her sake, Destiny will keep her husband out of France.”
“Her husband’s destiny,” said Madame Defarge, with her usual
composure, “will take him where he is to go, and will lead him to
the end that is to end him. That is all I know.”
“But it is very strange—now, at least, is it not very strange”—
said Defarge, rather pleading with his wife to induce her to admit
it, “that, after all our sympathy for Monsieur her father, and
herself, her husband’s name should be proscribed under your
hand at this moment, by the side of that infernal dog’s who has
just left us?”
“Stranger things than that will happen when it does come,”
answered madame. “I have them both here, of a certainty; and
they are both here for their merits; that is enough.”
She rolled up her knitting when she had said those words, and
presently took the rose out of the handkerchief that was wound
about her head. Either Saint Antoine had an instinctive sense that
the objectionable decoration was gone, or Saint Antoine was on
the watch for its disappearance; howbeit, the Saint took courage to
