Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0067/00673.txt

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$Unique_ID{bob00673}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{(A) Tale Of Two Cities
Chapter XV}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Dickens, Charles}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{defarge
jacques
madame
mender
roads
himself
looked
village
hand
like}
$Date{}
$Log{}
Title:       (A) Tale Of Two Cities
Book:        Book The Second: The Golden Thread
Author:      Dickens, Charles

Chapter XV

Knitting

     There had been earlier drinking than usual in the wine-shop of Monsieur
Defarge.  As early as six o'clock in the morning, sallow faces peeping
through its barred windows had descried other faces within, bending over
measures of wine.  Monsieur Defarge sold a very thin wine at the best of
times, but it would seem to have been an unusually thin wine that he sold at
this time.  A sour wine, moreover, or a souring, for its influence on the
mood of those who drank it was to make them gloomy.  No vivacious
Bacchanalian flame leaped out of the pressed grape of Monsieur Defarge: but,
a smouldering fire that burnt in the dark, lay hidden in the dregs of it.

     This had been the third morning in succession, in which there had been
early drinking at the wine-shop of Monsieur Defarge.  It had begun on Monday,
and here was Wednesday come.  There had been more of early brooding than
drinking; for, many men had listened and whispered and slunk about there from
the time of the opening of the door, who could not have laid a piece of money
on the counter to save their souls.  These were to the full as interested in
the place, however, as if they could have commanded whole barrels of wine;
and they glided from seat to seat, and from corner to corner, swallowing talk
in lieu of drink, with greedy looks.

     Notwithstanding an unusual flow of company, the master of the wine-shop
was not visible.  He was not missed; for, nobody who crossed the threshold
looked for him, nobody asked for him, nobody wondered to see only Madame
Defarge in her seat, presiding over the distribution of wine, with a bowl of
battered small coins before her, as much defaced and beaten out of their
original impress as the small coinage of humanity from whose ragged pockets
they had come.

     A suspended interest and a prevalent absence of mind, were perhaps
observed by the spies who looked in at the wine-shop, as they looked in at
every place, high and low, from the king's palace to the criminal's gaol.
Games at cards languished, players at dominoes musingly built towers with
them, drinkers drew figures on the tables with spilt drops of wine, Madame
Defarge herself picked out the pattern on her sleeve with her toothpick, and
saw and heard something inaudible and invisible a long way off.

     Thus, Saint Antoine in this vinous feature of his, until midday.  It was
high noontide, when two dusty men passed through his streets and under his
swinging lamps: of whom, one was Monsieur Defarge: the other a mender of
roads in a blue cap.  All adust and athirst, the two entered the wine-shop.
Their arrival had lighted a kind of fire in the breast of Saint Antoine, fast
spreading as they came along, which stirred flickered in flames of faces at
most doors and windows.  Yet, no one had followed them, and no man spoke when
they entered the wine-shop, though the eyes of every man there were turned
upon them.

     "Good-day, gentlemen!" said Monsieur Defarge.

     It may have been a signal for loosening the general tongue.  It elicited
an answering chorus of "Good-day!"

     "It is bad weather, gentlemen," said Defarge, shaking his head.

     Upon which, every man looked at his neighbour, and then all cast down
their eyes and sat silent.  Except one man, who got up and went out.

     "My wife," said Defarge aloud, addressing Madame Defarge: "I have
travelled certain leagues with this good mender of roads, called Jacques.  I
met him - by accident - a day and half's journey out of Paris.  He is a good
child, this mender of roads, called Jacques.  Give him to drink, my wife!"

     A second man got up and went out.  Madame Defarge set wine before the
mender of roads called Jacques, who doffed his blue cap to the company, and
drank.  In the breast of his blouse he carried some coarse dark bread; he ate
of this between whiles, and sat munching and drinking near Madame Defarge's
counter.  A third man got up and went out.

     Defarge refreshed himself with a draught of wine - but, he took less
than was given to the stranger, as being himself a man to whom it was no
rarity - and stood waiting until the countryman had made his breakfast.  He
looked at no one present, and no one now looked at him; not even Madame
Defarge, who had taken up her knitting, and was at work.

     "Have you finished your repast, friend?" he asked, in due season.

     "Yes, thank you."

     "Come, then!  You shall see the apartment that I told you you could
occupy.  It will suit you to a marvel."

     Out of the wine-shop into the street, out of the street into a
court-yard, out of the court-yard up a steep staircase, out of the staicase
into a garret, - formerly the garret where a white-haired man sat on a low
bench, stooping forward and very busy, making shoes.

     No white-haired man was there now; but, the three men were there who had
gone out of the wine-shop singly.  And between them and the white-haired man
afar off, was the one small link, that they had once looked in at him through
the chinks in the wall.

     Defarge closed the door carefully, and spoke in a subdued voice:

     "Jacques One, Jacques Two, Jacques Three!  This is the witness
encountered by appointment, by me, Jacques Four.  He will tell you all.
Speak, Jacques Five!"

     The mender of roads, blue cap in hand, wiped his swarthy forehead with
it, and said, "Where shall I commence, monsieur?"

     "Commence," was Monsieurs Defarge's not unreasonable reply, "at the
commencement."

     "I saw him then, messiers," began the mender of roads, "a year ago this
running summer, underneath the carriage of the Marquis, hanging by the chain.
Behold the manner of it.  I leaving my work on the road, the sun going to
bed, the carriage of the Marquis slowly ascending the hill, he hanging by the
chain - like this."

     Again the mender of roads went through the whole performance; in which
he ought to have been perfect by that time, seeing that it had been the
infallible resource and indispensable entertainment of his village during a
whole year.

     Jacques One struck in, and asked if he had ever seen the man before?

     "Never," answered the mender of roads, recovering his perpendicular.

     Jacques Three demanded how he afterwards recognised him then?

     "By his tall figure," said the mender of roads, softly, and with his
finger at his nose.  "When Monsieur the Marquis demands that evening, 'Say,
what is he like?'  I make response, "Tall as a spectre.'"

     "You should have said, short as a dwarf," returned Jacques Two.

     "But what did I know?  The deed was not then accomplished, neither did
he confide in me.  Observe!  Under those circumstances even, I do not offer
my testimony.  Monsieur the Marquis indicates me with his finger, standing
near our little fountain, and says, 'To me!  Bring that rascal!'  My faith,
messieurs, I offer nothing."

     "He is right there, Jacques," murmured Defarge, to him who had
interrupted.  "Go on!"

     "Good!" said the mender of roads, with an air of mystery.  "The tall man
is lost, and he is sought - how many months?  Nine, ten, eleven?"

     "No matter, the number," said Defarge.  "He is well hidden, but at last
he is unluckily found.  Go on!"

     "I am again at work upon the hill-side, and the sun is again about to go
to bed.  I am collecting my tools to descend to my cottage down in the
village below, where it is already dark, when I raise my eyes, and see coming
over the hill six soldiers.  In the midst of them is a tall man with his arms
bound - tied to his sides - like this!"

     With the aid of his indispensable cap, he represented a man with his
elbows bound fast at his hips, with cords that were knotted behind him.

     "I stand aside, messieurs, by my heap of stones, to see the soldiers and
their prisoner pass (for it is a solitary road, that, where any spectacle
iswell worth looking at), and at first, as they approach, I see no more than
that they are six soldiers with a tall man bound, and that they are almost
black to my sight - except on the side of the sun going to bed, where they
have a red edge, messieurs.  Also, I see that their long shadows are on the
hollow ridge on the opposite side of the road, and are on the hill above it,
and are like the shadows of giants.  Also, I see that they are covered with
dust, and that the dust moves with them as they come, tramp, tramp!  But when
they advance quite near to me, I recognise the tall man, and he recognises
me.  Ah, but he would be well content to precipitate himself over the
hill-side once again, as on the evening when he and I first encountered,
close to the same spot!"

     He described it as if he were there, and it was evident that he saw
vividly; perhaps he had not seen much in his life.

     "I do not show the soldiers that I recognise the tall man; he does not
show the soldiers that he recognises me; we do it, and we know it, with
our eyes.  'Come on!' says the chief of that company, pointing to the
village, 'bring him fast to his tomb!' and they bring him faster.  I follow.
His arms are swelled because of being bound so tight, his wooden shoes are
large and clumsy, and he is lame.  Because he is lame, and consequently slow,
they drive him with their guns - like this!"

     He imitated the action of a man's being impelled forward by the
butt-ends of muskets.

     "As they descend the hill like madmen running a race, he falls.  They
laugh and pick him up again.  His face is bleeding and covered with dust, but
he cannot touch it; thereupon they laugh again.  They bring him into the
village; all the village runs to look; they take him past the mill, and up to
the prison; all the village sees the prison gate open in the darkness of the
night, and swallow him - like this!"

     He opened his mouth as wide as he could, and shut it with a sounding
snap of his teeth.  Observant of his unwillingness to mar the effect by
opening it again, Defarge said, "Go on, Jacques."

     "All the village," pursued the mender of roads, on tiptoe and in a low
voice, "withdraws; all the village whispers by the fountain; all the village
sleeps; all the village dreams of that unhappy one, within the locks and bars
of the prison on the crag, and never to come out of it, except to perish.  In
the morning, with my tools upon my shoulder, eating my morsel of black bread
as I go, I make a circuit by the prison, on my way to my work.  There I see
him, high up, behind the bars of a lofty iron cage, bloody and dusty as last
night, looking through.  He has no hand free, to wave to me; I dare not call
to him; he regards me like a dead man."

     Defarge and the three glanced darkly at one another.  The looks of all
of them were dark, repressed, and revengeful, as they listened to the
countryman's story; the manner of all of them, while it was secret, was
authoritative too.  They had the air of a rough tribunal; Jacques One and Two
sitting on the old pallet-bed, each with his chin resting on his hand, and
his eyes intent on the road-mender; Jacques Three, equally intent, on one
knee behind them, with his agitated hand always gliding over the network of
fine nerves about his mouth and nose; Defarge standing between them and the
narrator, whom he had stationed in the light of the window, by turns looking
from him to them, and from them to him.

     "Go on, Jacques," said Defarge.

     "He remains up there in his iron cage some days.  The village looks at
him by stealth, for it is afraid.  But it always looks up, from a distance,
at the prison on the crag; and in the evening, when the work of the day is
achieved and it assembles to gossip at the fountain, all faces are turned
towards the prison.  Formerly, they were turned towards the posting-house;
now, they are turned towards the prison.  They whisper at the fountain, that
although condemned to death he will not be executed; they say that petitions
have been presented in Paris, showing that he was enraged and made mad by the
death of his child; they say that a petition has been presented to the King
himself.  What do I know?  It is possible.  Perhaps yes, perhaps no."

     "Listen then, Jacques," Number One of that name sternly interposed.
"Know that a petition was presented to the King and Queen.  All here,
yourself excepted, saw the King take it, in his carriage in the street,
sitting beside the Queen.  It is Defarge whom you see here, who, at the
hazard of his life, darted out before the horses, with the petition in his
hand."

     "And once again listen, Jacques!" said the kneeling Number Three: his
fingers ever wandering over and over those fine nerves, with a strikingly
greedy air, as if he hungered for something - that was neither food nor
drink; "the guard, horse and foot, surrounded the petitioner, and struck him
blows.  You hear?"

     "I hear, messieurs."

     "Go on then," said Defarge.

     "Again; on the other hand, they whisper at the fountain," resumed the
countryman, "that he is brought down into our country to be executed on the
spot, and that he will very certainly be executed.  They even whisper that
because he has slain Monseigneur, and because Monseigneur was the father of
his tenants - serfs - what you will - he will be executed as a parricide.
One old man says at the fountain, that his right hand, armed with the knife,
will be burnt off before his face; that, into wounds which will be made in
his arms, his breast, and his legs, there will be poured boiling oil, melted
lead, hot resin, wax, and sulphur; finally, that he will be torn limb from
limb by four strong horses.  That old man says, all this was actually done to
a prisoner who made an attempt on the life of the late King, Louis Fifteen.
But how do I know if he lies?  I am not a scholar."

     "Listen once again then, Jacques!" said the man with the restless hand
and the craving air.  "The name of that prisoner was Damiens, and it was all
done in open day, in the open streets of this city of Paris; and nothing was
more noticed in the vast concourse that saw it done, than the crowd of ladies
of quality and fashion, who were full of eager attention to the last - to the
last, Jacques, prolonged until nightfall, when he had lost two legs and an
arm, and still breathed!  And it was done - why, how old are you?"

     "Thirty-five," said the mender of roads, who looked sixty.

     "It was done when you were more than ten years old; you might have seen
it."

     "Enough!" said Defarge, with grim impatience.  "Long live the Devil!  Go
on."

     "Well!  Some whisper this, some whisper that; they speak of nothing
else; even the fountain appears to fall to that tune.  At length, on Sunday
night when all the village is asleep, come soldiers, winding down from the
prison, and their guns ring on the stones of the little street.  Workmen dig,
workmen hammer, soldiers laugh and sing; in the morning, by the fountain,
there is 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 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 the 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 arise 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 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 lady might pretend next; and he
felt assured that if she should take it 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
Kingand 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 intoxication, 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, court-yards, 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 demonstration; 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."

     "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 feathers; would you not?"

     "It is true, madame."

     "You have seen both dolls and birds to-day," said Madame Defarge, with a
wave of her hand towards the place where they had last been apparent; "now, go
home!"