Babel to scale the skies with, talked with Unbelieving Chemists
who had an eye on the transmutation of metals, at this wonderful
gathering accumulated by Monseigneur. Exquisite gentlemen of
the finest breeding, which was at that remarkable time—and has
been since—to be known by its fruits of indifference to every
natural subject of human interest, were in the most exemplary
state of exhaustion, at the hotel of Monseigneur. Such homes had
these various notabilities left behind them in the fine world of
Paris, that the spies among the assembled devotees of
Monseigneur—forming a goodly half of the polite company—
would have found it hard to discover among the angels of that
sphere one solitary wife, who, in her manners and appearance,
owned to being a Mother. Indeed, except for the mere act of
bringing a troublesome creature into this world—which does not
go far towards the realisation of the name of mother—there was
no such thing known to the fashion. Peasant women kept the
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unfashionable babies close, and brought them up, and charming
grandmammas of sixty dressed and supped as at twenty.
The leprosy of unreality disfigured every human creature in
attendance upon Monseigneur. In the outermost room were half a
dozen exceptional people who had had, for a few years, some
vague misgiving in them that things in general were going rather
wrong. As a promising way of setting them right, half of the half-
dozen had become members of a fantastic sect of Convulsionists,
and were even then considering within themselves whether they
should foam, rage, roar, and turn cataleptic on the spot—thereby
setting up a highly intelligible finger-post to the Future, for
Monseigneur’s guidance. Besides these Dervishes, were other
three who had rushed into another sect, which mended matters
with a jargon about “the Centre of Truth:” holding that Man had
got out of the Centre of Truth—which did not need much
demonstration—but had not got out of the Circumference, and
that he was to be kept from flying out of the Circumference, and
was even to be shoved back into the Centre, by fasting and seeing
of spirits. Among these, accordingly, much discoursing with spirits
went on—and it did a world of good which never became manifest.
But, the comfort was, that all the company at the grand hotel of
Monseigneur were perfectly dressed. If the Day of Judgment had
only been ascertained to be a dress day, everybody there would
have been eternally correct. Such frizzling and powdering and
sticking up of hair, such delicate complexions artificially preserved
and mended, such gallant swords to look at, and such delicate
honour to the sense of smell, would surely keep anything going,
for ever and ever. The exquisite gentlemen of the finest breeding
wore little pendent trinkets that chinked as they languidly moved;
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these golden fetters rang like precious little bells; and what with
that ringing, and with the rustle of silk and brocade and fine linen,
there was a flutter in the air that fanned Saint Antoine and his
devouring hunger far away.
Dress was the one unfailing talisman and charm used for
keeping all things in their places. Everybody was dressed for a
Fancy Ball that was never to leave off. From the Palace of the
Tuileries, through Monseigneur and the whole Court, through the
Chambers, the Tribunals of Justice, and all society (except the
scarecrows), the Fancy Ball descended to the Common
Executioner: who, in pursuance of the charm, was required to
officiate “frizzled, powdered, in a gold-laced coat, pumps, and
white silk stockings.” At the gallows and the wheel—the axe was a
rarity—Monsieur Paris, as it was the episcopal mode among his
brother Professors of the provinces, Monsieur Orleans, and the
rest, to call him, presided in this dainty dress. And who among the
company at Monseigneur’s reception in that seventeen hundred
and eightieth year of Our Lord, could possibly doubt, that a system
rooted in a frizzled hangman, powdered, gold-laced, pumped, and
white-silk stockinged, would see the very stars out!
Monseigneur having eased his four men of their burdens and
taken his chocolate, caused the doors of the Holiest of Holiests to
be thrown open, and issued forth. Then, what submission, what
cringing and fawning, what servility, what abject humiliation! As
to bowing down in body and spirit, nothing in that way was left for
Heaven—which may have been one among other reasons why the
worshippers of Monseigneur never troubled it.
Bestowing a word of promise here and a smile there, a whisper
on one happy slave and wave of the hand on another,
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Monseigneur affably passed through his rooms to the remote
region of the Circumference of Truth. There, Monseigneur turned,
and came back again, and so in due course of time got himself shut
up in his sanctuary by the chocolate sprites, and was seen no
more.
The show being over, the flutter in the air became quite a little
storm, and the precious little bells went ringing downstairs. There
was soon but one person left of all the crowd, and he, with his hat
under his arm and his snuff-box in his hand, slowly passed among
the mirrors on his way out.
“I devote you,” said this person, stopping at the last door on his
way, and turning in the direction of the sanctuary, “to the Devil!”
With that, he shook the snuff from his fingers as if he had
shaken the dust from his feet, and quietly walked downstairs.
He was a man of about sixty, handsomely dressed, haughty in
manner, and with a face like a fine mask. A face of a transparent
paleness; every feature in it clearly defined; one set expression on
it. The nose, beautifully formed otherwise, was very slightly
pinched at the top of each nostril. In those two compressions, or
dints, the only little change that the face ever showed, resided.
They persisted in changing colour sometimes, and they would be
occasionally dilated and contracted by something like a faint
pulsation: then, they gave a look of treachery, and cruelty, to the
whole countenance. Examined with attention, its capacity of
helping such a look was to be found in the line of the mouth, and
the lines of the orbits of the eyes, being much too horizontal and
thin; still, in the effect the face made, it was a handsome face, and
a remarkable one.
Its owner went downstairs into the courtyard, got into his
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carriage, and drove away. Not many people had talked with him at
the reception; he had stood in a little space apart, and
Monseigneur might have been warmer in his manner. It appeared
under the circumstances, rather agreeable to him to see the
common people dispersed before his horses, and often barely
escaping from being run down. His man drove as if he were
charging an enemy, and the furious recklessness of the man
brought no check into the face, or to the lips, of the master. The
complaint had sometimes made itself audible, even in that deaf
city and dumb age, that, in the narrow streets without footways,
the fierce patrician custom of hard driving endangered and
maimed the mere vulgar in a barbarous manner. But few cared
enough for that to think of it a second time, and, in this matter, as
in all others, the common wretches were left to get out of their
difficulties as they could.
With a wild rattle and clatter, and an inhuman abandonment of
consideration not easy to be understood in these days, the carriage
dashed though the streets and swept round corners, with women
screaming before it, and men clutching each other and clutching
children out of its way. At last, swooping at a street corner by a
fountain, one of its wheels came to a sickening little jolt, and there
was a loud cry from a number of voices, and the horses reared and
plunged.
But for the latter inconvenience, the carriage probably would
not have stopped; carriages were often known to drive on, and
leave their wounded behind, and why not? But the frightened
valet had got down in a hurry, and there were twenty hands at the
horses’ bridles.
“What has gone wrong?” said Monsieur, calmly looking out.
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A tall man in a nightcap had caught up a bundle from among
the feet of the horses, and had laid it on the basement of the
fountain, and was down in the mud and wet, howling over it like a
wild animal.
“Pardon, Monsieur the Marquis!” said a ragged and submissive
man, “it is a child.”
“Why does he make that abominable noise? Is it his child?”
“Excuse me, Monsieur the Marquis—it is a pity—yes.”
The fountain was a little removed; for the street opened, where
it was, into a space some ten or twelve yards square. As the tall
man suddenly got up from the ground, and came running at the
carriage, Monsieur the Marquis clapped his hand for an instant on
his sword-hilt.
“Killed!” shrieked the man, in wild desperation, extending both
arms at their length above his head, and staring at him. “Dead!”
The people closed round, and looked at Monsieur the Marquis.
There was nothing revealed by the many eyes that looked at him
but watchfulness and eagerness; there was no visible menacing or
anger. Neither did the people say anything; after the first cry, they
had been silent, and they remained so. The voice of the submissive
man who had spoken, was flat and tame in its extreme submission.
Monsieur the Marquis ran his eyes over them all, as if they had
been mere rats come out of their holes.
He took out his purse.
“It is extraordinary to me,” said he, “that you people cannot
take care of yourselves and your children. One or the other of you
is for ever in the way. How do I know what injury you have done
my horses? See! Give him that.”
He threw out a gold coin for the valet to pick up, and all the
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heads craned forward that all the eyes might look down as it fell.
The tall man called out again with a most unearthly cry, “Dead!”
He was arrested by the quick arrival of another man, for whom
the rest made way. On seeing him, the miserable creature fell
upon his shoulder, sobbing and crying, and pointing to the
fountain, where some women were stooping over the motionless
bundle, and moving gently about it. They were as silent, however,
as the men.
“I know all, I know all,” said the last comer. “Be a brave man,
my Gaspard! It is better for the poor little plaything to die so, than
to live. It has died in a moment without pain. Could it have lived
an hour as happily?”
“You are a philosopher, you there,” said the Marquis, smiling.
“How do they call you?”
“They call me Defarge.”
“Of what trade?”
“Monsieur the Marquis, vendor of wine.”
“Pick up that, philosopher and vendor of wine,” said the
Marquis, throwing him another gold coin, “and spend it as you
will. The horses there; are they right?”
Without deigning to look at the assemblage a second time,
Monsieur the Marquis leaned back in his seat, and was just being
driven away with the air of a gentleman who had accidentally
broken some common thing, and had paid for it, and could afford
to pay for it; when his ease was suddenly disturbed by a coin flying
into his carriage, and ringing on its floor.
“Hold!” said Monsieur the Marquis. “Hold the horses! Who
threw that?”
He looked to the spot where Defarge the vendor of wine had
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stood, a moment before; but the wretched father was grovelling on
his face on the pavement in that spot, and the figure that stood
beside him was the figure of a dark stout woman, knitting.
“You dogs,” said the Marquis, but smoothly, and with an
unchanged front, except as to the spots on his nose: “I would ride
over any of you very willingly, and exterminate you from the earth.
If I knew which rascal threw at the carriage, and if that brigand
were sufficiently near it, he should be crushed under the wheels.”
So cowed was their condition, and so long and hard their
experience of what such a man could do to them, within the law
and beyond it, that not a voice, or a hand, or even an eye was
raised. Among the men, not one. But the woman who stood
knitting looked up steadily, and looked the Marquis in the face. It
was not for his dignity to notice it; his contemptuous eyes passed
over her, and over all the other rats; and he leaned back in his seat
again, and gave the word, “Go on!”
He was driven on, and other carriages came whirling by in
quick succession; the Minister, the State-Projector, the Farmer-
General, the Doctor, the Lawyer, the Ecclesiastic, the Grand
Opera, the Comedy, the whole Fancy Ball in a bright continuous
flow, came whirling by. The rats had crept out of their holes to
look on, and they remained looking on for hours; soldiers and
police often passing between them and the spectacle, and making
a barrier behind which they slunk, and through which they
peeped. The father had long ago taken up his bundle and hidden
himself away with it, when the women who had tended the bundle
while it lay on the base of the fountain, sat there watching the
running of the water and the rolling of the Fancy Ball—when the
one woman who had stood conspicuous, knitting, still knitted on
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with the steadiness of Fate. The water of the fountain ran, the
swift river ran, the day ran into evening, so much life in the city
ran into death according to rule, time and tide waited for no man,
the rats were sleeping close together in their dark holes again, the
