Fancy Ball was lighted up at supper, all things ran their courses.
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Chapter XIV
MONSEIGNEUR IN THE COUNTRY
Abeautiful landscape, with the corn bright in it, but not
abundant. Patches of poor rye where corn should have
been, patches of poor peas and beans, patches of most
coarse vegetable substitutes for wheat. On inanimate nature, as on
the men and women who cultivated it, a prevalent tendency
towards an appearance of vegetating unwillingly—a dejected
disposition to give up, and wither away.
Monsieur the Marquis in his travelling carriage (which might
have been lighter), conducted by four post-horses and two
postilions, fagged up a steep hill. A blush on the countenance of
Monsieur the Marquis was no impeachment of his high breeding;
it was not from within; it was occasioned by an external
circumstance beyond his control—the setting sun.
The sunset struck so brilliantly into the travelling carriage
when it gained the hill-top, that its occupant was steeped in
crimson. “It will die out,” said Monsieur the Marquis, glancing at
his hands, “directly.”
In effect, the sun was so low that it dipped at the moment.
When the heavy drag had been adjusted to the wheel, and the
carriage slid down hill, with a cinderous smell, in a cloud of dust,
the red glow departed quickly; the sun and the Marquis going
down together, there was no glow left when the drag was taken off.
But there remained a broken country, bold and open, a little
village at the bottom of the hill, a broad sweep and rise beyond it,
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a church-tower, a windmill, a forest for the chase, and a crag with
a fortress on it used as a prison. Round upon all these darkening
objects as the night drew on, the Marquis looked, with the air of
one who was coming near home.
The village had its one poor street, with its poor brewery, poor
tannery, poor tavern, poor stable-yard for relays of post-horses,
poor fountain, all usual poor appointments. It had its poor people
too. All its people were poor, and many of them were sitting at
their doors, shredding spare onions and the like for supper, while
many were at the fountain, washing leaves, and grasses, and any
such small yieldings of the earth that could be eaten. Expressive
signs of what made them poor, were not wanting; the tax for the
state, the tax for the church, the tax for the lord, tax local and tax
general, were to be paid here and to be paid there, according to
solemn inscription in the little village, until the wonder was, that
there was any village left unswallowed.
Few children were to be seen, and no dogs. As to the men and
women, their choice on earth was stated in the prospect—Life on
the lowest terms that could sustain it, down in the little village
under the mill; or captivity and Death in the dominant prison on
the crag.
Heralded by a courier in advance, and by the cracking of his
postilion’s whips, which twined snake-like about their heads in the
evening air, as if he came attended by the Furies, Monsieur the
Marquis drew up in his travelling carriage at the posting-house
gate. It was hard by the fountain, and the peasants suspended
their operations to look at him. He looked at them and saw in
them, without knowing it, the slow sure filing down of misery-
worn face and figure, that was to make the meagreness of
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Frenchmen and English superstition which should survive the
truth through the best part of a hundred years.
Monsieur the Marquis cast his eyes over the submissive faces
that drooped before him, as the like of himself had dropped before
Monseigneur of the Court—only the difference was, that these
faces drooped merely to suffer and not to propitiate—when a
grizzled mender of the roads joined the group.
“Bring me hither that fellow!” said the Marquis to the courier.
The fellow was brought, cap in hand, and the other fellows
closed round to look and listen, in the manner of the people at the
Paris fountain.
“I passed you on the road?”
“Monseigneur, it is true. I had the honour of being passed on
the road.”
“Coming up the hill, and at the top of the hill, both?”
“Monseigneur, it is true.”
“What did you look at so fixedly?”
“Monseigneur, I looked at the man.”
He stooped a little, and with his tattered blue cap pointed under
the carriage. All his fellows stooped to look under the carriage.
“What man, pig? And why look there?”
“Pardon, Monseigneur; he swung by the chain of the shoe—the
drag.”
“Who?” demanded the traveller.
“Monseigneur, the man.”
“May the Devil carry away these idiots! How do you call the
man? You know all the men of this part of the country. Who was
he?”
“Your clemency, Monseigneur! He was not of this part of the
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A Tale of Two Cities
country. Of all the days of my life, I never saw him.”
“Swinging by the chain? To be suffocated?”
“With your gracious permission, that was the wonder of it,
Monseigneur. His head hanging over—like this!”
He turned himself sideways to the carriage, and leaned back,
with his face thrown up to the sky, and his head hanging down;
then recovered himself, fumbled with his cap, and made a bow.
“What was he like?”
“Monseigneur, he was whiter than the miller. All covered with
dust, white as a spectre, tall as a spectre!”
The picture produced an immense sensation in the little crowd;
but all eyes, without comparing notes with other eyes, looked at
Monsieur the Marquis. Perhaps, to observe whether he had any
spectre on his conscience.
“Truly, you did well,” said the Marquis, felicitously sensible
that such vermin were not to ruffle him, “to see a thief
accompanying my carriage, and not open that great mouth of
yours. Bah! Put him aside, Monsieur Gabelle!”
Monsieur Gabelle was the Postmaster, and some other taxing
functionary united; he had come out with great obsequiousness to
assist at this examination, and had held the examined by the
drapery of his arm in an official manner.
“Bah! Go aside!” said Monsieur Gabelle.
“Lay hands on this stranger if he seeks to lodge in your village
tonight, and be sure that his business is honest, Gabelle.”
“Monseigneur, I am flattered to devote myself to your orders.”
“Did he run away, fellow?—Where is that Accursed?”
The accursed was already under the carriage with some half-
dozen particular friends, pointing out the chain with his blue cap.
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Some half-dozen other particular friends promptly hauled him
out, and presented him breathless to Monsieur the Marquis.
“Did the man run away, Dolt, when we stopped for the drag?”
“Monseigneur, he precipitated himself over the hillside, head
first, as a person plunges into the river.”
“See to it, Gabelle. Go on!”
The half-dozen who were peering at the chain were still among
the wheels, like sheep; the wheels turned so suddenly that they
were lucky to save their skins and bones; they had very little else
to save, or they might not have been so fortunate.
The burst with which the carriage started out of the village and
up the rise beyond, was soon checked by the steepness of the hill.
Gradually, it subsided to a foot pace, swinging and lumbering
upward among the many sweet scents of a summer night. The
postilions, with a thousand gossamer gnats circling about them in
lieu of the Furies, quietly mended the points to the lashes of their
whips; the valet walked by the horses; the courier was audible,
trotting on ahead into the dim distance.
At the steepest point of the hill there was a little burial-ground,
with a Cross and a new large figure of Our Saviour on it; it was a
poor figure in wood, done by some inexperienced rustic carver,
but he had studied the figure from the life—his own life, maybe—
for it was dreadfully spare and thin.
To this distressful emblem of a great distress that had long been
growing worse, and was not at its worst, a woman was kneeling.
She turned her head as the carriage came up to her, rose quickly,
and presented herself at the carriage-door.
“It is you, Monseigneur! Monseigneur, a petition.”
With an exclamation of impatience, but with his unchangeable
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face, Monseigneur looked out.
“How, then! What is it? Always petitions!”
“Monseigneur. For the love of the great God! My husband, the
forester.”
“What of your husband, the forester? Always the same with you
people. He cannot pay something?”
“He has paid all, Monseigneur. He is dead.”
“Well! He is quiet. Can I restore him to you?”
“Alas, no Monseigneur! But he lies yonder, under a little heap
of poor grass.”
“Well?”
“Monseigneur, there are so many little heaps of poor grass.”
“Again, well?”
She looked an old woman, but was young. Her manner was one
of passionate grief; by turns she clasped her veinous and knotted
hands together with wild energy, and laid one of them on the
carriage-door—tenderly, caressingly, as if it had been a human
breast, and could be expected to feel the appealing touch.
“Monseigneur, hear me! Monseigneur, hear my petition! My
husband died of want; so many die of want; so many more will die
of want.”
“Again, well? Can I feed them?”
“Monseigneur, the good God knows; but I don’t ask it. My
petition is, that a morsel of stone or wood, with my husband’s
name, may be placed over him to show where he lies. Otherwise,
the place will be quickly forgotten, it will never be found when I
am dead of the same malady. I shall be laid under some other heap
of poor grass. Monseigneur, they are so many, they increase so
fast, there is so much want. Monseigneur! Monseigneur!”
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The valet had put her away from the door, the carriage had
broken into a brisk trot, the postilions had quickened the pace, she
was left far behind, and Monseigneur, again escorted by the
Furies, was rapidly diminishing the league or two of distance that
remained between him and his chateau.
The sweet scents of the summer night rose all around him, and
rose, as the rain falls, impartially, on the rusty, ragged, and toilworn group at the fountain not far away; to whom the mender of
roads, with the aid of the blue cap without which he was nothing,
still enlarged upon his man like a spectre, as long as they could
bear it. By degrees, as they could bear no more, they dropped off
one by one, and lights twinkled in little casements; which lights, as
the casements darkened, and more stars came out, seemed to have
shot up into the sky instead of having been extinguished.
The shadow of a large high-roofed house, and of many
overhanging trees, was upon Monsieur the Marquis by that time;
and the shadow was exchanged for the light of a flambeau, as his
carriage stopped, and the great door of his chateau was opened to
him.
“Monsieur Charles, whom I expect; is he arrived from
England?”
“Monseigneur, not yet.”
Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
A Tale of Two Cities
Chapter XV
THE GORGON’S HEAD
It was a heavy mass of building, that chateau of Monsieur the
Marquis, with a large stone courtyard before it, and two stone
sweeps of staircase meeting in a stone terrace before the
principal door. A stony business altogether, with heavy stone
balustrades, and stone urns, and stone flowers, and stone faces of
men, and stone heads of lions, in all directions. As if the Gorgon’s
head had surveyed it, when it was finished, two centuries ago.
Upon the broad flight of shallow steps, Monsieur the Marquis,
flambeau preceded, went from his carriage, sufficiently disturbing
the darkness to elicit loud remonstrance from an owl in the roof of
the great pile of stable building away among the trees. All else was
so quiet, that the flambeau carried up the steps, and the other
flambeau held at the great door, burnt as if they were in a close
room of state, instead of being in the open night air. Other sound
than the owl’s voice there was none, save the falling of the
fountain into its stone basin; for, it was one of those dark nights
that hold their breath by the hour together, and then heave a long
low sigh, and hold their breath again.
The great door clanged behind him, and Monsieur the Marquis
crossed a hall grim with certain old boar-spears, swords, and
knives of the chase; grimmer with certain heavy riding-rods and
riding-whips, of which many a peasant, gone to his benefactor
Death, had felt the weight when his lord was angry.
Avoiding the larger rooms, which were dark and made fast for
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the night, Monsieur the Marquis, with his flambeau-bearer going
on before, went up the staircase to a door in a corridor. This
thrown open, admitted him to his own private apartment of three
rooms: his bedchamber and two others. High vaulted rooms with
cool uncarpeted floors, great dogs upon the hearths for the
burning of wood in winter time, and all luxuries befitting the state
of a marquis in a luxurious age and country. The fashion of the last
Louis but one, of the line that was never to break—the fourteenth
Louis—was conspicuous in their rich furniture; but, it was
diversified by many objects that were illustrations of old pages in
the history of France.
A supper-table was laid for two, in the third of the rooms; a
round room, in one of the chateau’s four extinguisher-topped
towers. A small lofty room, with its window wide open, and the
wooden jalousie-blinds closed, so that the dark night only showed
in slight horizontal lines of black, alternating with their broad
