came along, which stirred and 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
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A Tale of Two Cities
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 a 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
courtyard, out of the courtyard up a steep staircase, out of the
staircase into a garret—formerly the garret where a white-haired
man sat on a low bench, stooping forward and very busy, making
shoes.
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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 Monsieur Defarge’s not unreasonable reply,
“at the commencement.”
“I saw him then, messieurs,” began the mender of roads, “a
year ago this running summer, underneath the carriage of the
Marquis, hanging by the chain. Be hold 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 hanged 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?
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A Tale of Two Cities
“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 hillside, 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,
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A Tale of Two Cities
where any spectacle is well 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 hillside 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 it 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
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A Tale of Two Cities
sees the prison gate open in the darkness of the night—and
swallow him—like this!”
He opened his mouth 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
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A Tale of Two Cities
looks at him by stealth, for it is afraid. But 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 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
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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
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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
