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Notwithstanding Miss Pross’s denial of her own
imagination, there was a perception of the pain of being
monotonously haunted by one sad idea, in her repetition
of the phrase, walking up and down, which testified to her
possessing such a thing.
The corner has been mentioned as a wonderful corner
for echoes; it had begun to echo so resoundingly to the
tread of coming feet, that it seemed as though the very
mention of that weary pacing to and fro had set it going.
‘Here they are!’ said Miss Pross, rising to break up the
conference; ‘and now we shall have hundreds of people
pretty soon!’
It was such a curious corner in its acoustical properties,
such a peculiar Ear of a place, that as Mr. Lorry stood at
the open window, looking for the father and daughter
whose steps he heard, he fancied they would never
approach. Not only would the echoes die away, as though
the steps had gone
; but, echoes of other steps that never
came would be heard in their stead, and would die away
for good when they seemed close at hand. However,
father and daughter did at last appear, and Miss Pross was
ready at the street door to receive them.
Miss Pross was a pleasant sight, albeit wild, and red, and
grim, taking off her darling’s bonnet when she came upeBook
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stairs, and touching it up with the ends of her
handkerchief, and blowing the dust off it, and folding her
mantle ready for laying by, and smoothing her rich hair
with as much pride as she could possibly have taken in her
own hair if she had been the vainest and handsomest of
women. Her darling was a pleasant sight too, embracing
her and thanking her, and protesting against her taking so
much trouble for her—which last she only dared to do
playfully, or Miss Pross, sorely hurt, would have retired to
her own chamber and cried. The Doctor was a pleasant
sight too, looking on at them, and telling Miss Pross how
she spoilt Lucie, in accents and with eyes that had as much
spoiling in them as Miss Pross had, and would have had
more if it were possible. Mr. Lorry was a pleasant sight
too, beaming at all this in his little wig, and thanking his
bachelor stars for having lighted him in his declining years
to a Home. But, no Hundreds of people came to see the
sights, and Mr. Lorry looked in vain for the fulfilment of
Miss Pross’s prediction.
Dinner-time, and still no Hundreds of people. In the
arrangements of the little household, Miss Pross took
charge of the lower regions, and always acquitted herself
marvellously. Her dinners, of a very modest quality, were
so well cooked and so well served, and so neat in their
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contrivances, half English and half French, that nothing
could be better. Miss Pross’s friendship being of the
thoroughly practical kind, she had ravaged Soho and the
adjacent provinces, in search of impoverished French,
who, tempted by shillings and half- crowns, would impart
culinary mysteries to her. From these decayed sons and
daughters of Gaul, she had acquired such wonderful arts,
that the woman and girl who formed the staff of domestics
regarded her as quite a Sorceress, or Cinderella’s
Godmother: who would send out for a fowl, a rabbit, a
vegetable or two from the garden, and change them into
anything she pleased.
On Sundays, Miss Pross dined at the Doctor’s table, but
on other days persisted in taking her meals at unknown
periods, either in the lower regions, or in her own room
on the second floor—a blue chamber, to which no one
but her Ladybird ever gained admittance. On this
occasion, Miss Pross, responding to Ladybird’s pleasant
face and pleasant efforts to please her, unbent exceedingly;
so the dinner was very pleasant, too.
It was an oppressive day, and, after dinner, Lucie
proposed that the wine should be carried out under the
plane-tree, and they should sit there in the air. As
everything turned upon her, and revolved about her, they
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went out under the plane-tree, and she carried the wine
down for the special benefit of Mr. Lorry. She had
installed herself, some time before, as Mr. Lorry’s cupbearer;
and while they sat under the plane-tree, talking,
she kept his glass replenished. Mysterious backs and ends
of houses peeped at them as they talked, and the planetree
whispered to them in its own way above their heads.
Still, the Hundreds of people did not present
themselves. Mr. Darnay presented himself while they were
sitting under the plane-tree, but he was only One.
Doctor Manette received him kindly, and so did Lucie.
But, Miss Pross suddenly became afflicted with a twitching
in the head and body, and retired into the house. She was
not unfrequently the victim of this disorder, and she called
it, in familiar conversation, ‘a fit of the jerks.’
The Doctor was in his best condition, and looked
specially young. The resemblance between him and Lucie
was very strong at such times, and as they sat side by side,
she leaning on his shoulder, and he resting his arm on the
back of her chair, it was very agreeable to trace the
likeness.
He had been talking all day, on many subjects, and
with unusual vivacity. ‘Pray, Doctor Manette,’ said Mr.
Darnay, as they sat under the plane-tree—and he said it in
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the natural pursuit of the topic in hand, which happened
to be the old buildings of London—‘have you seen much
of the Tower?’
‘Lucie and I have been there; but only casually. We
have seen enough of it, to know that it teems with
interest; little more.’
‘I have been there, as you remember,’ said Darnay,
with a smile, though reddening a little angrily, ‘in another
character, and not in a character that gives facilities for
seeing much of it. They told me a curious thing when I
was there.’
‘What was that?’ Lucie asked.
‘In making some alterations, the workmen came upon
an old dungeon, which had been, for many years, built up
and forgotten. Every stone of its inner wall was covered by
inscriptions which had been carved by prisoners—dates,
names, complaints, and prayers. Upon a corner stone in an
angle of the wall, one prisoner, who seemed to have gone
to execution, had cut as his last work, three letters. They
were done with some very poor instrument, and
hurriedly, with an unsteady hand. At first, they were read
as D. I. C.; but, on being more carefully examined, the
last letter was found to be G. There was no record or
legend of any prisoner with those initials, and many
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fruitless guesses were made what the name could have
been. At length, it was suggested that the letters were not
initials, but the complete word, DiG. The floor was
examined very carefully under the inscription, and, in the
earth beneath a stone, or tile, or some fragment of paving,
were found the ashes of a paper, mingled with the ashes of
a small leathern case or bag. What the unknown prisoner
had written will never be read, but he had written
something, and hidden it away to keep it from the gaoler.’
‘My father,’ exclaimed Lucie, ‘you are ill!’
He had suddenly started up, with his hand to his head.
His manner and his look quite terrified them all.
‘No, my dear, not ill. There are large drops of rain
falling, and they made me start. We had better go in.’
He recovered himself almost instantly. Rain was really
falling in large drops, and he showed the back of his hand
with rain-drops on it. But, he said not a single word in
reference to the discovery that had been told of, and, as
they went into the house, the business eye of Mr. Lorry
either detected, or fancied it detected, on his face, as it
turned towards Charles Darnay, the same singular look
that had been upon it when it turned towards him in the
passages of the Court House.
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He recovered himself so quickly, however, that Mr.
Lorry had doubts of his business eye. The arm of the
golden giant in the hall was not more steady than he was,
when he stopped under it to remark to them that he was
not yet proof against slight surprises (if he ever would be),
and that the rain had startled him.
Tea-time, and Miss Pross making tea, with another fit
of the jerks upon her, and yet no Hundreds of people. Mr.
Carton had lounged in, but he made only Two.
The night was so very sultry, that although they sat
with doors and windows open, they were overpowered by
heat. When the tea-table was done with, they all moved
to one of the windows, and looked out into the heavy
twilight. Lucie sat by her father; Darnay sat beside her;
Carton leaned against a window. The curtains were long
and white, and some of the thunder-gusts that whirled
into the corner, caught them up to the ceiling, and waved
them like spectral wings.
‘The rain-drops are still falling, large, heavy, and few,’
said Doctor Manette. ‘It comes slowly.’
‘It comes surely,’ said Carton.
They spoke low, as people watching and waiting
mostly do; as people in a dark room, watching and waiting
for Lightning, always do.
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There was a great hurry in the streets of people
speeding away to get shelter before the storm broke; the
wonderful corner for echoes resounded with the echoes of
footsteps coming and going, yet not a footstep was there.
‘A multitude of people, and yet a solitude!’ said Darnay,
when they had listened for a while.
‘Is it not impressive, Mr. Darnay?’ asked Lucie.
‘Sometimes, I have sat here of an evening, until I have
fancied—but even the shade of a foolish fancy makes me
shudder to-night, when all is so black and solemn—‘
‘Let us shudder too. We may know what it is.’
‘It will seem nothing to you. Such whims are only
impressive as we originate them, I think; they are not to
be communicated. I have sometimes sat alone here of an
evening, listening, until I have made the echoes out to be
the echoes of all the footsteps that are coming by-and-bye
into our lives.’
‘There is a great crowd coming one day into our lives,
if that be so,’ Sydney Carton struck in, in his moody way.
The footsteps were incessant, and the hurry of them
became more and more rapid. The corner echoed and reechoed
with the tread of feet; some, as it seemed, under
the windows; some, as it seemed, in the room; some
coming, some going, some breaking off, some stopping
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altogether; all in the distant streets, and not one within
sight.
‘Are all these footsteps destined to come to all of us,
Miss Manette, or are we to divide them among us?’
‘I don’t know, Mr. Darnay; I told you it was a foolish
fancy, but you asked for it. When I have yielded myself to
it, I have been alone, and then I have imagined them the
footsteps of the people who are to come into my life, and
my father’s.’
‘I take them into mine!’ said Carton. ‘I ask no questions
and make no stipulations. There is a great crowd bearing
down upon us, Miss Manette, and I see them—by the
Lightning.’ He added the last words, after there had been a
vivid flash which had shown him lounging in the window.
‘And I hear them!’ he added again, after a peal of
thunder. ‘Here they come, fast, fierce, and furious!’
It was the rush and roar of rain that he typified, and it
stopped him, for no voice could be heard in it. A
memorable storm of thunder and lightning broke with
that sweep of water, and there was not a moment’s
interval in crash, and fire, and rain, until after the moon
rose at midnight.
The great bell of Saint Paul’s was striking one in the
cleared air, when Mr. Lorry, escorted by Jerry, highA
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booted and bearing a lantern, set forth on his returnpassage
to Clerkenwell. There were solitary patches of
road on the way between Soho and Clerkenwell, and Mr.
Lorry, mindful of foot-pads, always retained Jerry for this
service: though it was usually performed a good two hours
earlier.
‘What a night it has been! Almost a night, Jerry,’ said
Mr. Lorry, ‘to bring the dead out of their graves.’
‘I never see the night myself, master—nor yet I don’t
expect to— what would do that,’ answered Jerry.
‘Good night, Mr. Carton,’ said the man of business.
‘Good night, Mr. Darnay. Shall we ever see such a night
again, together!’
Perhaps. Perhaps, see the great crowd of people with its
rush and roar, bearing down upon them, too.
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VII
Monseigneur in Town
Monseigneur, one of the great lords in power at the
Court, held his fortnightly reception in his grand hotel in
Paris. Monseigneur was in his inner room, his sanctuary of
sanctuaries, the Holiest of Holiests to the crowd of
worshippers in the suite of rooms without. Monseigneur
was about to take his chocolate. Monseigneur could
swallow a great many things with ease, and was by some
few sullen minds supposed to be rather rapidly swallowing
France; but, his morning’s chocolate could not so much as
get into the throat of Monseigneur, without the aid of
four strong men besides the Cook.
Yes. It took four men, all four ablaze with gorgeous
decoration, and the Chief of them unable to exist with
fewer than two gold watches in his pocket, emulative of
the noble and chaste fashion set by Monseigneur, to
conduct the happy chocolate to Monseigneur’s lips. One
lacquey carried the chocolate-pot into the sacred presence;
a second, milled and frothed the chocolate with the little
instrument he bore for that function; a third, presented the
favoured napkin; a fourth (he of the two gold watches),
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poured the chocolate out. It was impossible for
Monseigneur to dispense with one of these attendants on
the chocolate and hold his high place under the admiring
Heavens. Deep would have been the blot upon his
escutcheon if his chocolate had been ignobly waited on by
only three men; he must have died of two.
Monseigneur had been out at a little supper last night,
where the Comedy and the Grand Opera were
charmingly represented. Monseigneur was out at a little
supper most nights, with fascinating company. So polite
and so impressible was Monseigneur, that the Comedy and
the Grand Opera had far more influence with him in the
tiresome articles of state affairs and state secrets, than the
needs of all France. A happy circumstance for France, as
the like always is for all countries similarly favoured!—
always was for England (by way of example), in the
regretted days of the merry Stuart who sold it.
Monseigneur had one truly noble idea of general public
business, which was, to let everything go on in its own
way; of particular public business, Monseigneur had the
other truly noble idea that it must all go his way—tend to
his own power and pocket. Of his pleasures, general and
particular, Monseigneur had the other truly noble idea,
that the world was made for them. The text of his order
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(altered from the original by only a pronoun, which is not
much) ran: ‘The earth and the fulness thereof are mine,
saith Monseigneur.’
Yet, Monseigneur had slowly found that vulgar
embarrassments crept into his affairs, both private and
public; and he had, as to both classes of affairs, allied
himself perforce with a Farmer-General. As to finances
public, because Monseigneur could not make anything at
all of them, and must consequently let them out to
somebody who could; as to finances private, because
Farmer-Generals were rich, and Monseigneur, after
generations of great luxury and expense, was growing
poor. Hence Monseigneur had taken his sister from a
convent, while there was yet time to ward off the
impending veil, the cheapest garment she could wear, and
had bestowed her as a prize upon a very rich Farmer-
General, poor in family. Which Farmer-General, carrying
an appropriate cane with a golden apple on the top of it,
was now among the company in the outer rooms, much
prostrated before by mankind—always excepting superior
mankind of the blood of Monseigneur, who, his own wife
included, looked down upon him with the loftiest
contempt.
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A sumptuous man was the Farmer-General. Thirty
horses stood in his stables, twenty-four male domestics sat
in his halls, six body-women waited on his wife. As one
who pretended to do nothing but plunder and forage
where he could, the Farmer-General—howsoever his
matrimonial relations conduced to social morality—was at
least the greatest reality among the personages who
attended at the hotel of Monseigneur that day.
For, the rooms, though a beautiful scene to look at, and
adorned with every device of decoration that the taste and
skill of the time could achieve, were, in truth, not a sound
business; considered with any reference to the scarecrows
in the rags and nightcaps elsewhere (and not so far off,
either, but that the watching towers of Notre Dame,
almost equidistant from the two extremes, could see them
both), they would have been an exceedingly
uncomfortable business—if that could have been
anybody’s business, at the house of Monseigneur. Military
officers destitute of military knowledge; naval officers with
no idea of a ship; civil officers without a notion of affairs;
brazen ecclesiastics, of the worst world worldly, with
sensual eyes, loose tongues, and looser lives; all totally
unfit for their several callings, all lying horribly in
pretending to belong to them, but all nearly or remotely
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of the order of Monseigneur, and therefore foisted on all
public employments from which anything was to be got;
these were to be told off by the score and the score.
People not immediately connected with Monseigneur or
the State, yet equally unconnected with anything that was
real, or with lives passed in travelling by any straight road
to any true earthly end, were no less abundant. Doctors
who made great fortunes out of dainty remedies for
imaginary disorders that never existed, smiled upon their
courtly patients in the ante-chambers of Monseigneur.
Projectors who had discovered every kind of remedy for
the little evils with which the State was touched, except
the remedy of setting to work in earnest to root out a
single sin, poured their distracting babble into any ears
they could lay hold of, at the reception of Monseigneur.
Unbelieving Philosophers who were remodelling the
world with words, and making card-towers of 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
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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
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
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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; these golden fetters rang like precious
little bells; and what with that ringing, and with the rustle
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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.
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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 a wave of the hand on
another, 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.
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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 of the face made, it was a handsome face, and a
remarkable one.
Its owner went downstairs into the courtyard, got into
his 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,
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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 through 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.
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‘What has gone wrong?’ said Monsieur, calmly looking
out.
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
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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 heads craned forward that all the eyes might look
down at it 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?’
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‘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 broke 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 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
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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
bidden himself away with it, when the women who had
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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 with the steadfastness
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 Fancy Ball was lighted up at supper, all things
ran their course.
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VIII
Monseigneur in the Country
A beautiful 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.’
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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, 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 sips 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
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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 postilions’ 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 Frenchmen
an 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
drooped before Monseigneur of the Court—only the
difference was, that these faces drooped merely to suffer
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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.’
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‘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 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!’
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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 to-night, 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. 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
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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 dun distance.
At the steepest point of the hill there was a little burialground,
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.’
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With an exclamation of impatience, but with his
unchangeable face, Monseigneur looked out.
‘How, then! What is it? Always petitions!’
‘Monseigneur. For the love of the great God! My
husband, the forester.’
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