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Funerals had at all times a remarkable attraction for Mr.
Cruncher; he always pricked up his senses, and became
excited, when a funeral passed Tellson’s. Naturally,
therefore, a funeral with this uncommon attendance
excited him greatly, and he asked of the first man who ran
against him:
‘What is it, brother? What’s it about?’
‘I don’t know,’ said the man. ‘Spies! Yaha! Tst! Spies!’
He asked another man. ‘Who is it?’
‘I don’t know,’ returned the man, clapping his hands to
his mouth nevertheless, and vociferating in a surprising
heat and with the greatest ardour, ‘Spies! Yaha! Tst, tst!
Spi—ies!’
At length, a person better informed on the merits of the
case, tumbled against him, and from this person he learned
that the funeral was the funeral of one Roger Cly.
‘Was He a spy?’ asked Mr. Cruncher.
‘Old Bailey spy,’ returned his informant. ‘Yaha! Tst!
Yah! Old Bailey Spi—i—ies!’
‘Why, to be sure!’ exclaimed Jerry, recalling the Trial at
which he had assisted. ‘I’ve seen him. Dead, is he?’
‘Dead as mutton,’ returned the other, ‘and can’t be too
dead. Have ‘em out, there! Spies! Pull ‘em out, there!
Spies!’
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The idea was so acceptable in the prevalent absence of
any idea, that the crowd caught it up with eagerness, and
loudly repeating the suggestion to have ‘em out, and to
pull ‘em out, mobbed the two vehicles so closely that they
came to a stop. On the crowd’s opening the coach doors,
the one mourner scuffled out of himself and was in their
hands for a moment; but he was so alert, and made such
good use of his time, that in another moment he was
scouring away up a bye-street, after shedding his cloak,
hat, long hatband, white pocket-handkerchief, and other
symbolical tears.
These, the people tore to pieces and scattered far and
wide with great enjoyment, while the tradesmen hurriedly
shut up their shops; for a crowd in those times stopped at
nothing, and was a monster much dreaded. They had
already got the length of opening the hearse to take the
coffin out, when some brighter genius proposed instead,
its being escorted to its destination amidst general
rejoicing. Practical suggestions being much needed, this
suggestion, too, was received with acclamation, and the
coach was immediately filled with eight inside and a dozen
out, while as many people got on the roof of the hearse as
could by any exercise of ingenuity stick upon it. Among
the first of these volunteers was Jerry Cruncher himself,
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who modestly concealed his spiky head from the
observation of Tellson’s, in the further corner of the
mourning coach.
The officiating undertakers made some protest against
these changes in the ceremonies; but, the river being
alarmingly near, and several voices remarking on the
efficacy of cold immersion in bringing refractory members
of the profession to reason, the protest was faint and brief.
The remodelled procession started, with a chimney-sweep
driving the hearse—advised by the regular driver, who was
perched beside him, under close inspection, for the
purpose—and with a pieman, also attended by his cabinet
minister, driving the mourning coach. A bear-leader, a
popular street character of the time, was impressed as an
additional ornament, before the cavalcade had gone far
down the Strand; and his bear, who was black and very
mangy, gave quite an Undertaking air to that part of the
procession in which he walked.
Thus, with beer-drinking, pipe-smoking, song-roaring,
and infinite caricaturing of woe, the disorderly procession
went its way, recruiting at every step, and all the shops
shutting up before it. Its destination was the old church of
Saint Pancras, far off in the fields. It got there in course of
time; insisted on pouring into the burial-ground; finally,
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accomplished the interment of the deceased Roger Cly in
its own way, and highly to its own satisfaction.
The dead man disposed of, and the crowd being under
the necessity of providing some other entertainment for
itself, another brighter genius (or perhaps the same)
conceived the humour of impeaching casual passers-by, as
Old Bailey spies, and wreaking vengeance on them. Chase
was given to some scores of inoffensive persons who had
never been near the Old Bailey in their lives, in the
realisation of this fancy, and they were roughly hustled and
maltreated. The transition to the sport of windowbreaking,
and thence to the plundering of public-houses,
was easy and natural. At last, after several hours, when
sundry summer-houses had been pulled down, and some
area-railings had been torn up, to arm the more belligerent
spirits, a rumour got about that the Guards were coming.
Before this rumour, the crowd gradually melted away, and
perhaps the Guards came, and perhaps they never came,
and this was the usual progress of a mob.
Mr. Cruncher did not assist at the closing sports, but
had remained behind in the churchyard, to confer and
condole with the undertakers. The place had a soothing
influence on him. He procured a pipe from a
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neighbouring public-house, and smoked it, looking in at
the railings and maturely considering the spot.
‘Jerry,’ said Mr. Cruncher, apostrophising himself in his
usual way, ‘you see that there Cly that day, and you see
with your own eyes that he was a young ‘un and a straight
made ‘un.’
Having smoked his pipe out, and ruminated a little
longer, he turned himself about, that he might appear,
before the hour of closing, on his station at Tellson’s.
Whether his meditations on mortality had touched his
liver, or whether his general health had been previously at
all amiss, or whether he desired to show a little attention
to an eminent man, is not so much to the purpose, as that
he made a short call upon his medical adviser—a
distinguished surgeon—on his way back.
Young Jerry relieved his father with dutiful interest,
and reported No job in his absence. The bank closed, the
ancient clerks came out, the usual watch was set, and Mr.
Cruncher and his son went home to tea.
‘Now, I tell you where it is!’ said Mr. Cruncher to his
wife, on entering. ‘If, as a honest tradesman, my wenturs
goes wrong to-night, I shall make sure that you’ve been
praying again me, and I shall work you for it just the same
as if I seen you do it.’
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The dejected Mrs. Cruncher shook her head.
‘Why, you’re at it afore my face!’ said Mr. Cruncher,
with signs of angry apprehension.
‘I am saying nothing.’
‘Well, then; don’t meditate nothing. You might as well
flop as meditate. You may as well go again me one way as
another. Drop it altogether.’
‘Yes, Jerry.’
‘Yes, Jerry,’ repeated Mr. Cruncher sitting down to tea.
‘Ah! It IS yes, Jerry. That’s about it. You may say yes,
Jerry.’
Mr. Cruncher had no particular meaning in these sulky
corroborations, but made use of them, as people not
unfrequently do, to express general ironical dissatisfaction.
‘You and your yes, Jerry,’ said Mr. Cruncher, taking a
bite out of his bread-and-butter, and seeming to help it
down with a large invisible oyster out of his saucer. ‘Ah! I
think so. I believe you.’
‘You are going out to-night?’ asked his decent wife,
when he took another bite.
‘Yes, I am.’
‘May I go with you, father?’ asked his son, briskly.
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‘No, you mayn’t. I’m a going—as your mother
knows—a fishing. That’s where I’m going to. Going a
fishing.’
‘Your fishing-rod gets rayther rusty; don’t it, father?’
‘Never you mind.’
‘Shall you bring any fish home, father?’
‘If I don’t, you’ll have short commons, to-morrow,’
returned that gentleman, shaking his head; ‘that’s questions
enough for you; I ain’t a going out, till you’ve been long
abed.’
He devoted himself during the remainder of the
evening to keeping a most vigilant watch on Mrs.
Cruncher, and sullenly holding her in conversation that
she might be prevented from meditating any petitions to
his disadvantage. With this view, he urged his son to hold
her in conversation also, and led the unfortunate woman a
hard life by dwelling on any causes of complaint he could
bring against her, rather than he would leave her for a
moment to her own reflections. The devoutest person
could have rendered no greater homage to the efficacy of
an honest prayer than he did in this distrust of his wife. It
was as if a professed unbeliever in ghosts should be
frightened by a ghost story.
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‘And mind you!’ said Mr. Cruncher. ‘No games tomorrow!
If I, as a honest tradesman, succeed in providing
a jinte of meat or two, none of your not touching of it,
and sticking to bread. If I, as a honest tradesman, am able
to provide a little beer, none of your declaring on water.
When you go to Rome, do as Rome does. Rome will be
a ugly customer to you, if you don’t. I’m your Rome, you
know.’
Then he began grumbling again:
‘With your flying into the face of your own wittles and
drink! I don’t know how scarce you mayn’t make the
wittles and drink here, by your flopping tricks and your
unfeeling conduct. Look at your boy: he IS your’n, ain’t
he? He’s as thin as a lath. Do you call yourself a mother,
and not know that a mother’s first duty is to blow her boy
out?’
This touched Young Jerry on a tender place; who
adjured his mother to perform her first duty, and,
whatever else she did or neglected, above all things to lay
especial stress on the discharge of that maternal function so
affectingly and delicately indicated by his other parent.
Thus the evening wore away with the Cruncher
family, until Young Jerry was ordered to bed, and his
mother, laid under similar injunctions, obeyed them. Mr.
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Cruncher beguiled the earlier watches of the night with
solitary pipes, and did not start upon his excursion until
nearly one o’clock. Towards that small and ghostly hour,
he rose up from his chair, took a key out of his pocket,
opened a locked cupboard, and brought forth a sack, a
crowbar of convenient size, a rope and chain, and other
fishing tackle of that nature. Disposing these articles about
him in skilful manner, he bestowed a parting defiance on
Mrs. Cruncher, extinguished the light, and went out.
Young Jerry, who had only made a feint of undressing
when he went to bed, was not long after his father. Under
cover of the darkness he followed out of the room,
followed down the stairs, followed down the court,
followed out into the streets. He was in no uneasiness
concerning his getting into the house again, for it was full
of lodgers, and the door stood ajar all night.
Impelled by a laudable ambition to study the art and
mystery of his father’s honest calling, Young Jerry,
keeping as close to house fronts, walls, and doorways, as
his eyes were close to one another, held his honoured
parent in view. The honoured parent steering Northward,
had not gone far, when he was joined by another disciple
of Izaak Walton, and the two trudged on together.
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Within half an hour from the first starting, they were
beyond the winking lamps, and the more than winking
watchmen, and were out upon a lonely road. Another
fisherman was picked up here—and that so silently, that if
Young Jerry had been superstitious, he might have
supposed the second follower of the gentle craft to have,
all of a sudden, split himself into two.
The three went on, and Young Jerry went on, until the
three stopped under a bank overhanging the road. Upon
the top of the bank was a low brick wall, surmounted by
an iron railing. In the shadow of bank and wall the three
turned out of the road, and up a blind lane, of which the
wall—there, risen to some eight or ten feet high—formed
one side. Crouching down in a corner, peeping up the
lane, the next object that Young Jerry saw, was the form
of his honoured parent, pretty well defined against a
watery and clouded moon, nimbly scaling an iron gate. He
was soon over, and then the second fisherman got over,
and then the third. They all dropped softly on the ground
within the gate, and lay there a little—listening perhaps.
Then, they moved away on their hands and knees.
It was now Young Jerry’s turn to approach the gate:
which he did, holding his breath. Crouching down again
in a corner there, and looking in, he made out the three
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fishermen creeping through some rank grass! and all the
gravestones in the churchyard—it was a large churchyard
that they were in—looking on like ghosts in white, while
the church tower itself looked on like the ghost of a
monstrous giant. They did not creep far, before they
stopped and stood upright. And then they began to fish.
They fished with a spade, at first. Presently the
honoured parent appeared to be adjusting some instrument
like a great corkscrew. Whatever tools they worked with,
they worked hard, until the awful striking of the church
clock so terrified Young Jerry, that he made off, with his
hair as stiff as his father’s.
But, his long-cherished desire to know more about
these matters, not only stopped him in his running away,
but lured him back again. They were still fishing
perseveringly, when he peeped in at the gate for the
second time; but, now they seemed to have got a bite.
There was a screwing and complaining sound down
below, and their bent figures were strained, as if by a
weight. By slow degrees the weight broke away the earth
upon it, and came to the surface. Young Jerry very well
knew what it would be; but, when he saw it, and saw his
honoured parent about to wrench it open, he was so
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frightened, being new to the sight, that he made off again,
and never stopped until he had run a mile or more.
He would not have stopped then, for anything less
necessary than breath, it being a spectral sort of race that
he ran, and one highly desirable to get to the end of. He
had a strong idea that the coffin he had seen was running
after him; and, pictured as hopping on behind him, bolt
upright, upon its narrow end, always on the point of
overtaking him and hopping on at his side—perhaps
taking his arm— it was a pursuer to shun. It was an
inconsistent and ubiquitous fiend too, for, while it was
making the whole night behind him dreadful, he darted
out into the roadway to avoid dark alleys, fearful of its
coming hopping out of them like a dropsical boy’s-Kite
without tail and wings. It hid in doorways too, rubbing its
horrible shoulders against doors, and drawing them up to
its ears, as if it were laughing. It got into shadows on the
road, and lay cunningly on its back to trip him up. All this
time it was incessantly hopping on behind and gaining on
him, so that when the boy got to his own door he had
reason for being half dead. And even then it would not
leave him, but followed him upstairs with a bump on
every stair, scrambled into bed with him, and bumped
down, dead and heavy, on his breast when he fell asleep.
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From his oppressed slumber, Young Jerry in his closet
was awakened after daybreak and before sunrise, by the
presence of his father in the family room. Something had
gone wrong with him; at least, so Young Jerry inferred,
from the circumstance of his holding Mrs. Cruncher by
the ears, and knocking the back of her head against the
head-board of the bed.
‘I told you I would,’ said Mr. Cruncher, ‘and I did.’
‘Jerry, Jerry, Jerry!’ his wife implored.
‘You oppose yourself to the profit of the business,’ said
Jerry, ‘and me and my partners suffer. You was to honour
and obey; why the devil don’t you?’
‘I try to be a good wife, Jerry,’ the poor woman
protested, with tears.
‘Is it being a good wife to oppose your husband’s
business? Is it honouring your husband to dishonour his
business? Is it obeying your husband to disobey him on
the wital subject of his business?’
‘You hadn’t taken to the dreadful business then, Jerry.’
‘It’s enough for you,’ retorted Mr. Cruncher, ‘to be the
wife of a honest tradesman, and not to occupy your female
mind with calculations when he took to his trade or when
he didn’t. A honouring and obeying wife would let his
trade alone altogether. Call yourself a religious woman? If
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you’re a religious woman, give me a irreligious one! You
have no more nat’ral sense of duty than the bed of this
here Thames river has of a pile, and similarly it must be
knocked into you.’
The altercation was conducted in a low tone of voice,
and terminated in the honest tradesman’s kicking off his
clay-soiled boots, and lying down at his length on the
floor. After taking a timid peep at him lying on his back,
with his rusty hands under his head for a pillow, his son
lay down too, and fell asleep again.
There was no fish for breakfast, and not much of
anything else. Mr. Cruncher was out of spirits, and out of
temper, and kept an iron pot-lid by him as a projectile for
the correction of Mrs. Cruncher, in case he should
observe any symptoms of her saying Grace. He was
brushed and washed at the usual hour, and set off with his
son to pursue his ostensible calling.
Young Jerry, walking with the stool under his arm at
his father’s side along sunny and crowded Fleet-street, was
a very different Young Jerry from him of the previous
night, running home through darkness and solitude from
his grim pursuer. His cunning was fresh with the day, and
his qualms were gone with the night—in which particulars
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it is not improbable that he had compeers in Fleet-street
and the City of London, that fine morning.
‘Father,’ said Young Jerry, as they walked along: taking
care to keep at arm’s length and to have the stool well
between them: ‘what’s a Resurrection-Man?’
Mr. Cruncher came to a stop on the pavement before
he answered, ‘How should I know?’
‘I thought you knowed everything, father,’ said the
artless boy.
‘Hem! Well,’ returned Mr. Cruncher, going on again,
and lifting off his hat to give his spikes free play, ‘he’s a
tradesman.’
‘What’s his goods, father?’ asked the brisk Young Jerry.
‘His goods,’ said Mr. Cruncher, after turning it over in
his mind, ‘is a branch of Scientific goods.’
‘Persons’ bodies, ain’t it, father?’ asked the lively boy.
‘I believe it is something of that sort,’ said Mr.
Cruncher.
‘Oh, father, I should so like to be a Resurrection-Man
when I’m quite growed up!’
Mr. Cruncher was soothed, but shook his head in a
dubious and moral way. ‘It depends upon how you
dewelop your talents. Be careful to dewelop your talents,
and never to say no more than you can help to nobody,
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and there’s no telling at the present time what you may
not come to be fit for.’ As Young Jerry, thus encouraged,
went on a few yards in advance, to plant the stool in the
shadow of the Bar, Mr. Cruncher added to himself: ‘Jerry,
you honest tradesman, there’s hopes wot that boy will yet
be a blessing to you, and a recompense to you for his
mother!’
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XV
Knitting
There had been earlier drinking than usual in the wineshop
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, on
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
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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 kings 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
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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 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 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!’
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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. 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
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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!’
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‘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 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
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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 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
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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
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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.’
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‘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
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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
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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.
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‘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.
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‘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.’
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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
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expressly unconscious of him, and so particularly
determined not to perceive that his being there had any
connection 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 King and 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.’
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