XXII. The Sea Still Rises
Haggard Saint Antoine had had only one exultant week, in which to softenhis modicum of hard and bitter bread to such extent as he could, withthe relish of fraternal embraces and congratulations, when MadameDefarge sat at her counter, as usual, presiding over the customers.Madame Defarge wore no rose in her head, for the great brotherhood ofSpies had become, even in one short week, extremely chary of trustingthemselves to the saint's mercies. The lamps across his streets had aportentously elastic swing with them.
Madame Defarge, with her arms folded, sat in the morning light and heat,contemplating the wine-shop and the street. In both, there were severalknots of loungers, squalid and miserable, but now with a manifest senseof power enthroned on their distress. The raggedest nightcap, awry onthe wretchedest head, had this crooked significance in it: "I know howhard it has grown for me, the wearer of this, to support life in myself;but do you know how easy it has grown for me, the wearer of this, todestroy life in you?" Every lean bare arm, that had been without workbefore, had this work always ready for it now, that it could strike.The fingers of the knitting women were vicious, with the experience thatthey could tear. There was a change in the appearance of Saint Antoine;the image had been hammering into this for hundreds of years, and thelast finishing blows had told mightily on the expression.
Madame Defarge sat observing it, with such suppressed approval as wasto be desired in the leader of the Saint Antoine women. One of hersisterhood knitted beside her. The short, rather plump wife of a starvedgrocer, and the mother of two children withal, this lieutenant hadalready earned the complimentary name of The Vengeance.
"Hark!" said The Vengeance. "Listen, then! Who comes?"
As if a train of powder laid from the outermost bound of Saint AntoineQuarter to the wine-shop door, had been suddenly fired, a fast-spreadingmurmur came rushing along.
"It is Defarge," said madame. "Silence, patriots!"
Defarge came in breathless, pulled off a red cap he wore, and lookedaround him! "Listen, everywhere!" said madame again. "Listen to him!"Defarge stood, panting, against a background of eager eyes and openmouths, formed outside the door; all those within the wine-shop hadsprung to their feet.
"Say then, my husband. What is it?"
"News from the other world!"
"How, then?" cried madame, contemptuously. "The other world?"
"Does everybody here recall old Foulon, who told the famished peoplethat they might eat grass, and who died, and went to Hell?"
"Everybody!" from all throats.
"The news is of him. He is among us!"
"Among us!" from the universal throat again. "And dead?"
"Not dead! He feared us so much--and with reason--that he caused himselfto be represented as dead, and had a grand mock-funeral. But they havefound him alive, hiding in the country, and have brought him in. I haveseen him but now, on his way to the Hotel de Ville, a prisoner. I havesaid that he had reason to fear us. Say all! _Had_ he reason?"
Wretched old sinner of more than threescore years and ten, if he hadnever known it yet, he would have known it in his heart of hearts if hecould have heard the answering cry.
A moment of profound silence followed. Defarge and his wife lookedsteadfastly at one another. The Vengeance stooped, and the jar of a drumwas heard as she moved it at her feet behind the counter.
"Patriots!" said Defarge, in a determined voice, "are we ready?"
Instantly Madame Defarge's knife was in her girdle; the drum was beatingin the streets, as if it and a drummer had flown together by magic; andThe Vengeance, uttering terrific shrieks, and flinging her arms abouther head like all the forty Furies at once, was tearing from house tohouse, rousing the women.
The men were terrible, in the bloody-minded anger with which they lookedfrom windows, caught up what arms they had, and came pouring down intothe streets; but, the women were a sight to chill the boldest. Fromsuch household occupations as their bare poverty yielded, from theirchildren, from their aged and their sick crouching on the bare groundfamished and naked, they ran out with streaming hair, urging oneanother, and themselves, to madness with the wildest cries and actions.Villain Foulon taken, my sister! Old Foulon taken, my mother! MiscreantFoulon taken, my daughter! Then, a score of others ran into the midst ofthese, beating their breasts, tearing their hair, and screaming, Foulonalive! Foulon who told the starving people they might eat grass! Foulonwho told my old father that he might eat grass, when I had no breadto give him! Foulon who told my baby it might suck grass, when thesebreasts were dry with want! O mother of God, this Foulon! O Heaven oursuffering! Hear me, my dead baby and my withered father: I swear on myknees, on these stones, to avenge you on Foulon! Husbands, and brothers,and young men, Give us the blood of Foulon, Give us the head of Foulon,Give us the heart of Foulon, Give us the body and soul of Foulon, RendFoulon to pieces, and dig him into the ground, that grass may grow fromhim! With these cries, numbers of the women, lashed into blind frenzy,whirled about, striking and tearing at their own friends until theydropped into a passionate swoon, and were only saved by the menbelonging to them from being trampled under foot.
Nevertheless, not a moment was lost; not a moment! This Foulon was atthe Hotel de Ville, and might be loosed. Never, if Saint Antoine knewhis own sufferings, insults, and wrongs! Armed men and women flocked outof the Quarter so fast, and drew even these last dregs after them withsuch a force of suction, that within a quarter of an hour there was nota human creature in Saint Antoine's bosom but a few old crones and thewailing children.
No. They were all by that time choking the Hall of Examination wherethis old man, ugly and wicked, was, and overflowing into the adjacentopen space and streets. The Defarges, husband and wife, The Vengeance,and Jacques Three, were in the first press, and at no great distancefrom him in the Hall.
"See!" cried madame, pointing with her knife. "See the old villain boundwith ropes. That was well done to tie a bunch of grass upon his back.Ha, ha! That was well done. Let him eat it now!" Madame put her knifeunder her arm, and clapped her hands as at a play.
The people immediately behind Madame Defarge, explaining the cause ofher satisfaction to those behind them, and those again explaining toothers, and those to others, the neighbouring streets resounded with theclapping of hands. Similarly, during two or three hours of drawl,and the winnowing of many bushels of words, Madame Defarge's frequentexpressions of impatience were taken up, with marvellous quickness, ata distance: the more readily, because certain men who had by somewonderful exercise of agility climbed up the external architectureto look in from the windows, knew Madame Defarge well, and acted as atelegraph between her and the crowd outside the building.
At length the sun rose so high that it struck a kindly ray as of hope orprotection, directly down upon the old prisoner's head. The favour wastoo much to bear; in an instant the barrier of dust and chaff that hadstood surprisingly long, went to the winds, and Saint Antoine had gothim!
It was known directly, to the furthest confines of the crowd. Defargehad but sprung over a railing and a table, and folded the miserablewretch in a deadly embrace--Madame Defarge had but followed and turnedher hand in one of the ropes with which he was tied--The Vengeance andJacques Three were not yet up with them, and the men at the windowshad not yet swooped into the Hall, like birds of prey from their highperches--when the cry seemed to go up, all over the city, "Bring himout! Bring him to the lamp!"
Down, and up, and head foremost on the steps of the building; now, onhis knees; now, on his feet; now, on his back; dragged, and struck at,and stifled by the bunches of grass and straw that were thrust into hisface by hundreds of hands; torn, bruised, panting, bleeding, yet alwaysentreating and beseeching for mercy; now full of vehement agony ofaction, with a small clear space about him as the people drew oneanother back that they might see; now, a log of dead wood drawn througha forest of legs; he was hauled to the nearest street corner where oneof the fatal lamps swung, and there Madame Defarge let him go--as
a catmight have done to a mouse--and silently and composedly looked at himwhile they made ready, and while he besought her: the women passionatelyscreeching at him all the time, and the men sternly calling out to havehim killed with grass in his mouth. Once, he went aloft, and the ropebroke, and they caught him shrieking; twice, he went aloft, and the ropebroke, and they caught him shrieking; then, the rope was merciful, andheld him, and his head was soon upon a pike, with grass enough in themouth for all Saint Antoine to dance at the sight of.
Nor was this the end of the day's bad work, for Saint Antoine so shoutedand danced his angry blood up, that it boiled again, on hearing whenthe day closed in that the son-in-law of the despatched, another of thepeople's enemies and insulters, was coming into Paris under a guardfive hundred strong, in cavalry alone. Saint Antoine wrote his crimeson flaring sheets of paper, seized him--would have torn him out of thebreast of an army to bear Foulon company--set his head and heart onpikes, and carried the three spoils of the day, in Wolf-processionthrough the streets.
Not before dark night did the men and women come back to the children,wailing and breadless. Then, the miserable bakers' shops were beset bylong files of them, patiently waiting to buy bad bread; and whilethey waited with stomachs faint and empty, they beguiled the time byembracing one another on the triumphs of the day, and achieving themagain in gossip. Gradually, these strings of ragged people shortened andfrayed away; and then poor lights began to shine in high windows, andslender fires were made in the streets, at which neighbours cooked incommon, afterwards supping at their doors.
Scanty and insufficient suppers those, and innocent of meat, as ofmost other sauce to wretched bread. Yet, human fellowship infusedsome nourishment into the flinty viands, and struck some sparks ofcheerfulness out of them. Fathers and mothers who had had their fullshare in the worst of the day, played gently with their meagre children;and lovers, with such a world around them and before them, loved andhoped.
It was almost morning, when Defarge's wine-shop parted with its lastknot of customers, and Monsieur Defarge said to madame his wife, inhusky tones, while fastening the door:
"At last it is come, my dear!"
"Eh well!" returned madame. "Almost."
Saint Antoine slept, the Defarges slept: even The Vengeance slept withher starved grocer, and the drum was at rest. The drum's was theonly voice in Saint Antoine that blood and hurry had not changed. TheVengeance, as custodian of the drum, could have wakened him up and hadthe same speech out of him as before the Bastille fell, or old Foulonwas seized; not so with the hoarse tones of the men and women in SaintAntoine's bosom.
A Tale of Two Cities Page 28
