A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations (Oprah's Book Club)

by Charles Dickens

  ‘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.

  ‘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 château, and all the race?’ inquired the first.

  ‘The château 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.’

  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 expressly unconscious of him, and so particularly determined not to perceive that his being there had any connexion 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.’

  ‘For instance—?’

  ‘For instance,’ returned Madame Defarge, composedly, ‘shrouds.’

  The man moved a little further away, as soon as he could, and the mender of roads fanned himself with his blue cap: feeling it mightily close and oppressive. If he needed a King and Queen to restore him, he was fortunate in having his remedy at hand; for, soon the large-faced King and the fair-faced Queen came in their golden coach, attended by the shining Bull’s Eye of their Court, a glittering multitude of laughing ladies and fine lords; and in jewels and silks and powder and splendour and elegantly spurning figures and handsomely disdainful faces of both sexes, the mender of roads bathed himself, so much to his temporary intoxication, that he cried Long live the King, Long live the Queen, Long live everybody and everything! as if he had never heard of ubiquitous Jacques in his time. Then, there were gardens, court-yards, terraces, fountains, green banks, more King and Queen, more Bull’s Eye, more lords and ladies, more Long live they all! until he absolutely wept with sentiment. During the whole of this scene, which lasted some three hours, he had plenty of shouting and weeping and sentimental company, and throughout Defarge held him by the collar, as if to restrain him from flying at the objects of his brief devotion and tearing them to pieces.

  ‘Bravo!’ said Defarge, clapping him on the back when it was over, like a patron; ‘you are a good boy!’

  The mender of roads was now coming to himself, and was mistrustful of having made a mistake in his late demonstrations; but no.

  ‘You are the fellow we want,’ said Defarge, in his ear; ‘you make these fools believe that it will last for ever. Then, they are the more insolent, and it is the nearer ended.’

  ‘Hey!’ cried the mender of roads, reflectively; ‘that’s true.’

  ‘These fools know nothing. While they despise your breath, and would stop it for ever and ever, in you or in a hundred like you rather than in one of their own horses or dogs, they only know what your breath tells them. Let it deceive them, then, a little longer; it cannot deceive them too much.’

  Madame Defarge looked superciliously at the client, and nodded in confirmation.

  ‘As to you,’ said she, ‘you would shout and shed tears for anything, if it made a show and a noise. Say! Would you not?’

  ‘Truly, madame, I think so. For the moment.’

  ‘If you were shown a great heap of dolls, and were set upon them to pluck them to pieces and despoil them for your own advantage, you would pick out the richest and gayest. Say! Would you not?’

  ‘Truly yes, madame.’

  ‘Yes. And if you were shown a flock of birds unable to fly, and were set upon them to strip them of their feathers for your own advantage, you would set upon the birds of the finest feathers; would you not?’

  ‘It is true, madame.’

  ‘You have seen both dolls and birds to-day,’ said Madame Defarge, with a wave of her hand towards the place where they had last been apparent; ‘now, go home!’

  [END OF INSTALMENT 14]

  CHAPTER 16

  Still Knitting

  Madame Defarge and monsieur her husband returned amicably to the bosom of Saint Antoine, while a speck in a blue cap toiled through the darkness, and through the dust, and down the weary miles of avenue by the wayside, slowly tending towards that point of the compass where the château of Monsieur the Marquis, now in his grave, listened to the whispering trees. Such ample leisure had the stone faces, now, for listening to the trees and to the fountain, that the few village scarecrows who, in their quest for herbs to eat and fragments of dead stick to burn, strayed within sight of the great stone court-yard and terrace staircase, had it borne in upon their starved fancy that the expression of the faces was altered. A rumour just lived in the village – had a faint and bare existence there, as its people had – that when the knife struck home, the faces changed, from faces of pride to faces of anger and pain; also, that when that dangling figure was hauled up forty feet above the fountain, they changed again, and bore a cruel look of being avenged, which they would henceforth bear for ever. In the stone face over the great window of the bed-chamber where the murder was done, two fine dints were pointed out in the s
culptured nose, which everybody recognised, and which nobody had seen of old; and on the scarce occasions when two or three ragged peasants emerged from the crowd to take a hurried peep at Monsieur the Marquis petrified, a skinny finger would not have pointed to it for a minute, before they all started away among the moss and leaves, like the more fortunate hares who could find a living there.

  Château and hut, stone face and dangling figure, the red stain on the stone floor and the pure water in the village well – thousands of acres of land – a whole province of France – all France itself – lay under the night sky, concentrated into a faint hair-breadth line. So does a whole world with all its greatnesses and littlenesses, lie in a twinkling star. And as mere human knowledge can split a ray of light and analyse the manner of its composition, so, sublimer intelligences may read in the feeble shining of this earth of ours, every thought and act, every vice and virtue, of every responsible creature on it.

  The Defarges, husband and wife, came lumbering under the starlight, in their public vehicle, to that gate of Paris whereunto their journey naturally tended. There was the usual stoppage at the barrier guard-house, and the usual lanterns came glancing forth for the usual examination and inquiry. Monsieur Defarge alighted: knowing one or two of the soldiery there, and one of the police. The latter he was intimate with, and affectionately embraced.

  When Saint Antoine had again enfolded the Defarges in his dusky wings, and they, having finally alighted near the Saint’s boundaries, were picking their way on foot through the black mud and offal of his streets, Madame Defarge spoke to her husband:

  ‘Say then, my friend; what did Jacques of the police tell thee?’

  ‘Very little to-night, but all he knows. There is another spy commissioned for our quarter. There may be many more, for all that he can say, but he knows of one.’

  ‘Eh well!’ said Madame Defarge, raising her eyebrows with a cool business air. ‘It is necessary to register him. How do they call that man?’

  ‘He is English.’

  ‘So much the better. His name?’

  ‘Barsad,’ said Defarge, making it French by pronunciation. But, he had been so careful to get it accurately, that he then spelt it with perfect correctness.

  ‘Barsad,’ repeated madame. ‘Good. Christian name?’

  ‘John.’

  ‘John Barsad,’ repeated madame, after murmuring it once to herself. ‘Good. His appearance; is it known?’

  ‘Age, about forty years; height, about five feet nine; black hair; complexion dark; generally, rather handsome visage; eyes dark, face thin, long, and sallow; nose aquiline, but not straight, having a peculiar inclination towards the left cheek; expression, therefore, sinister.’

  ‘Eh my faith. It is a portrait!’ said madame, laughing. ‘He shall be registered to-morrow.’

  They turned into the wine-shop, which was closed (for it was midnight), and where Madame Defarge immediately took her post at her desk, counted the small moneys that had been taken during her absence, examined the stock, went through the entries in the book, made other entries of her own, checked the serving man in every possible way, and finally dismissed him to bed. Then she turned out the contents of the bowl of money for the second time, and began knotting them up in her handkerchief, in a chain of separate knots, for safe keeping through the night. All this while, Defarge, with his pipe in his mouth, walked up and down, complacently admiring, but never interfering; in which condition, indeed, as to the business and his domestic affairs, he walked up and down through life.

  The night was hot, and the shop, close shut and surrounded by so foul a neighbourhood, was ill-smelling. Monsieur Defarge’s olfactory sense was by no means delicate, but the stock of wine smelt much stronger than it ever tasted, and so did the stock of rum and brandy and aniseed. He whiffed the compound of scents away, as he put down his smoked-out pipe.

  ‘You are fatigued,’ said madame, raising her glance as she knotted the money. ‘There are only the usual odours.’

  ‘I am a little tired,’ her husband acknowledged.

  ‘You are a little depressed, too,’ said madame, whose quick eyes had never been so intent on the accounts, but they had had a ray or two for him. ‘Oh, the men, the men!’

  ‘But my dear,’ began Defarge.

  ‘But my dear!’ repeated madame, nodding firmly: ‘but my dear! You are faint of heart to-night, my dear!’

  ‘Well, then,’ said Defarge, as if a thought were wrung out of his breast, ‘it is a long time.’

  ‘It is a long time,’ repeated his wife; ‘and when is it not a long time? Vengeance and retribution require a long time; it is the rule.’

  ‘It does not take a long time to strike a man with Lightning,’ said Defarge.

  ‘How long,’ demanded madame, composedly, ‘does it take to make and store the lightning? Tell me?’

  Defarge raised his forehead thoughtfully, as if there were something in that, too.

  ‘It does not take a long time,’ said madame, ‘for an earthquake to swallow a town. Eh well! Tell me how long it takes to prepare the earthquake?’

  ‘A long time, I suppose,’ said Defarge.

  ‘But when it is ready, it takes place, and grinds to pieces everything before it. In the mean time, it is always preparing, though it is not seen or heard. That is your consolation. Keep it.’

  She tied a knot with flashing eyes, as if it throttled a foe.

  ‘I tell thee,’ said madame, extending her right hand, for emphasis, ‘that although it is a long time on the road, it is on the road and coming. I tell thee it never retreats, and never stops. I tell thee it is always advancing. Look around and consider the lives of all the world that we know, consider the faces of all the world that we know, consider the rage and discontent to which the Jacquerie addresses itself with more and more of certainty every hour. Can such things last? Bah! I mock you.’

  ‘My brave wife,’ returned Defarge, standing before her with his head a little bent, and his hands clasped at his back, like a docile and attentive pupil before his catechist, ‘I do not question all this. But it has lasted a long time, and it is possible – you know well, my wife, it is possible – that it may not come, during our lives.’

  ‘Eh well! How then?’ demanded madame, tying another knot, as if there were another enemy strangled.

  ‘Well!’ said Defarge, with a half complaining and half apologetic shrug. ‘We shall not see the triumph.’

  ‘We shall have helped it,’ returned madame, with her extended hand in strong action. ‘Nothing that we do, is done in vain. I believe, with all my soul, that we shall see the triumph. But even if not, even if I knew certainly not, show me the neck of an aristocrat and tyrant, and still I would—’

  There madame, with her teeth set, tied a very terrible knot indeed.

  ‘Hold!’ cried Defarge, reddening a little as if he felt charged with cowardice; ‘I too, my dear, will stop at nothing.’

  ‘Yes! But it is your weakness that you sometimes need to see your victim and your opportunity, to sustain you. Sustain yourself without that. When the time comes, let loose a tiger and a devil; but wait for the time with the tiger and the devil chained – not shown – yet always ready.’

  Madame enforced the conclusion of this piece of advice by striking her little counter with her chain of money as if she knocked its brains out, and then gathering the heavy handkerchief under her arm in a serene manner, and observing that it was time to go to bed.

  Next noontide saw the admirable woman in her usual place in the wine-shop, knitting away assiduously. A rose lay beside her, and if she now and then glanced at the flower, it was with no infraction of her usual preoccupied air. There were a few customers, drinking or not drinking, standing or seated, sprinkled about. The day was very hot, and heaps of flies, who were extending their inquisitive and adventurous perquisitions into all the glutinous little glasses near madame, fell dead at the bottom. Their decease made no impression on the other flies out promenading, who looked
at them in the coolest manner (as if they themselves were elephants, or something as far removed), until they met the same fate. Curious to consider how heedless flies are! – perhaps they thought as much at Court that sunny summer day.

  A figure entering at the door threw a shadow on Madame Defarge which she felt to be a new one. She laid down her knitting, and began to pin her rose in her head-dress, before she looked at the figure.

  It was curious. The moment Madame Defarge took up the rose, the customers ceased talking, and began gradually to drop out of the wine-shop.

  ‘Good day, madame,’ said the new comer.

  ‘Good day, monsieur.’

  She said it aloud, but added to herself, as she resumed her knitting: ‘Hah! Good day, age about forty, height about five feet nine, black hair, generally rather handsome visage, complexion dark, eyes dark, thin long and sallow face, aquiline nose but not straight, having a peculiar inclination towards the left cheek which imparts a sinister expression! Good day, one and all!’

  ‘Have the goodness to give me a little glass of old cognac, and a mouthful of cool fresh water, madame.’

  Madame complied with a polite air.

  ‘Marvellous cognac this, madame!’

  It was the first time it had ever been so complimented, and Madame Defarge knew enough of its antecedents to know better. She said, however, that the cognac was flattered, and took up her knitting. The visitor watched her fingers for a few moments, and took the opportunity of observing the place in general.

  ‘You knit with great skill, madame.’

  ‘I am accustomed to it.’

  ‘A pretty pattern too!’

  ‘You think so?’ said madame, looking at him with a smile.

  ‘Decidedly. May one ask what it is for?’

  ‘Pastime,’ said madame, still looking at him with a smile, while her fingers moved nimbly.

  ‘Not for use?’

  ‘That depends. I may find a use for it, one day. If I do—well,’ said madame, drawing a breath and nodding her head with a stern kind of coquetry, ‘I’ll use it!’