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?"

"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
broken 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 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
so 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
hidden himself away with it, when the women
who had 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.

CHAPTER VIII. MONSIEUR THE MARQUIS 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."

ln 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 signs 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 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.