perspiration had started afresh while he recalled
the spectacle.

"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.

"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 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."

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