as the little circle sat in the dark London
window.

Saint Antoine had been, that morning, a vast
dusky mass of scarecrows heaving to and fro, with
frequent gleams of light above the billowy heads,
where steel blades and bayonets shone in the
sun. A tremendous roar arose from the throat
of Saint Antoine, and a forest of naked arms
struggled in the air like shrivelled branches of
trees in a winter wind: all the fingers convulsively
clutching at every weapon or semblance
of a weapon that was thrown up from the depths
below, no matter how far off.

Who gave them out, whence they last came,
where they began, through what agency they
crookedly quivered and jerked, scores at a time,
over the heads of the crowd, like a kind of
lightning, no eye in the throng could have told; but,
muskets were being distributed—so were
cartridges, powder, and ball, bars of iron and wood,
knives, axes, pikes, every weapon that distracted
ingenuity could discover or devise. People who
could lay hold of nothing else, set themselves
with bleeding hands to force stones and bricks
out of their places in walls. Every pulse and
heart in Saint Antoine was on high-fever strain
and at high-fever heat. Every living creature
there, held life as of no account, and was
demented with a passionate readiness to
sacrifice it.

As a whirlpool of boiling waters has a centre
point, so, all this raging circled round Defarge's
wine-shop, and every human drop in the caldron
had a tendency to be sucked towards the vortex
where Defarge himself, already begrimed with
gunpowder and sweat, issued orders, issued
arms, thrust this man back, dragged this man
forward, disarmed one to arm another, laboured
and strove in the thickest of the uproar.

"Keep near to me, Jacques Three," cried
Defarge; "and do you, Jacques One and Two,
separate and put yourselves at the head of as
many of these patriots as you can. Where is
my wife?"

"Eh, well! Here you see me!" said madame,
composed as ever, but not knitting to-day.
Madame's resolute right hand was occupied with
an axe, in place of the usual softer implements,
and in her girdle were a pistol and a cruel
knife.

"Where do you go, my wife?"

"I go," said madame, "with you, at present.
You shall see me at the head of women,
by-and-by."

"Come then!" cried Defarge, in a resounding
voice. "Patriots and friends, we are ready!
The Bastille!"

With a roar that sounded as if all the breath
in France had been shaped into the detested
word, the living sea rose, wave on wave, depth
on depth, and overflowed the city to that point.
Alarm-bells ringing, drums beating, the sea raging
and thundering on its new beach, the attack
begun.

Deep ditches, double draw-bridge, massive
stone walls, eight great towers, cannon, muskets,
fire and smoke. Through the fire and through
the smoke—in the fire and in the smoke, for the
sea cast him up against a cannon, and on the
instant he became a cannonier—Defarge of the
wine-shop worked like a manful soldier, Two
fierce hours.

Deep ditch, single drawbridge, massive stone
walls, eight great towers, cannon, muskets, fire
and smoke. One drawbridge down! "Work,
comrades all, work! Work, Jacques One,
Jacques Two, Jacques One Thousand, Jacques
Two Thousand, Jacques Five-and-Twenty
Thousand; in the name of all the Angels or the Devils
—which you prefer—work!" Thus Defarge of
the wine-shop, still at his gun, which had
long grown hot.

"To me, women!" cried madame his wife.
"What! We can kill as well as the men
when the place is taken!" And to her, with
a shrill thirsty cry, trooping women variously
armed, but all armed alike in hunger and
revenge.

Cannon, muskets, fire and smoke; but, still
the deep ditch, the single drawbridge, the
massive stone walls, and the eight great towers.
Slight displacements of the raging sea, made by
the falling wounded. Flashing weapons, blazing
torches, smoking waggon-loads of wet straw,
hard work at neighbouring barricades in all
directions, shrieks, volleys, execrations, bravery
without stint, boom smash and rattle, and the
furious sounding of the living sea; but, still the
deep ditch, and the single drawbridge, and the
massive stone walls, and the eight great towers,
and still Defarge of the wine-shop at his gun,
grown doubly hot by the service of Four fierce
hours.

A white flag from within the fortress, and a
parley—this dimly perceptible through the
raging storm, nothing audible in it—suddenly
the sea rose immeasurably wider and higher,
and swept Defarge of the wine-shop over the
lowered drawbridge, past the massive stone
outer walls, in among the eight great towers
surrendered!

So resistless was the force of the ocean bearing
him on, that even to draw his breath or turn his
head was as impracticable as if he had been
struggling in the surf of the South Sea, until he was
landed in the outer court-yard of the Bastille.
There, against an angle of a wall, he made a
struggle to look about him. Jacques Three was
nearly at his side; Madame Defarge, still heading
some of her women, was visible in the inner
distance, and her knife was in her hand.
Everywhere was tumult, exultation, deafening and
maniacal bewilderment, astounding noise, yet
furious dumb-show.

"The Prisoners!"

"The Records!"

"The secret cells!"

"The instruments of torture!"

"The Prisoners!"

Of all these cries, and ten thousand
incoherencies, "The Prisoners!" was the cry most
taken up by the sea that rushed in, as if there
were an eternity of people, as well as of time and
space. When the foremost billows rolled past,