A Tale of Two Cities-CHAPTER 22 THE SEA STILL RISES

THE SEA STILL RISES

Haggard Saint Antoine had only one exultant¹ week in which to soften² his modicum³ of hard and bitter bread to such extent as he could, with the relish⁴ of fraternal embraces and congratulations, when Madame Defarge sat at her counter, as usual, presiding over the customers. Madame Defarge wore no rose in her head, for the great brotherhood⁵ of Spies had become, even in one short week, extremely chary⁶ of trusting themselves to the saint’s mercies. The lamps across his streets had a portentously⁷ elastic⁸ swing with them.

Madame Defarge, with her arms folded, sat in the morning light and heat, contemplating⁹ the wine-shop and the street. In both, there were several knots of loungers, squalid and miserable¹⁰, but now with a manifest sense of power enthroned on their distress¹¹. The raggedest nightcap, awry¹³ on the wretchedest head, had this crooked¹⁵ significance in it: “I know how hard 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, to destroy life in you?” Every lean bare arm, that had been without work before, had this work always ready for it now, that it could strike. The fingers of the knitting women were vicious, with the experience that they could tear. There was a change in the appearance of Saint Antoine; the image had been hammering into this for hundreds of years, and the last finishing blows had told mightily¹⁶ on the expression.

Madame Defarge sat observing it, with such suppressed approval as was to be desired in the leader of the Saint Antoine women. One of her sisterhood knitted beside her. The short, rather plump wife of a starved grocer, and the mother of two children withal, this lieutenant¹⁷ had already earned the complimentary¹⁸ name of The Vengeance¹⁹.

“Hark!” said The Vengeance. “Listen, then! Who comes?”

As if a train of powder laid from the outermost²⁰ bound of the Saint Antoine Quarter to the wine-shop door, had been suddenly fired, a fast-spreading murmur²¹ came rushing along.

“It is Defarge,” said madame. “Silence, patriots²²!”

Defarge came in breathless, pulled off a red cap he wore, and looked around him. “Listen, everywhere!” said madame again. “Listen to him!” Defarge stood, panting, against a background of eager eyes and open mouths, formed outside the door; all those within the wine-shop had sprung 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 famished²³ people that 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 himself to be represented as dead, and had a grand mock- funeral. But they have found him alive, hiding in the country, and have brought him in. I have seen him but now, on his way to the Hotel de Ville, a prisoner. I have said that he had reason to fear us. Say all! Had he reason?”

Wretched old sinner of more than three score years and ten, if he had never known it yet, he would have known it in his heart of hearts if he could have heard the answering cry.

A moment of profound silence followed. Defarge and his wife looked steadfastly²⁴ at one another. The Vengeance stooped, and the jar of a drum was heard as she moved it at her feet behind the counter.

“Patriots!” said Defarge, in a determined²⁵ voice, “are we ready?”

Instantly Madame Defarge’s knife was in her girdle; the drum was beating in the streets, as if it and a drummer had flown together by magic; and The Vengeance, uttering terrific shrieks²⁶, and flinging her arms about her head like all the forty Furies at once, was tearing from house to house, rousing the women.

The men were terrible, in the bloody-minded anger with which they looked from windows, caught up what arms they had, and came pouring down into the streets; but, the women were a sight to chill the boldest. From such household occupations as their bare poverty yielded, from their children, from their aged²⁷ and their sick crouching²⁸ on the bare ground famished and naked, they ran out with streaming hair, urging one another, and themselves, to madness with the wildest cries and actions. Villain²⁹ Foulon taken, my sister! Old Foulon taken, my mother! Miscreant³⁰ Foulon taken, my daughter! Then, a score of others ran into the midst of these, beating their breasts, tearing their hair, and screaming, Foulon alive! Foulon who told the starving people they might eat grass! Foulon who told my old father that he might eat grass, when I had no bread to give him! Foulon who told my baby it might suck grass, when these breasts were dry with want! O mother of God, this Foulon! O Heaven, our suffering! Hear me, my dead baby and my withered³¹ father: I swear on my knees, on these stones to avenge³² 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, Rend³³ Foulon to pieces, and dig him into the ground, that grass may grow from him! With these cries, numbers of the women, lashed³⁴ into blind frenzy³⁵, whirled about, striking and tearing at their own friends until they dropped into a passionate³⁶ swoon, and were only saved by the men belonging to them from being trampled³⁷ under foot.

Nevertheless, not a moment was lost; not a moment! This Foulon was at the Hotel de Ville, and might be loosed. Never, if Saint Antoine knew his own sufferings, insults, and wrongs! Armed men and women flocked out of the Quarter so fast, and drew even these last dregs after them with such a force of suction, that within a quarter of an hour there was not a human creature in Saint Antoine’s bosom³⁸ but a few old crones and the wailing³⁹ children.

No. They were all by that time choking the Hall of Examination where this old man, ugly and wicked, was, and overflowing⁴⁰ into the adjacent open space and streets. The Defarges, husband and wife, The Vengeance, and Jacques Three, were in the first press, and at no great distance from him in the Hall.

“See!” cried madame, pointing with her knife. “See the old villain bound with 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 knife under her arm, and clapped her hands as at a play.

The people immediately behind Madame Defarge, explaining the cause of her satisfaction to those behind them, and those again explaining to others, and those to others, the neighbouring streets resounded⁴¹ with the clapping of hands. Similarly, during two or three hours of drawl, and the winnowing⁴² of many bushels of words, Madame Defarge’s frequent expressions of impatience⁴³ were taken up, with marvellous quickness, at a distance: the more readily, because certain men who had by some wonderful exercise of agility⁴⁴ climbed up the external architecture to look in from the windows, knew Madame Defarge well, and acted as a telegraph between her and the crowd outside the building.

At length the sun rose so high that it struck a kindly⁴⁵ ray as of hope or protection, directly down upon the old prisoner’s head. The favour was too much to bear; in an instant the barrier of dust and chaff⁴⁶ that had stood surprisingly long, went to the winds, and Saint Antoine had got him!

It was known directly, to the furthest confines of the crowd. Defarge had but sprung over a railing and a table, and folded the miserable wretch¹⁴ in a deadly embrace—Madame Defarge had but followed and turned her hand in one of the ropes with which he was tied—The Vengeance and Jacques Three were not yet up with them, and the men at the windows had not yet swooped⁴⁷ into the Hall, like birds of prey⁴⁸ from their high perches—when the cry seemed to go up, all over the city, “Bring him out! Bring him to the lamp!”

Down, and up, and head foremost on the steps of the building; now, on his knees; now, on his feet; now, on his back; dragged and struck at, and stifled⁴⁹ by the bunches of grass and straw that were thrust into his face by hundreds of hands; torn, bruised⁵⁰, panting, bleeding, yet always entreating⁵¹ and beseeching⁵² for mercy; now full of vehement⁵³ agony of action, with a small clear space about him as the people drew one another back that they might see; now, a log of dead wood drawn⁵⁴ through a forest of legs; he was hauled to the nearest street corner where one of the fatal lamps swung, and there Madame Defarge let him go—as a cat might have done to a mouse—and silently and composedly looked at him while they made ready, and while he besought⁵⁵ her: the women passionately⁵⁶ screeching⁵⁷ at him all the time, and the men sternly calling out to have him killed with grass in his mouth. Once, he went aloft, and the rope broke, and they caught him shrieking⁵⁸; twice, he went aloft, and the rope broke, and they caught him shrieking; then, the rope was merciful, and held him, and his head was soon upon a pike, with grass enough in the mouth 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 shouted and danced his angry blood up, that it boiled again, on hearing when the day closed in that the son-in-law of the despatched, another of the people’s enemies and insulters, was coming into Paris under a guard five hundred strong, in cavalry⁵⁹ alone. Saint Antoine wrote his crimes on flaring⁶⁰ sheets of paper, seized him—would have torn him out of the breast of an army to bear Foulon company—set his head and heart on pikes, and carried the three spoils of the day, in Wolf-procession through 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 beset⁶¹ by long files of them, patiently waiting to buy bad bread; and while they waited with stomachs faint and empty, they beguiled⁶² the time by embracing one another on the triumphs of the day, and achieving them again in gossip. Gradually, these strings⁶³ of ragged¹² people shortened and frayed⁶⁴ away; and then poor lights began to shine in high windows, and slender fires were made in the streets, at which neighbours cooked in common, afterwards supping at their doors.

Scanty⁶⁵ and insufficient⁶⁶ suppers those, and innocent of meat, as of most other sauce to wretched bread. Yet, human fellowship infused some nourishment⁶⁷ into the flinty viands⁶⁸, and struck some sparks of cheerfulness out of them. Fathers and mothers who had their full share in the worst of the day, played gently with their meagre children; and lovers, with such a world around them and before them, loved and hoped.

It was almost morning, when Defarge’s wine-shop parted with its last knot of customers, and Monsieur Defarge said to madame his wife, in husky 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 with her starved grocer, and the drum was at rest. The drum’s was the only voice in Saint Antoine that blood and hurry had not changed. The Vengeance, as custodian⁶⁹ of the drum, could have wakened him up and had the same speech out of him as before the Bastille fell, or old Foulon was seized; not so with the hoarse⁷⁰ tones of the men and women in Saint Antoine’s bosom.

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