thumbs, from the corners of his mouth to his ears. “On the top of
the gallows is fixed the knife, blade upwards, with its point in the
air. He is hanged there forty feet high—and is left hanging,
poisoning the water.”
They looked at one another, as he used his blue cap to wipe his
face, on which the 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
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A Tale of Two Cities
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 craving, “The chateau,
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 rise 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
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A Tale of Two Cities
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 "};
