where any spectacle is well worth looking at), and at first, as they

approach, I see no more than that they are six soldiers with a tall

man bound, and that they are almost black to my sightexcept on

the side of the sun going to bed, where they have a red edge,

messieurs. Also, I see that their long shadows are on the hollow

ridge on the opposite side of the road, and are on the hill above it,

and are like the shadows of giants. Also, I see that they are covered

with dust, and that the dust moves with them as they come, tramp,

tramp! But when they advance quite near to me, I recognise the

tall man, and he recognises me. Ah, but he would be well content

to precipitate himself over the hillside once again, as on the

evening when he and I first encountered, close to the same spot!”

He described it as if he were there, and it was evident that he

saw it vividly; perhaps he had not seen much in his life.

“I do not show the soldiers that I recognise the tall man; he

does not show the soldiers that he recognises me; we do it, and we

know it, with our eyes. ‘Come on!’ says the chief of that company,

pointing to the village, ‘bring him fast to his tomb!’ and they bring

him faster. I follow. His arms are swelled because of being bound

so tight, his wooden shoes are large and clumsy, and he is lame.

Because he is lame, and consequently slow, they drive him with

their gunslike this!”

He imitated the action of a man’s being impelled forward by the

butt-ends of muskets.

“As they descend the hill like madmen running a race, he falls.

They laugh and pick him up again. His face is bleeding and

covered with dust, but he cannot touch it; thereupon they laugh

again. They bring him into the village; all the village runs to look;

they take him past the mill, and up to the prison; all the village

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

sees the prison gate open in the darkness of the nightand

swallow himlike this!”

He opened his mouth wide as he could, and shut it with a

sounding snap of his teeth. Observant of his unwillingness to mar

the effect by opening it again. Defarge said, “Go on, Jacques.”

“All the village,” pursued the mender of roads, on tiptoe and in

a low voice, “withdraws; all the village whispers by the fountain;

all the village sleeps; all the village dreams of that unhappy one,

within the locks and bars of the prison on the crag, and never to

come out of it, except to perish. In the morning, with my tools

upon my shoulder, eating my morsel of black bread as I go, I make

a circuit by the prison, on my way to my work. There I see him,

high up, behind the bars of a lofty iron cage, bloody and dusty as

last night, looking through. He has no hand free, to wave to me; I

dare not call to him; he regards me like a dead man.”

Defarge and the three glanced darkly at one another. The looks

of all of them were dark, repressed, and revengeful, as they

listened to the countryman’s story; the manner of all of them,

while it was secret, was authoritative too. They had the air of a

rough tribunal; Jacques One and Two sitting on the old pallet-bed,