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

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lady might pretend next; and he felt assured that if she should

take 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 intoxicating,

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that he cried Long live the King, Long live the Queen, Long live

everybody and everything! as if he had never heard of ubiquitous

Jacques in his time. Then, there were gardens, courtyards,

terraces, fountains, green banks, more King and Queen, more

Bull’s Eye, more lords and ladies, more Long live they all! until he

absolutely wept with sentiment. During the whole of this scene,

which lasted some three hours, he had plenty of shouting and

weeping and sentimental company, and throughout Defarge held

him by the collar, as if to restrain him from flying at the objects of

his brief devotion and tearing them to pieces.