“Bravo!” said Defarge, clapping him on the back when it was

over, like a patron; “you are a good boy!”

The mender of roads was now coming to himself, and was

mistrustful of having made a mistake in his late demonstrations;

but no.

“You are the fellow we want,” said Defarge, in his ear; “you

make these fools believe that it will last for ever. Then, they are

the more insolent, and it is the nearer ended.”

“Hey!” cried the mender of roads, reflectively; “that’s true.”

“These fools know nothing. While they despise your breath, and

would stop it for ever and ever, in you or in a hundred like you

rather than in one of their own horses or dogs, they only know

what your breath tells them. Let it deceive them then, a little

longer; it cannot deceive them too much.”

Madame Defarge looked superciliously at the client, and

nodded in confirmation.

“As to you,” said she, “you would shout and shed tears for

anything, if it made a show and a noise. Say! Would you not?”

“Truly, madame, I think so. For the moment.”

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

“If you were shown a great heap of dolls, and were set upon

them to pluck them to pieces and despoil them for your own

advantage, you would pick out the richest and gayest. Say! Would

you not?”

“Truly yes, Madame.”

“Yes. And if you were shown a flock of birds, unable to fly, and

were set upon them to strip them of their feathers for your own

advantage, you would set upon the birds of the finest feather:

would you not?”

“It is true, madame.”

“You have seen both dolls and birds today,” said Madame

Defarge, with a wave of her hand towards the place where they

had last been apparent; “now go home!”

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

Chapter XXII

STILL KNITTING

M

adame Defarge and monsieur her husband returned

amicably to the bosom of Saint Antoine, while a speck

in a blue cap toiled through the darkness, and through

the dust, and down the weary miles of avenue by the wayside,

slowly tending towards that point of the compass where the

chateau of Monsieur the Marquis, now in his grave, listened to the

whispering trees. Such ample leisure had the stone faces, now, for

listening to the trees and to the fountain, that the few village

scarecrows who, in their quest for herbs to eat and fragments of

dead stick to burn, strayed within sight of the great stone

courtyard and terrace staircase, had it borne in upon their starved

fancy that the expression of the faces was altered. A rumour just

lived in the villagehad a faint and bare existence there, as its