“You don’t hear much about them now?” said the spy.

“No,” said Defarge.

“In effect,” madame struck in, looking up from her work and

her little song, “we never hear about them. We received the news

of their safe arrival, and perhaps another letter, or perhaps two;

but, since then, they have gradually taken their road in lifewe,

oursand we have held no correspondence.”

“Perfectly so, madame,” replied the spy. “She is going to be

married.”

“Going?” echoed madame. “She was pretty enough to have

been married long ago. You English are cold, it seems to me.”

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“Oh! You know I am English.”

“I perceive your tongue is,” returned madame, “and what the

tongue is, I suppose the man is.”

He did not take the identification as a compliment; but he made

the best of it, and turned it off with a laugh. After sipping his

cognac to the end, he added:

“Yes, Miss Manette is going to be married. But not to an

Englishman; to one who, like herself, is French by birth. And

speaking of Gaspard (ah, poor Gaspard! It was cruel, cruel!), it is a

curious thing that she is going to marry the nephew of Monsieur

the Marquis, for whom Gaspard was exalted to that height of so

many feet; in other words, the present Marquis. But he lives

unknown in England, he is no Marquis there; he is Mr. Charles

Darnay. D’Aulnais is the name of his mother’s family.”

Madame Defarge knitted steadily, but the intelligence had a

palpable effect upon her husband. Do what he would, behind the

little counter, as to the striking of a light and the lighting of his

pipe, he was troubled, and his hand was not trustworthy. The spy

would have been no spy if he had failed to see it, or to record it in

his mind.

Having made, at least, this one hit, whatever it might prove to

be worth, and no customers coming in to help him to any other,

Mr. Barsad paid for what he had drunk, and took his leave: taking

occasion to say, in a genteel manner, before he departed, that he

looked forward to the pleasure of seeing Monsieur and Madame

Defarge again. For some minutes after he had emerged into the

outer presence of Saint Antoine, the husband and wife remained

exactly as he had left them, lest he should come back.

“Can it be true,” said Defarge, in a low voice, looking down at

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his wife as he stood smoking with his hand on the back of her

chair: “what he has said of Mam’selle Manette?”

“As he has said it,” returned madame, lifting her eyebrows a

little, “it is probably false. But it may be true.”

“If it is” Defarge began, and stopped.

“If it is?” repeated his wife.

“And if it does come, while we live to see it triumphI hope,

for her sake, Destiny will keep her husband out of France.”