“Her husband’s destiny,” said Madame Defarge, with her usual

composure, “will take him where he is to go, and will lead him to

the end that is to end him. That is all I know.”

“But it is very strangenow, at least, is it not very strange”

said Defarge, rather pleading with his wife to induce her to admit

it, “that, after all our sympathy for Monsieur her father, and

herself, her husband’s name should be proscribed under your

hand at this moment, by the side of that infernal dog’s who has

just left us?”

“Stranger things than that will happen when it does come,”

answered madame. “I have them both here, of a certainty; and

they are both here for their merits; that is enough.”

She rolled up her knitting when she had said those words, and

presently took the rose out of the handkerchief that was wound

about her head. Either Saint Antoine had an instinctive sense that

the objectionable decoration was gone, or Saint Antoine was on

the watch for its disappearance; howbeit, the Saint took courage to

lounge in, very shortly afterwards, and the wine-shop recovered its

habitual aspect.

In the evening, at which season of all others Saint Antoine

turned himself inside out, and sat on doorsteps and window-

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ledges, and came to the corners of vile streets and courts, for a

breath of air, Madame Defarge with her work in her hand was

accustomed to pass from place to place and from group to group: a

Missionarythere were many like hersuch as the world will do

well never to breed again. All the women knitted. They knitted

worthless things, but, the mechanical work was a mechanical

substitute for eating and drinking; the hands moved for the jaws

and the digestive apparatus: if the bony fingers had been still, the

stomachs would have been more famine-pinched.

But, as the fingers went, the eyes went, and the thoughts. And

as Madame Defarge moved on from group to group, all three went

quicker and fiercer among every little knot of women that she had

spoken with, and left behind.

Her husband smoked at his door, looking after her with

admiration. “A great woman,” said he, “a strong woman, a grand

woman, a frightfully grand woman!”

Darkness closed around, and then came the ringing of church

bells and the distant beating of the military drums in the Palace

Courtyard, as the women sat knitting, knitting. Darkness

encompassed them. Another darkness was closing in as surely,

when the church bells, then ringing pleasantly in many an airy

steeple over France, should be melted into thundering cannon;

when the military drums should be beating to drown a wretched

voice, that night all potent as the voice of Power and Plenty,

Freedom and Life. So much was closing in about the women who

sat knitting, knitting, that they their very selves were closing in

around a structure yet unbuilt, where they were to sit knitting,

knitting, counting dropping heads.