hardened in the furnaces of suffering until the touch of pity could

make no mark on them.

But, in the ocean of faces where every fierce and furious

expression was in vivid life, there were two groups of faceseach

seven in numberso fixedly contrasting with the rest, that never

did sea roll which bore more memorable wrecks with it. Seven

faces of prisoners, suddenly released by the storm that had burst

their tomb, were carried high overhead; all scared, all lost, all

wandering and amazed, as if the Last Day were come, and those

who rejoiced around them were lost spirits. Other seven faces

there were, carried higher, seven dead faces, whose drooping

eyelids and half-seen eyes awaited the Last Day. Impassive faces,

yet with a suspendednot an abolishedexpression on them;

faces, rather, in a fearful pause, as having yet to raise the dropped

lids of the eyes, and bear witness with the bloodless lips “THOU

DIDST IT!”

Seven prisoners released, seven gory heads on pikes, the keys

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

of the accursed fortress of the eight strong towers, some

discovered letters and other memorials of prisoners of old time,

long dead of broken hearts,such, and suchlike, the loudly

echoing footsteps of Saint Antoine escort through the Paris streets

in mid-July, one thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine. Now,

Heaven defeat the fancy of Lucie Darnay, and keep these feet far

out of her life! For, they are headlong, mad, and dangerous; and in

the years so long after the breaking of the cask at Defarge’s wineshop

door, they are not easily purified when once stained red.

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Chapter XXVIII

THE SEA STILL RISES

H

aggard Saint Antoine had only one exultant week in

which to soften his modicum of hard and bitter bread to

such extent as he could, with the relish of fraternal

embraces and congratulations, when Madame Defarge sat at her

counter, as usual, presiding over the customers. Madame Defarge

wore no rose in her head, for the great brotherhood of Spies had

become, even in one short week, extremely chary of trusting

themselves to the saint’s mercies. The lamps across his streets had

a portentously elastic swing with them.

Madame Defarge, with her arms folded, sat in the morning light

and heat, contemplating the wine-shop and the street. In both,

there were several knots of loungers, squalid and miserable, but

now with a manifest sense of power enthroned on their distress.

The raggedest nightcap, awry on the wretchedest head, had this

crooked significance in it: “I know how hard it has grown for me,

the wearer of this, to support life in myself; but do you know how

easy it has grown for me, the wearer of this, to destroy life in you?”

Every lean bare arm, that had been without work before, had this

work always ready for it now, that it could strike. The fingers of