resounded with the clapping of hands. Similarly, during two or

three hours of drawl, and the winnowing of many bushels of

words, Madame Defarge’s frequent expressions of impatience

were taken up, with marvellous quickness, at a distance: the more

readily, because certain men who had by some wonderful exercise

of agility climbed up the external architecture to look in from the

windows, knew Madame Defarge well, and acted as a telegraph

between her and the crowd outside the building.

At length the sun rose so high that it struck a kindly ray as of

hope or protection, directly down upon the old prisoner’s head.

The favour was too much to bear; in an instant the barrier of dust

and chaff that had stood surprisingly long, went to the winds, and

Saint Antoine had got him!

It was known directly, to the furthest confines of the crowd.

Defarge had but sprung over a railing and a table, and folded the

miserable wretch in a deadly embraceMadame Defarge had but

followed and turned her hand in one of the ropes with which he

was tiedThe Vengeance and Jacques Three were not yet up with

them, and the men at the windows had not yet swooped into the

Hall, like birds of prey from their high percheswhen the cry

seemed to go up, all over the city, “Bring him out! Bring him to the

lamp!”

Down, and up, and head foremost on the steps of the building;

now, on his knees; now, on his feet; now, on his back; dragged and

struck at, and stifled by the bunches of grass and straw that were

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thrust into his face by hundreds of hands; torn, bruised, panting,

bleeding, yet always entreating and beseeching for mercy; now full

of vehement agony of action, with a small clear space about him as

the people drew one another back that they might see; now, a log

of dead wood drawn through a forest of legs; he was hauled to the

nearest street corner where one of the fatal lamps swung, and

there Madame Defarge let him goas a cat might have done to a

mouseand silently and composedly looked at him while they

made ready, and while he besought her: the women passionately

screeching at him all the time, and the men sternly calling out to

have him killed with grass in his mouth. Once, he went aloft, and

the rope broke, and they caught him shrieking; twice, he went

aloft, and the rope broke, and they caught him shrieking; then, the

rope was merciful, and held him, and his head was soon upon a

pike, with grass enough in the mouth for all Saint Antoine to

dance at the sight of.

Nor was this the end of the day’s bad work, for Saint Antoine so

shouted and danced his angry blood up, that it boiled again, on

hearing when the day closed in that the son-in-law of the

despatched, another of the people’s enemies and insulters, was

coming into Paris under a guard five hundred strong, in cavalry

alone. Saint Antoine wrote his crimes on flaring sheets of paper,

seized himwould have torn him out of the breast of an army to

bear Foulon companyset his head and heart on pikes, and