carried the three spoils of the day, in Wolf-procession through the

streets.

Not before dark night did the men and women come back to the

children, wailing and breadless. Then, the miserable bakers’ shops

were beset by long files of them, patiently waiting to buy bad

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bread; and while they waited with stomachs faint and empty, they

beguiled the time by embracing one another on the triumphs of

the day, and achieving them again in gossip. Gradually, these

strings of ragged people shortened and frayed away; and then

poor lights began to shine in high windows, and slender fires were

made in the streets, at which neighbours cooked in common,

afterwards supping at their doors.

Scanty and insufficient suppers those, and innocent of meat, as

of most other sauce to wretched bread. Yet, human fellowship

infused some nourishment into the flinty viands, and struck some

sparks of cheerfulness out of them. Fathers and mothers who had

their full share in the worst of the day, played gently with their

meagre children; and lovers, with such a world around them and

before them, loved and hoped.

It was almost morning, when Defarge’s wine-shop parted with

its last knot of customers, and Monsieur Defarge said to madame

his wife, in husky tones, while fastening the door:

“At last it is come, my dear!”

“Eh well!” returned madame. “Almost.”

Saint Antoine slept, the Defarges slept; even The Vengeance

slept with her starved grocer, and the drum was at rest. The

drum’s was the only voice in Saint Antoine that blood and hurry

had not changed. The Vengeance, as custodian of the drum, could

have wakened him up and had the same speech out of him as

before the Bastille fell, or old Foulon was seized; not so with the

hoarse tones of the men and women in Saint Antoine’s bosom.

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Chapter XXIX

FIRE RISES

T

here was a change on the village where the fountain fell,

and where the mender of roads went forth daily to

hammer out of the stones on the high way such morsels of

bread as might serve for patches to hold his poor ignorant soul

and his poor reduced body together. The prison on the crag was

not so dominant as of yore; there were soldiers to guard it, but not

many; there were officers to guard the soldiers, but not one of

them knew what his men would dobeyond this: that it would

probably not be what he was ordered.

Far and wide lay a ruined country, yielding nothing but

desolation. Every green leaf, every blade of grass and blade of

grain, was as shrivelled and poor as the miserable people.

Everything was bowed down, dejected, oppressed, and broken.

Habitations fences, domesticated animals, men, women, children,