the day, seven days a week.

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

These occupations brought her round to the December month,

wherein her father walked among the terrors with a steady head.

On a lightly-snowing afternoon she arrived at the usual corner. It

was a day of some wild rejoicing, and a festival. She had seen the

houses, as she came along, decorated with little pikes, and with

little red caps stuck upon them; also, with tricoloured ribbons;

also, with the standard inscription (tricoloured letters were the

favourite), Republic One and Indivisible. Liberty, Equality,

Fraternity, or Death!

The miserable shop of the wood-sawyer was so small, that its

whole surface furnished very indifferent space for this legend. He

had got somebody to scrawl it up for him, however, who had

squeezed Death in with most inappropriate difficulty. On his

house-top, he displayed pike and cap, as a good citizen must, and

in a window he had stationed his saw inscribed as his “Little

Sainte Guillotine”for the great sharp female was by that time

popularly canonised. His shop was shut and he was not there,

which was a relief to Lucie, and left her quite alone.

But, he was not far off, for presently she heard a troubled

movement and a shouting coming along, which filled her with fear.

A moment afterwards, and a throng of people came pouring round

the corner by the prison wall, in the midst of which was the woodsawyer

hand in hand with The Vengeance. There could not be

fewer than five hundred people, and they were dancing like five

thousand demons. There was no other music than their own

singing. They danced to the popular Revolution song, keeping a

ferocious time that was like a gnashing of teeth in unison. Men and

women danced together, women danced together, men danced

together, as hazard had brought them together. At first, they were

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a mere storm of coarse red caps and coarse woollen rags; but, as

they filled the place, and stopped to dance about Lucie, some

ghastly apparition of a dance-figure gone raving mad arose among

them. They advanced, retreated, struck at one another’s hands,

clutched at one another’s heads, spun round alone, caught one

another and spun round in pairs, until many of them dropped.

While those were down, the rest linked hand in hand, and all spun

round together: then the ring broke, and in separate rings of two

and four they turned and turned until they all stopped at once,

began again, struck, clutched, and tore, and then reversed the

spin, and all spun round another way. Suddenly they stopped

again, paused, struck out the time afresh, formed into lines the

width of the public way, and, with their heads low down and their

hands high up, swooped screaming off. No fight could have been

half so terrible as this dance. It was so emphatically a fallen

sporta something, once innocent, delivered over to all devilrya

healthy pastime changed into a means of angering the blood,

bewildering the senses, and stealing the heart. Such grace as was