pieces, like any other door of French construction. To exclude the

cold, one half of this door was fast closed, and the other was

opened but a very little way. Such a scanty portion of light was

admitted through these means, that it was difficult, on first coming

in, to see anything; and long habit alone could have slowly formed

in any one, the ability to do any work requiring nicety in such

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obscurity. Yet, work of that kind was being done in the garret; for,

with his back towards the door, and his face towards the window

where the keeper of the wine-shop stood looking at him, a whitehaired

man sat on a low bench, stooping forward and very busy,

making shoes.

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Chapter VI

THE SHOEMAKER

G

ood day!” said Monsieur Defarge, looking down at the

white head that bent low over the shoemaking.

It was raised for a moment, and a very faint voice

responded to the salutation, as if it were at a distance: “Good day!”

“You are still hard at work, I see?”

After a long silence, the head was lifted for another moment,

and the voice replied, “YesI am working.” This time, a pair of

haggard eyes had looked at the questioner, before the face had

dropped again.

The faintness of the voice was pitiable and dreadful. It was not

the faintness of physical weakness, though confinement and hard

fare no doubt had their part in it. Its deplorable peculiarity was,

that it was the faintness of solitude and disuse. It was like the last

feeble echo of a sound made long and long ago. So entirely had it

lost the life and resonance of the human voice, that it affected the

senses like a once beautiful colour faded away into a poor weak

stain. So sunken and suppressed it was, that it was like a voice

underground. So expressive it was, of a hopeless and lost creature,

that a famished traveller, wearied out by lonely wandering in a

wilderness, would have remembered home and friends in such a

tone before lying down to die.

Some minutes of silent work had passed: and the haggard eyes

had looked up again: not with any interest or curiosity, but with a

dull mechanical perception, beforehand, that the spot where the

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only visitor they were aware of had stood, was not yet empty.

“I want,” said Defarge, who had not removed his gaze from the

shoemaker, “to let in a little more light here. You can bear a little

more?”

The shoemaker stopped his work; looked with a vacant air of

listening, at the floor on one side of him; then similarly, at the floor

on the other side of him; then, upward at the speaker.

“What did you say?”

“You can bear a little more light?”