“I must bear it, if you let it in.” (Laying the palest shadow of a

stress upon the second word.) The opened half-door was opened a

little further, and secured at that angle for the time. A broad ray of

light fell into the garret, and showed the workman with an

unfinished shoe upon his lap, pausing in his labour. His few

common tools and various scraps of leather were at his feet and on

his bench. He had a white beard, raggedly cut, but not very long, a

hollow face, and exceedingly bright eyes. The hollowness and

thinness of his face would have caused them to look large, under

his yet dark eyebrows and his confused white hair, though they

had been really otherwise; but, they were naturally large, and

looked unnaturally so. His yellow rags of shirt lay open at the

throat, and showed his body to be withered and worn. He, and his

old canvas frock, and his loose stockings, and all his poor tatters of

clothes, had, in a long seclusion from direct light and air, faded

down to such a dull uniformity of parchment-yellow, that it would

have been hard to say which was which.

He had put up a hand between his eyes and the light, and the

very bones of it seemed transparent. So he sat, with a steadfastly

vacant gaze, pausing in his work. He never looked at the figure

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before him, without first looking down on this side of himself, then

on that, as if he had lost the habit of associating place with sound;

he never spoke, without first wandering in this manner, and

forgetting to speak.

“Are you going to finish that pair of shoes today?” asked

Defarge, motioning to Mr. Lorry to come forward.

“What did you say?”

“Do you mean to finish that pair of shoes today?”

“I can’t say that I mean to. I suppose so. I don’t know.”

But, the question reminded him of his work, and he bent over it

again.

Mr. Lorry came silently forward, leaving the daughter by the

door. When he had stood, for a minute or two, by the side of

Defarge, the shoemaker looked up. He showed no surprise at

seeing another figure, but the unsteady fingers of one of his hands

strayed to his lips as he looked at it (his lips and his nails were of

the same pale lead-colour), and then the hand dropped to his

work, and he once more bent over the shoe. The look and the

action had occupied but an instant.

“You have a visitor, you see,” said Monsieur Defarge.

“What did you say?”

“Here is a visitor.”

The shoemaker looked up as before, but without removing a

hand from his work.

“Come!” said Defarge. “Here is monsieur, who knows a wellmade

shoe when he sees one. Show him that shoe you are working

at. Take it, monsieur.”

Mr. Lorry took it in his hand.

“Tell monsieur what kind of shoe it is, and the maker’s name.”