will. The horses there; are they right?”

Without deigning to look at the assemblage a second time,

Monsieur the Marquis leaned back in his seat, and was just being

driven away with the air of a gentleman who had accidentally

broken some common thing, and had paid for it, and could afford

to pay for it; when his ease was suddenly disturbed by a coin flying

into his carriage, and ringing on its floor.

“Hold!” said Monsieur the Marquis. “Hold the horses! Who

threw that?”

He looked to the spot where Defarge the vendor of wine had

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stood, a moment before; but the wretched father was grovelling on

his face on the pavement in that spot, and the figure that stood

beside him was the figure of a dark stout woman, knitting.

“You dogs,” said the Marquis, but smoothly, and with an

unchanged front, except as to the spots on his nose: “I would ride

over any of you very willingly, and exterminate you from the earth.

If I knew which rascal threw at the carriage, and if that brigand

were sufficiently near it, he should be crushed under the wheels.”

So cowed was their condition, and so long and hard their

experience of what such a man could do to them, within the law

and beyond it, that not a voice, or a hand, or even an eye was

raised. Among the men, not one. But the woman who stood

knitting looked up steadily, and looked the Marquis in the face. It

was not for his dignity to notice it; his contemptuous eyes passed

over her, and over all the other rats; and he leaned back in his seat

again, and gave the word, “Go on!”

He was driven on, and other carriages came whirling by in

quick succession; the Minister, the State-Projector, the Farmer-

General, the Doctor, the Lawyer, the Ecclesiastic, the Grand

Opera, the Comedy, the whole Fancy Ball in a bright continuous

flow, came whirling by. The rats had crept out of their holes to

look on, and they remained looking on for hours; soldiers and

police often passing between them and the spectacle, and making

a barrier behind which they slunk, and through which they

peeped. The father had long ago taken up his bundle and hidden

himself away with it, when the women who had tended the bundle

while it lay on the base of the fountain, sat there watching the

running of the water and the rolling of the Fancy Ballwhen the

one woman who had stood conspicuous, knitting, still knitted on

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with the steadiness of Fate. The water of the fountain ran, the

swift river ran, the day ran into evening, so much life in the city

ran into death according to rule, time and tide waited for no man,

the rats were sleeping close together in their dark holes again, the

Fancy Ball was lighted up at supper, all things ran their courses.

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Chapter XIV

MONSEIGNEUR IN THE COUNTRY

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