and wife. The Vengeance assisted in the
conversation, like a regular member of the
establishment.

As Carton walked in, took his seat, and asked
(in very indifferent French) for a small measure
of wine, Madame Defarge cast a careless glance
at him, and then a keener, and then a keener,
and then advanced to him herself, and asked him
what it was he had ordered.

He repeated what he had already said.

"English?" asked Madame Defarge,
inquisitively raising her dark eyebrows.

After looking at her, as if the sound of even a
single French word were slow to express itself
to him, he answered, in his former strong foreign
accent. "Yes, Madame, yes. I am English!"

Madame Defarge returned to her counter to
get the wine, and, as he took up a Jacobin
journal and feigned to pore over it puzzling out
its meaning, he heard her say, "I swear to you,
like Evrémonde!"

Defarge brought him the wine; and gave him
Good Evening.

"How?"

"Good evening."

"Oh! Good evening, citizen," filling his
glass. "Ah! and good wine. I drink to the
Republic."

Defarge went back to the counter, and said,
"Certainly, a little like." Madame; sternly
retorted, "I tell you a good deal like." Jacques
Three pacifically remarked, "He is so much in
your mind, see you, madame." The amiable
Vengeance added, with a laugh, "Yes, my faith!
And you are looking forward with so much
pleasure to seeing him once more to-morrow!"

Carton followed, the lines and words of his
paper, with a slow forefinger, and with a studious
and absorbed face. They were all leaning their
arms on the counter close together, speaking low.
After a silence of a few moments, during which
they had all looked towards him without
disturbing his outward attention from the Jacobin
editor, they resumed their conversation.

"It is true, what madame says," observed
Jacques Three. "Why stop? There is great
force in that. Why stop?"

"Well, well," reasoned Defarge, "but one
must stop somewhere. After all, the question
is still where?"

"At extermination," said madame.

"Magnificent!" croaked Jacques Three. The
Vengeance, also, highly approved.

"Extermination is good doctrine, my wife,"
said Defarge, rather troubled; "in general, I
say nothing against it. But this Doctor has
suffered much; you have seen him to-day; you
have observed his face when the paper was read."

"I have observed his face!" repeated madame.
contemptuously and angrily. "Yes, I have
observed his face. I have observed his face to
be not the face of a true friend of the Republic.
Let him take care of his face!"

"And you have observed, my wife," said
Defarge, in a deprecatory manner, "the anguish
of his daughter, which must be dreadful anguish
to him!"

"I have observed his daughter!" repeated
madame; "yes, I have observed his daughter,
more times than one. I have observed her
to-day, and I have observed her other days. I
have observed her in the court, and I have
observed her in the street by the prison. Let
me but lift my finger——!" She seemed to
raise it (the listener's eyes were always on his
paper), and to let it fall with a rattle on the ledge
before her, as if the axe had dropped.

"The citizeness is superb!" croaked the
Juryman.

"She is an Angel!" said The Vengeance, and
embraced her.

"As to thee," pursued madame, implacably,
addressing her husband, "if it depended on thee
—which happily, it does not—thou wouldst
rescue this man even now."

"No!" protested Defarge. "Not if to lift
this glass would do it! But I would leave the
matter there. I say, stop there."

"See you then, Jacques," said Madame
Defarge, wrathfully; "and see you too, my little
Vengeance; see you both! Listen! For other
crimes as tyrants and oppressors, I have this
race a long time on my register, doomed to
destruction and extermination. Ask my
husband is that so."

"It is so," assented Defarge, without being
asked.

"In the beginning of the great days, when
the Bastille falls, he finds this paper of to-day,
and he brings it home, and in the middle of the
night when this place is clear and shut, we
read it, here on this spot, by the light of this
lamp. Ask him, is that so."

"It is so," assented Defarge.

"That night, I tell him when the paper is
read through, and the lamp is burnt out, and
the day is gleaming in above those shutters and
between those iron bars, that I have now a
secret to communicate. Ask him, is that so."

"It is so," assented Defarge again.

"I communicate to him that secret. I smite
this bosom with these two hands as I smite it
now, and I tell him, 'Defarge, I was brought up
among the fishermen of the sea-shore and that
peasant-family so injured by the two Evrémonde
brothers, as that Bastille paper describes, is my
family. Defarge, that sister of the mortally
wounded boy upon the ground was my sister,
that husband was my sister's husband, that
unborn child was their child, that brother was my
brother, that father was my father, those dead are
my dead, and that summons to answer for those
things descends to me!' Ask him, is that so."

"It is so," assented Defarge once more.

"Then tell Wind and Fire where to stop,"
returned madame; "but don't tell me."

Both her hearers derived a horrible enjoyment
from the deadly nature of her wrath—
the listener could feel how white she was,
without seeing her—and both highly commended
it. Defarge, a weak minority, interposed a
few words for the memory of the compassionate
wife of the Marquis; but, only elicited from his
own wife a repetition of her last reply. "Tell