A Tale of Two Cities

every wind that blew over France shook the rags of the scarecrows
in vain, for the birds, fine of song and feather, took no warning.

The wine-shop was a corner shop, better than most others in its
appearance and degree, and the master of the wine-shop had stood
outside it, in a yellow waistcoat and green breeches, looking on at
the struggle for the lost wine.  "It's not my affair," said he,
with a final shrug of the shoulders.  "The people from the market
did it.  Let them bring another."

There, his eyes happening to catch the tall joker writing up his
joke, he called to him across the way:

"Say, then, my Gaspard, what do you do there?"

The fellow pointed to his joke with immense significance, as is often
the way with his tribe.  It missed its mark, and completely failed,
as is often the way with his tribe too.

"What now?  Are you a subject for the mad hospital?" said the
wine-shop keeper, crossing the road, and obliterating the jest with
a handful of mud, picked up for the purpose, and smeared over it.
"Why do you write in the public streets?  Is there--tell me thou--is
there no other place to write such words in?"

In his expostulation he dropped his cleaner hand (perhaps accidentally,
perhaps not) upon the joker's heart.  The joker rapped it with his
own, took a nimble spring upward, and came down in a fantastic
dancing attitude, with one of his stained shoes jerked off his foot
into his hand, and held out.  A joker of an extremely, not to say
wolfishly practical character, he looked, under those circumstances.

"Put it on, put it on," said the other.  "Call wine, wine; and finish
there."  With that advice, he wiped his soiled hand upon the joker's
dress, such as it was--quite deliberately, as having dirtied the hand
on his account; and then recrossed the road and entered the wine-shop.

This wine-shop keeper was a bull-necked, martial-looking man of
thirty, and he should have been of a hot temperament, for, although
it was a bitter day, he wore no coat, but carried one slung over his
shoulder.  His shirt-sleeves were rolled up, too, and his brown arms
were bare to the elbows.  Neither did he wear anything more on his
head than his own crisply-curling short dark hair.  He was a dark man
altogether, with good eyes and a good bold breadth between them.
Good-humoured looking on the whole, but implacable-looking, too;
evidently a man of a strong resolution and a set purpose; a man not
desirable to be met, rushing down a narrow pass with a gulf on either
side, for nothing would turn the man.

Madame Defarge, his wife, sat in the shop behind the counter as he
came in.  Madame Defarge was a stout woman of about his own age, with
a watchful eye that seldom seemed to look at anything, a large hand
heavily ringed, a steady face, strong features, and great composure
of manner.  There was a character about Madame Defarge, from which
one might have predicated that she did not often make mistakes against
herself in any of the reckonings over which she presided.  Madame
Defarge being sensitive to cold, was wrapped in fur, and had a
quantity of bright shawl twined about her head, though not to the
concealment of her large earrings.  Her knitting was before her, but
she had laid it down to pick her teeth with a toothpick.  Thus
engaged, with her right elbow supported by her left hand, Madame
Defarge said nothing when her lord came in, but coughed just one
grain of cough.  This, in combination with the lifting of her darkly
defined eyebrows over her toothpick by the breadth of a line, suggested
to her husband that he would do well to look round the shop among the
customers, for any new customer who had dropped in while he stepped
over the way.

The wine-shop keeper accordingly rolled his eyes about, until they
rested upon an elderly gentleman and a young lady, who were seated in
a corner.  Other company were there:  two playing cards, two playing
dominoes, three standing by the counter lengthening out a short
supply of wine.  As he passed behind the counter, he took notice that
the elderly gentleman said in a look to the young lady, "This is our
man."

"What the devil do _you_ do in that galley there?" said Monsieur
Defarge to himself; "I don't know you."

But, he feigned not to notice the two strangers, and fell into
discourse with the triumvirate of customers who were drinking at the
counter.

"How goes it, Jacques?" said one of these three to Monsieur Defarge.
"Is all the spilt wine swallowed?"

"Every drop, Jacques," answered Monsieur Defarge.

When this interchange of Christian name was effected, Madame Defarge,
picking her teeth with her toothpick, coughed another grain of cough,
and raised her eyebrows by the breadth of another line.

"It is not often," said the second of the three, addressing Monsieur
Defarge, "that many of these miserable beasts know the taste of wine,
or of anything but black bread and death.  Is it not so, Jacques?"

"It is so, Jacques," Monsieur Defarge returned.

At this second interchange of the Christian name, Madame Defarge,
still using her toothpick with profound composure, coughed another