A Tale of Two Cities

grain of cough, and raised her eyebrows by the breadth of another line.

The last of the three now said his say, as he put down his empty
drinking vessel and smacked his lips.

"Ah!  So much the worse!  A bitter taste it is that such poor cattle
always have in their mouths, and hard lives they live, Jacques.
Am I right, Jacques?"

"You are right, Jacques," was the response of Monsieur Defarge.

This third interchange of the Christian name was completed at the
moment when Madame Defarge put her toothpick by, kept her eyebrows
up, and slightly rustled in her seat.

"Hold then!  True!" muttered her husband.  "Gentlemen--my wife!"

The three customers pulled off their hats to Madame Defarge, with
three flourishes.  She acknowledged their homage by bending her head,
and giving them a quick look.  Then she glanced in a casual manner
round the wine-shop, took up her knitting with great apparent
calmness and repose of spirit, and became absorbed in it.

"Gentlemen," said her husband, who had kept his bright eye
observantly upon her, "good day.  The chamber, furnished bachelor-
fashion, that you wished to see, and were inquiring for when I
stepped out, is on the fifth floor.  The doorway of the staircase
gives on the little courtyard close to the left here," pointing with
his hand, "near to the window of my establishment.  But, now that I
remember, one of you has already been there, and can show the way.
Gentlemen, adieu!"

They paid for their wine, and left the place.  The eyes of Monsieur
Defarge were studying his wife at her knitting when the elderly
gentleman advanced from his corner, and begged the favour of a word.

"Willingly, sir," said Monsieur Defarge, and quietly stepped with him
to the door.

Their conference was very short, but very decided.  Almost at the
first word, Monsieur Defarge started and became deeply attentive.
It had not lasted a minute, when he nodded and went out.  The
gentleman then beckoned to the young lady, and they, too, went out.
Madame Defarge knitted with nimble fingers and steady eyebrows, and
saw nothing.

Mr. Jarvis Lorry and Miss Manette, emerging from the wine-shop thus,
joined Monsieur Defarge in the doorway to which he had directed his
own company just before.  It opened from a stinking little black
courtyard, and was the general public entrance to a great pile of
houses, inhabited by a great number of people.  In the gloomy tile-
paved entry to the gloomy tile-paved staircase, Monsieur Defarge bent
down on one knee to the child of his old master, and put her hand to
his lips.  It was a gentle action, but not at all gently done; a very
remarkable transformation had come over him in a few seconds.  He had
no good-humour in his face, nor any openness of aspect left, but had
become a secret, angry, dangerous man.

"It is very high; it is a little difficult.  Better to begin slowly."
Thus, Monsieur Defarge, in a stern voice, to Mr. Lorry, as they began
ascending the stairs.

"Is he alone?" the latter whispered.

"Alone!  God help him, who should be with him!" said the other, in the
same low voice.

"Is he always alone, then?"

"Yes."

"Of his own desire?"

"Of his own necessity.  As he was, when I first saw him after they
found me and demanded to know if I would take him, and, at my peril
be discreet--as he was then, so he is now."

"He is greatly changed?"

"Changed!"

The keeper of the wine-shop stopped to strike the wall with his hand,
and mutter a tremendous curse.  No direct answer could have been half
so forcible.  Mr. Lorry's spirits grew heavier and heavier, as he and
his two companions ascended higher and higher.

Such a staircase, with its accessories, in the older and more crowded
parts of Paris, would be bad enough now; but, at that time, it was
vile indeed to unaccustomed and unhardened senses.  Every little
habitation within the great foul nest of one high building--that is
to say, the room or rooms within every door that opened on the
general staircase--left its own heap of refuse on its own landing,
besides flinging other refuse from its own windows.  The uncontrollable
and hopeless mass of decomposition so engendered, would have polluted
the air, even if poverty and deprivation had not loaded it with their
intangible impurities; the two bad sources combined made it almost
insupportable.  Through such an atmosphere, by a steep dark shaft of
dirt and poison, the way lay.  Yielding to his own disturbance of
mind, and to his young companion's agitation, which became greater
every instant, Mr. Jarvis Lorry twice stopped to rest.  Each of these