A Tale of Two Cities

children, from their aged and their sick crouching on the bare ground
famished and naked, they ran out with streaming hair, urging one
another, and themselves, to madness with the wildest cries and actions.
Villain Foulon taken, my sister!  Old Foulon taken, my mother!
Miscreant Foulon taken, my daughter!  Then, a score of others ran into
the midst of these, beating their breasts, tearing their hair, and
screaming, Foulon alive!  Foulon who told the starving people they
might eat grass!  Foulon who told my old father that he might eat
grass, when I had no bread to give him!  Foulon who told my baby it
might suck grass, when these breasts where dry with want!  O mother
of God, this Foulon!  O Heaven our suffering!  Hear me, my dead baby
and my withered father:  I swear on my knees, on these stones, to avenge
you on Foulon!  Husbands, and brothers, and young men, Give us the blood
of Foulon, Give us the head of Foulon, Give us the heart of Foulon,
Give us the body and soul of Foulon, Rend Foulon to pieces, and dig
him into the ground, that grass may grow from him!  With these cries,
numbers of the women, lashed into blind frenzy, whirled about, striking
and tearing at their own friends until they dropped into a passionate
swoon, and were only saved by the men belonging to them from being
trampled under foot.

Nevertheless, not a moment was lost; not a moment!  This Foulon was
at the Hotel de Ville, and might be loosed.  Never, if Saint Antoine
knew his own sufferings, insults, and wrongs!  Armed men and women
flocked out of the Quarter so fast, and drew even these last dregs
after them with such a force of suction, that within a quarter of an
hour there was not a human creature in Saint Antoine's bosom but a
few old crones and the wailing children.

No.  They were all by that time choking the Hall of Examination where
this old man, ugly and wicked, was, and overflowing into the adjacent
open space and streets.  The Defarges, husband and wife, The Vengeance,
and Jacques Three, were in the first press, and at no great distance
from him in the Hall.

"See!" cried madame, pointing with her knife.  "See the old villain
bound with ropes.  That was well done to tie a bunch of grass upon
his back.  Ha, ha!  That was well done.  Let him eat it now!"  Madame
put her knife under her arm, and clapped her hands as at a play.

The people immediately behind Madame Defarge, explaining the cause of
her satisfaction to those behind them, and those again explaining
to others, and those to others, the neighbouring streets resounded with
the clapping of hands.  Similarly, during two or three hours of drawl,
and the winnowing of many bushels of words, Madame Defarge's frequent
expressions of impatience were taken up, with marvellous quickness,
at a distance:  the more readily, because certain men who had by some
wonderful exercise of agility climbed up the external architecture to
look in from the windows, knew Madame Defarge well, and acted as a
telegraph between her and the crowd outside the building.

At length the sun rose so high that it struck a kindly ray as of hope
or protection, directly down upon the old prisoner's head.  The favour
was too much to bear; in an instant the barrier of dust and chaff that
had stood surprisingly long, went to the winds, and Saint Antoine had
got him!

It was known directly, to the furthest confines of the crowd.  Defarge
had but sprung over a railing and a table, and folded the miserable
wretch in a deadly embrace--Madame Defarge had but followed and turned
her hand in one of the ropes with which he was tied--The Vengeance
and Jacques Three were not yet up with them, and the men at the windows
had not yet swooped into the Hall, like birds of prey from their high
perches--when the cry seemed to go up, all over the city, "Bring him
out!  Bring him to the lamp!"

Down, and up, and head foremost on the steps of the building; now, on
his knees; now, on his feet; now, on his back; dragged, and struck at,
and stifled by the bunches of grass and straw that were thrust into his
face by hundreds of hands; torn, bruised, panting, bleeding, yet always
entreating and beseeching for mercy; now full of vehement agony of
action, with a small clear space about him as the people drew one
another back that they might see; now, a log of dead wood drawn through
a forest of legs; he was hauled to the nearest street corner where one
of the fatal lamps swung, and there Madame Defarge let him go--as a
cat might have done to a mouse--and silently and composedly looked
at him while they made ready, and while he besought her:  the women
passionately screeching at him all the time, and the men sternly
calling out to have him killed with grass in his mouth.  Once, he went
aloft, and the rope broke, and they caught him shrieking; twice, he went
aloft, and the rope broke, and they caught him shrieking; then, the rope
was merciful, and held him, and his head was soon upon a pike, with
grass enough in the mouth for all Saint Antoine to dance at the sight of.

Nor was this the end of the day's bad work, for Saint Antoine so
shouted and danced his angry blood up, that it boiled again, on
hearing when the day closed in that the son-in-law of the despatched,
another of the people's enemies and insulters, was coming into Paris
under a guard five hundred strong, in cavalry alone.  Saint Antoine
wrote his crimes on flaring sheets of paper, seized him--would have
torn him out of the breast of an army to bear Foulon company--set
his head and heart on pikes, and carried the three spoils of the day,
in Wolf-procession through the streets.

Not before dark night did the men and women come back to the children,
wailing and breadless.  Then, the miserable bakers' shops were beset
by long files of them, patiently waiting to buy bad bread; and while
they waited with stomachs faint and empty, they beguiled the time by
embracing one another on the triumphs of the day, and achieving them
again in gossip.  Gradually, these strings of ragged people shortened