band's, need not be told. Nor how the lightest | safe and well here, thank God; but I have been echo of their united home, directed by herself with such a wise and elegant thrift that it was more abundant than any waste, was music to her. Nor how there were echoes all about her, sweet in her ears, of the many times her father had told her that he found her more devoted to him married (if that could be) than single, and of the many times her husband had said to her that no cares and duties seemed to divide her love for him or her help to him, and asked her, "What is the magic secret, my darling, of your being every thing to all of us, as if there were only one of us, yet never seeming to be hurried, or to have too much to do?" But there were other echoes, from a distance, that rumbled menacingly in the corner all through this space of time. And it was now, about little Lucie's sixth birthday, that they began to have an awful sound, as of a great storm in France with a dreadful sea rising. Headlong, mad, and dangerous footsteps to force their way into any body's life, footsteps not easily made clean again if once stained red, the footsteps raging in Saint Antoine afar off, as the little circle sat in the dark London window. Saint Antoine had been that morning a vast dusky mass of scarecrows heaving to and fro, with frequent gleams of light above the billowy On a night in mid-July, one thousand seven heads, where steel blades and bayonets shone in hundred and eighty-nine, Mr. Lorry came in the sun. A tremendous roar arose from the late from Tellson's, and sat himself down by throat of Saint Antoine, and a forest of naked Lucie and her husband in the dark window. It arms struggled in the air like shriveled branchwas a hot, wild night, and they were all three es of trees in a winter wind; all the fingers conreminded of the old Sunday night when they vulsively clutching at every weapon or semblance had looked at the lightning from the same place. of a weapon that was thrown up from the depths "I began to think," said Mr. Lorry, pushing below, no matter how far off. his brown wig back, "that I should have to pass the night at Tellson's. We have been so full of business all day that we have not known what to do first, or which way to turn. There is such an uneasiness in Paris that we have actually a run of confidence upon us! Our customers over there seem not to be able to confide their property to us fast enough. There is positively a mania among some of them for sending it to England." "That has a bad look," said Darnay. "A bad look, you say, my dear Darnay? Yes, but we don't know what reason there is in it. People are so unreasonable! Some of us at Tellson's are getting old, and we really can't be troubled out of the ordinary course without due occasion." "Still," said Darnay, "you know how gloomy and threatening the sky is." "I know that, to be sure," assented Mr. Lorry, trying to persuade himself that his sweet temper was soured, and that he grumbled, "but I am determined to be peevish after my long day's botheration. Where is Manette?" "Here he is!" said the Doctor, entering the dark room at the moment. "I am quite glad you are at home; for these hurries and forebodings by which I have been surrounded all day long have made me nervous without reason. You are not going out, I hope ?" "No; I am going to play backgammon with you, if you like," said the Doctor. "I don't think I do like, if I may speak my mind. I am not fit to be pitted against you tonight. Is the tea-board still there, Lucie? I can't see." "Of course, it has been kept for you." Who gave them out, whence they last came, where they began, through what agency they crookedly quivered and jerked, scores at a time, over the heads of the crowd, like a kind of lightning, no eye in the throng could have told; but muskets were being distributed-so were cartridges, powder and ball, bars of iron and wood, knives, axes, pikes, every weapon that distracted ingenuity could discover or devise. People who could lay hold of nothing else set themselves with bleeding hands to force stones and bricks out of their places in walls. Every pulse and heart in St. Antoine was on high-fever strain, and at high-fever heat. Every living creature there held life as of no account, and was demented with a passionate readiness to sacrifice it. As a whirlpool of boiling waters has a centre point, so all this raging circled round Defarge's wine-shop, and every human drop in the caldron had a tendency to be sucked toward the vortex where Defarge himself, already begrimed with gunpowder and sweat, issued orders, issued arms, thrust this man back, dragged this man forward, disarmed one to arm another, labored and strove in the thickest of the uproar. "Keep near to me, Jacques Three," cried Defarge; "and do you, Jacques One and Two, separate and put yourselves at the head of as many of these patriots as you can. Where is my wife ?" "Eh, well! Here you see me!" said madame, composed as ever, but not knitting to-day. Madame's resolute right hand was occupied with an axe, in place of the usual softer implements, and in her girdle were a pistol and a cruel knife. "Where do you go, my wife ?" I go," said madame, "with you, at present. "Thank ye, my dear. The precious child is You shall see me at the head of women, bysafe in bed ?" and-by." Come then!" cried Defarge, in a resounding voice. "Patriots and friends, we are ready! The Bastile !" "And sleeping soundly." "That's right; all safe and well! I don't know why any thing should be otherwise than 66 "IN THE NAME OF ALL THE ANGELS OR DEVILS, WORK!" With a roar that sounded as if all the breath in France had been shaped into the detested word, the living sea rose, wave on wave, depth on depth, and overflowed the city to that point. Alarm-bells ringing, drums beating, the sea raging and thundering on its new beach, the attack begun. Deep ditches, double draw-bridge, massive stone walls, eight great towers, cannon, muskets, fire and smoke. Through the fire and through the smoke-in the fire and in the smoke, for the sea cast him up against a cannon, and on the instant he became a cannonier-Defarge of the wine-shop worked like a manful soldier, Two fierce hours. Deep ditch, single draw-bridge, massive stone walls, eight great towers, cannon, muskets, fire and smoke. One draw-bridge down! "Work, comrades all, work! Work, Jacques One, Jacques Two, Jacques One Thousand, Jacques Two Thousand, Jacques Five-and-Twenty Thousand; in the name of all the Angels or the Devils-which you prefer-work!" Thus Defarge of the wine-shop, still at his gun, which had long grown hot. "To me, women!" cried madame his wife. "What! We can kill as well as the men when the place is taken!" And to her, with a shrill thirsty cry, trooping women variously armed, but all armed alike in hunger and revenge. Cannon, muskets, fire and smoke; but still the deep ditch, the single draw-bridge, the massive stone walls, and the eight great towers. Slight displacements of the raging sea, made by the falling wounded. Flashing weapons, blazing torches, smoking wagon-loads of wet straw, hard work at neighboring barricades in all directions, shrieks, volleys, execrations, bravery without stint, boom smash and rattle, and the furious sounding of the living sea; but still the deep ditch, and the single draw-bridge, and the massive stone walls, and the eight great towers, and still Defarge of the wine-shop at his gun, grown doubly hot by the service of Four fierce hours. A white flag from within the fortress, and a parley- this dimly perceptible through the raging storm, nothing audible in it-suddenly the sea rose immeasurably wider and higher, and swept Defarge of the wine-shop over the lowered draw-bridge, past the massive stone outer walls, in among the eight great towers surrendered! So resistless was the force of the ocean bearing him on, that even to draw his breath or turn his head was as impracticable as if he had been struggling in the surf of the South Sea, until he was landed in the outer court-yard of the Bastile. There, against an angle of a wall, he made a struggle to look about him. Jacques Three was nearly at his side; Madame Defarge, still heading some of her women, was visible in the inner distance, and her knife was in her hand. Every where was tumult, exultation, deafening and maniacal bewilderment, astounding noise, yet furious dumb-show. "The Prisoners!" "The Records!" "The secret cells!" "The instruments of torture!" "The Prisoners!" Of all these cries, and ten thousand incoherencies, "The Prisoners!" was the cry most taken up by the sea that rushed in, as if there were an eternity of people, as well as of time and space. When the foremost billows rolled past, bearing the prison officers with them, and threatening them all with instant death if any secret nook remained undisclosed, Defarge laid his strong hand on the breast of one of these men-a man with a gray head who had a lighted torch in his hand-separated him from the rest, and got him between himself and the wall. "Show me the North Tower!" said Defarge. "Quick!" "I will faithfully," replied the man, "if you will come with me. But there is no one there." "What is the meaning of One Hundred and Five, North Tower?" asked Defarge. "Quick!" "The meaning, monsieur?" "Does it mean a captive, or a place of captivity? Or do you mean that I shall strike you dead?" "Kill him!" croaked Jacques Three, who had come close up. "Monsieur, it is a cell." "Show it me!" "Pass this way, then." Jacques Three, with his usual craving on him, and evidently disappointed by the dialogue taking a turn that did not seem to promise bloodshed, held by Defarge's arm as he held by the turnkey's. Their three heads had been close together during this brief discourse, and it had been as much as they could do to hear one another even then: so tremendous was the noise of the living ocean, in its irruption into the Fortress, and its inundation of the courts and passages and staircases. All around outside, too, it beat the walls with a deep, hoarse roar, from which occasionally some partial shouts of tumult broke and leaped into the air like spray. Through gloomy vaults where the light of day had never shone, past hideous doors of dark dens and cages, down cavernous flights of steps, and again up steep, rugged ascents of stone and brick, more like dry waterfalls than staircases, Defarge, the turnkey, and Jacques Three, linked hand and arm, went with all the speed they could make. Here and there, especially at first, the inundation started on them and swept by; but when they had done descending, and were winding and climbing up a tower, they were alone. Hemmed in here by the massive thickness of walls and arches, the storm within the fortress and without was only audible to them in a dull, subdued way, as if the noise out of which they had come had almost destroyed their sense of hearing. The turnkey stopped at a low door, put a key in a clashing lock, swung the door slowly open, and said, as they all bent their heads and passed in: "One hundred and five, North Tower!" There was a small, heavily-grated, unglazed window high in the wall, with a stone screen before it, so that the sky could be only seen by stooping low and looking up. There was a small chimney, heavily barred across, a few feet within. There was a heap of old feathery wood ashes on the hearth. There were a stool, and table, and a straw bed. There were the four blackened walls, and a rusted iron ring in one of them. "Pass that torch slowly along these walls, that I may see them,” said Defarge to the turnkey. The man obeyed, and Defarge followed the light closely with his eyes. "Stop!-Look here, Jacques!" "A. M.!" croaked Jacques Three, as he read greedily. "Alexandre Manette!" said Defarge in his ear, following the letters with his swart forefinger, deeply ingrained with gunpowder. "And here he wrote a poor physician.' And it was he, without doubt, who scratched a calendar on this stone. What is that in your hand? A crow-bar? Give it me!" He had still the linstock of his gun in his own hand. He made a sudden exchange of the two instruments, and turning on the wormeaten stool and table, beat them to pieces in a few blows. "Hold the light higher!" he said, wrathfully, to the turnkey. "Look among those fragments with care, Jacques. And see! Here is my knife," throwing it to him; "rip open that bed, and search the straw. Hold the light. higher, you!" With a menacing look at the turnkey he crawled upon the hearth, and peering up the chimney, struck and prised at its sides with the crow-bar, and worked at the iron grating across it. In a few minutes some mortar and dust came dropping down, which he averted his face to avoid; and in it, and in the old wood-ashes, and in crevice in the chimney into which his weapon had slipped or wrought itself, he groped with a cautious touch. "Nothing in the wood, and nothing in the straw, Jacques ?" "Nothing." "Let us collect them together in the middle of the cell. So! Light them, you!" The turnkey fired the little pile, which blazed high and hot. Stooping again to come out at the low-arched door, they left it burning, and retraced their way to the court-yard: seeming to recover their sense of hearing as they came down, until they were in the raging flood once more. They found it surging and tossing, in quest of Defarge himself. Saint Antoine was clamorous to have its wine-shop keeper foremost in the guard upon the governor who had defended the Bastile and shot the people. Otherwise, the governor would not be marched to the Hôtel de Ville for judgment. Otherwise, the governor would escape, and the people's blood (suddenly Heaven defeat the fancy of Lucie Darnay, and of some value, after many years of worthlessness) be unavenged. In the howling universe of passion and contention that seemed to encompass this grim old officer conspicuous in his gray coat and red decoration, there was but one quite steady figure, and that was a woman's. "See, there is my husband!" she cried, pointing him out. "See Defarge!" She stood immovable close to the grim old officer, and remained immovable close to him; remained immovable close to him through the streets, as Defarge and the rest bore him along; remained immovable close to him when he was got near his destination, and began to be struck at from behind; remained immovable close to him when the longgathering rain of stabs and blows fell heavy; was so close to him when he dropped dead under it, that, suddenly animated, she put her foot upon his neck, and with her cruel knifelong ready-hewed off his head. The hour was come when Saint Antoine was to execute his horrible idea of hoisting up men for lamps to show what he could be and do. Saint Antoine's blood was up, and the blood of tyranny and domination by the iron hand was down-down on the steps of the Hôtel de Ville where the governor's body lay-down on the sole of the shoe of Madame Defarge where she had trodden on the body to steady it for mutilation. "Lower the lamp yonder!" cried Saint Antoine, after glaring round for a new means of death; "here is one of his soldiers to be left on guard!" The swinging sentinel was posted, and the sea rushed on. The sea of black and threatening waters, and of destructive upheavings of wave against wave, whose depths were yet unfathomed and whose forces were yet unknown. The remorseless sea of turbulently swaying shapes, voices of vengeance, and faces hardened in the furnaces of suffering until the touch of pity could make no mark on them. But in the ocean of faces where every fierce and furious expression was in vivid life, there were two groups of faces-each seven in number-so fixedly contrasting with the rest, that never did sea roll which bore more memorable wrecks with it. Seven faces of prisoners, suddenly released by the storm that had burst their tomb, were carried high over head; all scared, all lost, all wondering and amazed, as if the Last Day were come, and those who rejoiced around them were lost spirits. Other seven faces there were, carried higher, seven dead faces, whose drooping eyelids and half-seen eyes awaited the Last Day. Impassive faces, yet with a suspended-not an abolished-expression on them; faces, rather, in a fearful pause, as having yet to raise the dropped lids of the eyes, and bear witness with the bloodless lips, "THOU DIDST IT!" keep these feet far out of her life! For they CHAPTER XXII. THE SEA STILL RISES. HAGGARD Saint Antoine had had only one exultant week in which to soften his modicum of hard and bitter bread, to such extent as he could, with the relish of fraternal embraces and congratulations, when Madame Defarge sat at her counter, as usual, presiding over the customers. Madame Defarge wore no rose in her head, for the great brotherhood of Spies had become, even in one short week, extremely chary of trusting themselves to the Saint's mercies. The lamps across his streets had a portentously elastic swing with them. Madame Defarge, with her arms folded, sat in the morning light and heat, contemplating the wine-shop and the street. In both there were several knots of loungers, squalid and miserable, but now with a manifest sense of power enthroned on their distress. The raggedest night-cap, awry on the wretchedest head, Seven prisoners released, seven gory heads on had this crooked significance in it: "I know pikes, the keys of the accursed fortress of the how hard it has grown for me, the wearer of eight strong towers, some discovered letters and this, to support life in myself; but do you know other memorials of prisoners of old time, long how easy it has grown for me, the wearer of dead of broken hearts--such, and such-like, the this, to destroy life in you?" Every lean, bare loudly echoing footsteps of Saint Antoine escort arm, that had been without work before, had through the Paris streets in mid-July, one thou- this work always ready for it now, that it could sand seven hundred and eighty-nine. Now, strike. The fingers of the knitting women were vicious, with the experience that they could tear. | There was a change in the appearance of Saint Antoine; the image had been hammering into this for hundreds of years, and the last finishing blows had told mightily on the expression. Madame Defarge sat observing it, with such suppressed approval as was to be desired in the leader of the Saint Antoine women. One of her sisterhood knitted beside her. The short, rather plump wife of a starved grocer, and the mother of two children withal, this lieutenant had already earned the complimentary name of The Vengeance. "Hark!" said The Vengeance. "Listen, then! Who comes?" 66 As if a train of powder, laid from the outermost bound of the Saint Antoine Quarter to the wine-shop door, had been suddenly fired, a fast-spreading murmur came rushing along. "It is Defarge," said madame. Silence, patriots!" Defarge came in breathless, pulled off a red cap he wore, and looked around him. "Listen, every where!” said madame, again. "Listen to him!" Defarge stood, panting, against a back-ground of eager eyes and open mouths, formed outside the door; all those within the wine-shop had sprung to their feet. 66 Say then, my husband. What is it?" 66 How, then?" cried madame, contemptuously. "The other world?" 66 Does every body here recall old Foulon, who told the famished people that they might eat grass, and who died and went to Hell?" "Every body!" from all throats.. 66 66 "The news is of him. He is among us!" Among us!" from the universal throat again. "And dead?" "Not dead! He feared us so much-and with reason that he caused himself to be represented as dead, and had a grand mock-funeral. But they have found him alive, hiding in the country, and have brought him in. I have seen him but now, on his way to the Hôtel de Ville, a prisoner. I have said that he had reason to fear us. Say all! Had he reason ?" Wretched old sinner of more than threescore years and ten! if he had never known it yet, he would have known it in his heart of hearts if he could have heard the answering cry. A moment of profound silence followed. Defarge and his wife looked steadfastly at one another. The Vengeance stooped, and the jar of a drum was heard as she moved it at her feet behind the counter. "Patriots!" said Defarge, in a determined voice, are we ready?" 66 Instantly Madame Defarge's knife was in her girdle; the drum was beating in the streets, as if it and a drummer had flown together by magic; and The Vengeance, uttering terrific shrieks, and flinging her arms about her head like all the forty Furies at once, was tearing from house to house, rousing the women. The men were terrible in the bloody-minded anger with which they looked from windows, caught up what arms they had, and came pouring down into the streets; but the women were a sight to chill the boldest. From such household occupations as their bare poverty yielded, from their 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 were 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 in 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 Hôtel 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 neighboring 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 marvelous 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 favor was too much to bear; in an instant the barrier |