In the evening, at which season of all
others Saint Antoine turned himself inside out, and sat on doorsteps and
window-ledges, and came to the corners of vile streets and courts, for a breath
of air, Madame Defarge with her work in her hand was accustomed to pass from
place to place and from group to group: a Missionary--there were many like
her--such as the world will do well never to breed again. All the women
knitted. They knitted worthless things; but, the mechanical work was a
mechanical substitute for eating and drinking; the hands moved for the jaws and
the digestive apparatus: if the bony fingers had been still, the stomachs would
have been more famine-pinched.
But, as the fingers went, the eyes went,
and the thoughts. And as Madame Defarge moved on from group to group, all three
went quicker and fiercer among every little knot of women that she had spoken
with, and left behind.
Her husband smoked at his door, looking
after her with admiration. `A great woman,' said he, `a strong woman, a grand
woman, a frightfully grand woman!'
Darkness closed around, and then came the
ringing of church bells and the distant beating of the military drums in the
Palace Court-Yard, as the women sat knitting, knitting. Darkness encompassed
them. Another darkness was closing in as surely, when the church bells, then
ringing pleasantly in many an airy steeple over France, should be melted into
thundering cannon; when the military drums should be beating to drown a
wretched voice, that night all-potent as the voice of Power and Plenty, Freedom
and Life. So much was closing in about the women who sat knitting, knitting,
that they their very selves were closing in around a structure yet unbuilt,
where they were to sit knitting, knitting, counting dropping heads.
CHAPTER XVII
One Night
NEVER did the sun go down with a brighter
glory on the quiet comer in Soho , than one
memorable evening when Doctor and his daughter sat under the plane-tree together.
Never did the moon rise with a milder radiance over great London
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