husband have enough to do to keep this wine-shop open, without
thinking. All we think, here, is how to live. That is the subject we
think of, and it gives us, from morning to night, enough to think
about, without embarrassing our heads concerning others. I think
for others? No, no.”
The spy, who was there to pick up any crumbs he could find or
make, did not allow his baffled state to express itself in his sinister
face; but stood with an air of gossiping gallantry, leaning his elbow
on Madame Defarge’s little counter, and occasionally sipping his
cognac.
“A bad business this, madame, of Gaspard’s execution. Ah! the
poor Gaspard!” With a sigh of great compassion.
“My faith!” returned madame, coolly and lightly, “if people use
knives for such purposes, they have to pay for it. He knew
beforehand what the price of his luxury was; he has paid the
price.”
“I believe,” said the spy, dropping his soft voice to a tone that
invited confidence, and expressing an injured revolutionary
susceptibility in every muscle of his wicked face: “I believe there is
much compassion and anger in this neighbourhood, touching the
poor fellow? Between ourselves.”
“Is there?” asked madame, vacantly.
“Is there not?”
“—Here is my husband!” said Madame Defarge.
As the keeper of the wine-shop entered at the door, the spy
saluted him by touching his hat, and saying, with an engaging
smile, “Good day, Jacques!” Defarge stopped short, and stared at
him.
Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
f
A Tale of Two Cities
“Good day, Jacques!” the spy repeated; with not quite so much
confidence, or quite so easy a smile under the stare.
“You deceive yourself, monsieur,” returned the keeper of the
wine-shop. “You mistake me for another. That is not my name. I
am Ernest Defarge.”
“It is all the same,” said the spy, airily, but discomfited too:
“good day!”
“Good day!” answered Defarge, drily.
“I was saying to madame, with whom I had the pleasure of
chatting when you entered, that they tell me there is—and no
wonder!—much sympathy and anger in Saint Antoine, touching
the unhappy fate of poor Gaspard.”
“No one has told me so,” said Defarge, shaking his head. “I
know nothing of it.”
Having said it, he passed behind the little counter, and stood
with his hand on the back of the wife’s chair, looking over that
barrier at the person to whom they were both opposed, and whom
either of them would have shot with the greatest satisfaction.
The spy, well used to his business, did not change his
unconscious attitude, but drained his little glass of cognac, took a
sip of fresh water, and asked for another glass of cognac. Madame
Defarge poured it out for him, took to her knitting again, and
hummed a little song over it.
“You seem to know the quarter well; that is to say, better than I
do?” observed Defarge.
“Not at all, but I hope to know it better. I am so profoundly
interested in its miserable inhabitants.”
“Hah!” muttered Defarge.
“The pleasure of conversing with you, Monsieur Defarge,
Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
f
A Tale of Two Cities
recalls to me,” pursued the spy, “that I have the honour of
cherishing some interesting associations with your name.”
“Indeed!” said Defarge, with much indifference.
“Yes, indeed. When Dr. Manette was released, you, his old
domestic, had the charge of him, I know. He was delivered to you.
You see I am informed of the circumstances?”
“Such is the fact, certainly,” said Defarge. He had had it
conveyed to him, in an accidental touch of his wife’s elbow as she
knitted and warbled, that he would do best to answer, but always
with brevity.
“It was to you,” said the spy, “that his daughter came; and it
was from your care that his daughter took him, accompanied by a
neat brown monsieur; how is he called?—in a little wig—Lorry—of
the bank of Tellson and Company—over to England.”
“Such is the fact,” repeated Defarge.
“Very interesting remembrances!” said the spy. “I "};
