A TALE OF TWO CITIES - 1 - 5 books and stories free download online pdf in English

A TALE OF TWO CITIES - 1 - 5

A TALE OF TWO CITIES

A STORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

By Charles Dickens

Recalled to Life

(5)

The Wine-shop

A large cask of wine had been dropped and broken, in the street. The

accident had happened in getting it out of a cart; the cask had tumbled

out with a run, the hoops had burst, and it lay on the stones just

outside the door of the wine-shop, shattered like a walnut-shell.

All the people within reach had suspended their business, or their

idleness, to run to the spot and drink the wine. The rough, irregular

stones of the street, pointing every way, and designed, one might have

thought, expressly to lame all living creatures that approached them,

had dammed it into little pools; these were surrounded, each by its own

jostling group or crowd, according to its size. Some men kneeled down,

made scoops of their two hands joined, and sipped, or tried to help

women, who bent over their shoulders, to sip, before the wine had all

run out between their fingers. Others, men and women, dipped in

the puddles with little mugs of mutilated earthenware, or even with

handkerchiefs from women's heads, which were squeezed dry into infants'

mouths; others made small mud-embankments, to stem the wine as it ran;

others, directed by lookers-on up at high windows, darted here and

there, to cut off little streams of wine that started away in new

directions; others devoted themselves to the sodden and lee-dyed

pieces of the cask, licking, and even champing the moister wine-rotted

fragments with eager relish. There was no drainage to carry off the

wine, and not only did it all get taken up, but so much mud got taken up

along with it, that there might have been a scavenger in the street,

if anybody acquainted with it could have believed in such a miraculous

presence.

A shrill sound of laughter and of amused voices--voices of men, women,

and children--resounded in the street while this wine game lasted. There

was little roughness in the sport, and much playfulness. There was a

special companionship in it, an observable inclination on the part

of every one to join some other one, which led, especially among the

luckier or lighter-hearted, to frolicsome embraces, drinking of healths,

shaking of hands, and even joining of hands and dancing, a dozen

together. When the wine was gone, and the places where it had been

most abundant were raked into a gridiron-pattern by fingers, these

demonstrations ceased, as suddenly as they had broken out. The man who

had left his saw sticking in the firewood he was cutting, set it in

motion again; the women who had left on a door-step the little pot of

hot ashes, at which she had been trying to soften the pain in her own

starved fingers and toes, or in those of her child, returned to it; men

with bare arms, matted locks, and cadaverous faces, who had emerged into

the winter light from cellars, moved away, to descend again; and a gloom

gathered on the scene that appeared more natural to it than sunshine.

The wine was red wine, and had stained the ground of the narrow street

in the suburb of Saint Antoine, in Paris, where it was spilled. It had

stained many hands, too, and many faces, and many naked feet, and many

wooden shoes. The hands of the man who sawed the wood, left red marks

on the billets; and the forehead of the woman who nursed her baby, was

stained with the stain of the old rag she wound about her head again.

Those who had been greedy with the staves of the cask, had acquired a

tigerish smear about the mouth; and one tall joker so besmirched, his

head more out of a long squalid bag of a nightcap than in it, scrawled

upon a wall with his finger dipped in muddy wine-lees--BLOOD.

The time was to come, when that wine too would be spilled on the

street-stones, and when the stain of it would be red upon many there.

And now that the cloud settled on Saint Antoine, which a momentary

gleam had driven from his sacred countenance, the darkness of it was

heavy--cold, dirt, sickness, ignorance, and want, were the lords in

waiting on the saintly presence--nobles of great power all of them;

but, most especially the last. Samples of a people that had undergone a

terrible grinding and regrinding in the mill, and certainly not in the

fabulous mill which ground old people young, shivered at every corner,

passed in and out at every doorway, looked from every window, fluttered

in every vestige of a garment that the wind shook. The mill which

had worked them down, was the mill that grinds young people old; the

children had ancient faces and grave voices; and upon them, and upon the

grown faces, and ploughed into every furrow of age and coming up afresh,

was the sigh, Hunger. It was prevalent everywhere. Hunger was pushed out

of the tall houses, in the wretched clothing that hung upon poles and

lines; Hunger was patched into them with straw and rag and wood and

paper; Hunger was repeated in every fragment of the small modicum of

firewood that the man sawed off; Hunger stared down from the smokeless

chimneys, and started up from the filthy street that had no offal,

among its refuse, of anything to eat. Hunger was the inscription on the

baker's shelves, written in every small loaf of his scanty stock of

bad bread; at the sausage-shop, in every dead-dog preparation that

was offered for sale. Hunger rattled its dry bones among the roasting

chestnuts in the turned cylinder; Hunger was shred into atomics in every

farthing porringer of husky chips of potato, fried with some reluctant

drops of oil.

Its abiding place was in all things fitted to it. A narrow winding

street, full of offence and stench, with other narrow winding streets

diverging, all peopled by rags and nightcaps, and all smelling of rags

and nightcaps, and all visible things with a brooding look upon them

that looked ill. In the hunted air of the people there was yet some

wild-beast thought of the possibility of turning at bay. Depressed and

slinking though they were, eyes of fire were not wanting among them; nor

compressed lips, white with what they suppressed; nor foreheads knitted

into the likeness of the gallows-rope they mused about enduring, or

inflicting. The trade signs (and they were almost as many as the shops)

were, all, grim illustrations of Want. The butcher and the porkman

painted up, only the leanest scrags of meat; the baker, the coarsest of

meagre loaves. The people rudely pictured as drinking in the wine-shops,

croaked over their scanty measures of thin wine and beer, and were

gloweringly confidential together. Nothing was represented in a

flourishing condition, save tools and weapons; but, the cutler's knives

and axes were sharp and bright, the smith's hammers were heavy, and the

gunmaker's stock was murderous. The crippling stones of the pavement,

with their many little reservoirs of mud and water, had no footways, but

broke off abruptly at the doors. The kennel, to make amends, ran down

the middle of the street--when it ran at all: which was only after heavy

rains, and then it ran, by many eccentric fits, into the houses. Across

the streets, at wide intervals, one clumsy lamp was slung by a rope and

pulley; at night, when the lamplighter had let these down, and lighted,

and hoisted them again, a feeble grove of dim wicks swung in a sickly

manner overhead, as if they were at sea. Indeed they were at sea, and

the ship and crew were in peril of tempest.

For, the time was to come, when the gaunt scarecrows of that region

should have watched the lamplighter, in their idleness and hunger, so

long, as to conceive the idea of improving on his method, and hauling

up men by those ropes and pulleys, to flare upon the darkness of their

condition. But, the time was not come yet; and every wind that blew over

France shook the rags of the scarecrows in vain, for the birds, fine of

song and feather, took no warning.

The wine-shop was a corner shop, better than most others in its

appearance and degree, and the master of the wine-shop had stood outside

it, in a yellow waistcoat and green breeches, looking on at the struggle

for the lost wine. “It's not my affair,” said he, with a final shrug

of the shoulders. “The people from the market did it. Let them bring

another.”

There, his eyes happening to catch the tall joker writing up his joke,

he called to him across the way:

“Say, then, my Gaspard, what do you do there?”

The fellow pointed to his joke with immense significance, as is often

the way with his tribe. It missed its mark, and completely failed, as is

often the way with his tribe too.

“What now? Are you a subject for the mad hospital?” said the wine-shop

keeper, crossing the road, and obliterating the jest with a handful of

mud, picked up for the purpose, and smeared over it. “Why do you write

in the public streets? Is there--tell me thou--is there no other place

to write such words in?”

In his expostulation he dropped his cleaner hand (perhaps accidentally,

perhaps not) upon the joker's heart. The joker rapped it with his

own, took a nimble spring upward, and came down in a fantastic dancing

attitude, with one of his stained shoes jerked off his foot into his

hand, and held out. A joker of an extremely, not to say wolfishly

practical character, he looked, under those circumstances.

“Put it on, put it on,” said the other. “Call wine, wine; and finish

there.” With that advice, he wiped his soiled hand upon the joker's

dress, such as it was--quite deliberately, as having dirtied the hand on

his account; and then recrossed the road and entered the wine-shop.

This wine-shop keeper was a bull-necked, martial-looking man of thirty,

and he should have been of a hot temperament, for, although it was a

bitter day, he wore no coat, but carried one slung over his shoulder.

His shirt-sleeves were rolled up, too, and his brown arms were bare to

the elbows. Neither did he wear anything more on his head than his own

crisply-curling short dark hair. He was a dark man altogether, with good

eyes and a good bold breadth between them. Good-humoured looking on

the whole, but implacable-looking, too; evidently a man of a strong

resolution and a set purpose; a man not desirable to be met, rushing

down a narrow pass with a gulf on either side, for nothing would turn

the man.

Madame Defarge, his wife, sat in the shop behind the counter as he

came in. Madame Defarge was a stout woman of about his own age, with

a watchful eye that seldom seemed to look at anything, a large hand

heavily ringed, a steady face, strong features, and great composure of

manner. There was a character about Madame Defarge, from which one might

have predicated that she did not often make mistakes against herself

in any of the reckonings over which she presided. Madame Defarge being

sensitive to cold, was wrapped in fur, and had a quantity of bright

shawl twined about her head, though not to the concealment of her large

earrings. Her knitting was before her, but she had laid it down to pick

her teeth with a toothpick. Thus engaged, with her right elbow supported

by her left hand, Madame Defarge said nothing when her lord came in, but

coughed just one grain of cough. This, in combination with the lifting

of her darkly defined eyebrows over her toothpick by the breadth of a

line, suggested to her husband that he would do well to look round the

shop among the customers, for any new customer who had dropped in while

he stepped over the way.

The wine-shop keeper accordingly rolled his eyes about, until they

rested upon an elderly gentleman and a young lady, who were seated in

a corner. Other company were there: two playing cards, two playing

dominoes, three standing by the counter lengthening out a short supply

of wine. As he passed behind the counter, he took notice that the

elderly gentleman said in a look to the young lady, “This is our man.”

“What the devil do _you_ do in that galley there?” said Monsieur Defarge

to himself; “I don't know you.”

But, he feigned not to notice the two strangers, and fell into discourse

with the triumvirate of customers who were drinking at the counter.

“How goes it, Jacques?” said one of these three to Monsieur Defarge. “Is

all the spilt wine swallowed?”

“Every drop, Jacques,” answered Monsieur Defarge.

When this interchange of Christian name was effected, Madame Defarge,

picking her teeth with her toothpick, coughed another grain of cough,

and raised her eyebrows by the breadth of another line.

“It is not often,” said the second of the three, addressing Monsieur

Defarge, “that many of these miserable beasts know the taste of wine, or

of anything but black bread and death. Is it not so, Jacques?”

“It is so, Jacques,” Monsieur Defarge returned.

At this second interchange of the Christian name, Madame Defarge, still

using her toothpick with profound composure, coughed another 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 stoppages was made

at a doleful grating, by which any languishing good airs that were left

uncorrupted, seemed to escape, and all spoilt and sickly vapours seemed

to crawl in. Through the rusted bars, tastes, rather than glimpses, were

caught of the jumbled neighbourhood; and nothing within range, nearer

or lower than the summits of the two great towers of Notre-Dame, had any

promise on it of healthy life or wholesome aspirations.

At last, the top of the staircase was gained, and they stopped for the

third time. There was yet an upper staircase, of a steeper inclination

and of contracted dimensions, to be ascended, before the garret story

was reached. The keeper of the wine-shop, always going a little in

advance, and always going on the side which Mr. Lorry took, as though he

dreaded to be asked any question by the young lady, turned himself about

here, and, carefully feeling in the pockets of the coat he carried over

his shoulder, took out a key.

“The door is locked then, my friend?” said Mr. Lorry, surprised.

“Ay. Yes,” was the grim reply of Monsieur Defarge.

“You think it necessary to keep the unfortunate gentleman so retired?”

“I think it necessary to turn the key.” Monsieur Defarge whispered it

closer in his ear, and frowned heavily.

“Why?”

“Why! Because he has lived so long, locked up, that he would be

frightened--rave--tear himself to pieces--die--come to I know not what

harm--if his door was left open.”

“Is it possible!” exclaimed Mr. Lorry.

“Is it possible!” repeated Defarge, bitterly. “Yes. And a beautiful

world we live in, when it _is_ possible, and when many other such things

are possible, and not only possible, but done--done, see you!--under

that sky there, every day. Long live the Devil. Let us go on.”

This dialogue had been held in so very low a whisper, that not a word

of it had reached the young lady's ears. But, by this time she trembled

under such strong emotion, and her face expressed such deep anxiety,

and, above all, such dread and terror, that Mr. Lorry felt it incumbent

on him to speak a word or two of reassurance.

“Courage, dear miss! Courage! Business! The worst will be over in a

moment; it is but passing the room-door, and the worst is over. Then,

all the good you bring to him, all the relief, all the happiness you

bring to him, begin. Let our good friend here, assist you on that side.

That's well, friend Defarge. Come, now. Business, business!”

They went up slowly and softly. The staircase was short, and they were

soon at the top. There, as it had an abrupt turn in it, they came all at

once in sight of three men, whose heads were bent down close together at

the side of a door, and who were intently looking into the room to which

the door belonged, through some chinks or holes in the wall. On hearing

footsteps close at hand, these three turned, and rose, and showed

themselves to be the three of one name who had been drinking in the

wine-shop.

“I forgot them in the surprise of your visit,” explained Monsieur

Defarge. “Leave us, good boys; we have business here.”

The three glided by, and went silently down.

There appearing to be no other door on that floor, and the keeper of

the wine-shop going straight to this one when they were left alone, Mr.

Lorry asked him in a whisper, with a little anger:

“Do you make a show of Monsieur Manette?”

“I show him, in the way you have seen, to a chosen few.”

“Is that well?”

“_I_ think it is well.”

“Who are the few? How do you choose them?”

“I choose them as real men, of my name--Jacques is my name--to whom the

sight is likely to do good. Enough; you are English; that is another

thing. Stay there, if you please, a little moment.”

With an admonitory gesture to keep them back, he stooped, and looked in

through the crevice in the wall. Soon raising his head again, he struck

twice or thrice upon the door--evidently with no other object than to

make a noise there. With the same intention, he drew the key across it,

three or four times, before he put it clumsily into the lock, and turned

it as heavily as he could.

The door slowly opened inward under his hand, and he looked into the

room and said something. A faint voice answered something. Little more

than a single syllable could have been spoken on either side.

He looked back over his shoulder, and beckoned them to enter. Mr. Lorry

got his arm securely round the daughter's waist, and held her; for he

felt that she was sinking.

“A-a-a-business, business!” he urged, with a moisture that was not of

business shining on his cheek. “Come in, come in!”

“I am afraid of it,” she answered, shuddering.

“Of it? What?”

“I mean of him. Of my father.”

Rendered in a manner desperate, by her state and by the beckoning of

their conductor, he drew over his neck the arm that shook upon his

shoulder, lifted her a little, and hurried her into the room. He sat her

down just within the door, and held her, clinging to him.

Defarge drew out the key, closed the door, locked it on the inside,

took out the key again, and held it in his hand. All this he did,

methodically, and with as loud and harsh an accompaniment of noise as he

could make. Finally, he walked across the room with a measured tread to

where the window was. He stopped there, and faced round.

The garret, built to be a depository for firewood and the like, was dim

and dark: for, the window of dormer shape, was in truth a door in the

roof, with a little crane over it for the hoisting up of stores from

the street: unglazed, and closing up the middle in two pieces, like any

other door of French construction. To exclude the cold, one half of this

door was fast closed, and the other was opened but a very little way.

Such a scanty portion of light was admitted through these means, that it

was difficult, on first coming in, to see anything; and long habit

alone could have slowly formed in any one, the ability to do any work

requiring nicety in such obscurity. Yet, work of that kind was being

done in the garret; for, with his back towards the door, and his face

towards the window where the keeper of the wine-shop stood looking at

him, a white-haired man sat on a low bench, stooping forward and very

busy, making shoes.

*******