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After looking at her, as if the sound of even a single French word were slow to express itself to him, he answered, in his former strong foreign accent. "Yes, madame, yes. I am English!" Madame Defarge returned to her counter to get the wine, and, as he took up a Jacobin journal and feigned to pore over it puzzling out its meaning, he heard her say, "I swear to you, like Evremonde!"
"Very little to-night, but all he knows. There is another spy commissioned for our quarter. There may be many more, for all that he can say, but he knows of one." "Eh well!" said Madame Defarge, raising her eyebrows with a cool business air. "It is necessary to register him. How do they call that man?" "He is English." "So much the better. His name?"
The citizeness looking at him, he became embarrassed, evaded her glance as a small dog would have done, retreated among his wood, and hid his confusion over the handle of his saw. Madame Defarge beckoned the Juryman and The Vengeance a little nearer to the door, and there expounded her further views to them thus: "She will now be at home, awaiting the moment of his death.
Defarge glanced darkly at him for answer, and walked on in a steady and set silence. The deeper he sank into this silence, the fainter hope there was or so Darnay thought of his softening in any slight degree. Lorry of Tellson's Bank, an English gentleman who is now in Paris, the simple fact, without comment, that I have been thrown into the prison of La Force.
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.
Games at cards languished, players at dominoes musingly built towers with them, drinkers drew figures on the tables with spilt drops of wine, Madame Defarge herself picked out the pattern on her sleeve with her toothpick, and saw and heard something inaudible and invisible a long way off. Thus, Saint Antoine in this vinous feature of his, until midday.
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?"
Haunted by her feverish apprehensions, she could not bear to have her sight obscured for a minute at a time by the dripping water, but constantly paused and looked round to see that there was no one watching her. In one of those pauses she recoiled and cried out, for she saw a figure standing in the room. The basin fell to the ground broken, and the water flowed to the feet of Madame Defarge.
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. Everywhere 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!"
He made all manner of gestures while he spoke, as if in incidental imitation of some few of the great diversity of signals that he had never seen. "Clearly plots," said Jacques Three. "Transparently!" "There is no doubt of the Jury?" inquired Madame Defarge, letting her eyes turn to him with a gloomy smile. "Rely upon the patriotic Jury, dear citizeness. I answer for my fellow-Jurymen."
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