"Pardon,
Monsieur
the Marquis!
Warner - World's Best Literature - v06 to v10 - Cal to Fro
While some brought all their energies to bear upon this toil-
some task, and some, rearing ladders against the prison, tried to
clamber to the summit of the walls they were too short to scale,
and some again engaged a body of police a hundred strong, and
beat them back and trod them under foot by force of numbers,
others besieged the house on which the jailer had appeared, and
driving in the door, brought out his furniture and piled it up
against the prison gate to make a bonfire which should burn it
down. As soon
as this device was understood, all those who
had labored hitherto cast down their tools and helped to swell
the heap, which reached half-way across the street, and was so
high that those who threw more fuel on the top got up by lad-
ders. When all the keeper's goods were flung upon this costly
pile, to the last fragment, they smeared it with the pitch and tar
and rosin they had brought, and sprinkled it with turpentine.
## p. 4657 (#451) ###########################################
CHARLES DICKENS
4657
To all the woodwork round the prison doors they did the like,
leaving not a joist or beam untouched. This infernal christen-
ing performed, they fired the pile with lighted matches and with
blazing tow, and then stood by, awaiting the result.
The furniture being very dry and rendered more combustible
by wax and oil, besides the arts they had used, took fire at once.
The flames roared high and fiercely, blackening the prison wall,
and twining up its lofty front like burning serpents. At first
they crowded round the blaze, and vented their exultation only
in their looks; but when it grew hotter and fiercer when it
crackled, leaped, and roared, like a great furnace - when it shone
upon the opposite houses and lighted up not only the pale and
wondering faces at the windows, but the inmost corners of each
habitation - when, through the deep red heat and glow, the fire
was seen sporting and toying with the door, now clinging to its
obdurate surface, now gliding off with fierce inconstancy and
soaring high into the sky, anon returning to fold it in its burn-
ing grasp and lure it to its ruin—when it shone and gleamed so
brightly that the church clock of St. Sepulchre's, so often point-
ing to the hour of death, was legible as in broad day, and the
vane upon its steeple-top glittered in the unwonted light like
something richly jeweled-when blackened stone and sombre
brick grew ruddy in the deep reflection, and windows shone like
burnished gold, dotting the longest distance in the fiery vista
with their specks of brightness-when wall and tower and roof
and chimney-stack seemed drunk, and in the flickering glare ap-
peared to reel and stagger-when scores of objects, never seen
before, burst out upon the view, and things the most familiar
put on some new aspect-then the mob began to join the whirl,
and with loud yells, and shouts, and clamor, such as happily is
seldom heard, bestirred themselves to feed the fire and keep it at
its height.
――
Although the heat was so intense that the paint on the houses
over against the prison parched and crackled up, and swelling
into boils as it were, from excess of torture, broke and crumbled
away; although the glass fell from the window-sashes, and the
lead and iron on the roofs blistered the incautious hand that
touched them, and the sparrows in the eaves took wing, and
rendered giddy by the smoke, fell fluttering down upon the blaz-
ing pile;-still the fire was tended unceasingly by busy hands, and
round it men were going always. They never slackened in their
VIII-292
## p. 4658 (#452) ###########################################
4658
CHARLES DICKENS
zeal, or kept aloof, but pressed upon the flames so hard that
those in front had much ado to save themselves from being
thrust in; if one man swooned or dropped, a dozen struggled for
his place, and that, although they knew the pain and thirst and
pressure to be unendurable. Those who fell down in fainting
fits, and were not crushed or burned, were carried to an inn-yard
close at hand, and dashed with water from a pump; of which
buckets full were passed from man to man among the crowd;
but such was the strong desire of all to drink, and such the
fighting to be first, that for the most part the whole contents
were spilled upon the ground, without the lips of one man being
moistened.
Meanwhile, and in the midst of all the roar and outcry, those
who were nearest to the pile heaped up again the burning frag-
ments that came toppling down, and raked the fire about the
door, which, although a sheet of flame, was still a door fast
locked and barred, and kept them out. Great pieces of blazing
wood were passed, besides, above the people's heads to such as
stood about the ladders, and some of these, climbing up to the
topmost stave, and holding on with one hand by the prison wall,
exerted all their skill and force to cast these fire-brands on the
roof, or down into the yards within. In many instances their
efforts were successful, which occasioned a new and appalling
addition to the horrors of the scene; for the prisoners within,
seeing from between their bars that the fire caught in many
places and thrived fiercely, and being all locked up in strong
cells for the night, began to know that they were in danger of
being burned alive. This terrible fear, spreading from cell to
cell and from yard to yard, vented itself in such dismal cries and
wailings, and in such dreadful shrieks for help, that the whole
jail resounded with the noise; which was loudly heard even above
the shouting of the mob and roaring of the flames, and was so
full of agony and despair that it made the boldest tremble.
The women who were looking on shrieked loudly, beat their
hands together, stopped their ears, and many fainted; the men
who were not near the walls and active in the siege, rather than
do nothing tore up the pavement of the street, and did so with
a haste and fury they could not have surpassed if that had been
the jail, and they were near their object. Not one living creature
in the throng was for an instant still.
were mad.
The whole great mass
## p. 4659 (#453) ###########################################
CHARLES DICKENS
4659
A shout! Another! Another yet, though few knew why, or
what it meant. But those around the gate had seen it slowly
yield, and drop from its topmost hinge. It hung on that side by
but one, but it was upright still because of the bar, and its hav-
ing sunk of its own weight into the heap of ashes at its foot.
There was now a gap at the top of the doorway, through which
could be descried a gloomy passage, cavernous and dark. Pile
up the fire!
It burned fiercely. The door was red-hot, and the gap wider.
They vainly tried to shield their faces with their hands, and
standing as if in readiness for a spring, watched the place. Dark
figures, some crawling on their hands and knees, some carried in
the arms of others, were seen to pass along the roof.
It was
plain the jail could hold out no longer. The keeper and his
officers, and their wives and children, were escaping. Pile up the
fire!
The door sank down again: it settled deeper in the cinders-
tottered-yielded-was down!
As they shouted again, they fell back for a moment, and left
a clear space about the fire that lay between them and the jail
entry. Hugh leaped upon the blazing heap, and scattering a
train of sparks into the air, and making the dark lobby glitter
with those that hung upon his dress, dashed into the jail.
The hangman followed. And then so many rushed upon their
track that the fire got trodden down and thinly strewn about the
street; but there was no need of it now, for inside and out, the
prison was in flames.
DURING the whole course of the terrible scene which was now
at its height, one man in the jail suffered a degree of fear and
mental torment which had no parallel in the endurance even of
those who lay under sentence of death.
When the rioters first assembled before the building, the
murderer was roused from sleep-if such slumbers as his may
have that blessed name - by the roar of voices, and the strug-
gling of a great crowd. He started up as these sounds met his
ear, and sitting on his bedstead, listened.
-
After a short interval of silence the noise burst out again.
Still listening attentively, he made out in course of time that
the jail was besieged by a furious multitude. His guilty con-
science instantly arrayed these men against himself, and brought
## p. 4660 (#454) ###########################################
4660
CHARLES DICKENS
the fear upon him that he would be singled out and torn to
pieces.
Once impressed with the terror of this conceit, everything
tended to confirm and strengthen it. His double crime, the cir-
cumstances under which it had been committed, the length of
time that had elapsed, and its discovery in spite of all, made
him as it were the visible object of the Almighty's wrath. In
all the crime and vice and moral gloom of the great pest-house
of the capital, he stood alone, marked and singled out by his
great guilt, a Lucifer among the devils. The other prisoners
were a host, hiding and sheltering each other-a crowd like
that without the walls. He was one man against the whole
united concourse; a single, solitary, lonely man, from whom the
very captives in the jail fell off and shrunk appalled.
It might be that the intelligence of his capture having been
bruited abroad, they had come there purposely to drag him out
and kill him in the street; or it might be that they were the
rioters, and in pursuance of an old design had come to sack
the prison. But in either case he had no belief or hope that they
would spare him. Every shout they raised and every sound
they made was a blow upon his heart. As the attack went on,
he grew more wild and frantic in his terror; tried to pull away
the bars that guarded the chimney and prevented him from
climbing up; called loudly on the turnkeys to cluster round the
cell and save him from the fury of the rabble, or put him in
some dungeon underground, no matter of what depth, how dark
it was, or loathsome, or beset with rats and creeping things, so
that it hid him and was hard to find.
But no one came, or answered him. Fearful, even while he
cried to them, of attracting attention, he was silent. By-and-by
he saw, as he looked from his grated window, a strange glim-
mering on the stone walls and pavement of the yard.
It was
feeble at first, and came and went, as though some officers with
torches were passing to and fro upon the roof of the prison.
Soon it reddened, and lighted brands came whirling down, spat-
tering the ground with fire, and burning sullenly in corners.
One rolled beneath a wooden bench and set it in a blaze;
another caught a water-spout, and so went climbing up the wall,
leaving a long straight track of fire behind it. After a time, a
slow thick shower of burning fragments, from some upper portion
of the prison which was blazing nigh, began to fall before his
## p. 4661 (#455) ###########################################
CHARLES DICKENS
4661
door.
Remembering that it opened outwards, he knew that
every spark which fell upon the heap, and in the act lost its
bright life and died an ugly speck of dust and rubbish, helped
to entomb him in a living grave. Still, though the jail resounded
with shrieks and cries for help,- though the fire bounded up as
if each separate flame had had a tiger's life, and roared as though
in every one there were a hungry voice-though the heat began
to grow intense, and the air suffocating, and the clamor without
increased, and the danger of his situation even from one merci-
less element was every moment more extreme,- still he was
afraid to raise his voice again, lest the crowd should break in,
and should, of their own ears or from the information given them
by the other prisoners, get the clew to his place of confinement.
Thus fearful alike of those within the prison and of those with-
out; of noise and silence; light and darkness; of being released,
and being left there to die: he was so tortured and tormented,
that nothing man has ever done to man in the horrible caprice
of power and cruelty, exceeds his self-inflicted punishment.
Now, now, the door was down. Now they came rushing
through the jail, calling to each other in the vaulted passages;
clashing the iron gates dividing yard from yard; beating at the
doors of cells and wards; wrenching off bolts and locks and
bars; tearing down the doorposts to get men out; endeavoring
to drag them by main force through gaps and windows where
a child could scarcely pass; whooping and yelling without a
moment's rest; and running through the heat and flames as if
they were cased in metal. By their legs, their arms, the hair
upon their heads, they dragged the prisoners out. Some threw
themselves upon the captives as they got towards the door, and
tried to file away their irons; some danced about them with a
frenzied joy, and rent their clothes, and were ready, as it seemed,
to tear them limb from limb. Now a party of a dozen men
came darting through the yard into which the murderer cast
fearful glances from his darkened window; dragging a prisoner
along the ground, whose dress they had nearly torn from his
body in their mad eagerness to set him free, and who was bleed-
ing and senseless in their hands. Now a score of prisoners ran
to and fro, who had lost themselves in the intricacies of the
prison, and were so bewildered with the noise and glare that
they knew not where to turn or what to do, and still cried
out for help as loudly as before. Anon some famished wretch,
## p. 4662 (#456) ###########################################
4662
CHARLES DICKENS
whose theft had been a loaf of bread or scrap of butcher's
meat, came skulking past, barefooted — going slowly away be-
cause that jail, his house, was burning; not because he had any
other, or had friends to meet, or old haunts to revisit, or any
liberty to gain but liberty to starve and die. And then a knot
of highwaymen went trooping by, conducted by the friends
they had among the crowd, who muffled their fetters as they
went along with handkerchiefs and bands of hay, and wrapped
them in coats and cloaks, and gave them drink from bottles,
and held it to their lips, because of their handcuffs which there
was no time to remove. All this, and Heaven knows how much
more, was done amidst a noise, a hurry, and distraction, like
nothing that we know of even in our dreams; which seemed for-
ever on the rise, and never to decrease for the space of a single
instant.
He was still looking down from his window upon these things,
when a band of men with torches, ladders, axes, and many
kinds of weapons, poured into the yard, and hammering at his
door, inquired if there were any prisoner within. He left the
window when he saw them coming, and drew back into the
remotest corner of the cell; but although he returned them no
answer, they had a fancy that some one was inside, for they
presently set ladders against it, and began to tear away the bars
at the casement; not only that, indeed, but with pickaxes to
hew down the very stones in the wall.
As soon as they had made a breach at the window, large
enough for the admission of a man's head, one of them thrust
in a torch and looked all round the room. He followed this
man's gaze until it rested on himself, and heard him demand
why he had not answered, but made him no reply.
In the general surprise and wonder, they were used to this;
without saying anything more, they enlarged the breach until it
was large enough to admit the body of a man, and then came
dropping down upon the floor, one after another, until the cell
was full. They caught him up among them, handed him to the
window, and those who stood upon the ladders passed him down
upon the pavement of the yard. Then the rest came out, one
after another, and bidding him fly and lose no time, or the way
would be choked up, hurried away to rescue others.
It seemed not a minute's work from first to last.
He stag
gered to his feet, incredulous of what had happened, when the
## p. 4663 (#457) ###########################################
CHARLES DICKENS
4663
yard was filled again, and a crowd rushed on, hurrying Barnaby
among them.
In another minute- not so much: another min-
ute! the same instant, with no lapse or interval between! - he
and his son were being passed from hand to hand, through the
dense crowd in the street, and were glancing backward at a
burning pile which some one said was Newgate.
When he [the hangman] had issued his instructions relative
to every other part of the building, and the mob were dispersed
from end to end, and busy at their work, he took a bundle of
keys from a kind of cupboard in the wall, and going by a pri-
vate passage near the chapel (it joined the governor's house, and
was then on fire), betook himself to the condemned cells, which
were a series of small, strong, dismal rooms, opening on a low
gallery, guarded at the end at which he entered by a strong
iron wicket, and at its opposite extremity by two doors and a
thick grate. Having double-locked the wicket and assured him-
self that the other entrances were well secured, he sat down on
a bench in the gallery and sucked the head of his stick with an
air of the utmost complacency, tranquillity, and contentment.
It would have been strange enough, a man's enjoying himself
in this quiet manner while the prison was burning and such a
tumult was cleaving the air, though he had been outside the walls.
But here in the very heart of the building, and moreover,
with the prayers and cries of the four men under sentence
sounding in his ears, and their hands, stretched out through the
gratings in their cell doors, clasped in frantic entreaty before
his very eyes, it was particularly remarkable. Indeed, Mr. Den-
nis appeared to think it an uncommon circumstance, and to
banter himself upon it; for he thrust his hat on one side as
some men do when they are in a waggish humor, sucked the
head of his stick with a higher relish, and smiled as though he
would say: "Dennis, you're a rum dog; you're a queer fellow;
you're capital company, Dennis, and quite a character! "
He sat in this way for some minutes, while the four men in
the cells, certain that somebody had entered the gallery but un-
able to see who, gave vent to such piteous entreaties as wretches
in their miserable condition may be supposed to have been
inspired with; urging whoever it was to set them at liberty, for
the love of Heaven; and protesting with great fervor, and truly
enough perhaps for the time, that if they escaped they would
amend their ways, and would never, never, never again do wrong
## p. 4664 (#458) ###########################################
4664
CHARLES DICKENS
before God or man, but would lead penitent and sober lives, and
sorrowfully repent the crimes they had committed. The terrible
energy with which they spoke would have moved any person, no
matter how good or just (if any good or just person could have
strayed into that sad place that night), to set them at liberty,
and while he would have left any other punishment to its free
course, to save them from this last dreadful and repulsive pen-
alty; which never turned a man inclined to evil, and has hard-
ened thousands who were half inclined to good.
Mr. Dennis, who had been bred and nurtured in the good
old school, and had administered the good old laws on the good
old plan, always once and sometimes twice every six weeks, for a
long time bore these appeals with a deal of philosophy. Being
at last, however, rather disturbed in his pleasant reflection by
their repetition, he rapped at one of the doors with his stick,
and cried,-
―
"Hold your noise there, will you? "
Mr. Dennis resumed in a sort of coaxing tone:
"Now look'ee here, you four. I'm come here to take care of
you, and see that you ain't burnt, instead of the other thing.
It's no use you making any noise, for you won't be found out by
them as has broken in, and you'll only be hoarse when you come
to the speeches, which is a pity. What I say in respect to the
speeches always is, 'Give it mouth. ' That's my maxim. Give it
mouth. I've heerd," said the hangman, pulling off his hat to
take his handkerchief from the crown and wipe his face, and
then putting it on again a little more on one side than before,
"I've heerd a eloquence on them boards,-you know what boards
I mean,- and have heerd a degree of mouth given to them
speeches, that they was as clear as a bell, and as good as a play.
There's a pattern! And always, when a thing of this natur's
to come off, what I stand up for is a proper frame of mind.
Let's have a proper frame of mind, and we can go through
with it, creditable — pleasant-sociable. Whatever you do (and
I address myself in particular to you in the furthest), never
snivel. I'd sooner by half, though I lose by it, see a man tear
his clothes a-purpose to spile 'em before they come to me, than
find him sniveling. It is ten to one a better frame of mind,
every way! "
-
―――
## p. 4665 (#459) ###########################################
CHARLES DICKENS
4665
MONSEIGNEUR
From A Tale of Two Cities >
M
ONSEIGNEUR, one of the great lords in power at the Court,
held his fortnightly reception in his grand hotel in Paris.
Monseigneur was in his inner room, his sanctuary of
sanctuaries, the Holiest of Holiests to the crowd of worshipers
in the suite of rooms without. Monseigneur was about to take
his chocolate. Monseigneur could swallow a great many things
with ease, and was by some few sullen minds supposed to be
rather rapidly swallowing France; but his morning's chocolate
could not so much as get into the throat of Monseigneur with-
out the aid of four strong men besides the Cook.
Yes. It took four men, all four ablaze with gorgeous deco-
ration, and the Chief of them unable to exist with fewer than
two gold watches in his pocket, emulative of the noble and
chaste fashion set by Monseigneur, to conduct the happy choco-
late to Monseigneur's lips. One lackey carried the chocolate pot
into the sacred presence; a second milled and frothed the choco-
late with the little instrument he bore for that function; a third
presented the favored napkin; a fourth (he of the two gold
watches) poured the chocolate out. It was impossible for Mon-
seigneur to dispense with one of these attendants on the chocolate
and hold his high place under the admiring heavens. Deep
would have been the blot upon his escutcheon if his chocolate
had been ignobly waited on by only three men; he must have
died of two.
Monseigneur had been out at a little supper last night, where
the Comedy and the Grand Opera were charmingly represented.
Monseigneur was out at a little supper most nights, with fasci-
nating company. So polite and so impressible was Monseigneur,
that the Comedy and the Grand Opera had far more influence
with him in the tiresome articles of state affairs and state secrets
than the needs of all France. A happy circumstance for France,
as the like always is for all countries similarly favored! - always
was for England (by way of example) in the regretted days of
the merry Stuart who sold it.
Monseigneur had one truly noble idea of general public busi-
ness, which was to let everything go on in its own way; of par-
ticular public business, Monseigneur had the other truly noble
## p. 4666 (#460) ###########################################
4666
CHARLES DICKENS
idea that it must all go his way- tend to his own power and
pocket.
Of his pleasures, general and particular, Monseigneur
had the other truly noble idea, that the world was made for
them. The text of his order (altered from the original by only
a pronoun, which is not much) ran, "The earth and the fullness
thereof are mine, saith Monseigneur. "
Yet Monseigneur had slowly found that vulgar embarrass-
ments crept into his affairs, both private and public; and he had,
as to both classes of affairs, allied himself perforce with a Far-
mer-General. As to finances public, because Monseigneur could
not make anything at all of them, and must consequently let
them out to somebody who could; as to finances private, because
Farmers-General were rich, and Monseigneur, after generations
of great luxury and expense, was growing poor. Hence Mon-
seigneur had taken his sister from a convent while there was yet
time to ward off the impending veil, the cheapest garment she
could wear, and had bestowed her as a prize upon a very rich
Farmer-General, poor in family. Which Farmer-General, carry-
ing an appropriate cane with a golden apple on the top of it,
was now among the company in the outer rooms, much prostrated
before by mankind—always excepting superior mankind of the
blood of Monseigneur, who, his own wife included, looked down
upon him with the loftiest contempt.
A sumptuous man was the Farmer-General. Thirty horses
stood in his stables, twenty-four male domestics sat in his halls,
six body-women waited on his wife. As one who pretended to
do nothing but plunder and forage where he could, the Farmer-
General - howsoever his matrimonial relations conduced to social
morality was at least the greatest reality among the personages
who attended at the hotel of Monseigneur that day.
For the rooms, though a beautiful scene to look at, and
adorned with every device of decoration that the taste and skill
of the time could achieve, were in truth not a sound business;
considered with any reference to the scarecrows in the rags and
nightcaps elsewhere (and not so far off, either, but that the
watching towers of Notre-Dame, almost equidistant from the two
extremes, could see them both), they would have been an exceed-
ingly uncomfortable business-if that could have been anybody's
business, at the house of Monseigneur. Military officers desti-
tute of military knowledge; naval officers with no idea of a ship;
civil officers without a notion of affairs; brazen ecclesiastics,
―――
## p. 4667 (#461) ###########################################
CHARLES DICKENS
4667
of the worst world worldly, with sensual eyes, loose tongues,
and looser lives; all totally unfit for their several callings,
all lying horribly in pretending to belong to them, but all
nearly or remotely of the order of Monseigneur, and therefore
foisted on all public employments from which anything was to
be got these were to be told off by the score and the score.
People not immediately connected with Monseigneur or the
State, yet equally unconnected with anything that was real, or
with lives passed in traveling by any straight road to any true
earthly end, were no less abundant. Doctors who made great
fortunes out of dainty remedies for imaginary disorders that
never existed, smiled upon their courtly patients in the ante-cham-
bers of Monseigneur. Projectors who had discovered every kind
of remedy for the little evils with which the State was touched,
except the remedy of setting to work in earnest to root out a
single sin, poured their distracting babble into any ears they
could lay hold of, at the reception of Monseigneur. Unbelieving
Philosophers who were remodeling the world with words, and
making card-towers of Babel to scale the skies with, talked with
unbelieving Chemists who had an eye on the transmutation of
metals, at this wonderful gathering accumulated by Monseigneur.
Exquisite gentlemen of the finest breeding, which was at that
remarkable time—and has ever since—to be known by its fruits
of indifference to every natural subject of human interest, were
in the most exemplary state of exhaustion, at the hotel of Mon-
seigneur. Such homes had these various notabilities left behind
them in the fine world of Paris, that the Spies among the assem-
bled devotees of Monseigneur - forming a goodly half of the
polite company-would have found it hard to discover among
the angels of that sphere one solitary wife who in her manners
and appearance owned to being a mother. Indeed, except for
the mere act of bringing a troublesome creature into this world
which does not go far towards the realization of the name of
mother—there was no such thing known to the fashion. Peasant
women kept the unfashionable babies close, and brought them
up; and charming grandmammas of sixty dressed and supped as
at twenty.
-
――――――
The leprosy of unreality disfigured every human creature in
attendance upon Monseigneur. In the outermost room were half
a dozen exceptional people who had had, for a few years, some
vague misgiving in them that things in general were going
## p. 4668 (#462) ###########################################
4668
CHARLES DICKENS
rather wrong. As a promising way of setting them right, half
of the half-dozen had become members of a fantastic sect of
Convulsionists, and were even then considering within themselves.
whether they should foam, rage, roar, and turn cataleptic on the
spot-thereby setting up a highly intelligible finger-post to the
Future for Monseigneur's guidance. Besides these Dervishes
were other three who had rushed into another sect, which
mended matters with a jargon about "the Centre of truth":
holding that Man had got out of the Centre of truth—which did
not need much demonstration- but had not got out of the Cir-
cumference, and that he was to be kept from flying out of the
Circumference, and was even to be shoved back into the Centre,
by fasting and seeing of spirits. Among these, accordingly, much
discoursing with spirits went on-and it did a world of good
which never became manifest.
But the comfort was, that all the company at the grand hotel
of Monseigneur were perfectly dressed. If the Day of Judgment
had only been ascertained to be a dress day, everybody there
would have been eternally correct. Such frizzling and powdering
and sticking-up of hair, such delicate complexions artificially
preserved and mended, such gallant swords to look at, and such
delicate honor to the sense of smell, would surely keep anything
going for ever and ever. The exquisite gentlemen of the finest
breeding wore little pendent trinkets that chinked as they lan-
guidly moved; these golden fetters rang like precious little bells;
and what with that ringing, and with the rustle of silk and
brocade and fine linen, there was a flutter in the air that fanned
Saint Antoine and his devouring hunger far away.
Dress was the one unfailing talisman and charm used for
keeping all things in their places. Everybody was dressed for a
Fancy Ball that was never to leave off. From the Palace of the
Tuileries, through Monseigneur and the whole Court, through
the Chambers, the Tribunals of Justice, and all society (except
the scarecrows), the Fancy Ball descended to the Common Exe-
cutioner; who in pursuance of the charm was required to offi-
ciate "frizzled, powdered, in a gold-laced coat, pumps, and white
silk stockings. " At the gallows and the wheel-the axe was a
rarity Monsieur Paris, -as it was the episcopal mode among
his brother Professors of the provinces, Monsieur Orleans and
the rest, to call him,- presided in this dainty dress. And who
among the company at Monseigneur's reception in that seventeen-
-
## p. 4669 (#463) ###########################################
CHARLES DICKENS
4669
hundred-and-eightieth year of our Lord could possibly doubt
that a system rooted in a frizzled hangman, powdered, gold-laced,
pumped, and white-silk-stockinged, would see the very stars out!
Monseigneur, having eased his four men of their burdens and
taken his chocolate, caused the doors of the Holiest of Holiests
to be thrown open, and issued forth. Then what submission,
what cringing and fawning, what servility, what abject humilia-
tion! As to bowing down in body and spirit, nothing in that
way was left for Heaven - which may have been one among other
reasons why the worshipers of Monseigneur never troubled it.
-
Bestowing a word of promise here and a smile there, a whisper
on one happy slave and a wave of the hand on another, Mon-
seigneur affably passed through his rooms to the remote region of
the Circumference of Truth. There Monseigneur turned and came
back again, and so in due course of time got himself shut up in
his sanctuary by the chocolate sprites, and was seen no more.
The show being over, the flutter in the air became quite a
little storm, and the precious little bells went ringing down-stairs.
There was soon but one person left of all the crowd, and he,
with his hat under his arm and his snuff-box in his hand, slowly
passed among the mirrors on his way out.
"I devote you," said this person, stopping at the last door on
his way, and turning in the direction of the sanctuary, "to the
Devil! "
With that, he shook the snuff from his fingers as if he had
shaken the dust from his feet, and quietly walked down-stairs.
He was a man of about sixty, handsomely dressed, haughty
in manner, and with a face like a fine mask. A face of a trans-
parent paleness; every feature in it clearly defined; one set
expression on it. The nose, beautifully formed otherwise, was
very slightly pinched at the top of each nostril. In those two
compressions, or dints, the only little change that the face ever
showed, resided. They persisted in changing color sometimes,
and they would be occasionally dilated and contracted by some-
thing like a faint pulsation; then they gave a look of treachery
and cruelty to the whole countenance. Examined with attention,
its capacity of helping such a look was to be found in the line
of the mouth and the lines of the orbits of the eyes, being much
too horizontal and thin; still, in the effect the face made, it was
a handsome face, and a remarkable one.
Its owner went down-stairs into the courtyard, got into his
carriage, and drove away. Not many people had talked with
## p. 4670 (#464) ###########################################
4670
CHARLES DICKENS
him at the reception; he had stood in a little space apart, and
Monseigneur might have been warmer in his manner. It appeared,
under the circumstances, rather agreeable to him to see the com-
mon people dispersed before his horses, and often barely es-
caping from being run down. His man drove as if he were
charging an enemy, and the furious recklessness of the man
brought no check into the face or to the lips of the master.
The complaint had sometimes made itself audible, even in that
deaf city and dumb age, that in the narrow streets without foot-
ways, the fierce patrician custom of hard driving endangered and
maimed the mere vulgar in a barbarous manner. But few cared
enough for that to think of it a second time, and in this matter,
as in all others, the common wretches were left to get out of
their difficulties as they could.
With a wild rattle and clatter, and an inhuman abandonment
of consideration not easy to be understood in these days, the
carriage dashed through streets and swept round corners, with
women screaming before it, and men clutching each other and
clutching children out of its way. At last, swooping at a street
corner by a fountain, one of its wheels came to a sickening little
jolt, and there was a loud cry from a number of voices, and the
horses reared and plunged.
But for the latter inconvenience, the carriage probably would
not have stopped; carriages were often known to drive on and
leave their wounded behind; and why not? But the frightened
valet had got down in a hurry, and there were twenty hands at
the horses' bridles.
"What has gone wrong? " said Monsieur, calmly looking out.
A tall man in a nightcap had caught up a bundle from among
the feet of the horses, and had laid it on the basement of the
fountain, and was down in the mud and wet, howling over it
like a wild animal.
"Pardon, Monsieur the Marquis! " said a ragged and submiss-
ive man, "it is a child. "
"Why does he make that abominable noise? Is it his child? "
"Excuse me, Monsieur the Marquis-it is a pity-yes. "
The fountain was a little removed; for the street opened,
where it was, into a space some ten or twelve yards square. As
the tall man suddenly got up from the ground and came run-
ning at the carriage, Monsieur the Marquis clapped his hand for
an instant on his sword-hilt.
## p. 4671 (#465) ###########################################
CHARLES DICKENS
4671
"Killed! " shrieked the man in wild desperation, extending
both arms at their length above his head, and staring at him.
"Dead! "
The people closed round, and looked at Monsieur the Marquis.
There was nothing revealed by the many eyes that looked at him
but watchfulness and eagerness; there was no visible menacing
or anger.
Neither did the people say anything; after the first
cry they had been silent, and they remained so. The voice of
the submissive man who had spoken was flat and tame in its
extreme submission. Monsieur the Marquis ran his eyes over
them all as if they had been mere rats come out of their holes.
He took out his purse.
"It is extraordinary to me," said he, "that you people cannot.
take care of yourselves and your children. One or the other of
you is forever in the way. How do I know what injury you
have done my horses? See!
Give him that. "
He threw out a gold coin for the valet to pick up, and all
the heads craned forward that all the eyes might look down at it
as it fell. The tall man called out again with a most unearthly
cry, "Dead! "
He was arrested by the quick arrival of another man, for
whom the rest made way. On seeing him, the miserable creature
fell upon his shoulder, sobbing and crying and pointing to the
fountain, where some women were stooping over the motionless
bundle and moving gently about it. They were as silent, how-
ever, as the men.
"I know all, I know all," said the last comer. "Be a brave
man, my Gaspard! It is better for the poor little plaything to
die so, than to live. It has died in a moment without pain.
Could it have lived an hour as happily? "
"You are a philosopher, you there," said the Marquis, smil-
ing. "How do they call you? "
"They call me Defarge. "
"Of what trade? "
"Monsieur the Marquis, vendor of wine. "
"Pick up that, philosopher and vendor of wine," said the
Marquis, throwing him another gold coin, "and spend it as you
will. The horses there; are they right? "
Without deigning to look at the assemblage a second time,
Monsieur the Marquis leaned back in his seat, and was just being
driven away with the air of a gentleman who had accidentally
broken some common thing, and had paid for it and could afford
## p. 4672 (#466) ###########################################
4672
CHARLES DICKENS
to pay for it, when his ease was suddenly disturbed by a coin
flying into his carriage, and ringing on its floor.
"Hold! " said Monsieur the Marquis. "Hold the horses! Who
threw that? "
He looked to the spot where Defarge the vendor of wine had
stood, a moment before; but the wretched father was groveling
on his face on the pavement in that spot, and the figure that
stood beside him was the figure of a dark stout woman, knitting.
"You dogs! " said the Marquis, but smoothly and with an
unchanged front, except as to the spots on his nose: "I would
ride over any of you very willingly, and exterminate you from
the earth. If I knew which rascal threw at the carriage, and if
that brigand were sufficiently near it, he should be crushed
under the wheels. "
So cowed was their condition, and so long and hard their
experience of what such a man could do to them, within the
law and beyond it, that not a voice, or a hand, or even an eye
was raised. Among the men, not one. But the woman who
stood knitting looked up steadily, and looked the Marquis in the
face. It was not for his dignity to notice it; his contemptuous
eyes passed over her and over all the other rats; and he leaned
back in his seat again and gave the word, "Go on! "
He was driven on, and other carriages came whirling by in
quick succession; the Minister, the State-Projector, the Farmer-
General, the Doctor, the Lawyer, the Ecclesiastic, the Grand
Opera, the Comedy, the whole Fancy Ball in a bright continuous
flow, came whirling by. The rats had crept out of their holes
to look on, and they remained looking on for hours; soldiers and
police often passing between them and the spectacle, and mak-
ing a barrier behind which they slunk, and through which they
peeped. The father had long ago taken up his bundle and hid-
den himself away with it, when the women who had tended the
bundle while it lay on the base of the fountain sat there watch-
ing the running of the water and the rolling of the Fancy
Ball when the one woman who had stood conspicuous, knitting,
still knitted on with the steadfastness of Fate. The water of
the fountain ran, the swift river ran, the day ran into evening,
so much life in the city ran into death according to rule, time
and tide waited for no man, the rats were sleeping close together
in their dark holes again, the Fancy Ball was lighted up at sup-
per, all things ran their course.
## p. 4673 (#467) ###########################################
CHARLES DICKENS
4673
A BEAUTIFUL landscape, with the corn bright in it but not
abundant. Patches of poor rye where corn should have been,
patches of poor peas and beans, patches of most coarse vegeta-
ble substitutes for wheat. On inanimate nature, as on the men
and women who cultivated it, a prevalent tendency towards an
appearance of vegetating unwillingly-a dejected disposition to
give up and wither away.
Monsieur the Marquis in his traveling carriage (which might
have been lighter), conducted by four post-horses and two pos-
tilions, fagged up a steep hill. A blush on the countenance of
Monsieur the Marquis was no impeachment of his high breeding;
it was not from within; it was occasioned by an external circum-
stance beyond his control-the setting sun.
The sunset struck so brilliantly into the traveling carriage
when it gained the hill-top, that its occupant was steeped in
crimson. "It will die out," said Monsieur the Marquis, glancing
at his hands, "directly. "
In effect, the sun was so low that it dipped at the moment.
When the heavy drag had been adjusted to the wheel, and the
carriage slid down hill, with a cinderous smell, in a cloud of
dust, the red glow departed quickly; the sun and the Marquis
going down together, there was no glow left when the drag was
taken off.
But there remained a broken country, bold and open, a little
village at the bottom of the hill, a broad sweep and rise beyond
it, a church tower, a windmill, a forest for the chase, and a crag
with a fortress on it, used as a prison. Round upon all these
darkening objects as the night drew on, the Marquis looked, with
the air of one who was coming near home.
The village had its one poor street, with its poor brewery,
poor tannery, poor tavern, poor stable-yard for relays of post-
horses, poor fountain, all usual poor appointments. It had its
poor people too. All its people were poor, and many of them
were sitting at their doors, shredding spare onions and the like
for supper, while many were at the fountain, washing leaves,
and grasses, and any such small yieldings of the earth that could
be eaten. Expressive signs of what made them poor were not
wanting; the tax for the state, the tax for the church, the tax
for the lord, tax local and tax general, were to be paid here and
to be paid there, according to solemn inscription in the little
village, until the wonder was that there was any village left
unswallowed.
VIII-293
## p. 4674 (#468) ###########################################
4674
CHARLES DICKENS
Few children were to be seen, and no dogs. As to the men
and women, their choice on earth was stated in the prospect—
Life on the lowest terms that could sustain it, down in the little
village under the mill; or captivity and Death in the dominant
prison on the crag.
Heralded by a courier in advance, and by the cracking of his
postilions' whips, which twined snake-like about their heads in the
evening air, as if he came attended by the Furies, Monsieur
the Marquis drew up in his traveling carriage at the posting.
house gate. It was hard by the fountain, and the peasants
suspended their operations to look at him. He looked at them,
and saw in them, without knowing it, the slow sure filing down
of misery-worn face and figure, that was to make the meagreness
of Frenchmen an English superstition which should survive the
truth through the best part of a hundred years.
Monsieur the Marquis cast his eyes over the submissive faces
that drooped before him, as the like of himself had drooped
before Monseigneur of the Court-only the difference was, that
these faces drooped merely to suffer and not to propitiate — when
a grizzled mender of the roads joined the group.
"Bring me hither that fellow! " said the Marquis to the courier.
The fellow was brought, cap in hand, and the other fellows
closed round to look and listen, in the manner of the people at
the Paris fountain.
"I passed you on the road? »
"Monseigneur, it is true. I had the honor of being passed
on the road. "
"Coming up the hill, and at the top of the hill, both? ”
"Monseigneur, it is true. "
"What did you look at so fixedly? "
«< Monseigneur, I looked at the man. "
He stooped a little, and with his tattered blue cap pointed
under the carriage. All his fellows stooped to look under the
carriage.
"What man, pig? And why look there? »
"Pardon, Monseigneur; he swung by the chain of the shoe-
the drag. "
"Who? " demanded the traveler.
"Monseigneur, the man. "
"May the Devil carry away these idiots! How do you call
the man? You know all the men of this part of the count ry.
Who was he? "
## p. 4675 (#469) ###########################################
CHARLES DICKENS
4675
"Your clemency, Monseigneur! He was not of this part of
the country. Of all the days of my life, I never saw him. "
"Swinging by the chain? To be suffocated? »
"With your gracious permission, that was the wonder of it,
Monseigneur. His head hanging over-like this! "
He turned himself sideways to the carriage, and leaned back,
with his face thrown up to the sky, and his head hanging down;
then recovered himself, fumbled with his cap, and made a bow.
"What was he like? "
"Monseigneur, he was whiter than the miller. All covered
with dust, white as a spectre, tall as a spectre ! »
The picture produced an immense sensation in the little
crowd; but all eyes, without comparing notes with other eyes,
looked at Monsieur the Marquis. Perhaps to observe whether he
had any spectre on his conscience.
"Truly, you did well," said the Marquis, felicitously sensible
that such vermin were not to ruffle him, "to see a thief accom-
panying my carriage, and not open that great mouth of yours.
Bah! Put him aside, Monsieur Gabelle! "
Monsieur Gabelle was the Postmaster and some other taxing
functionary, united; he had come out with great obsequiousness
to assist at this examination, and had held the examined by the
drapery of his arm in an official manner.
"Bah! Go aside! " said Monsieur Gabelle.
"Lay hands on this stranger if he seeks to lodge in your
village to-night, and be sure that his business is honest, Gabelle. "
« Monseigneur, I am flattered to devote myself to your
orders. "
"Did he run away, fellow ? -where is that Accursed? »
The accursed was already under the carriage with some half-
dozen particular friends, pointing out the chain with his blue cap.
Some half-dozen other particular friends promptly haled him out,
and presented him breathless to Monsieur the Marquis.
"Did the man run away, Dolt, when we stopped for the
drag? "
་
Monseigneur, he precipitated himself over the hill-side, head
first, as a person plunges into the river. "
"See to it, Gabelle. Go on! "
The half-dozen who were peering at the chain were still
among the wheels, like sheep; the wheels turned so suddenly
that they were lucky to save their skins and bones; they had
very little else to save, or they might not have been so fortunate.
## p. 4676 (#470) ###########################################
4676
CHARLES DICKENS
The burst with which the carriage started out of the village
and up the rise beyond was soon checked by the steepness of the
hill. Gradually it subsided to a foot pace, swinging and lum-
bering upward among the many sweet scents of a summer night.
The postilions, with a thousand gossamer gnats circling about
them in lieu of the Furies, quietly mended the points to the
lashes of their whips; the valet walked by the horses; the courier
was audible, trotting on ahead into the dim distance.
At the steepest point of the hill there was a little burial-
ground, with a Cross and a new large figure of our Saviour on
it; it was a poor figure in wood, done by some inexperienced
rustic carver, but he had studied the figure from the life-his
own life, maybe-for it was dreadfully spare and thin.
To this distressful emblem of a great distress that had long
been growing worse and was not at its worst, a woman was
kneeling. She turned her head as the carriage came up to her,
rose quickly, and presented herself at the carriage door.
"It is you, Monseigneur! Monseigneur, a petition. "
With an exclamation of impatience, but with his unchangeable
face, Monseigneur looked out.
"How, then! What is it? Always petitions! "
"Monseigneur. For the love of the great God! My husband,
the forester. "
"What of your husband, the forester? Always the same with
you people. He cannot pay something? "
"He has paid all, Monseigneur. He is dead. "
"Well! He is quiet. Can I restore him to you? "
"Alas, no, Monseigneur! But he lies yonder, under a little
heap of poor grass. "
"Well? "
"Monseigneur, there are so many little heaps of poor grass! '
"Again, well? »
She looked an old woman, but was young. Her manner
was one of passionate grief; by turns she clasped her veinous
and knotted hands together with wild energy, and laid one of
them on the carriage door-tenderly, caressingly, as if it had
been a human breast, and could be expected to feel the ap
pealing touch.
"Monseigneur, hear me! Monseigneur, hear my petition! My
husband died of want; so many die of want; so many more will
die of want. "
"Again, well? Can I feed them? "
## p. 4677 (#471) ###########################################
CHARLES DICKENS
4677
"Monseigneur, the good God knows; but I don't ask it. My
petition is, that a morsel of stone or wood, with my husband's
name, may be placed over him to show where he lies. Other-
wise the place will be quickly forgotten; it will never be found
when I am dead of the same malady; I shall be laid under
some other heap of poor grass. Monseigneur, they are so many,
they increase so fast, there is so much want. Monseigneur!
Monseigneur! "
The valet had put her away from the door, the carriage had
broken into a brisk trot, the postilions had quickened the pace;
she was left far behind, and Monseigneur, again escorted by the
Furies, was rapidly diminishing the league or two of distance
that remained between him and his château.
The sweet scents of the summer night rose all around him,
and rose, as the rain falls, impartially, on the dusty, ragged, and
toil-worn group at the fountain not far away; to whom the
mender of roads, with the aid of the blue cap without which he
was nothing, still enlarged upon his man like a spectre as long
as they could bear it. By degrees, as they could bear no more,
they dropped off one by one, and lights twinkled in little case-
ments; which lights, as the casements darkened, and more stars
came out, seemed to have shot up into the sky instead of having
been extinguished.
The shadow of a large high-roofed house, and of many over-
hanging trees, was upon Monsieur the Marquis by that time; and
the shadow was exchanged for the light of a flambeau, as his
carriage stopped, and the great door of his château was opened
to him.
"Monsieur Charles, whom I expect; is he arrived from Eng-
land? »
"Monseigneur, not yet. "
THE GORGON'S HEAD
It was a heavy mass of building, that château of Monsieur the
Marquis, with a large stone court-yard before it, and two stone
sweeps of staircase meeting in a stone terrace before the prin-
cipal door. A stony business altogether, with heavy stone balus-
trades, and stone urns, and stone flowers, and stone faces of men,
and stone heads of lions, in all directions. As if the Gorgon's
head had surveyed it when it was finished two centuries ago.
## p. 4678 (#472) ###########################################
4678
CHARLES DICKENS
Up the broad flight of shallow steps, Monsieur the Marquis,
flambeau-preceded, went from his carriage, sufficiently disturbing
the darkness to elicit loud remonstrance from an owl in the roof
of the great pile of stable-building away among the trees. All
else was so quiet that the flambeau carried up the steps, and the
other flambeau held at the great door, burnt as if they were in a
close room of state, instead of being in the open night air.
Other sound than the owl's voice there was none, save the falling
of a fountain into its stone basin; for it was one of those dark
nights that hold their breath by the hour together, and then
heave a long low sigh, and hold their breath again.
The great door clanged behind him, and Monsieur the Mar-
quis crossed a hall grim with certain old boar-spears, swords, and
knives of the chase; grimmer with certain heavy riding-rods and
riding-whips, of which many a peasant, gone to his benefactor
Death, had felt the weight when his lord was angry.
Avoiding the larger rooms, which were dark and made fast
for the night, Monsieur the Marquis, with his flambeau-bearer
going on before, went up the staircase to a door in a corridor.
This thrown open admitted him to his own private apartment
of three rooms; his bedchamber and two others. High vaulted
rooms with cool uncarpeted floors, great dogs upon the hearths
for the burning of wood in winter-time, and all luxuries befitting
the state of a marquis in a luxurious age and country. The
fashion of the last Louis but one, of the line that was never to
break the fourteenth Louis-was conspicuous in their rich
furniture; but it was diversified by many objects that were illus-
trations of old pages in the history of France.
A supper-table was laid for two, in the third of the rooms; a
round room, in one of the château's four extinguisher-topped
towers. A small lofty room, with its window wide open, and the
wooden jalousie-blinds closed, so that the dark night only showed
in slight horizontal lines of black, alternating with their broad
lines of stone-color.
―――――
"My nephew," said the Marquis, glancing at the supper prepa-
ration; "they said he was not arrived. "
Nor was he; but he had been expected with Monseigneur.
