A Tale of Two Cities by Dave Mckay, Charles Dickens (easy readers .txt) 📖

down and were climbing up through the tower, they were alone. Shut in here by the thick walls of the tower, the storm inside and outside the prison was softer on the ears, as if the earlier noise had destroyed their ability to hear well.

The guard stopped at a low door, put a key in the noisy lock, pushed the door slowly open, and said, as they all bent their heads and went in:

"One hundred and five, North Tower!"

There was a small, heavily covered window with no glass in it, high in the wall, with a stone wall coming down from the roof in front of it, so that one could only see the sky by bending low and looking up at the window. There was a small chimney with heavy bars across it, a few feet inside, with a pile of ashes from the timber burned in it. There was a small chair without a back, a table, and a bed of straw. There were the four black walls, and a rusted iron ring in one of them.

"Move that torch slowly across these walls, so I can see them," said Defarge to the guard.

The man obeyed, and Defarge followed the light closely with his eyes.

"Stop! Look here, Jack!"

"A.M.!" said Jack, in a low, rough voice, as he read greedily.

"Alexander Manette," said Defarge in his ear, following the letters with his dark first finger, that was deeply coloured by the gunpowder he had been using. "And here he wrote 'a poor doctor'. And it was he, for sure, who scratched a calendar on this stone. What is that in your hand? An iron bar? Give it to me!"

He still had in his hand the long stick he had used to light the cannon. He quickly gave that tool for the other one, and turning on the chair and table broke them to pieces with a few hits.

"Hold the light higher!" he said angrily to the guard. "Look through that rubbish with care, Jack. Look! Here is my knife," throwing it to him. "Cut open that bed and look through the straw. Hold the light higher, you!"

With an angry look at the guard he climbed up into the fireplace and, looking up the chimney, hit and scratched at its side with the iron bar, and worked at the iron bars across it too. In a few minutes, some dust and broken bricks came dropping down, which he turned his face to get away from. In that, and in the rubbish of the fireplace, and in the hole in the chimney that his weapon had found its way, he reached with a careful touch.

"Nothing in the timber and nothing in the straw, Jack?"

"Nothing."

"Let us put them together in the middle of the room. Good! Now light them, you!"

The guard put a light to the little pile, which burned high and hot. Bending again to come out at the low door, they left it burning and returned to the prison yard. They seemed, little by little, to receive back their ability to hear as they climbed down, until they were back in the angry flood once again.

They found the storm of people moving one way and another as the crowd looked for Defarge himself. Saint Antoine wanted to have its wine shop owner at the front of those guarding the governor of the prison -- the one who had been shooting people to stop them from breaking into the prison. Without Defarge they could not make the governor walk to the Hotel de Ville to be judged. Without him, the governor would break free, and he would not be forced to pay for the people's blood (which was now of some worth after so many years when it had not been important at all).

In all the noise and emotion that circled this serious old officer, who was easy to tell from the others by his grey uniform with red ropes and other things on it, there was only one person who was not moving, and she was a woman. "See, there is my husband!" she cried, pointing to him. "See Defarge!" She stood without moving, close to the serious old officer, and stayed close to him through the streets, as Defarge and the others carried him along. She stayed close to him without moving when he was close to where they were going, and the hits had started coming at him from behind. She stayed close to him without moving as the rain of hits from weapons and hands that had been held back for so long fell more and more heavily. She was so close to him when he dropped dead under it that, moving quickly, she put her own foot on his neck, and with her cruel knife -- that had been ready for such a long time -- she cut off his head.

The time had come when Saint Antoine was going to really hang people up as lanterns, to show what he could be and do. Saint Antoine's blood was up, and the blood of cruel leaders with iron hands was down -- down on the steps of the Hotel de Ville where the governor's body lay... down under the sole of Madam Defarge's shoe, that had been used to keep him from moving during the cutting off of his head. "Lower the lantern out there!" cried Saint Antoine, after looking around for a new way to kill.

"Here is one of his soldiers to be left to guard the prison!" The hanging head was put up, and the ocean of people moved on.

It was an ocean of black dangerous waters and of wave against wave, with no one yet knowing how deep it was or how strong it was. An ocean that would not be stopped, made up of storming shapes, angry voices, and faces made hard in the fires of pain, until there was not the smallest mark of love on any of them.

But in the ocean of faces, where every angry look was so full of life, there were two groups of faces -- each seven in number -- so very opposite to the others that there was never an ocean that had any more surprising broken ships on it. Seven faces of prisoners, just freed by the storm that had broken into the rooms where they were to die, were carried high above the crowd. They were all scared, all lost, all surprised and confused, as if the Last Day had come, and as if those happy people around them were lost spirits. Seven other faces were there, carried even higher. These were seven dead faces, whose half closed eyes were waiting for the Last Day. Faces without life, having a look of fear on them that had stopped -- but had not been taken away. The eyes were yet to open and the lips, now without blood in them, were yet to say, "YOU DID IT!"

Seven prisoners freed, seven blood-covered heads on sticks, the keys of the awful building with eight strong towers, some letters and other things left by past prisoners, long dead from broken hearts... these, and things like them, the loud footsteps carried through the streets of Paris in the middle of July, 1789. Now, Heaven stop the foolish thoughts of Lucie Darnay, and keep those feet far out of her life! For they are wild, crazy, and dangerous; and in the years so long after the breaking of the barrel at Defarge's wine shop door, they are not easily cleaned after they turn red.

22. The Storm Grows

Tired old Saint Antoine had had only one happy week in which to make its hard bread softer with brotherly hugs and shouts of happiness before Madam Defarge was back at her counter, looking over the people in the shop. She had no flower on her head, for the Jacks had become, even in one short week, no longer ready to trust the Saint to care for them. The lanterns across his streets had a way of changing directions very quickly.

Madam Defarge, with her arms folded, sat in the morning light and heat, looking out on the wine shop and the street. In both there were little groups of people doing nothing, dirty and poor; but now they had a proud sign of power sitting on top of their pain. The oldest broken hat hanging on the poorest head now said, "I know how hard it has been for me, the wearer of this hat, to stay alive; but do you know how easy it is for me now to take another person's life?” Every thin, uncovered arm, that had been without work before, now had one job it could always do; it could hit out. The fingers of the knitting women had become evil now, just from knowing that they could kill. There was a change in the way Saint Antoine looked; his face had been hammered for hundreds of years, and the last finishing touches from the hammers had made a very big change.

Madam Defarge sat looking at it with the kind of controlled happiness that was needed from the manager of the Saint Antoine women. One of her sisters knitted beside her. The short, fat wife of a hungry food seller and the mother of two children as well, this leader had already been given the proud name of The Punisher.

"Listen!" said The Punisher. "Listen, then! Who is coming?"

As if a line of gunpowder, poured from the farthest border of Saint Antoine to the door of the wine shop, had been fired with a match, the sound of talking came just that quickly down the line.

"It is Defarge," said Madam. "Be quiet brothers and sisters!"

Defarge came in, breathing heavily, pulled off a red hat that he had been wearing, and looked around him.

"Listen, all of you!" said Madam again. "Listen to him!" Defarge stood, breathing deeply in front of a wall of open mouths and eyes filled with interest. They were looking in from outside the door, as those inside the shop jumped to their feet to hear too.

"Tell us, my husband. What is it?"

"News from the other world!"

"How's that?” cried Madam angrily. "The other world?"

"Does everyone here remember old Foulon, who told the hungry people that they could eat grass, and who died and went to hell?"

"We all do!" from all their throats.

"The news is about him. He's in town!"

"In town?” from the throat of all again. "And dead?"

"Not dead! He was so afraid of us -- and with good reason -- that he started a story that he had died, and there was a big funeral for him. But they have found him alive, hiding in the country, and they have brought him here. I just saw him, on his way to the Hotel de Ville as a prisoner. I said that he had good reason to fear us. So tell me. Did he?"

That poor old sinner of more than 70 years, if he had never known before that he had reason to fear them, he would have known it in his heart of hearts if he had heard their answering cry.

They all were very quiet for a short time after that. Defarge and his wife looked deeply at each other. The Punisher bent over and the sound of a drum could be heard as she moved it at her feet behind the counter.

"Countrymen!" said Defarge, in a strong voice, "are we ready?"

In a second Madam Defarge's knife was in her belt. The drum was sounding in the street as if it and a drummer had come together by magic. And The Punisher, making awful shouts and throwing her arms around her head like all the forty punishers of the Greek and Roman religions, was running from house to house to move the women into action.

The men were bad enough, in the blood-thirsty way that they looked out the windows, grabbing whatever weapons they could find, and running down into the street; but the women were enough to scare the bravest person. From whatever house jobs they had been doing, from their children, from their old parents, and from the sick, all of whom they left sitting on the ground, hungry and without clothes, they ran out with their hair flying in every direction, pushing themselves and others, through wild cries and actions, to a measure of hate that was almost crazy. Evil Foulon is a prisoner, my sister! Old Foulon is a prisoner, my mother! Law-breaker Foulon is a prisoner, my daughter! Then, twenty more would run into the middle of these, hitting their breasts and tearing their hair and crying loudly, Foulon is alive! Foulon, who told the people who were dying from hunger to eat grass. Foulon who told my old father to eat grass when I had no bread to give him! Foulon who told my baby to drink grass when my breasts were dry from hunger. Oh mother of God, this Foulon! Oh Heaven, our pain! Hear me, my dead baby, and my thin father: I promise on my knees, on these stones,