“I have observed his daughter,” repeated madame; “yes, I have observed his daughter, more times than one. I have observed her today, and I have observed her other days. I have observed her in the court, and I have observed her in the street by the prison. Let me but lift my finger—!” She seemed to raise it (the listener’s eyes were always on his paper), and to let it fall with a rattle on the ledge before her, as if the axe had dropped.
“The citizeness is superb!” croaked the Juryman.
“She is an Angel!” said The Vengeance, and embraced her.
“As to thee,” pursued madame, implacably, addressing her husband, “if it depended on thee—which, happily, it does not—thou wouldst rescue this man even now.”
“No!” protested Defarge. “Not if to lift this glass would do it! But I would leave the matter there. I say, stop there.”
“See you then, Jacques,” said Madame Defarge, wrathfully; “and see you, too, my little Vengeance; see you both! Listen! For other crimes as tyrants and oppressors, I have this race a long time on my register, doomed to destruction and extermination. Ask my husband, is that so.”
“It is so,” assented Defarge, without being asked.
“In the beginning of the great days, when the Bastille falls, he finds this paper of today, and he brings it home, and in the middle of the night when this place is clear and shut, we read it, here on this spot, by the light of this lamp. Ask him, is that so.”
“It is so,” assented Defarge.
“That night, I tell him, when the paper is read through, and the lamp is burnt out, and the day is gleaming in above those shutters and between those iron bars, that I have now a secret to communicate. Ask him, is that so.”