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PinkMonkey.com Digital Library - A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens


189

“Say then, my husband. What is it?” “News from the other world!”
“How, then?” cried madame, contemptuously. “The other world?”
“Does everybody here recall old Foulon, who told the famished
people that they might eat grass, and who died, and went to Hell?”
“Everybody!” from all throats.

“The news is of him. He is among us!” “Among us!” from the
universal throat again. “And dead?” “Not dead! He feared us so
much-and with reason-that he caused himself to be represented as
dead, and had a grand mock-funeral. But they have found him
alive, hiding in the country, and have brought him in. I have seen
him but now, on his way to the Hotel de Ville, a prisoner. I have
said that he had reason to fear us. Say all! Had he reason?”
Wretched old sinner of more than threescore years and ten, if he
had never known it yet, he would have known it in his heart of
hearts if he could have heard the answering cry.

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?”
Instantly Madame Defarge’s knife was in her girdle; the drum was
beating in the streets, as if it and a drummer had flown together by
magic; and The Vengeance, uttering terrific shrieks, and flinging
her arms about her head like all the forty Furies at once, was
tearing from house to house, rousing the women.

The men were terrible, in the bloody-minded anger with which
they looked from windows, caught up what arms they had, and
came pouring down into the streets; but, the women were a sight to
chill the boldest. From such household oc-cupations as their bare
poverty yielded, from their children, from their aged and their sick
crouching on the bare ground famished and naked, they ran out
with streaming hair, urging one another, and themselves, to
madness with the wildest cries and actions. Villain Foulon taken,
my sister! Old Foulon taken, my mother! Miscreant Foulon taken,
my daughter! Then, a score of others ran into the midst of these,
beating their breasts, tearing their hair, and screaming, Foulon
alive! Foulon who told the starving people they might eat grass!
Foulon who told my old father that he might eat grass, when I had
no bread to give him! Foulon who told my baby it might suck
grass, when these breasts where dry with want! O mother of God,
this Foulon! O Heaven our suffering! Hear me, my dead baby and
my withered father: I swear on my knees, on these stones, to
avenge you on Foulon! Husbands, and brothers, and young men,
Give us the blood of Foulon, Give us the head of Foulon, Give us
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