and a recompense to you for his mother.”

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

Chapter XXI

KNITTING

T

here had been earlier drinking than usual in the wineshop

of Monsieur Defarge. As early as six o’clock in the

morning, sallow faces peeping through its barred windows

had descried other faces within, bending over measures of wine.

Monsieur Defarge sold a very thin wine at the best of times, but it

would seem to have been an unusually thin wine that he sold at

this time. A sour wine, moreover, or a souring, for its influence on

the mood of those who drank it was to make them gloomy. No

vivacious Bacchanalian flame leaped out of the pressed grape of

Monsieur Defarge: but, a smouldering fire that burnt in the dark,

lay hidden in the dregs of it.

This had been the third morning in succession, on which there

had been early drinking at the wine-shop of Monsieur Defarge. It

had been begun on Monday, and here was Wednesday come.

There had been more of early brooding than drinking; for, many

men had listened and whispered and slunk about there from the

time of the opening of the door, who could not have laid a piece of

money on the counter to save their souls. These were to the full as

interested in the place, however, as if they could have commanded

whole barrels of wine; and they glided from seat to seat, and from