Worse quarters than Defarge’s wine-shop, could easily have

been found in Paris for a provincial slave of that degree. Saving for

a mysterious dread of madame by which he was constantly

haunted, his life was very new and agreeable. But, madame sat all

day at her counter, so expressly unconscious of him, and so

particularly determined not to perceive that his being there had

any connexion with anything below the surface, that he shook in

his wooden shoes whenever his eye lighted on her. For, he

contended with himself that it was impossible to foresee what that

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

lady might pretend next; and he felt assured that if she should

take into her brightly ornamented head to pretend that she had

seen him do a murder and afterwards flay the victim, she would

infallibly go through with it until the play was played out.

Therefore, when Sunday came, the mender of roads was not

enchanted (though he said he was) to find that madame was to

accompany monsieur and himself to Versailles. It was additionally

disconcerting to have madame knitting all the way there, in a

public conveyance; it was additionally disconcerting yet, to have

madame in the crowd in the afternoon, still with her knitting in

her hands as the crowd waited to see the carriage of the King and

Queen.

“You work hard, madame,” said a man near h