y, and

were set upon them to strip them of their feathers for your own

advantage, you would set upon the birds of the finest feather:

would you not?”

“It is true, madame.”

“You have seen both dolls and birds today,” said Madame

Defarge, with a wave of her hand towards the place where they

had last been apparent; “now go home!”

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

Chapter XXII

STILL KNITTING

M

adame Defarge and monsieur her husband returned

amicably to the bosom of Saint Antoine, while a speck

in a blue cap toiled through the darkness, and through

the dust, and down the weary miles of avenue by the wayside,

slowly tending towards that point of the compass where the

chateau of Monsieur the Marquis, now in his grave, listened to the

whispering trees. Such ample leisure had the stone faces, now, for

listening to the trees and to the fountain, that the few village

scarecrows who, in their quest for herbs to eat and fragments of

dead stick to burn, strayed within sight of the great stone

courtyard and terrace staircase, had it borne in upon their starved

fancy that the expression of the faces was altered. A rumour just

lived in the villagehad a faint and bare existence there, as its