D’Aulnais is the name of his mother’s family.”
Madame Defarge knitted steadily, but the intelligence had a
palpable effect upon her husband. Do what he would, behind the
little counter, as to the striking of a light and the lighting of his
pipe, he was troubled, and his hand was not trustworthy. The spy
would have been no spy if he had failed to see it, or to record it in
his mind.
Having made, at least, this one hit, whatever it might prove to
be worth, and no customers coming in to help him to any other,
Mr. Barsad paid for what he had drunk, and took his leave: taking
occasion to say, in a genteel manner, before he departed, that he
looked forward to the pleasure of seeing Monsieur and Madame
Defarge again. For some minutes after he had emerged into the
outer presence of Saint Antoine, the husband and wife remained
exactly as he had left them, lest he should come back.
“Can it be true,” said Defarge, in a low voice, looking down at
Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
his wife as he stood smoking with his hand on the back of her
chair: “what he has said of Mam’selle Manette?”
“As he has said it,” returned madame, lifting her eyebrows a
little, “it is probably false. But it may be true.”
“If it is” Defarge began, and stopped.
“If it is?” repeated his wife.
“And if it does come, while we live to see it triumphI hope,