n defeat the fancy of Lucie Darnay, and keep these feet far

out of her life! For, they are headlong, mad, and dangerous; and in

the years so long after the breaking of the cask at Defarge’s wineshop

door, they are not easily purified when once stained red.

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

Chapter XXVIII

THE SEA STILL RISES

H

aggard Saint Antoine had only one exultant week in

which to soften his modicum of hard and bitter bread to

such extent as he could, with the relish of fraternal

embraces and congratulations, when Madame Defarge sat at her

counter, as usual, presiding over the customers. Madame Defarge

wore no rose in her head, for the great brotherhood of Spies had

become, even in one short week, extremely chary of trusting

themselves to the saint’s mercies. The lamps across his streets had

a portentously elastic swing with them.

Madame Defarge, with her arms folded, sat in the morning light

and heat, contemplating the wine-shop and the street. In both,

there were several knots of loungers, squalid and miserable, but

now with a manifest sense of power enthroned on their distress.

The raggedest nightcap, awry on the wretchedest head, had this

crooked significance in it: “I know how hard it has grown for me,

the wearer of this, to support life in myself; but do you know how

easy it has grown for me, the wear