the knitting women were vicious, with the experience that they

could tear. There was a change in the appearance of Saint

Antoine; the image had been hammering into this for hundreds of

years, and the last finishing blows had told mightily on the

expression.

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

Madame Defarge sat observing it, with such suppressed

approval as was to be desired in the leader of the Saint Antoine

women. One of her sisterhood knitted beside her. The short,

rather plump wife of a starved grocer, and the mother of two

children withal, this lieutenant had already earned the

complimentary name of The Vengeance.

“Hark!” said The Vengeance. “Listen, then! Who comes?”

As if a train of powder laid from the outermost bound of the

Saint Antoine Quarter to the wine-shop door, had been suddenly

fired, a fast-spreading murmur came rushing along.

“It is Defarge,” said madame. “Silence, patriots!”

Defarge came in breathless, pulled off a red cap he wore, and

looked around him. “Listen, everywhere!” said madame again.

“Listen to him!” Defarge stood, panting, against a background of

eager eyes and open mouths, formed outside the door; all those

within the wine-shop had sprung to their feet.

“Say then, my husband. What is it?”

“News from the other world!”

“How then?” cried madame, contemptuously. “The other