cques,” said Madame Defarge, wrathfully;

“and see you, too, my little Vengeance: see you both! Listen! For

other crimes as tyrants and oppressors, I have this race a long

time on my register, doomed to destruction and extermination.

Ask my husband, is that so.”

“It is so,” assented Defarge, without being asked.

“In the beginning of the great days, when the Bastille falls, he

finds this paper of today, and he brings it home, and in the middle

of the night when this place is clear and shut, we read it, here on

this spot, by the light of this lamp. Ask him, is that so.”

“It is so,” assented Defarge.

“That night, I tell him, when the paper is read through, and the

lamp is burnt out, and the day is gleaming in above those shutters

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and between those iron bars, that I have now a secret to

communicate. Ask him, is that so.”

“It is so,” assented Defarge again.

“I communicate to him that secret. I smite this bosom with

these two hands as I smite it now, and I tell him, ‘Defarge, I was

brought up among the fishermen of the seashore, and that peasant

family so injured by the two Evremonde brothers, as that Bastille

paper describes, is my family. Defarge, that sister of the mortally

wounded boy upon the ground was my sister, that husband was

my sister’s husband, that unborn child was their child,