A TALE OF TWO CITIES
A STORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
By Charles Dickens
The Golden Thread
(8)
Monseigneur in the Country
A beautiful landscape, with the corn bright in it, but not abundant.
Patches of poor rye where corn should have been, patches of poor peas
and beans, patches of most coarse vegetable substitutes for wheat. On
inanimate nature, as on the men and women who cultivated it, a prevalent
tendency towards an appearance of vegetating unwillingly--a dejected
disposition to give up, and wither away.
Monsieur the Marquis in his travelling carriage (which might have been
lighter), conducted by four post-horses and two postilions, fagged up
a steep hill. A blush on the countenance of Monsieur the Marquis was
no impeachment of his high breeding; it was not from within; it was
occasioned by an external circumstance beyond his control--the setting
sun.
The sunset struck so brilliantly into the travelling carriage when it
gained the hill-top, that its occupant was steeped in crimson. “It will
die out,” said Monsieur the Marquis, glancing at his hands, “directly.”
In effect, the sun was so low that it dipped at the moment. When the
heavy drag had been adjusted to the wheel, and the carriage slid down
hill, with a cinderous smell, in a cloud of dust, the red glow departed
quickly; the sun and the Marquis going down together, there was no glow
left when the drag was taken off.
But, there remained a broken country, bold and open, a little village
at the bottom of the hill, a broad sweep and rise beyond it, a
church-tower, a windmill, a forest for the chase, and a crag with a
fortress on it used as a prison. Round upon all these darkening objects
as the night drew on, the Marquis looked, with the air of one who was
coming near home.
The village had its one poor street, with its poor brewery, poor
tannery, poor tavern, poor stable-yard for relays of post-horses, poor
fountain, all usual poor appointments. It had its poor people too. All
its people were poor, and many of them were sitting at their doors,
shredding spare onions and the like for supper, while many were at the
fountain, washing leaves, and grasses, and any such small yieldings of
the earth that could be eaten. Expressive signs of what made them poor,
were not wanting; the tax for the state, the tax for the church, the tax
for the lord, tax local and tax general, were to be paid here and to be
paid there, according to solemn inscription in the little village, until
the wonder was, that there was any village left unswallowed.
Few children were to be seen, and no dogs. As to the men and women,
their choice on earth was stated in the prospect--Life on the lowest
terms that could sustain it, down in the little village under the mill;
or captivity and Death in the dominant prison on the crag.
Heralded by a courier in advance, and by the cracking of his postilions'
whips, which twined snake-like about their heads in the evening air, as
if he came attended by the Furies, Monsieur the Marquis drew up in
his travelling carriage at the posting-house gate. It was hard by the
fountain, and the peasants suspended their operations to look at him.
He looked at them, and saw in them, without knowing it, the slow
sure filing down of misery-worn face and figure, that was to make the
meagreness of Frenchmen an English superstition which should survive the
truth through the best part of a hundred years.
Monsieur the Marquis cast his eyes over the submissive faces that
drooped before him, as the like of himself had drooped before
Monseigneur of the Court--only the difference was, that these faces
drooped merely to suffer and not to propitiate--when a grizzled mender
of the roads joined the group.
“Bring me hither that fellow!” said the Marquis to the courier.
The fellow was brought, cap in hand, and the other fellows closed round
to look and listen, in the manner of the people at the Paris fountain.
“I passed you on the road?”
“Monseigneur, it is true. I had the honour of being passed on the road.”
“Coming up the hill, and at the top of the hill, both?”
“Monseigneur, it is true.”
“What did you look at, so fixedly?”
“Monseigneur, I looked at the man.”
He stooped a little, and with his tattered blue cap pointed under the
carriage. All his fellows stooped to look under the carriage.
“What man, pig? And why look there?”
“Pardon, Monseigneur; he swung by the chain of the shoe--the drag.”
“Who?” demanded the traveller.
“Monseigneur, the man.”
“May the Devil carry away these idiots! How do you call the man? You
know all the men of this part of the country. Who was he?”
“Your clemency, Monseigneur! He was not of this part of the country. Of
all the days of my life, I never saw him.”
“Swinging by the chain? To be suffocated?”
“With your gracious permission, that was the wonder of it, Monseigneur.
His head hanging over--like this!”
He turned himself sideways to the carriage, and leaned back, with his
face thrown up to the sky, and his head hanging down; then recovered
himself, fumbled with his cap, and made a bow.
“What was he like?”
“Monseigneur, he was whiter than the miller. All covered with dust,
white as a spectre, tall as a spectre!”
The picture produced an immense sensation in the little crowd; but all
eyes, without comparing notes with other eyes, looked at Monsieur
the Marquis. Perhaps, to observe whether he had any spectre on his
conscience.
“Truly, you did well,” said the Marquis, felicitously sensible that such
vermin were not to ruffle him, “to see a thief accompanying my carriage,
and not open that great mouth of yours. Bah! Put him aside, Monsieur
Gabelle!”
Monsieur Gabelle was the Postmaster, and some other taxing functionary
united; he had come out with great obsequiousness to assist at this
examination, and had held the examined by the drapery of his arm in an
official manner.
“Bah! Go aside!” said Monsieur Gabelle.
“Lay hands on this stranger if he seeks to lodge in your village
to-night, and be sure that his business is honest, Gabelle.”
“Monseigneur, I am flattered to devote myself to your orders.”
“Did he run away, fellow?--where is that Accursed?”
The accursed was already under the carriage with some half-dozen
particular friends, pointing out the chain with his blue cap. Some
half-dozen other particular friends promptly hauled him out, and
presented him breathless to Monsieur the Marquis.
“Did the man run away, Dolt, when we stopped for the drag?”
“Monseigneur, he precipitated himself over the hill-side, head first, as
a person plunges into the river.”
“See to it, Gabelle. Go on!”
The half-dozen who were peering at the chain were still among the
wheels, like sheep; the wheels turned so suddenly that they were lucky
to save their skins and bones; they had very little else to save, or
they might not have been so fortunate.
The burst with which the carriage started out of the village and up the
rise beyond, was soon checked by the steepness of the hill. Gradually,
it subsided to a foot pace, swinging and lumbering upward among the many
sweet scents of a summer night. The postilions, with a thousand gossamer
gnats circling about them in lieu of the Furies, quietly mended the
points to the lashes of their whips; the valet walked by the horses; the
courier was audible, trotting on ahead into the dull distance.
At the steepest point of the hill there was a little burial-ground,
with a Cross and a new large figure of Our Saviour on it; it was a poor
figure in wood, done by some inexperienced rustic carver, but he had
studied the figure from the life--his own life, maybe--for it was
dreadfully spare and thin.
To this distressful emblem of a great distress that had long been
growing worse, and was not at its worst, a woman was kneeling. She
turned her head as the carriage came up to her, rose quickly, and
presented herself at the carriage-door.
“It is you, Monseigneur! Monseigneur, a petition.”
With an exclamation of impatience, but with his unchangeable face,
Monseigneur looked out.
“How, then! What is it? Always petitions!”
“Monseigneur. For the love of the great God! My husband, the forester.”
“What of your husband, the forester? Always the same with you people. He
cannot pay something?”
“He has paid all, Monseigneur. He is dead.”
“Well! He is quiet. Can I restore him to you?”
“Alas, no, Monseigneur! But he lies yonder, under a little heap of poor
grass.”
“Well?”
“Monseigneur, there are so many little heaps of poor grass?”
“Again, well?”
She looked an old woman, but was young. Her manner was one of passionate
grief; by turns she clasped her veinous and knotted hands together
with wild energy, and laid one of them on the carriage-door--tenderly,
caressingly, as if it had been a human breast, and could be expected to
feel the appealing touch.
“Monseigneur, hear me! Monseigneur, hear my petition! My husband died of
want; so many die of want; so many more will die of want.”
“Again, well? Can I feed them?”
“Monseigneur, the good God knows; but I don't ask it. My petition is,
that a morsel of stone or wood, with my husband's name, may be placed
over him to show where he lies. Otherwise, the place will be quickly
forgotten, it will never be found when I am dead of the same malady, I
shall be laid under some other heap of poor grass. Monseigneur, they
are so many, they increase so fast, there is so much want. Monseigneur!
Monseigneur!”
The valet had put her away from the door, the carriage had broken into
a brisk trot, the postilions had quickened the pace, she was left far
behind, and Monseigneur, again escorted by the Furies, was rapidly
diminishing the league or two of distance that remained between him and
his chateau.
The sweet scents of the summer night rose all around him, and rose, as
the rain falls, impartially, on the dusty, ragged, and toil-worn group
at the fountain not far away; to whom the mender of roads, with the aid
of the blue cap without which he was nothing, still enlarged upon his
man like a spectre, as long as they could bear it. By degrees, as they
could bear no more, they dropped off one by one, and lights twinkled
in little casements; which lights, as the casements darkened, and more
stars came out, seemed to have shot up into the sky instead of having
been extinguished.
The shadow of a large high-roofed house, and of many over-hanging trees,
was upon Monsieur the Marquis by that time; and the shadow was exchanged
for the light of a flambeau, as his carriage stopped, and the great door
of his chateau was opened to him.
“Monsieur Charles, whom I expect; is he arrived from England?”
“Monseigneur, not yet.”
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