riding and now walking, through the rest of yesterday and through
last night. And here you see me!”
After a gloomy silence, the first Jacques said, “Good! You have
acted and recounted faithfully. Will you wait for us a little, outside
the door?”
“Very willingly,” said the mender of roads, whom Defarge
escorted to the top of the stairs, and, leaving seated there,
returned.
The three had risen, and their heads were together when he
came back to the garret.
“How say you, Jacques?” demanded Number One. “To be
registered?”
“To be registered, as doomed to destruction,” returned Defarge.
“Magnificent!” croaked the man with craving, “The chateau,
and all the race?” inquired the first.
“The chateau and all the race,” returned Defarge.
“Extermination.”
The hungry man repeated, in a rapturous croak, “Magnificent!”
and began gnawing another finger.
“Are you sure,” asked Jacques Two, of Defarge, “that no
embarrassment can rise from our manner of keeping the register?
Without doubt it is safe, for no one beyond ourselves can decipher
it; but shall we always be able to decipher itor, I ought to say,
will she?”
“Jacques,” returned Defarge, drawing himself up, “if madame
my wife undertook to keep the register in her memory alone, she
would not lose a word of itnot a syllable of it. Knitted, in her own
stitches and her own symbols, it will always be as plain to her as
the sun. Confide in Madame Defarge. It would be easier for the
Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
weakest poltroon that lives, to erase himself from existence, than
to erase one letter of his name or crimes