household occupations as their bare poverty yielded,
from their children, from their aged and their
sick crouching on the bare ground famished
and naked, they ran out with streaming hair,
urging one another, and themselves, to madness
with the wildest cries and actions. Villain
Foulon taken, my sister! Old Foulon taken, my
mother! Miscreant Foulon taken, my daughter!
Then, a score of others ran into the midst of
these, beating their breasts, tearing their hair,
and screaming, Foulon alive! Foulon who told the
starving people they might eat grass! Foulon who
told my old father that he might eat grass, when
I had no bread to give him! Foulon who told
my baby it might suck grass, when these breasts
were dry with want! mother of God, this
Foulon! Heaven, our suffering! Hear me,
my dead baby and my withered father: I swear
on my knees, on these stones, to avenge you on
Foulon! Husbands, and brothers, and young
men, Give us the blood of Foulon, Give us the
head of Foulon, Give us the heart of Foulon,
Give us the body and soul of Foulon, Rend Foulon
to pieces, and dig him into the ground, that
grass may grow from him! With these cries
numbers of the women, lashed into blind frenzy
whirled about, striking and tearing at their own
friends until they dropped in a passionate swoon
and were only saved by the men belonging to
them from being trampled under foot.

Nevertheless, not a moment was lost; not a
moment! This Foulon was at the Hôtel de
Ville, and might be loosed. Never, if Saint
Antoine knew his own sufferings, insults, and
wrongs! Armed men and women flocked out
of the Quarter so fast, and drew even these last
dregs after them with such a force of suction
that within a quarter of an hour there was not
a human creature in Saint Antoine's bosom but
a few old crones and the wailing children.

No. They were all by that time choking the
Hall of examination where this old man, ugly
and wicked, was, and overflowing into the
adjacent open space and streets. The Defarges,
husband and wife, The Vengeance, and Jacques
Three, were in the first press, and at no great
distance from him in the Hall.

"See!" cried madame, pointing with her
knife. "See the old villain bound with ropes.
That was well done to tie a bunch of grass upon
his back. Ha, ha! That was well done. Let
him eat it now!" Madame put her knife under
her arm, and clapped her hands as at a play.

The people immediately behind Madame
Defarge, explaining the cause of her satisfaction to
those behind them, and those again explaining
to others, and those to others, the neighbouring
streets resounded with the clapping of hands.
Similarly, during two or three hours of drawl,
and the winnowing of many bushels of words,
Madame Defarge's frequent expressions of
impatience were taken up, with marvellous
quickness, at a distance: the more readily,
because certain men who had by some wonderful
exercise of agility climbed up the external
architecture to look in from the windows, knew Madame
Defarge well, and acted as a telegraph
between her and the crowd outside the building.

At length, the sun rose so high that it struck
a kindly ray, as of hope or protection, directly
down upon the old prisoner's head. The favour
was too much to bear; in an instant the barrier
of dust and chaff that had stood surprisingly
long, went to the winds, and Saint Antoine had
got him!

It was known directly, to the furthest
confines of the crowd. Defarge had but sprung
over a railing and a table, and folded the miseable
wretch in a deadly embrace—Madame
Defarge had but followed and turned her hand
in one of the ropes with which he was tied—
The Vengeance and Jacques Three were not yet
up with them, and the men at the windows had
not yet swooped into the Hall, like birds of prey
from their high perches—when the cry seemed
to go up, all over the city, "Bring him out!
Bring him to the lamp!"

Down, and up, and head foremost on the
steps of the building; now, on his knees;
now, on his feet; now, on his back; dragged,
and struck at, and stifled by the bunches of
grass and straw that were thrust into his
face by hundreds of hands; torn, bruised, panting,
bleeding, yet always entreating and
beseeching for mercy; now, full of vehement
agony of action, with a small clear space about
him as the people drew one another back that
they might see; now, a log of dead wood drawn
through a forest of legs; he was hauled to the
nearest street corner where one of the fatal
lamps swung, and there Madame Defarge let
him go—as a cat might have done to a mouse—
and silently and composedly looked at him
while they made ready, and while he besought
her: the women passionately screeching at him all
the time, and the men sternly calling out to
have him killed with grass in his mouth. Once,
he went aloft, and the rope broke, and they
caught him shrieking; twice, he went aloft, and
the rope broke, and they caught him shrieking;
then, the rope was merciful and held him, and his
head was soon upon a pike, with grass enough
in the mouth for all Saint Antoine to dance at
the sight of.

Nor was this the end of the day's bad work, for
Saint Antoine so shouted and danced his angry
blood up, that it boiled again, on hearing when
the day closed in that the son-in-law of the
despatched, another of the people's enemies and
insulters, was coming into Paris under a guard
five hundred strong, in cavalry alone. Saint
Antoine wrote his crimes on flaring sheets of
paper, seized him—would have torn him out of
the breast of an army to bear Foulon company
—set his head and heart on pikes, and carried
the three spoils of the day, in Wolf-procession
through the streets.

Not before dark night did the men and
women come back to the children, wailing and
breadless. Then, the miserable bakers' shops
were beset by long files of them, patiently waiting
to buy bad bread; and while they waited with
stomachs faint and empty, they beguiled the