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"Jacques," said Defarge; "judiciously show a cat milk, if you wish her to thirst for it. Judiciously show a dog his natural prey, if you wish him to bring it down one day."
"You work hard, madame," said a man near her. "Yes," answered Madame Defarge; "I have a good deal to do." "What do you make, madame?" "Many things." "For instance—" "For instance," returned Madame Defarge, composedly, "shrouds."
"It is a long time," repeated his wife; "and when is it not a long time? Vengeance and retribution require a long time; it is the rule."
No man ever really loved a woman, lost her, and knew her with a blameless though an unchanged mind, when she was a wife and a mother, but her children had a strange sympathy with him—an instinctive delicacy of pity for him. What fine hidden sensibilities are touched in such a case, no echoes tell; but it is so, and it was so here.
"To me, women!" cried madame his wife. "What! We can kill as well as the men when the place is taken!"
The raggedest nightcap, awry on the wretchedest head, had this crooked significance in it: "I know how hard it has grown for me, the wearer of this, to support life in myself; but do you know how easy it has grown for me, the wearer of this, to destroy life in you?" Every lean bare arm, that had been without work before, had this work always ready for it now, that it could strike.
"Tell the Wind and the Fire where to stop; not me!"
