Chapter 30 Chapter 22 The tide continues to rise

The haggard St. Antoine was only happy for a week.He made his hard, bitter bread as soft as it could be with delicious friendship hugs and celebrations.Madame Defarge sat behind her counter to receive customers as usual, but without roses on her hair, because the deep brotherhood of the spies had transformed into abnormal vigilance in just a week, and they dared not Send it to your door by yourself to let St. Antoine go.There the street lamps on the pavement were shaking with an ominous elasticity! Madame Defarge sat with folded hands on her breast in the light and heat of the morning, studying the tavern and the street, where there were groups of dirty and miserable idlers, but above their misery now Yet there is a palpable sense of power perched high above.The tattered nightcap that's lopsided on the hapless head carries this rebellious meaning: "I know how hard it is to live in a battered hat, but do you know that I want yours in a battered hat?" How easy is life?" The thin, bare arm that had no work before was now ready for work, because it could strike.The women who do the knitting work have vicious fingers, and they have already experienced scratching and tearing.Si Antoine changed his appearance; hundreds of years of hammering had hammered him into one appearance, but the last few hammers had the most powerful effect, hammering him out of another expression.

Madame Defarge sat watching with the tacit admiration of a leading lady of St. Antoine.One of her fellow women knits beside her.The woman was short and stout, the wife of a hungry grocer and the mother of two.The lieutenant had already earned the nickname "Nemesis." "Listen!" said the Nemesis. "Attention! Who's coming?" There came a rapid murmur, like a series of firecrackers exploding from the edge of the Saint-Antoine district to the entrance of the hotel. "It's Defarge," said the landlady, "quiet, patriots!" Panting, Defarge ran into the house, pulled off his red cap, and looked around. "Attention everywhere!" continued the landlady, "listen to him! Defarge stood panting, with his back to the eager eyes and open mouth outside the door; everyone in the tavern jumped to their feet.

"Tell me, master, what's the matter?" "News from another world!" "What's going on?" the landlady called contemptuously, "Another world?" "Do people here remember old Furen? He once said that the hungry can eat grass. Isn't he dead and in hell?" "Remember!" said all the voices. "It's news about him. He's still with us." "Stay with us!" roared all the throats. "Are you still with us after death?", "Not dead! He was so frightened--and he had reason to be--that he managed to pretend he was dead, and had a fake funeral. But he was found alive, hiding in the country, and he was taken. I just Saw him go to the town hall, already a prisoner. I said, he has reason to be afraid of us. Say it! Does he have reason to be afraid?"

If the unfortunate sinner in his seventies heard the unanimous answer, he would be afraid from the bottom of his heart even if he did not know why he was afraid. A deep silence followed.Defarge and his wife gazed at each other for a moment.Nemesis bent down, and there was the sound of a big drum as she carried it out from behind the counter at her feet. "Patriots!" said Defarge in a firm voice, "are you ready?" Immediately Madame Defarge's knife was thrust into her belt; the drums sounded in the street, and as if by magic they were sent flying with them; Furies all in her, rushing from house to house to rouse the women into the streets.

The men were terrible, and in a rage to bleed, they looked out of the window, grabbed the weapons they could get their hands on, and flooded out into the streets.The look of the women can chill the heart of the bravest.They left behind the chores of abject poverty, the children, the hungry, naked old and sick lying on the bare floor, and ran out with disheveled hair, one answering the other, with the wildest cries And the behavior went into frenzied activity "Sister, Furen the Scoundrel has been caught!" A woman joined them.Beating their chests and tearing their hair, they shrieked, "Furren's alive." "Furren, three fellows tell the hungry that they can eat grass." "Furren, now that I have no bread for me When Papa was eating, that guy said he could eat grass." "Furren, I have no milk because of poverty, but he said my baby can eat grass." "Oh, Holy Mother, this Furren." "Oh my God, our misery." "Listen, my dead child and my sickly father: I kneel on the ground, and on the stone I swear, I will avenge Furen for you! Husbands, brethren Boys, give us the blood of Furen." "Give us Furen's head, give us Furen's heart." "Give us Furen's body and soul." "Give us Furen's body and bury him in pieces." Go into the dirt, and let the grass grow out of him!" Shouting this, many women went into a frenzy, forgot everything, whirled, beat and tore with their friends until they passed out, and all depended on their families. The man who rescued him saved him from being trampled underfoot.

However, they didn't waste any time, not at all!Furren is at City Hall at this time and may be released.Saint Antoine must never be released as long as he has not forgotten the suffering, the humiliation and the wrong they have suffered.Armed men and women rushed out of the district of Saint-Antoine, at a gallop, and carried the last of them with great force.In less than a quarter of an hour there was no one in Saint Antoine's heart but a wrinkled old woman and a crying child. No one is there anymore.They had by this time filled the courtroom where the ugly, wicked old man sat, and spilled out into the adjacent grounds and streets.The Defarges, Furies, and Jacques III were the first to arrive and stood in the hall not far from the old man.

"Look!" cried the proprietress, pointing at the knife, "look at where the old rascal is tied. Yes, put a bundle of grass on his back. Ha! ha! Well tied. Let him eat grass now!" The proprietress held the knife under her arm and clapped her hands as if watching a show. The people behind Mrs. Defarge told the reasons for her satisfaction to the people behind them, and the people behind them explained to others, and the others explained to others, so that the nearby streets also burst into applause.Likewise, the often impatient opinions of Madame Defarge were answered at a distance with astonishing rapidity, in the midst of two or three hours' tumult, sifting through an indeterminate array of words, for a few People climbed outside the building and looked in through the windows.They knew Madame Defarge well, and acted as live telegrams between her and the crowd outside.

At last the sun rose, and cast a benevolent beam of hope or protection straight on the head of the old prisoner.Such favors are too much to be tolerated.All those bastards who had been in the way of him for too long were blasted away, and St. Antoine had him! The news reached immediately and directly to the peoples of the remotest regions.Defarge had just leaped over a railing and a table and hugged the hapless wretch, Madame Defarge had just followed and seized one of the ropes that bound him, and Furies and Jacques III had not had time to follow. Before the people on the windows had time to scurry down like birds of prey from their perches, there was a yell, which seemed to be yelling all over the city, "Get him out! Get him under the street lamp!"

Falling down, getting up, falling headfirst on the steps outside the hall; sometimes kneeling, sometimes standing up; sometimes being on the ground, sometimes being dragged away; Choking half to death on hay, green grass; being pulled, pulled, bruised, gasping, bleeding, always begging, always begging for mercy; sometimes struggling, full of pain.People would pull and pull to make way for a small area to watch him perform; sometimes it was a piece of dead wood dragged out of the forest's legs.In this way he was caught to the nearest street corner, where a deadly lamp hung.There Madame Defarge let him go--a cat can let a mouse go--and looked at him in silence, waiting for the others to prepare; while he begged her.The women kept screaming at him, and the men screamed viciously to put grass in his mouth and kill him.The first time he was hung up, the rope broke and he was caught screaming.The second time, he was hung up, the rope broke, and he was caught screaming.Then the rope showed mercy and hung him up.Immediately his head was on the point of a spear, and enough grass was stuffed in his mouth to make all St. Antoine dance.

But that wasn't the end of the bad day.St. Antoine's blood was already on fire with shouting and dancing, so at dusk his blood was hot and angry again.That was because it was said that the son-in-law of the man who had been dealt with, another enemy of the people who oppressed the people, had entered the city of Paris with a guard of five hundred cavalry.St. Antoine proclaimed his crimes on a large sheet of paper, and then seized him--would have taken him to be with Fauren even if he had had a great army to protect him--and put his head and heart Inserted on the spear point.St. Antoine took the day's three trophies in a procession of jackals and paraded through the streets.

Men and women did not return until late at night to the crying, breadless children.The poor bakery is then surrounded by a long line of people waiting patiently for crappy bread.Hugging each other as they lined up on empty bellies, celebrating the day's wins, passing the time, and chatting about their victories.Several ragged strings gradually shortened and finally disappeared.There was a faint light from the high windows, and a small fire was lit in the street. Several neighbors were cooking on the fire, and then they ate dinner at the door. The supper was small and insufficient, with no meat or other condiments, but bad bread.However, the friendship between people adds nutrition to this hard food, and a few sparks of happiness collide between people.Parents who took part in the most ferocious activity of the day spoke tenderly to their emaciated children; lovers loved and hoped in the world around them and before them. It was nearly daylight when the Defarge Hotel parted with its last guests.Monsieur Defarge said hoarsely to his wife, closing the door: "The day has finally come, my dear!" "Uh, not bad!" the proprietress replied. "Almost here." Saint-Antoine was asleep, the Defarges were asleep, even Furies was asleep with her grocer, and the drum was resting.The sound of the drum was the only sound that had not been altered by the blood and fuss.Nemesis, custodian of the drum, could also wake it up and make it sound like it did before the fall of the Bastille or the capture of old Furren, but the voices of the men and women in Saint Antoine's arms were all hoarse.