Chapter 37 Chapter 5 Woodworking

One year and three months.At every moment during this time Lucy felt that the guillotine would chop off her husband's head tomorrow.Prison vans are full of condemned prisoners every day, bumping and plodding through the streets.Lovely girls, pretty women; brown-haired, black-haired, grey-haired; young, stout, old; aristocrats, peasants, all red glasses of the guillotine lady , is brought out every day from the hideous dark cellars of the prison, into the sunshine, and sent to the lady through the streets to quench her thirst.Liberty Equality Fraternity or Death--the last is much easier: Ah, the guillotine!

Had the sudden catastrophe and the whirlwind of time stunned the doctor's daughter and left her to wait with disappointment for the outcome, she would have been no more than a million others.But ever since she laid her white-haired head on her youthful bosom in the garret of the Saint-Antoine, she had always been true to her duty, especially in times of trial, as all silent, faithful and good men do. Same. Once they moved into their new home and her father started his routine medical work, she organized her small household as if her husband were by his side.Everything has a fixed place and a fixed time.She taught little Lucy on the same schedule as she did when the family was reunited at home in England.She tricked herself into believing that the family reunion was imminent—she made little preparations for her husband's early return, getting him his own chair, and putting it aside with his books.Besides this, she solemnly prayed for a dear prisoner who, among many unfortunates, lived under the shadow of death in prison.That was almost the only way she could express and express her heavy heart song in words.

Her appearance has not changed much.She and the children were dressed in plain dark clothes that resembled mourning, but they were all neatly packed like the colorful clothes of happy days.Her vivid complexion was gone, and the focused look she had before appeared often instead of just by chance.Other than that, she's still beautiful and beautiful.Sometimes she would cry when she kissed her father at night, overflowing with the pent-up sadness of the day, and said that he was the only thing she had under heaven to depend on.He always said firmly: "There is nothing that has happened to him that I have not kept from my knowledge, and I know I can save him, Lucy."

Their lives changed when, a few weeks later, her father told her one night as soon as he came home: "My dear, there is an upper window in the prison, and Charles might sometimes go there at three o'clock in the afternoon. If you were standing in the street where I told you, and he went to the window, he thought he might see you —But whether he can get to the window or not depends on many chance factors. But you can't see him, poor boy, and if you do, you can't show it, because it's not safe for you." "Oh, tell me where, Father, I go every day." From then on, no matter what the weather was, she always went there and waited for two hours.When the clock struck two o'clock she was standing there, and at four o'clock she gave up the idea of ​​leaving.If the weather is not too humid or too bad to take the child, she will take the child.She usually goes alone, but never misses a day.

It was a dark, dirty corner of a crooked side street.The only house there was a hut for a worker who sawed wood into short pieces for the fireplace, and the rest were only walls.On the third day she went, the man noticed her. "Good day, female citizen." "Good day, citizen." This was the legal form of greeting at the time.The pattern, not so long ago formed unconsciously among more consistent patriots, is now the law to be obeyed by all. "Walking here again, citizen?" "You see, citizen!" The sawman was a small man with a lot of gestures (he had worked as a road mender before).He looked at the prison, pointed with his fingers, spread ten fingers apart and put them in front of his face, representing the iron bars, pretending to be a funny peek.

"But that has nothing to do with me," he said.He went to saw wood again. The next day, he poked his head out to look for her, and greeted her as soon as she appeared. "Why, have you come here for a walk again, female citizen?" "Yes, citizen." "Ah! Another child! Is she your mother, little citizen?" "Shall I say yes, mother?" asked little Lucy in a low voice, drawing close to her. "The answer is yes, obediently." "Yes, citizen." "Ah! But that's none of my business. My business is sawing wood. See my saw? I call it my guillotine. La la la la la la la la! His head falling down!"

As he spoke, the firewood fell, and he threw it into the basket. "I call myself Samson of the guillotine. Look here again! Loo, loo, loo; loo, loo, loo! This woman's head fell off! And now, a child. Chirp, chump; peep , Beep! The child’s head also fell off. The whole family was chopped off!” He threw two more logs into the basket, and Lucy shuddered.It was impossible to get there while the sawman was at work without being seen by him.From then on, in order to gain his favor, she always talked to him first, and often gave him some money for drinks, which he immediately accepted. This man is nosy, and sometimes when she is gazing at the roof and bars of the prison and forgetting about him with her mind flying to her husband, she will immediately come to her senses and see the man kneeling on a bench watching She forgot to pull the saw in her hand. "But it's none of my business!" he would say again then, and immediately saw again.

No matter what the weather is - in the frost and snow in winter, the cold wind in spring, the hot sun in summer, the drizzle in autumn, and the frost and snow in winter again, Lucy spends her days here For two hours, kiss the walls of the prison every day when you leave.She went six times, and her husband might see her once (her father told her so), sometimes for two days in a row, sometimes not for a week or two.If only he had the chance to see her, and if he happened to see the possibility, she would stand there all day, seven days a week. Such activity brought her back to December, and her father still stalked in terror.On a slightly snowy afternoon, she came to the corner she always went to.It was a wildly festive day.When she came, she saw that the house was decorated with bayonets, red caps on the top of the bayonets, three colored ribbons hanging on the roof, and a standard slogan (the letters are also often written in three colors): a united and indivisible republic, liberty, equality and fraternity or die!

The poor Sawyer's shop was too small for the slogan to fit over the whole front.But he still found someone to paint him crookedly, writing "death" and finally squeezed in.He stuck a gun and a cap on the roof, which is what good citizens do.He also placed the saw in a window, and marked it "Guillotine of the Little Saints," when that great and sharp woman was universally venerated.The wood shop was closed and the master was away, and Lucy was alone.She breathed a sigh of relief. But the man was not far away, for at once she heard a commotion and a cry, and was filled with dread.In an instant a great crowd turned out from the corner of the prison wall, and among them was the Sawyer, who was holding hands with the Furies.There were no less than five hundred of them, but they danced like five thousand demons and ghosts.They had no music but their own singing, and could only dance to the beat of popular revolutionary songs, a ferocious beat, as if they were gnashing their teeth in unison.Men dance with women, women dance with women, men dance with men, and dance with whomever they meet.At first they were nothing more than a storm of rough red caps and rough woolen wool, but by the time they had filled the place, stopped and danced beside Lucy, they had become a raving madness. Scary ghosts.Sometimes they moved forward, sometimes back, clapping each other's hands, grabbing each other's heads, spinning alone, spinning in pairs until some of them fell to the ground.At this time, those who did not fall held hands and circled in a circle. When the circle was broken, they grabbed a pair and spun again. The four of them spun around until they came to a sudden stop.So it started again, clapping hands again, pulling the head again, pulling hands again, pulling back and forth, rotating in the opposite direction, and then pulling it into a large circle and rotating in the opposite direction.They stopped suddenly, paused for a while, stepped on the beat again, lined up in a long row as wide as the street, lowered their heads, raised their hands, and flew forward screaming.Even fighting is not half as terrible as this dance.It's a game that's unbelievably depraved.Originally very pure, but later has this ghostly image.A wholesome pastime turned into a means of making the blood run wild, the senses confused, and the heart vicious.The semblance of grace makes the dance all the uglier, showing how perverted and perverted everything that is essentially good has become.Girls' breasts were exposed in the dance, the beautiful but crazy head of the almost teenage, and the delicate feet faltered in the bloody mud.It's all emblematic of a disjointed era.

This is the Carmagnola dance.The dance was over, and Lucy was left standing in front of the sawmill's house, terrified and bewildered.The light snowflakes flew quietly, piled up white and soft, as if this dance had never appeared before. "Ah, father!" She put down her hands covering her eyes and found him standing in front of her. "What a cruel and ugly sight." "I know, dear, I know. I've seen it many times. Don't be afraid! None of them would hurt you." "I'm not afraid of myself, father, but when I think of my husband, who's still at the mercy of these people-"

"We'll get him out of them soon enough. I left him, he was crawling up to the window, and I'll tell you. No one sees here. You can blow a kiss on the tallest sloping roof." .” "I'm going to blow kisses, father, and I'm going to blow him my soul too." "Can't you see him, poor boy?" "I can't see it," said Lucy, weeping and kissing his hand, "I can't see it." Footsteps in the snow, it was Madame Defarge. "Salute to you, lady citizen," said the doctor. "Hail to you, citizen," she answered casually.No more words.Madame Defarge was gone, like a shadow across the white road. "Give me your arm, darling. For his sake, come across here cheerfully and bravely. Well done." They had passed the place. "It won't work. Charles will be interrogated tomorrow." "tomorrow!" "There is no time to waste. I have made preparations, and there are precautions which must not be taken until he is in court. He has not been notified yet, but I know he will be. Tomorrow will be the trial, and at the same time the He was transferred to the prison of the Paris Inquisition. My information was timely. You will not be afraid, will you?" She could barely answer, "I believe in you." "Trust me absolutely! Your days of fear are coming to an end, my dear. He'll be back with you in a few hours after the trial. I've got him under wraps. I've got to see Rory. " He stopped.They heard the heavy sound of wheels, and knew very well what it meant.One, two, three.Three death row wagons drove away on the silent snow with their terrible cargo. "I've got to see Rory," repeated the doctor, leading her the other way. The reliable old man still stuck to his post and did not leave a step.Many properties are confiscated or confiscated, and he and his books are often consulted.He tried to keep everything that could be kept for the original owner.No one in the world knows better than him how much property Tellson Bank is entrusting, but he keeps his mouth shut. The dark red and yellow clouds and the mist rising over the Seine signaled the approach of night.It was almost dark when he reached the bank.The stately mansions of the court dignitaries have been dilapidated and few people live in them.On top of a pile of dust and ashes in the courtyard are several large characters: National Property.Unity and indivisible republic, liberty, equality, fraternity or death. Who was that with Mr. Lorry?Whose riding suit is that on the chair? —The man refused to be seen.From whom has Mr. Lorry just run out, excited and startled, and take his darling in his arms?He turned around and raised his voice to the room he came out of just now, "Transfer to the prison attached to the Paris Inquisition for interrogation tomorrow." Those were the words she stammered just now, and to whom was he repeating them?