评论
打印
`English?' asked Madame Defarge, inquisitively raising her dark eyebrows.
After looking at her, as if the sound of even a single French word were slow to express itself to him, he answered, in his former strong foreign accent, `Yes, madame, yes. I am English!'
Madame Defarge returned to her counter to get the wine, and, as he took up a Jacobin journal and feigned to pore over it puzzling out its meaning, he heard her say, `I swear to you, like Evrémonde!'
Defarge brought him the wine, and gave him Good Evening.
`How?'
`Good evening.'
`Oh! Good evening, citizen,' filling his glass. `Ah! and good wine. I drink to the Republic.'
Defarge went back to the counter, and said, `Certainly, a little like.' Madame sternly retorted, `I tell you a good deal like.' Jacques Three pacifically remarked, `He is so much in your mind, see you, madame.' The amiable Vengeance added, with a laugh, `Yes, my faith! And you are looking forward with so much pleasure to seeing him once more to-morrow!'
Carton followed the lines and words of his paper, with a slow forefinger, and with a studious and absorbed face. They were all leaning their arms on the counter close together, speaking low. After a silence of a few moments, during which they all looked towards him without disturbing his outward attention from the Jacobin editor, they resumed their conversation.
`It is true what madame says,' observed Jacques Three. `Why stop? There is great force in that. Why stop?'
`Well, well,' reasoned Defarge, `but one must stop somewhere. After all, the question is still where?'
`At extermination,' said madame.
`Magnificent!' croaked Jacques Three. The Vengeance, also, highly approved.
`Extermination is good doctrine, my wife,' said Defarge, rather troubled; `in general, I say nothing against it. But this Doctor has suffered much; you have seen him to-day; you have observed his face when the paper was read.'
`I have observed his face!' repeated madame, contemptuously and angrily. `Yes. I have observed his face. I have observed his face to be not the face of a true friend of the Republic. Let him take care of his face!'
