Book the Second - the Golden Thread
15. XV. Knitting
(continued)
The hungry man gnawed one of his fingers as he looked at the other
three, and his finger quivered with the craving that was on him.
"That's all, messieurs. I left at sunset (as I had been warned to do),
and I walked on, that night and half next day, until I met (as I was
warned I should) this comrade. With him, I came on, now riding and
now walking, through the rest of yesterday and through last night.
And here you see me!"
After a gloomy silence, the first Jacques said, "Good! You have
acted and recounted faithfully. Will you wait for us a little,
outside the door?"
"Very willingly," said the mender of roads. Whom Defarge escorted
to the top of the stairs, and, leaving seated there, returned.
The three had risen, and their heads were together when he came
back to the garret.
"How say you, Jacques?" demanded Number One. "To be registered?"
"To be registered, as doomed to destruction," returned Defarge.
"Magnificent!" croaked the man with the craving.
"The chateau, and all the race?" inquired the first.
"The chateau and all the race," returned Defarge. "Extermination."
The hungry man repeated, in a rapturous croak, "Magnificent!" and began
gnawing another finger.
"Are you sure," asked Jacques Two, of Defarge, "that no embarrassment
can arise from our manner of keeping the register? Without doubt it
is safe, for no one beyond ourselves can decipher it; but shall we
always be able to decipher it--or, I ought to say, will she?"
"Jacques," returned Defarge, drawing himself up, "if madame my wife
undertook to keep the register in her memory alone, she would not
lose a word of it--not a syllable of it. Knitted, in her own stitches
and her own symbols, it will always be as plain to her as the sun.
Confide in Madame Defarge. It would be easier for the weakest poltroon
that lives, to erase himself from existence, than to erase one letter
of his name or crimes from the knitted register of Madame Defarge."
|