All this while, Defarge, with his pipe in his mouth, walked up and down, complacently admiring, but never interfering; in which condition, indeed, as to the business and his domestic affairs, he walked up and down through life.
The night was hot, and the shop, close shut and surrounded by so foul a neighbourhood, was ill-smelling.
Monsieur Defarge's olfactory sense was by no means delicate, but the stock of wine smelt much stronger than it ever tasted, and so did the stock of rum and brandy and aniseed.
He whiffed the compound of scents away, as he put down his smoked-out pipe.
"You are fatigued," said madame, raising her glance as she knotted the money.
"There are only the usual odours."
"I am a little tired," her husband acknowledged.
"You are a little depressed, too," said madame, whose quick eyes had never been so intent on the accounts, but they had had a ray or two for him.
"Oh, the men, the men!"
"But my dear!" began Defarge.
"But my dear!" repeated madame, nodding firmly; "but my dear!
You are faint of heart to-night, my dear!"
"Well, then," said Defarge, as if a thought were wrung out of his breast, "it is a long time."
"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."
"It does not take a long time to strike a man with Lightning," said Defarge.
"How long," demanded madame, composedly, "does it take to make and store the lightning?
Tell me."
Defarge raised his head thoughtfully, as if there were something in that too.
"It does not take a long time," said madame, "for an earthquake to swallow a town.
Eh well! Tell me how long it takes to prepare the earthquake?"
"A long time, I suppose," said Defarge.
"But when it is ready, it takes place, and grinds to pieces everything before it. In the meantime, it is always preparing, though it is not seen or heard.
That is your consolation.
Keep it."
She tied a knot with flashing eyes, as if it throttled a foe.
"I tell thee," said madame, extending her right hand, for emphasis, "that although it is a long time on the road, it is on the road and coming.
I tell thee it never retreats, and never stops.
I tell thee it is always advancing.
Look around and consider the lives of all the world that we know, consider the faces of all the world that we know, consider the rage and discontent to which the Jacquerie addresses itself with more and more of certainty every hour.
Can such things last?
Bah!
I mock you."
"My brave wife," returned Defarge, standing before her with his head a little bent, and his hands clasped at his back, like a docile and attentive pupil before his catechist,
"I do not question all this.
But it has lasted a long time, and it is possible—you know well, my wife, it is possible—that it may not come, during our lives."
"Eh well! How then?" demanded madame, tying another knot, as if there were another enemy strangled.
"Well!" said Defarge, with a half complaining and half apologetic shrug. "We shall not see the triumph."
"We shall have helped it," returned madame, with her extended hand in strong action.
"Nothing that we do, is done in vain.
I believe, with all my soul, that we shall see the triumph.
But even if not, even if I knew certainly not, show me the neck of an aristocrat and tyrant, and still I would—"
Then madame, with her teeth set, tied a very terrible knot indeed.
"Hold!" cried Defarge, reddening a little as if he felt charged with cowardice;
"I too, my dear, will stop at nothing."
"Yes! But it is your weakness that you sometimes need to see your victim and your opportunity, to sustain you.
Sustain yourself without that.
When the time comes, let loose a tiger and a devil; but wait for the time with the tiger and the devil chained—not shown—yet always ready."
Madame enforced the conclusion of this piece of advice by striking her little counter with her chain of money as if she knocked its brains out, and then gathering the heavy handkerchief under her arm in a serene manner, and observing that it was time to go to bed.
Next noontide saw the admirable woman in her usual place in the wine-shop, knitting away assiduously.