doubly hot by the service of Four fierce hours.







A white flag from within the fortress, and a parley--this dimly perceptible through the

raging storm, nothing audible in it--suddenly the sea rose immeasurably wider and higher,

and swept Defarge of the wine-shop over the lowered draw-bridge, past the massive stone

outer walls, in among the eight great towers surrendered!







So resistless was the force of the ocean bearing him on, that even to draw his breath or

turn his head was as impracticable as if he had been struggling in the surf at the South

Sea, until he was landed in the outer court-yard of the Bastille. There, against an angle

of a wall, he made a struggle to look about him. Jacques Three was nearly at his side;

Madame Defarge, still-heading some of her women, was visible in the inner distance, and

her knife was in her hand. Everywhere was tumult, exultation, deafening and maniacal

bewilderment, astounding noise, yet furious dumb-show.







`The Prisoners!'







`The Records!'







`The secret cells!'







`The instruments of torture!'







`The Prisoners!'







Of all these cries, and ten thousand incoherencies, `The Prisoners!' was the Cry most

taken up by the sea that rushed in, as if there were an eternity of people, as well as of

time and space. When the foremost billows rolled past, bearing the prison officers with

them, and threatening them all with instant death if any secret nook remained undisclosed,

Defarge laid his strong hand on the breast of one of these men--a man with a grey head,

who had a lighted torch in his hand--separated him from the rest, and got him between

himself and the wall.







`Show me the North Tower!' said Defarge. `Quick!'







`I will faithfully,' replied the man, `if you will come with me.







But there is no one there.'







`What is the meaning of One Hundred and Five, North Tower?' asked Defarge. `Quick!'







`The meaning, monsieur?'







`Does it mean a captive, or a place of captivity? Or do you mean that I shall strike you

dead?'







`Kill him!' croaked Jacques Three, who had come close up.







`Monsieur, it is a cell.'







`Show it me!'







`Pass this way, then.'







Jacques Three, with his usual craving on him, and evidently disappointed by the dialogue

taking a turn that did not seem to promise bloodshed, held by Defarge's arm as he held by

the turnkey's. Their three heads had been close together during this brief discourse, and

it had been as much as they could do to hear one another, even then: so tremendous was the

noise of the living ocean, in its irruption into the Fortress, and its inundation of the

courts and passages and staircases. All around outside, too, it beat the walls with a

deep, hoarse roar, from which, occasionally, some partial shouts of tumult broke and

leaped into the air like spray.







Through gloomy vaults where the light of day had never shone, past hideous doors of dark

dens and cages, down cavernous flights of steps, and again up steep rugged ascents of

stone and brick, more like dry waterfalls than staircases, Defarge, the turnkey, and

Jacques Three, linked hand and arm, went with all the speed they could make. Here and

there, especially at first, the inundation started on them and swept by; but when they had

done descending, and were winding and climbing up a tower, they were alone. Hemmed in here

by the massivethickness of walls and arches, the storm within the fortress and without

was only audible to them in a dull, subdued way, as if the noise out of which they had

come had almost destroyed their sense of hearing.







The turnkey stopped at a low door, put a key in a clashing lock, swung the door slowly

open, and said, as they all bent their heads and passed in:







`One hundred and five, North Tower!'







There was a small, heavily-grated, unglazed window high in the wall, with a stone screen

before it, so that the sky could be only seen by stooping low and looking up. There was a

small chimney, heavily barred across, a few feet within. There was a heap of old feathery

wood-ashes on the hearth. There was a stool, and table, and a straw bed. There were the

four blackened walls, and a rusted iron ring in one of them.







`Pass that torch slowly along these walls, that I may see them,' said Defarge to the

turnkey.







The man obeyed, and Defarge followed the light closely with his eyes.







`Stop--Look here, Jacques!'







`A. M.!' croaked Jacques Three, as he read greedily.







`Alexandre Manette,' said Defarge in his ear, following the letters with his swart

forefinger, deeply engrained with gunpowder. `And here he wrote ``a poor physician.'' And

it was he, without doubt, who scratched a calendar on this stone. What is that in your

hand? A crowbar? Give it me!'







He had still the linstock of his gun in his own hand. He made a sudden exchange of the two

instruments, and turning on the worm-eaten stool and table, beat them to pieces in a few

blows.







`Hold the light higher!' he said, wrathfully, to the turnkey. `Look among those fragments

with care, Jacques. And see! Here is my knife,' throwing it to him; `rip open that bed,

and search the straw. Hold the light higher, you!'







With a menacing look at the turnkey he crawled upon the hearth, and, peering up the

chimney, struck and prised at its sides with the crowbar, and worked at the iron grating

across it. In a few minutes, some mortar and dust came dropping down, which he averted his

face to avoid; and in it, and in the old wood-ashes, and in a crevice in the chimney into

which his weapon had slipped or wrought itself, he groped with a cautious touch.







`Nothing in the wood, and nothing in the straw, Jacques?'







`Nothing.'







`Let us collect them together, in the middle of the cell. So! Light them, you!'







The turnkey fired the little pile, which blazed high and hot. Stooping again to come out

at the low-arched door, they left it burning, and retraced their way to the court-yard;

seeming to recover their sense of hearing as they came down, until they were in the raging

flood once more.







They found it surging and tossing, in quest of Defarge himself. Saint Antoine was

clamorous to have its wine-shop keeper foremost in the guard upon the governor who had

defended the Bastille and shot the people. Otherwise, the governor would not be marched to

the Hotel de Ville for judgment. Otherwise, the governor would escape, and the people's

blood (suddenly of some value, after many years of worthlessness) be unavenged.







In the howling universe of passion and contention that seemed to encompass this grim old

officer conspicuous in his grey coat and red decoration, there was but one quite steady

figure, and that was a woman's. `See, there is my husband!' she cried, pointing him out.

`See Defarge!' She stood immovable close to the grim old officer, and remained immovable

close to him; remained immovable close to him through the streets, as Defarge and the rest

bore him along; remained immovable close to him when he was got near his destination, and

began to be struck at from behind; remained immovable close to him when the long-gathering

rain of stabs and blows fell heavy; was so close to him when he dropped dead under it,

that, suddenly animated, she put her foot upon his neck, and with her cruel knife-long

`ready-hewed off his head.







The hour was come, when Saint Antoine was to execute his horrible idea of hoisting up men

for lamps to show what he could be and do. Saint Antoine's blood was up, and the blood of

tyranny and domination by the iron hand was down--down on the steps of the Hotel de Ville

where the governor's body lay--down on the sole of the shoe of Madame Defarge where she

had trodden on the body to steady it for mutilation. `Lower the lamp yonder!' cried Saint

Antoine, after glaring round for a new means of death; `here is one of his soldiers to be

left on guard!' The swinging sentinel was posted, and the sea rushed on.







The sea of black and threatening waters, and of destructive upheaving of wave against

wave, whose depths were yet unfathomed and whose forces were yet unknown. The remorseless

sea of turbulently swaying shapes, voices of vengeance, and faces hardened in the furnaces

of suffering until the touch of pity could make no mark on them.







But, in the ocean of faces where every fierce and furious expression was in vivid life,

there were two groups of faces--each seven in number--so fixedly contrasting with the

rest, that never did sea roll which bore more memorable wrecks with it. Seven faces of

prisoners, suddenly released by the storm that had burst their tomb, were carried high

overhead: all scared, all lost, all wondering and amazed, as if the Last Day were come,

and those who rejoiced around them were lost spirits. Other seven faces there were,

carried higher, seven dead faces, whose drooping eyelids and half-seen eyes awaited the

Last Day. Impassive faces, yet with a suspended--not an abolished--expression on them;

faces, rather, in a fearful pause, as having yet to raise the dropped lids of the eyes,

and bear witness with the bloodless lips, `THOU DIDST IT!'







Seven prisoners released, seven gory heads on pikes, the keys of the accursedfortress of

the eight strong towers, some discovered letters and other memorials of prisoners of old

time, long dead of broken hearts,--such, and such-like, the loudly echoing footsteps of

Saint Antoine escort through the Paris streets in mid-July, one thousand seven hundred and

eighty-nine. Now, Heaven defeat the fancy of Lucie Darnay, and keep these feet far out of

her life! For, they are headlong, mad, and dangerous; and in the years so long after the

breaking of the cask at Defarge's wine-shop door, they are not easily purified when once

stained red.

关键字:双城记第二部

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