《A Tale of Two Cities》 Book2 CHAPTER VIII
Monseigneur in the Country
by Charles Dickens
A BEAUTIFUL landscape,
with the corn bright in it, but not abundant. Patches of poor rye where corn should have
been, patches of poor peas and beans, patches of most coarse vegetable substitutes for
wheat. On inanimate nature, as on the men and women who cultivated it, a prevalent
tendency towards an appearance of vegetating unwillingly--dejected disposition to give up,
and wither away.
Monsieur the Marquis in his travelling carriage (which might have been lighter), conducted
by four post-horses and two postilions, fagged up a steep hill. A blush on the countenance
of Monsieur the Marquis was no impeachment of his high breeding; it was not from within;
it was occasioned by an external circumstance beyond his control--the setting sun give up,
and wither away give up, and wither away.
The sunset struck so brilliantly into the travelling carriage when it gained the hill-top,
that its occupant was steeped in crimson. `It will die out,' said Monsieur the Marquis,
glancing at his hands, `directly.'
In effect, the sun was so low that it dipped at the moment. When the heavy drag had been
adjusted to the wheel, and the carriage slid down hill, with a cinderous smell, in a cloud
of dust, the red glow departed quickly; the sun and the Marquis going down together, there
was no glow left when the drag was taken off.
But, there remained a broken country, bold and open, a little village at the bottom of the
hill, a broad sweep and rise beyond it, a church-tower, a windmill, a forest for the
chase, and a crag with a fortress on it used as a prison. Round upon all these darkening
objects as the night drew on, the Marquis looked, with the air of one who was coming near
home.
The village had its one poor street, with its poor brewery, poor tannery, poor tavern,
poor stable-yard for relay of post+horses, poor fountain, all usual poor appointments. It
had its poor people too. All its people were poor, and many of them were sitting at their
doors, shredding spare onions and the like for supper, while many were at the fountain,
washing leaves, and grasses, and any such small yieldings of the earth that could be
eaten. Expressive signs of what made them poor, were not wanting; the tax for the state,
the tax for the church, the tax for the lord, tax local and tax general, were to be paid
here and to be paid there, according to solemn inscription in the little village, until
the wonder was, that there was any village left unswallowed.
Few children were to be seen, and no dogs. As to the men and women, their choice on earth
was stated in the prospect--Life on the lowest terms that could sustain it, down in the
little village under die mill; or captivity and Death in the dominant prison on the crag.
Heralded by a courier in advance, and by the cracking of his postilions' whips, which
twined snake-like about their heads in the evening air, as if he came attended by the
Furies, Monsieur the Marquis drew up in his travelling carriage at the posting-house
gate. It was hard by the fountain, and the peasants suspended their operations to look at
him. He looked at them, and saw in them, without knowing it, the slow sure filing down of
misery-worn face and figure, that was to make the meagerness of Frenchmen an English
superstition which should survive the truth through the best part of a hundred years.
Monsieur the Marquis cast his eyes over the submissive faces that drooped before him, as
the like of himself had drooped before Monseigneur of the Court--only the difference was,
that these faces drooped merely to suffer and not to propitiate--when a grizzled mender of
the roads joined the group.
`Bring me hither that fellow!' said the Marquis to the courier.
The fellow was brought, cap in hand, and the other fellows closed round to look and
listen, in the manner of the people at the Paris fountain.
`I passed you on the road?'
`Monseigneur, it is true. I had the honour of being passed on the road.'
`Coming up the hill, and at the top of the hill, both?'
`Monseigneur, it is true.
`What did you look at, so fixedly?'
`Monseigneur, I looked at the man.'
He stooped a little, and with his tattered blue cap pointed under the carriage. All his
fellows stooped to look under the carriage.
`Mat man, pig? And why look there?'
`Pardon, Monseigneur; he swung by the chain of the shoe the drag.'
`Who?' demanded the traveller.
`Monseigneur, the man.'
`May the Devil carry away these idiots! How do you call the man? You know all the men of
this part of the country. Who was he?'
`Your clemency, Monseigneur! He was not of this part of the country. Of all the days of my
life, I never saw him.'
`Swinging by the chain? To be suffocated?'
`With your gracious permission, that was the wonder of it, Monseigneur. His head hanging
over--like this!'
He turned himself sideways to the carriage, and leaned back, with his face thrown up to
the sky, and his head hanging down; then recovered himself, fumbled with his cap, and made
a bow.
`what was he like?'
`Monseigneur, he was whiter than the miller. All covered with dust, white as a spectre,
tall as a spectre!'
The picture produced an immense sensation in the little crowd; but all eyes, without
comparing notes with other eyes, looked at Monsieur the Marquis. Perhaps, to
observe whether he had any spectre on his conscience.
`Truly, you did well,' said the Marquis, felicitously sensible that such vermin were not
to ruffle him, `to see a thief accompanying my carriage, and not open that great mouth of
yours. Bah! Put him aside, Monsieur Gabelle!'
Monsieur Gabelle was the Postmaster, and some other taxing functionary united; he had come
out with great obsequiousness to assist at this examination, and had held the examined by
the drapery of his arm in an official manner.
`Bah! Go aside!' said Monsieur Gabelle.
`Lay hands on this stranger if he seeks to lodge in your village to-night, and be sure
that his business is honest, Gabelle.'
`Monseigneur, I am flattered to devote myself to your orders.'
`Did he run away, fellow?--here is that Accursed?'
The accursed was already under the carriage with some half-dozen particular friends,
pointing out the chain with his blue cap. Some half-dozen other particular friends
promptly hauled him out, and presented him breathless to Monsieur the Marquis.
`Did the man run away, Dolt, when we stopped for the drag?'
`Monseigneur, he precipitated himself over the hill-side, head first, as a person plunges
into the river.'
`See to it, Gabelle. Go on!'
The half-dozen who were peering at the chain were still among the wheels, like sheep; the
wheels turned so suddenly that they were lucky to save their skins and bones; they had
very little else to save, or they might not have been so fortunate.
The burst with which the carriage started out of the village and up the rise beyond, was
soon checked by the steepness of the hill. Gradually, it subsided to a foot pace, swinging
and lumbering upward among the many sweet scents of a summer night. The postilions, with a
thousand gossamer gnats circling about them in lieu of the Furies, quietly mended the
points to the lashes of their whips; the valet walked by the horses; the courier was
audible, trotting on ahead into the dim distance.
At the steepest point of the hill there was a little burial ground, with a Cross and a new
large figure of Our Saviour on it; it was a poor figure in wood, done by some
inexperienced rustic carver, but he had studied the figure from the life--is own life,
maybe--or it was dreadfully spare and thin.
To this distressful emblem of a great distress that had long been growing worse, and was
not at its worst, a woman was kneeling. She turned her head as the carriage came up to
her, rose quickly, and presented herself at the carriage-door.
`It is you, Monseigneur! Monseigneur, a petition.'
With an exclamation of impatience, but with his Un+changeable face, Monseigneur looked
out.
`How, then! What is it? Always petitions!'
`Monseigneur. For the love of the great God! My husband, the forester.'
`What of your husband, the forester? Always the same with you people. He cannot pay
something?'
`He has paid all, Monseigneur. He is dead.'
`Well! He is quiet. Can I restore him to you?'
`Alas, no, Monseigneur! But he lies yonder, under a little heap of poor grass.'
`Well?'
`Monseigneur,, there are so many little heaps of par grass?'
`Again, well?'
She looked an old woman, but was young. Her manner was one of passionate grief; by turns
she clasped her veinous and knotted hands together with wild energy, and laid one of them
on the carriage-door--tenderly, caressingly, as if it had been a human breast, and could
be expected to feel the appealing touch.
`Monseigneur, hear me! Monseigneur, hear my petition! My husband died of want; so many die
of want; so many more will die of want.'
`Again, well? Can I feed them?'
`Monseigneur, the good God knows; but I don't ask it. My petition is, that a morsel of
stone or wood, with my husband's name, may be placed over him to show where he lies.
Otherwise, the place will be quickly forgotten, it will never be found when I am dead of
the same malady, I shall be laid under some other heap of poor grass. Monseigneur, they
are so many, they increase so fast, there is so much want. Monseigneur! Monseigneur!'
The valet had put her away from the door, the carriage had broken into a brisk trot, the
postilions had quickened the pace, she was left far behind, and Monseigneur, again
escorted by the Furies, was rapidly diminishing the league or two of distance that
remained between him and his chateau.
The sweet scents of the summer night rose all around him, and rose, as the rain falls,
impartially, on the dusty, ragged, and toil-worn group at the fountain not far away; to
whom the mender of roads, with the aid of the blue cap without which he was nothing, still
enlarged upon his man like a spectre, as long as they could bear it. By degrees, as they
could bear no more, they dropped off one by one, and lights twinkled in little casements;
which lights, as the casements darkened, and more stars came out, seemed to have shot up
into the sky instead of having been extinguished.
The shadow of a large high-roofed house, and of many overhanging trees, was upon Monsieur
the Marquis by that time; and the shadow was exchanged for the light of a flambeau, as his
carriage stopped, and the great door of his chateau was opened to him.
`Monsieur Charles, whom I expect: is he arrived from England?'
`Monseigneur, not yet.' |
