Section 4

In saying this, he dropped his clean hand (maybe by accident and maybe not) on the foolish man's heart. The joker pushed it away and jumped high in the air only to come down in a dancing movement, with one shoe pulled off and in his hand. He reached out to the wine shop owner with his shoe.
"Put it on. Put it on. You should call wine wine and leave it at that." With that, he rubbed his dirty hand on the clothes (if you can call them that) that the joker was wearing, as if to say that he was the reason that the hand had become dirty in the first place. Then he returned across the road and into the wine shop.
This owner was a strong man of thirty, with a thick neck. One could understand him being angry, because it was very cold out and he did not have a coat on (but he carried one over his shoulder). Even the sleeves of his shirt were rolled up, leaving his brown arms with no covering to the elbows. He did not wear a hat either, to cover his short dark hair. He was a dark man all over, with good eyes and a good distance between them. On the whole he was friendly, but he was not the kind of person one would want to argue with, or to meet on a narrow road with water on each side.
Madam Defarge, his wife, was sitting in the shop behind the counter, when he came in. She was a heavy woman of about his age with an eye that looked at nothing and everything at the same time. She had a few heavy rings on her fingers, an interesting
face, and a quiet spirit. She had an air of confidence about her that would make one think she was not often wrong in anything she did. Not liking the cold, Madam Defarge was covered in animal skins, with a big scarf turned around her head, but not enough to cover the big rings hanging from her ears. She had been knitting, but she had stopped to pick at her teeth with a match stick. She was so busy doing this, with her left hand holding up her right elbow, that she said nothing when her husband came in. She just made a very little cough and lifted her eyebrow by the smallest distance, as if to say that he needed to look around the shop and see if there were any new people who had come in while he was out.
He looked around to see if there was anyone new in the shop, and he saw an older man together with a young woman, both seated in a corner. There were also two people playing cards, two playing dominoes, and three people at the counter talking. As he walked over to the counter, he heard the older man in the corner say to the young woman, "There's our man."
"What the devil do I have to do with him?" Mr. Defarge asked himself. "I don't know him."
He did not show any interest in the new people, but started talking to the three men at the counter instead.
"How is it, Jack?" said one of the three to Mr. Defarge. "Did they drink all of the wine?"
"Every drop, Jack," answered Mr. Defarge.
At this point, Madam Defarge coughed another little cough, and lifted her eyebrows a little more than she did the first time.
"It is not often," said the second of the three to Mr. Defarge, "that many of these poor animals know the taste of wine, or of anything but black bread and death. Isn't that true, Jack?"
"That's true, Jack," Mr. Defarge returned.
At this, Madam Defarge, still quietly using her match stick to clean her teeth, gave another little cough, and lifted her eyebrows a little higher than she had just done.
The last of the three put down his cup, rubbed his lips together and had his say: "Ah, so much the worse for them! Now they will always have that bitter taste in their mouths. The poor cows do live a hard life, do they not, Jack?"
"You're so right, Jack," Mr. Defarge answered.
This is when Madam Defarge put down her match stick, holding her eyebrows up, and moved a little in her seat.
" Stay there ! " whispered her husband. "Men. . . my wife ! "
The three men took off their hats to Madam Defarge, and she answered back by bowing her head and giving them a little look. Then she looked quietly around the wine shop, picked up her needles with what looked like a happy spirit, and turned her whole mind to knitting.
"Good men," said her husband, "the room that you had been asking to see is on the fifth floor. The steps leading up to it start in the little closed yard to my left here, close to the shop window. But now, as I remember, one of you has been there already, and so he can show you all the way. You may go, my friends!"
They paid for their wine and left. Mr. Defarge's eyes were studying his wife at her knitting when the old man came from his corner and asked to have a word with him.
"I would be happy to do that," said Mr. Defarge as he walked quietly with him to the door.
Their talk was very short, but very clear. Almost at the first word Mr. Defarge showed serious interest in what he was hearing. In less than a minute, he showed agreement and stepped outside. The old man showed with his hand that he wanted the young woman to follow him, and she too went out the door. Madam Defarge was so busy knitting that she saw nothing.
Mr. Lorry and Miss Manette left the wine shop to join Mr. Defarge at the foot of the steps that he had just pointed out to the other men. The closed yard was dark and full of bad smells. It was the front yard for many floors of rooms holding many more people. At the foot of the steps, Mr. Defarge went down on one knee to the child of his old master, and put her hand to his lips. It was a humble action, but it marked a change in his spirit. Far from being happy and friendly, he became angry, in a dangerous and secret way.
"It's a long climb. It's a little difficult. Better to start slowly." Mr. Defarge said this to Mr. Lorry like it was an important rule, as they started climbing the steps.
"Is he alone?" Mr. Lorry whispered.
"Alone? God help him, who should be with him?" said the other in the same low voice.
"Is he always alone, then?" "Yes."
"Because he wants to be?"
"Because he needs to be. He is now as he was when I first saw him, after they found him and asked if I would take him. They made it clear that I would be in danger if I was not very careful."
"Had he changed much?"
"Changed?!" The owner of the wine shop stopped to hit the wall with his hand and say some very rough words. The answer was clear. Mr. Lorry's spirit grew heavier and heavier as the three of them climbed higher and higher.
Such steps today would be hard enough in the older and poorer parts of Paris; but it was much worse then, for any who were not used to being in such a place. Every room in that great nest of rooms that was one tall building, left their rubbish by these steps; that is, if they did not just throw it out of their windows to land in the yard. The three people were now climbing up through a dark tower filled with this awful smell. Giving in to his own worries, and to those of his young friend, whose worries were growing as they climbed, Mr. Jarvis Lorry stopped two times on the way to have a rest.
Each stop was beside an opening with bars, where light could come in. Because other buildings were so close beside them, it seemed that the openings were taking the best air out of that dark tower and bringing the worst air in. One could almost taste the life in the other awful buildings near this one, and the closest sign of healthy air and high hopes, even up here, were the two tall towers of Notre Dame far off in the distance.
At last they reached the top of the steps, where they rested for the third time. But there was one more narrow ladder up to the room in the roof that they were trying to reach. The shop owner, who had been leading them, and keeping to Mr. Lorry's side of the steps as if afraid the young woman would ask him a question, turned around here and, carefully feeling in the pockets of the coat he carried over his shoulder, took out a key
"The door is locked?" asked Mr. Lorry in surprise.
"Oh, yes," Mr. Defarge answered quite seriously.
"You think you need to keep the poor man away from others?"
Mr. Defarge leaned down to whisper into Mr. Lorry's ear. "I think that I need to be in control."
"Why?"
"Why? Because he has lived so long that way, that he would be afraid... go crazy... die... Who knows what would happen if his door was left open?"
"Is that possible?" Mr. Lorry said with surprise.
"Is it possible!" Defarge whispered bitterly. "Yes. And what a world we live in when it is, and when many other things like it are... not only possible, but done. Done, see you! Under that sky there every day. The devil is real and alive. Now let us go on."
These words had been said so softly that not one had reached the young woman's ears. But by now she was shaking under such emotion, and her face showed so much worry and fear, that Mr. Lorry believed he should speak a word or two to encourage her.
"Do not be afraid, Miss! Be brave! Business, remember? The worst will be over in a minute. It's just a question of opening the door, and the worst will be over. Then all the good, the love, and the happiness you bring to him will start to work. Let our good friend help you up the steps. Thank you, friend Defarge. Come now. Business, business!"
They went up slowly and softly. It was only a short distance and they were at the top. There, on turning the corner, they saw three men bending over, with their heads close together by the door. They were busy looking into the room through some small holes in the wall. On hearing the others, they stood and turned to face them, showing themselves to be the three men with the same name who had been drinking in the wine shop.
"I had forgotten them in the surprise of your visit," Mr. Defarge said. "Leave us, boys; we have business here."
The men squeezed by and climbed quietly down the ladder.
There being no other door on that floor, Mr. Lorry asked the owner in a whisper, and with some anger, "Do you make a show of Mr. Manette?"
"I show him in the way you have seen, to a few people whom I choose."
"Is it right to do that?"
"I think it is right."
"Who are the few people, and how do you choose them?"
"I choose them as real men, men with the same name as me... Jack. I choose men who I think will be better off for seeing. That is enough reason for me. You're English; you would not understand. Wait here for a minute."
With a hand out to hold them back, he leaned over to look through a hole in the wall himself. Soon he lifted his head and knocked two or three times on the door, for no other reason than to say that he was there. Then he pulled the key across the door three or four times for the same reason, before putting it in the lock and turning it as loudly as he could.
The door opened slowly into the room. Defarge looked in and said something. A weak voice answered something. Little more than a word could have been said by either.
Mr. Defarge looked back over his shoulder and made a movement to call them in. Mr. Lorry put his arm strongly around the daughter, to help her, because he had the feeling that she was about to faint.
"A... a... a business!" he said, with a tear on his cheek that was not of business. "Come in. Come in."
"I am not afraid of it," she answered, shaking.
"Of it? Of what?"
"I mean of him. Of my father."
Between Defarge calling them in and Miss Manette being so worried, Mr. Lorry did not know what to do. So he pulled the arm that was shaking on his shoulder, over his neck, and half lifted the girl into the room. He put her down just inside the door, where she stood holding onto him in fear.
Defarge pulled the key out of the lock, closed the door, and then locked the door again from the inside. He did it all with as much noise as he could make of it. Then he walked across the room to where the window was and turned around to face the others.
The room had been a place for firewood in the past, and the window was more of a door in the roof than a window, with a rope and timbers to be used for lifting things from the street below. There was no glass in it, and it opened in two halves. To keep out the cold, one half was locked at all times. The other was only open a very little. So little light was coming through that opening that it was difficult, on first coming into the room, to see anything. Only after living there for a long time would anyone be able to do any work that needed good eyes. Yet work of that kind was being done in that room even now; for, with his back toward the door and his face toward the window, where the wine shop owner stood looking at him, a white-haired man sat on a low bench, leaning forward and was very busily making shoes.
6. The Shoemaker
"Good day!" said Mr. Defarge, looking down at the white head that was bending over his shoemaking.
The head lifted for a second and answered with a quiet voice, like he was far away, "Good day!"
"I see you are still hard at work."
After some time, the head lifted again, and the voice said, "Yes. I am working." This time two tired eyes looked at Defarge before the face dropped again.
The weakness of the voice was both sad and awful. Having worked hard in prison for many years had not helped the man physically, but it was not a physical weakness that was so sad about his voice. The awful truth was that the weakness of his voice had come from being alone for so long. At some point, he had just stopped using it. When words came out, it was like they had been said long ago, and the people in that room were just hearing the last dying sounds of them. There was so little life in those words that they were like a once beautiful colour that has been washed away, leaving only a very weak mark where it had been. It was so low that it was like it was coming from under the ground. And the feeling carried across in those words was of one who had lost all hope. They were like the last words of a lost traveller, dying from hunger away from all friends and family.
A few minutes passed without a sound, as the man went on working. Then the tired eyes looked up again, but not with any interest. It was like he had forgotten that anyone was there, and then he saw again that someone was in front of him.
"I want," said Defarge, who had not stopped looking at the shoemaker, "to let in a little more light. Can you take a little more?"
The shoemaker stopped working, looked at the floor on each side of him, like he was listening for something, and then looked up at the speaker.
"What did you say?"
"Can you take a little more light?"
"I must take it if you choose to let it in." He said the second word with only the smallest difference to the other words.
The half-door was opened a little more, bringing in a wider line of light, and showing a half- finished shoe on the shoemaker's knees. A few tools and some pieces of leather were at his feet and on the bench. He had a white beard, roughly cut but not very long, a thin, empty face, and surprisingly bright eyes. Any eyes would look big in such an empty face, but this man's eyes were big to start with, and so they looked even bigger now. His yellow shirt was open at the throat, showing his body to be old and thin. He and the rags he was wearing, from his long loose socks to his long, open robe, were all of the same colour now, which is the weak yellow of a dried goat's skin when it is used for paper.
He had put a hand up between his eyes and the light, and one could almost see the light coming through it. He sat for a time like that, with an empty look in his eyes. Each time he looked at the man in front of him, he would first look down at the floor on each side of himself, like he was trying to find where the voice was coming from. And his talking was the same. He would look around and forget what it was that he was going to say.