Madame Defarge

“ 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 Hôtel 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. ”

“ Madame Defarge immediately called to her husband that she would get them, and went, knitting, out of the lamplight, through the courtyard. ”

“ "It will do her no good to keep herself concealed from me at this moment," said Madame Defarge. "Good patriots will know what that means. Let me see her. Go tell her that I wish to see her. Do you hear?" ”

“ And still Madame Defarge, pursuing her way along the streets, came nearer and nearer. ”

“ I know him now; he is just what you called him."
"Why do you not make him your banker, also, Madame Delphine?"
"I have done so this very day!" she replied, with more happiness in her eyes than Père Jerome had ever before seen there.
"Madame Delphine," he said, his own eyes sparkling, "make him your daughter's guardian; for myself, being a priest, it would not be best; but ask him; I believe he will not refuse you." ”

“ The vidame’s logic triumphed.
“If she is betraying her husband we will avenge ourselves,” said Auguste.
There was still faith in that “if.” The philosophic doubt of Descartes is a politeness with which we should always honor virtue. Ten o’clock sounded. The Baron de Maulincour remembered that this woman was going to a ball that evening at a house to which he had access. He dressed, went there, and searched for her through all the salons. The mistress of the house, Madame de Nucingen, seeing him thus occupied, said:—
“You are looking for Madame Jules; but she has not yet come.” ”

“ Père Jerome laid his palms tightly across his knees with his arms bowed out, and fixed his eyes upon the ground, pondering.
"I suppose she is a sweet, good daughter?" said he, glancing at Madame Delphine without changing his attitude.
Her answer was to raise her eyes rapturously.
"Which gives us the dilemma in its fullest force," said the priest, speaking as if to the floor. "She has no more place than if she had dropped upon a strange planet." ”

“ You take your wife to Madame Deschars’. Madame Deschars is a mother and is exceedingly devout. You never see any newspapers at her house: she keeps watch over her daughters by three different husbands, and keeps them all the more closely from the fact that she herself has, it is said, some little things to reproach herself with during the career of her two former lords. At her house, no one dares risk a jest. Everything there is white and pink and perfumed with sanctity, as at the houses of widows who are approaching the confines of their third youth. ”

“ But how is it that Madame de Villefort is not here?”
“Poor, dear woman,” said Debray, “she is no doubt occupied in distilling balm for the hospitals, or in making cosmetics for herself or friends. Do you know she spends two or three thousand crowns a year in this amusement? But I wonder she is not here. I should have been pleased to see her, for I like her very much.”
“And I hate her,” said Château-Renaud.
“Why?”
“I do not know. Why do we love? Why do we hate? I detest her, from antipathy.”
“Or, rather, by instinct.”
“Perhaps so. But to return to what you were saying, Beauchamp.” ”

“ It is important to note that with Madame du Deffand, as with some other French women, extreme freedom of living is quite compatible not only with great refinement of taste, but with a singular delicacy and sensitiveness of moral perception. She has an occasional coarseness of speech belonging to her age, but few people have been more alive to fine shades of affection, of devotion, of spiritual tact. ”

“ Madame Desart! a woman!”
“Yes, ladies,” returned the soft, sweet voice of the abashed lady, “I could not leave my husband in his danger.” She turned as she spoke, and fell fainting in the arms of the affectionate Mathilde, whose penetration had long since discovered the secret of her sex but whose prudence and good breeding had put a seal upon her lips on that subject.
“You are my prisoners,” said the dark man, turning towards the colonel, who was quietly putting his whiskers and black wig into the fire; “you will, if you please, prepare for instant departure to Paris.” ”

“ Capitaine Lemaitre was dead and buried. At noon there had been a wedding in the little church. Its scenes lingered before Père Jerome's vision now—the kneeling pair: the bridegroom, rich in all the excellences of man, [Pg 122] strength and kindness slumbering interlocked in every part and feature; the bride, a saintly weariness on her pale face, her awesome eyes lifted in adoration upon the image of the Saviour; the small knots of friends behind: Madame Thompson, large, fair, self-contained; Jean Thompson, with the affidavit of Madame Delphine showing through his tightly buttoned coat ”

“ And so, when Madame Dépine received a sister-in-law from Tonnerre, or Madame Valière's nephew came up by the excursion train from that same quiet and incongruously christened townlet, the Parisian personage would receive the visitor in the darkest corner of the salon, with her back to the light, and a big bonnet on her head—an imposing figure repeated duskily in the gold mirrors. These visits, instead of a relief, became a terror. Even a provincial knows it is not convenable for an old woman to wear a brown wig. ”

“ You want an explanation, and every one participates in your desire.
“In what sense did you understand the word, my dear?” you say to Caroline.
“Why, male!” [male.]
Madame Deschars bites her lips and manifests the greatest displeasure; the young women blush and drop their eyes; the little girls open theirs, nudge each other and prick up their ears. Your feet are glued to the carpet, and you have so much salt in your throat that you believe in a repetition of the event which delivered Lot from his wife.
You see an infernal life before you; society is out of the question. ”

“ Madame du Deffand's generation had, indeed, very little in common with that ardent, hopeful, speculative, sentimental group of friends who met together every evening in the drawing-room of Mademoiselle de Lespinasse. Born at the close of the seventeenth century, she had come into the world in the brilliant days of the Regent, whose witty and licentious reign had suddenly dissipated the atmosphere of gloom and bigotry imposed upon society by the moribund Court of Louis XIV. For a fortnight (so she confessed to Walpole) she was actually the Regent's mistress ”

“ The shadow of some one approaching it [Pg 47] from without fell upon the threshold, and a man entered, dressed in dark blue cottonade, lifting from his head a fine Panama hat, and from a broad, smooth brow, fair where the hat had covered it and dark below, gently stroking back his very soft, brown locks. Madame Delphine slightly started aside, while Père Jerome reached silently, but eagerly, forward, grasped a larger hand than his own, and motioned its owner to a seat. Madame Delphine's eyes ventured no higher than to discover that the shoes of the visitor were of white duck. ”

“ I went one day to see Saint-Just’s sister, Madame Decaisne, the chemist’s mother, and Emilienne’s grandmother. She lived at the extreme end of that beautiful quarter of Blérancourt called the Marais, where the lines of plane-trees perfumed the place in the spring, and where the ruins of the Louis XIV. château are so fine. Madame Decaisne inhabited a well-preserved house of the eighteenth century, looking on a garden, surrounded by high walls.
She was a very old lady of extreme elegance, tall and slight, dressed in the antique fashion. ”

“ His answer was a shrug with his palms extended and a short, disclamatory "Ah." He started to resume his walk, but turned to her again and said:
"Why did they make that law? Well, they made it to keep the two races separate."
Madame Delphine startled the speaker with [Pg 96] a loud, harsh, angry laugh. Fire came from her eyes and her lip curled with scorn.
"Then they made a lie, Père Jerome! Separate! No-o-o! They do not want to keep us separated; no, no! But they do want to keep us despised!" She laid her hand on her heart, and frowned upward with physical pain. "But, very well! ”

“ As the result of discussion, it was agreed that Deschartres, the trusted adviser of the late Madame Dupin, should be appointed as co-guardian with Aurore's mother. Deschartres was left in charge of Nohant, and Madame Dupin took her daughter with her to Paris. Here her life was by no means happy; the mother she idolized seems to have suffered in temper from the troubles and checks she had undergone, and her capricious outbursts of anger were only exasperated by her daughter's gracious and yielding way. ”

“ But, of your courtesy, Monsignore,
Do me this favour:
When you this morning make your way
To the Ivory Throne that bursts into bloom with roses because of her who sits upon it,
When you come to pay your devoir to Our Lady,
I beg you, say to her:
“Madame, a poor poet, one of your singing servants yet on earth,
Has asked me to say that at this moment he is especially grateful to you
For wearing a blue gown.” ”

“ But tell me, my dear Fouquet, instead of conversing with this reptile, as you did him the honor of styling him, a conversation the need for which I do not perceive, why do you not pay a visit, if not to the king, at least to Madame?”
“To Madame,” said the superintendent, his mind occupied by his souvenirs. “Yes, certainly, to Madame.”
“You remember,” continued Aramis, “that we have been told that Madame stands high in favor during the last two or three days. It enters into your policy, and forms part of our plans, that you should assiduously devote yourself to his majesty’s friends. ”

“ what arguments, what persuasions, can I make use of, with any prospect of success, to such a woman as Madame Duval? Her character and the violence of her disposition, intimidate me from making the attempt: she is too ignorant for instruction, too obstinate for intreaty, and too weak for reason. ”

“ Madame was in her room upstairs. She wore an open dressing gown that showed between the shawl facings of her bodice a pleated chamisette with three gold buttons. Her belt was a corded girdle with great tassels, and her small garnet coloured slippers had a large knot of ribbon that fell over her instep. She had bought herself a blotting book, writing case, pen-holder, and envelopes, although she had no one to write to; she dusted her what-not, looked at herself in the glass, picked up a book, and then, dreaming between the lines, let it drop on her knees. ”

“ Never in her life had she really ever cared for any man. Her caprice for Desboro, founded on the lesser motives, had been the nearest approach.
It had cost her all her self-control, all her courage, to play the diplomat with her husband for the sake of obtaining his consent to keep the forged porcelains. And after all it had been in vain.
In spite of her white misery and wretchedness, now, as she sat there in the drawing-room alone, her cheeks crimsoned hotly at the memory of her arts and wiles and calineries; of her new shyness with the man she had never before spared ”

“ The daylight which she liked, was indulgent to her. And truly she was pretty, bathed in that light of Florence, which caresses beautiful forms and feeds noble thoughts. A fine, pink color rose to her well-rounded cheeks; her eyes, bluish-gray, laughed; and when she talked, the brilliancy of her teeth set off her lips of ardent sweetness. His look embraced her supple bust, her full hips, and the bold attitude of her waist. She held her parasol with her left hand, the other hand played with violets. Dechartre had a mania for beautiful hands. ”

“ In despair we rail at Fate,
And strive to charm when all too late.
"Youthful hearts, your time improve,
Yours the season is for love;
Youth soon flies,
Beauty dies,
And frosty age blights every flower. ”

“ In this situation of things, the worthy and excellent Deschars, that model of the citizen husband, invites the couple known as Adolphe and Caroline to help him and his wife inaugurate a delightful country house. It is an opportunity that the Deschars have seized upon, the folly of a man of letters, a charming villa upon which he lavished one hundred thousand francs and which has been sold at auction for eleven thousand. Caroline has a new dress to air, or a hat with a weeping willow plume—things which a tilbury will set off to a charm. Little Charles is left with his grandmother. ”

“ "Not at all, but I hope to know it better. I am so profoundly interested in its miserable inhabitants."
"Hah!" muttered Defarge.
"The pleasure of conversing with you, Monsieur Defarge, recalls to me," pursued the spy, "that I have the honour of cherishing some interesting associations with your name." ”

“ Une nuit blanche—and the young seem less able to withstand its corroding alchemy than the old. It had left its terrible and pallid mark on Desboro; and on Jacqueline it had set its phantom sign. That youthfully flushed and bright-eyed loveliness which always characterised the girl had whitened to ashes over night.
And now, as she entered the sunny breakfast room in her delicate Chinese morning robes, the change in her was startlingly apparent; for the dead-gold lustre of her hair accented the pallor of a new and strange and transparent beauty ”

“ Then, discovering on the wall a medallion wherein Dechartre had modelled the profile of a girl, amusing and vicious:
“What is that?”
“That is Clara, a newspaper girl. She brought the Figaro to me every morning. She had dimples in her cheeks, nests for kisses. One day I said to her: ‘I will make your portrait.’ She came, one summer morning, with earrings and rings which she had bought at the Neuilly fair. I never saw her again. I do not know what has become of her. She was too instinctive to become a fashionable demi-mondaine. Shall I take it out?” ”