Once every two weeks, Sir the Governor, one of the top men in the government of France, would hold a party at his great hotel in Paris. Sir was, on the day in question, in his secret room, the holiest of holy places for all of the worshippers who were partying in the many other rooms of the hotel. He was about to drink a cup of hot chocolate. The Governor was a man who found it easy to swallow many things, for there were some who said that he was quickly swallowing all of France, but his morning chocolate could not so much as get into his throat without the help of four strong men besides the cook.
This is true. It took four men, all four dressed most beautifully, and the most important one not able to live without at least two gold watches in his pocket, in keeping with the perfect pattern set out by Sir himself, to bring the happy chocolate to the Governor's lips. One servant carried the pot of chocolate into his holy room; a second mixed it by turning around and around a special little instrument that he carried with him; a third handed the Governor a cloth with which to cover himself; and a fourth (he of the two gold watches) poured the chocolate into the Governor's cup. It would not be possible for Sir to do away with even one of these men and still be able to hold his head up before the heavens. His family name would have been deeply marked if he had so much as tried to drink chocolate with the help of only three men; and if he should have tried to do it with only two, he would have surely died.
The night before, Sir's entertainment had been music and jokes, with food on the side. Food and entertainment were his on most nights, and always in company with beautiful people. So open was Sir the Governor to what others said, that the jokes and music had far more effect on him and his thinking than all the boring rules and needs of France. Doing things in this way was destroying France, as always happens in countries where the leaders are like that -- just as it did for England in the days when one of its leaders just up and sold it.
Sir's general plan for government business was to let it go on in its own way; and for any one part of that government business the plan was that it should all go his way, giving him more power and filling his pockets more fully. As for what his way was, his plan, both general and special, was that the world was made to let him do what he liked to do. The Bible verse for his business (which only has one little word changed in it) is this one, "The earth is mine and all that is in it," says Sir the Governor.
Yet, Sir had slowly been having more problems with things going wrong both in his family business and in his government business, and so he joined with a controller-general to fix both problems. His government business was in trouble because he could not make anything of it, and so he needed to give it to one who could. His family business was in trouble because he had been spending more than he was making, and so he needed a rich relative to help him out. He had a sister whom he had given to the Catholic Church; but just before she finished her studies, he pulled her out and gave her as a gift to a very rich controller-general who was poor in those qualities that it takes to get a wife. This same controller-general was in the next room, holding a stick with a golden apple on the top of it, while all others bowed down to him. All, that is, apart from Sir's family, who looked down on him with the greatest feelings of hate. And his own wife was a part of that group.
A very rich man was the controller-general. He owned thirty horses, twenty-four male servants, and six body women to look after his wife. As one whose job it was to take money from anyone he could, the controller-general was the one person in Sir's hotel that day who most lived up to what his job asked of him.
For all the beautiful furniture, clothes and jewelry in those rooms, which were all the best that could be found anywhere at the time, the party-goers there were not, on the whole, ones who could do any real work. If you were to put them beside the poor scarecrows in rags who were not so far away that the watching towers of Notre Dame could not see them both, the scarecrows would have been, by far, the better workers, and done more to help Sir the Governor in a real way. There were army officers who knew nothing about the army; officers on ships who knew nothing about ships; government managers who knew nothing of government; and church leaders who had loose tongues and lived looser lives; all of them quite wrong for the jobs they had, and all living a lie. All of these people were from the class that Sir was in, and because of it, they took any job that they could use in a selfish way. But there were an equal number of people at the party who were not a part of Sir's class, but who were also not real people and not people who had travelled by any straight road to any true end. There were doctors who had made great wealth by selling strange mixtures as medicines for sicknesses that were not even real. They were there, being smiled at by the rich patients that they had used to make their wealth. There were planners who would promise to fix every little problem that touched the government, but who never fixed even one real sin. They came to the Governor's parties to whisper their empty promises into any ears they could find that would listen. Men of wisdom, who talked nothing but foolishness about how they were going to make a better world, talked with men of science who believed they could make gold through magic. Men from families of the highest class, which at that time and at this time as well, is marked by showing no interest toward anything that is really important to real people in the real world, talked themselves sick at the Governor's hotel. The homes that each of these people came from were such that people looking for secrets to tell Sir the Governor (who were about half of the people there) would have a hard time finding one real mother in any of them. Apart from the act of giving birth to a baby that was not wanted -- which is not enough to make one a real mother -- the wives of these men had nothing to do with their children. It was left to the poor women to care for their children, while the mothers themselves partied on even after their children had children, always trying to look like they were in their twenties.
The sickness of hypocrisy crippled every person who came there to kiss up to Sir the Governor. In the farthest rooms were half a dozen people who had, for a few years, been thinking that something was not right in the country. Half of this half dozen had become members of a strange group of people who turned in on themselves looking for answers in one emotion or another. Even now they were asking themselves if they should shout, cry, or roll on the floor to warn the Governor about what they could feel was coming soon. The other three had joined a different group, that worked at fixing the problem through finding "the center of truth". They believed that the world had moved away from the center of truth (and it did not take much to prove that argument) but they said that we had not yet gone past the border of the circle. To keep the world under control, and to point people back to the center they would go without eating and talk to spirits. Many of these people were known to have talked at length with spirits, and through that to have fixed up many of the problems in the country, not that any of the answers came in a way that anyone else could see.
But the good news was that everyone at Sir the Governor's great hotel was perfectly dressed. If the day when God is to judge the world could only be a dress day, everyone there would be right for eternity. Such shaping and powdering and sticking up of the hair, such beautiful skin, covered and fixed with the best pastes and powders, such brave swords to look at, and such careful interest to how they smelled would surely be enough to keep them saved forever. The men from the best families had little pieces of gold hanging here and there and making noises like little bells as they moved ever so smoothly from place to place. The sound of those bells and the movement of so much expensive material made a wind that must have touched Saint Antoine and his great hunger so far away.
How one dressed was the safest way to keep everyone in their place. All of Sir's friends were dressed for a top class party that was to never stop. From the king's house, through to the courts, and the managers of government, and all of the country (apart from the scarecrows) the top class party look was the way to be. It went down even to the man whose job it was to kill people for the country. To keep the country beautiful, the rules said that he must wear powdered, shaped hair, a coat with gold stitching, special shoes, and special white socks that reached to his knees. When hanging a prisoner, or pulling his body apart on the wheel -- The axe was not used at this time. -- Mr. Paris, as he was often called by others doing the same job in other French cities, did his job dressed in this beautiful way. And who in the crowd at Sir's party in the year of our Lord, 1780, could possibly have believed that any government with such a beautiful man, could not have lasted longer than the stars themselves?
Sir the Governor, having taken the weight off his four helpers by drinking his chocolate, had other workers throw open the doors of his holiest of holy places, so that he could explode out of it. And as he did, what acts of love and humble service, what bowing and shaking in front of him, what kissing up the people did to him. If there was anything they could do to show their love for God, they did it for Sir, which may be one reason of many why the worshippers of Sir the Governor never had time for God.
Giving a word of promise here and a smile there, a whisper to one happy slave, and a wave of the hand to another, the Governor moved happily through his rooms to the farthest borders of the circle of truth. There he turned and came back by the same way that he went, until he was safely back inside his secret room, protected by his chocolate angels once again.
The show being over, the movement of cloth and gold bells turned into a storm, as people crowded down the steps to leave. There was soon only one person left of all the crowd, and he, with his hat under his arm and his tobacco box in his hand, walked slowly by the mirrors on his way out.
Stopping at the last door on the way and turning toward the secret room, this person said, "I give you to Satan!"
With that, he shook the tobacco dust from his fingers as if he was shaking dust from his feet, and quietly walked down the steps.
He was a man of about sixty, well dressed, proud in his actions, and with a face like a thin mask. His face was so white that you almost could see through it. Each part of it was clear and sharp. The look on his face never changed. His nose was beautifully shaped, but just above each opening was a small concave place that would move in and out. It was the only part of his face that ever changed. At times they would change colour. When they moved quickly in and out, they added a cruel look to the whole face. When looking closely at his face, one could see that what made the little changes in the nose so strong was that the mouth and eyes were too perfectly horizontal and too thin. But on the whole, it was a good-looking face.
The owner of that face walked down the steps and into the yard, climbed into his coach, and left. Not many people had talked with him at the party. He had stood apart by himself. Even Sir the Governor had been warmer than him. It seemed, as the coach moved through the streets, that he liked to see the poor people jump out of the way of his horses, with many of them almost being knocked over. The driver acted like he was at war with the people in the street, and his master showed nothing in his words or actions to say that he had any problem with this dangerous way of driving. Others had often said, even in that city without ears and at that time when most were without a voice, that in the narrow streets without footpaths the hard driving of the coaches crippled many in a cruel way. But few cared enough for that to think of it a second time, and in this, like in everything else, the poor were left to live with their problems in whatever way they could.
With a wild noise and shaking and with no thought for the danger, the coach raced through the streets and around corners making women shout in fear before it, and making men pull each other and their children out of its way. At last, flying around a corner by a fountain, one of its front wheels hit something with a sound to make one sick. There was a loud cry from a number of voices, and the horses lifted themselves up on their back legs before falling over.
If it were not for the horses falling, the driver probably would not have stopped at all. Coaches would often drive off, leaving the people they had hit behind them; and why not? But the driver was afraid, and he jumped down quickly. All at once there were twenty different hands pulling at the ropes on the horses.
"What's wrong?” the man inside asked quietly, as he looked out. A tall man in a night hat had lifted something from under the feet of the horses and had put it at the foot of the fountain. Now he was down in the mud and wet, crying over it like a wild animal.
"I'm sorry Sir the Marquis!" said a humble man in rags. "It is a child."
"Why does he make that awful noise? Is it his child?"
"I'm sorry, Sir the Marquis... It is too bad... yes."
The fountain was some distance from the coach, as the street was much wider there. As the tall man jumped up from the ground and came running at the coach, Sir the Marquis put his hand, for a second, on the handle of his sword.
"Killed!" shouted the man at the top of his voice, as he put both arms straight above his head. Then, looking at Sir the Marquis, he said "Dead!"
The people pushed in and looked at Sir the Marquis. There was no anger showing in their many eyes, only an interest in seeing what would happen next. They did not say anything either. After the first shouts, they had been quiet, and stayed that way. The voice of the humble man who had first said that it was a child was flat and controlled. Sir the Marquis ran his eyes over them all like they were mice coming out of holes.
He took out his money bag.
"It is strange to me," he said, "that you people cannot take care of yourselves and of your children. One or the other of you is always in the way. How do I know what this has done to my horses? Here! Give him that."
He threw out a gold coin for the driver to pick up, and all of the heads pushed forward to look down at it as it fell. The tall man called out again, with a cry of great pain, "Dead!"
He was stopped by another man arriving, while the others moved back to make way for him. On seeing him, the poor man fell on his shoulder, crying loudly and pointing to the fountain, where some women were leaning over the shape that was lying there, and moving softly around it. They too were as quiet as the men.
"I know, I know," said the man who had just arrived. "Be brave, Gaspard! It is better for the poor thing to die so than to live. She has died in a second, without pain. Could she have lived for an hour as happily?"
"You are a wise man, you there," said the Marquis, smiling. "What do they call you?"
"They call me Defarge.” "What is your job?"
"Sir the Marquis, I sell wine."
"Pick that up, wise man and seller of wine," said the Marquis, throwing him another gold coin, "and spend it as you will. The horses there... are they okay?"
Without taking another look at the crowd, Sir the Marquis leaned back in the seat and was just leaving with the air of a man who has by accident broken some small thing, but who has easily been able to pay for it, when his rest was broken by a coin flying into the coach and hitting the floor.
"Stop!" said Sir the Marquis. "Hold the horses. Who threw that?"
He looked back at where Defarge the seller of wine had been standing, but the poor father was on his face on the footpath in that place, and the person standing there beside him now was a dark fat woman, and she was knitting.
"You dogs!" said the Marquis, but he said it smoothly, and with no change to his face apart from the two sides of the end of his nose as he breathed in and out. "I would gladly drive over any of you, and end your life. If I knew which one of you threw at the coach, and if that trouble maker was close enough, he would be killed under my wheels."
So scared were the people, and so long had they known what one could do to them, both under the law and outside it, that not a face or a hand or even an eye was lifted. Not one man. But the woman who was knitting lifted her head without fear and looked the Marquis in the eye. He was too proud to let her know that he saw it; his eyes of hate moved over her and over all the other rats. He then leaned back in his seat again, and gave the word, "Go on!"
He went on, and other coaches came after him: the government leader, the planner, the controller-general, the doctor, the lawyer, the church leader, the singer, the joke teller, the whole crowd from the party in one long line came racing by. The rats were out of their holes now, looking, and they stayed looking on for hours. Soldiers and police often moved between them and the vehicles, making a wall that they were to stay behind and that they could look through. The father had long ago carried away his child, and the women who had stayed by the dead child when it was lying at the foot of the fountain sat there now watching the water run, and the coaches roll by. The one woman who had stood up, knitting, was still knitting as faithful as death. The water from the fountain ran; the river ran; the day ran into evening; and so much life in the city ran into death, each obeying the rule that says time and movement of the ocean wait for no one. And before long the rats were sleeping close together again in their dark holes, while the party went on into the night. All things went on to where they should one day finish.