Tired old Saint Antoine had had only one happy week in which to make its hard bread softer with brotherly hugs and shouts of happiness before Madam Defarge was back at her counter, looking over the people in the shop. She had no flower on her head, for the Jacks had become, even in one short week, no longer ready to trust the Saint to care for them. The lanterns across his streets had a way of changing directions very quickly.
Madam Defarge, with her arms folded, sat in the morning light and heat, looking out on the wine shop and the street. In both there were little groups of people doing nothing, dirty and poor; but now they had a proud sign of power sitting on top of their pain. The oldest broken hat hanging on the poorest head now said, "I know how hard it has been for me, the wearer of this hat, to stay alive; but do you know how easy it is for me now to take another person's life?” Every thin, uncovered arm, that had been without work before, now had one job it could always do; it could hit out. The fingers of the knitting women had become evil now, just from knowing that they could kill. There was a change in the way Saint Antoine looked; his face had been hammered for hundreds of years, and the last finishing touches from the hammers had made a very big change.
Madam Defarge sat looking at it with the kind of controlled happiness that was needed from the manager of the Saint Antoine women. One of her sisters knitted beside her. The short, fat wife of a hungry food seller and the mother of two children as well, this leader had already been given the proud name of The Punisher.
"Listen!" said The Punisher. "Listen, then! Who is coming?"
As if a line of gunpowder, poured from the farthest border of Saint Antoine to the door of the wine shop, had been fired with a match, the sound of talking came just that quickly down the line.
"It is Defarge," said Madam. "Be quiet brothers and sisters!"
Defarge came in, breathing heavily, pulled off a red hat that he had been wearing, and looked around him.
"Listen, all of you!" said Madam again. "Listen to him!" Defarge stood, breathing deeply in front of a wall of open mouths and eyes filled with interest. They were looking in from outside the door, as those inside the shop jumped to their feet to hear too.
"Tell us, my husband. What is it?"
"News from the other world!"
"How's that?” cried Madam angrily. "The other world?"
"Does everyone here remember old Foulon, who told the hungry people that they could eat grass, and who died and went to hell?"
"We all do!" from all their throats.
"The news is about him. He's in town!"
"In town?” from the throat of all again. "And dead?"
"Not dead! He was so afraid of us -- and with good reason -- that he started a story that he had died, and there was a big funeral for him. But they have found him alive, hiding in the country, and they have brought him here. I just saw him, on his way to the Hotel de Ville as a prisoner. I said that he had good reason to fear us. So tell me. Did he?"
That poor old sinner of more than 70 years, if he had never known before that he had reason to fear them, he would have known it in his heart of hearts if he had heard their answering cry.
They all were very quiet for a short time after that. Defarge and his wife looked deeply at each other. The Punisher bent over and the sound of a drum could be heard as she moved it at her feet behind the counter.
"Countrymen!" said Defarge, in a strong voice, "are we ready?"
In a second Madam Defarge's knife was in her belt. The drum was sounding in the street as if it and a drummer had come together by magic. And The Punisher, making awful shouts and throwing her arms around her head like all the forty punishers of the Greek and Roman religions, was running from house to house to move the women into action.
The men were bad enough, in the blood-thirsty way that they looked out the windows, grabbing whatever weapons they could find, and running down into the street; but the women were enough to scare the bravest person. From whatever house jobs they had been doing, from their children, from their old parents, and from the sick, all of whom they left sitting on the ground, hungry and without clothes, they ran out with their hair flying in every direction, pushing themselves and others, through wild cries and actions, to a measure of hate that was almost crazy. Evil Foulon is a prisoner, my sister! Old Foulon is a prisoner, my mother! Law-breaker Foulon is a prisoner, my daughter! Then, twenty more would run into the middle of these, hitting their breasts and tearing their hair and crying loudly, Foulon is alive! Foulon, who told the people who were dying from hunger to eat grass. Foulon who told my old father to eat grass when I had no bread to give him! Foulon who told my baby to drink grass when my breasts were dry from hunger. Oh mother of God, this Foulon! Oh Heaven, our pain! Hear me, my dead baby, and my thin father: I promise on my knees, on these stones, to pay Foulon back for what he did to you! Husbands and brothers and young men, give us the blood of Foulon. Give us his head! Give us his heart! Give us the body and soul of Foulon. Tear him to pieces, and dig him into the ground, so grass can grow from him! With these cries, numbers of the women, whipped up into a blind anger, ran around hitting and tearing at their own friends until they fainted from all this emotion, and would have been walked on by the crowd if their men had not stopped the others from stepping on them.
For all this, not one minute was wasted; not even a second! This Foulon was at the Hotel de Ville; he could be freed. It must never happen. Saint Antoine knew all that he had done to hurt him! So men and women, armed with weapons, left Saint Antoine so quickly, pulling others with them with such force, that in less than fifteen minutes there was not one person left in the heart of Saint Antoine apart from a few old women and the crying children.
By that time people were crowding into the court where this ugly, evil old man was. There was not enough room, so they filled the yard and streets outside. The Defarges, husband and wife, The Punisher, and Jack Three were at the front, quite near to Foulon.
"See!" cried Madam, pointing with her knife. "See the evil old man tied with ropes. That was very smart to tie a pile of grass on his back. Ha, ha! Well done! Let him eat it now!" Madam put her knife under her arm, and hit her hands together to show that she liked the entertainment of it all.
The people closest behind her told the people behind them what had made Madam so happy, and they told others until even out on the streets people were clapping at how funny it was. In the same way, over the next two or three hours of boring talk and thousands of words, each time Madam Defarge would show that she wanted things to move more quickly, seconds later the people outside would be agreeing with her. This happened even more quickly after some of the men were able, by some wonderful ability, to climb the outside walls of the building and look in from the windows, where they could see what was happening and then pass the word on to the crowd outside the building.
After some time, the sun was so high that it came through the window straight on the head of the old prisoner, making it look like he had some hope of being protected. That was too much for the crowd to put up with. The wall between the crowd, as weak as dust, had lasted for a surprisingly long time, but in a second it was gone, and Saint Antoine had the prisoner!
Even at the back of the crowd, everyone knew when it happened. Defarge simply jumped a table and a short timber wall before folding the poor man in a deadly hug. Madam Defarge just followed and grabbed one of the ropes with which he was tied. The Punisher and Jack Three were not yet up with them, and the men in the windows had not yet dropped to the floor in the court room, like wild birds from their high nests, when the cry went up all over the city, "Bring him out! Bring him to the lanterns!"
Down, up, then head first down the steps. Now on his knees, now on his feet, now on his back. Pulled and hit at, and not able to breathe with all of the grass and straw that was being pushed into his face by hundreds of hands. Cut, hit, fighting to breathe, bleeding, and always begging for mercy. Now hurting from their angry hits and kicks, with a small open space cleared around him by people wanting to give everyone room to look. Now, like a dead tree branch being pulled through a forest of legs, he was pulled to the nearest street corner where one of the deadly lanterns was hanging. There, Madam Defarge took the ropes off him, like a cat might do with a mouse, and quietly looked on while the crowd prepared for the kill, and while he begged for mercy. The women, filled with hate, cried out through it all, and the men shouted for him to be killed with grass in his mouth. Once they pulled his body up on the lantern rope and it broke. They caught him, crying. Again they did the same thing. Then the rope was kind to him, and held him up until he was dead. His head was soon on a stick, with enough grass in his mouth to make all of Saint Antoine dance.
And this was not the end of the day's evil work. Saint Antoine so shouted and danced his angry blood up that it exploded again when, near the end of the day, they learned that the old man's son-in-law, another enemy of the people, was coming into Paris with five hundred soldiers on horseback as part of the guard that was travelling with him. Saint Antoine wrote the son-in-law’s sins on burning pieces of paper, grabbed him (He would have cut him out of the heart of an army if needed, to put him with Foulon.) put his head on one stick and his heart on another and carried the three rewards In a line through the streets.
It was after dark when the men and women came back to their children, who were crying and hungry. Long lines of them went to the bread shops where they patiently waited to buy bad bread. While they waited with weak and empty stomachs, they passed the time by hugging each other to show their happiness for the happenings of the day, and by going over them all again as they talked. Little by little these lines of dirty poor people died out, and then rough candles were lighted in high windows, and thin fires were made in the streets, where neighbours cooked together before eating their food in front of their doors.
The food was poor, and there was little of it. There was no meat, and not much of anything else to put on the bread. But just being together in what they were doing added some happiness to the poor food. Fathers and mothers, who had received their strength from the actions in the worst part of the day, now played quietly with their hungry children. Lovers, with such a world around them and in front of them, loved and hoped.
It was almost morning when the last group of people left Defarge's wine shop, and Mr. Defarge said to Madam, his wife, in a rough, tired voice, while locking the door:
"At last it has come, my love!"
"Eh, well," returned Madam, "almost".
Saint Antoine went to sleep, the Defarges went to sleep; even The Punisher went to sleep with her hungry husband, and the drum was at rest. The voice of the drum was the only one in Saint Antoine that had not been changed by the blood and hurry of the day. The Punisher, whose job it was to keep the drum, could have picked it up at any time and forced the same words out of it as had been said before the prison had been attacked, or before old Foulon had been killed. On the other hand, the voices of the men and women in Saint Antoine, were sore and rough.