《A Tale of Two Cities》 Book2 CHAPTER VII
Monseigneur in Town
by Charles Dickens
MONSEIGNEUR, one of the
great lords in power at the Court, held his fortnightly reception in his grand hotel in
Paris.Monseigneur was in his inner room, his sanctuary of sanctuaries, the Holiest of
Holiests to the crowd of worshippers in the suite of rooms without. Monseigneur was about
to take his chocolate. Monseigneur could swallow a great many things with ease, and was by
some few sullen minds supposed to be rather rapidly swallowing France; but, his morning's
chocolate could not so much as get into the throat of Monseigneur, without the aid of four
strong men besides the Cook.
Yes. It took four men, all four a-blaze with gorgeous decoration, and the Chief of them
unable to exist with fewer than two gold watches in his pocket, emulative of the noble and
chaste fashion set by Monseigneur, to conduct the happy chocolate to Monseigneur's lips.
One lacquey carried the chocolate-pot into the sacred presence; a second, milled and
frothed the chocolate with the little instrument he bore for that function; a third,
presented the favoured napkin; a fourth (he of the two old watches),
poured the chocolate out. It was impossible Monseigneur to dispense with one of these
attendants on the chocolate and hold his high place under the admiring Heavens. Deep would
have been the blot upon his escutcheon if his chocolate had been ignobly waited on by only
three men; he must have died of two.
Monseigneur had been out at a little supper last night, where the Comedy and the Grand
Opera were charmingly represented. Monseigneur was out at a little supper most nights,
with fascinating company. So polite and so impressible was Monseigneur, that the Comedy
and the Grand Opera had far more influence with him in the tiresome articles of state
affairs and state secrets, than the needs of all France. A happy circumstance for France,
as the like always is for all countries similarly favoured!--always was for England (by
way of example), in the regretted days of the merry Stuart who sold it.
Monseigneur had one truly noble idea of general public business, which was, to let
everything go on in its own way; of particular public business, Monseigneur had the other
truly noble idea that it must all go his way--tend to his own power and pocket. Of his
pleasures, general and particular, Monseigneur had the other truly noble idea, that the
world was made for them. The text of his order (altered from the original by only a
pronoun, which is not much) `ran: `The earth and the fulness thereof are mine, saith
Monseigneur.'
Yet, Monseigneur had slowly found that vulgar embarrassments crept into his affairs, both
private and public; and he had, as to both classes of affairs, allied himself perforce
with a Farmer-General. As to finances public, because Monseigneur could not make anything
at all of them, and must consequently let them out to somebody who could; as to finances
private, because Farmer-Generals were rich, and Monseigneur, after generations of great
luxury and expense, was growing poor. Hence Monseigneur had taken his sister from a
convent, while there was yet time to ward off the impending veil, the cheapest garment
she could wear, and had bestowed her as a prize upon a very rich Farmer-General, poor in
family. Which Farmer-General, carrying an appropriate cane with a golden apple on the top
of it, was now among the company in the outer rooms, much prostrated before by
mankind--always excepting superior mankind of the blood of Monseigneur, who, his own wife
included, looked down upon him with the loftiest contempt.
A sumptuous man was the Farmer-General. Thirty horses stood in his stables, twenty-four
male domestics sat in his halls, six body-women waited on his wife. As one who pre-tended
to do nothing but plunder and forage where he could, the Farmer-General--howsoever his
matrimonial relations conduced to social morality--was at least the greatest reality among
the personages who attended at the hotel of Monseigneur that day.
For, the rooms, though a beautiful scene to look at, and adorned with every device of
decoration that the taste and skill of the time could achieve, were, in truth, not a sound
business; considered with any reference to the scarecrows in the rags and nightcaps
elsewhere (and not so far off, either, but that the watching towers of Notre Dame, almost
equidistant from the two extremes, could see them both), they would have been an
exceedingly uncomfortable business--if that could have been anybody's business, at the
house of Monseigneur. Military officers destitute of military knowledge; naval officers
with no idea of a ship; civil officers without a notion of affairs; brazen ecclesiastics,
of the worst world worldly, with sensual eyes, loose tongues, and looser lives; all
totally unfit for their several callings, all lying horribly in pretending to belong to
them, but all nearly or remotely of the order of Monseigneur, and therefore foisted on all
public employments from which anything was to be got; these were to be told off by the
score and the score. People not immediately connected with Monseigneur or the State, yet
equally unconnected with anything that was real, or with lives passed in travelling by any
straight road to any true earthly end, were no less abundant. Doctors who made great
fortunes out of dainty remedies for imaginary disorders that never existed, smiled upon
their courtly patients in the ante-chambers of Monseigneur. Projectors who had discovered
every kind of remedy
for the little evils with which the State was touched, except the remedy of setting to
work in earnest to root out a single sin, poured their distracting babble into any ears
they could lay hold of, at the reception of Monseigneur. Unbelieving Philosophers who were
remodelling the world with words, and making card-towers of Babel to scale the skies with,
talked with unbelieving Chemists who had an eye on the transmutation of metals, at this
wonderful gathering accumulated by Monseigneur. Exquisite gentlemen of the finest
breeding, which was at that remarkable time-and has been since--to be known by its fruits
of indifference to every natural subject of human interest, were in the most exemplary
state of exhaustion, at the hotel of Monseigneur. Such homes had these various
notabilities left behind them in the fine world of Paris, that the spies among the
assembled devotees of Monseigneur--forming a goodly half of the polite company--would have
found it hard to discover among the angels of that sphere one solitary wife, who, in her
manners and appearance, owned to being a Mother. Indeed, except for the mere act of
bringing a troublesome creature into this world--which does not go far towards the
realisation of the name of mother--there was no such thing known to the fashion. Peasant
women kept the unfashionable babies close, and brought them up, and charming grandmammas
of sixty dressed and supped as at twenty.
The leprosy of unreality disfigured every human creature in attendance upon Monseigneur.
In the outermost room were half a dozen exceptional people who had had, for a few years,
some vague misgiving in them that things in general were going rather wrong. As a
promising way of setting them right, half of the half-dozen had become members of a
fantastic sect of Convulsionists, and were even then considering within themselves whether
they should foam, rage, roar, and turn cataleptic on the spot--thereby setting up a highly
intelligible finger-post to the Future, for Monseigneur's guidance. Besides these
Dervishes, were other three who had rushed into another sect, which mended matters with a
jargon about `the Centre of Truth' holding that Man had got out of the Centre of
Truth--which did not need much demonstration but had not got out of the Circumference,
and that he was to be kept from flying out of the Circumference, and was even to be shoved
back into the Centre, by fasting and seeing of spirits. Among these, accordingly, much
discoursing with spirits went on--and it did a world of good which never became manifest.
But, the comfort was, that all the company at the grand hotel of Monseigneur were
perfectly dressed. If the Day of Judgment had only been ascertained to be a dress day,
everybody there would have been eternally correct. Such frizzling and powdering and
sticking up of hair, such delicate complexions artificially preserved and mended, such
gallant swords to look at, and such delicate honour to the sense of smell, would surely
keep anything going, for ever and ever. The exquisite gentlemen of the finest breeding
wore little pendent trinkets that chinked as they languidly moved; these golden fetters
rang like precious little bells; and what with that ringing, and with the rustle of silk
and brocade and fine linen, there was a flutter in the air that fanned Saint Antoine and
his devouring hunger far away.
Dress was the one unfailing talisman and charm used for keeping all things in their
places. Everybody was dressed for a Fancy Ball that was never to leave off. From the
Palace of the Tuileries, through Monseigneur and the whole Court, through the Chambers,
the Tribunals of Justice, and all society (except the scarecrows), the Fancy Ball
descended to the common Executioner: who, in pursuance of the charm, was required to
officiate `frizzled, powdered, in a gold-laced coat, pumps, and white silk stockings.' At
the gallows and the wheel--the axe was a rarity--Monsieur Paris, as it was the episcopal
mode among
his brother Professors of the provinces, Monsieur Orleans, and the rest, to call him,
presided in this dainty dress. And who among the company at Monseigneur's reception in
that seventeen hundred and eightieth year of our Lord, could possibly doubt, that a system
rooted in a frizzled hangman, powdered, gold-laced, pumped, and white-silk stockinged,
would see the very stars out!
Monseigneur having eased his four men of their burdens and taken his chocolate, caused the
doors of the Holiest of Holiests to be thrown open, and issued forth. Then, what
submission, what cringing and fawning, what servility, what abject humiliation! As to
bowing down in body and spirit, nothing in that way was left for Heaven--which may have
been one among other reasons why the worshippers of Monseigneur never troubled it.
Bestowing a word of promise here and a smile there, a whisper on one happy slave and a
wave of the hand on another, Monseigneur affably passed through his rooms to the remote
region of the Circumference of Truth. There, Monseigneur turned, and came back again, and
so in due course of time got himself shut up in his sanctuary by the chocolate sprites,
and was seen no more.
The show being over, the flutter in the air became quite a little storm, and the precious
little bells went ringing down-stairs. There was soon but one person left of all the
crowd, and he, with his hat under his arm and his snuff-box in his hand, slowly passed
among the mirrors on his way out.
`I devote you,' said this person, stopping at the last door on his way, and turning in the
direction of the sanctuary, `to the Devil!'
With that, he shook the snuff from his fingers as if he had shaken the dust from his feet,
and quietly walked down stairs.
He was a man of about sixty, handsomely dressed, haughty in manner, and with a face like a
fine mask. Ah@ ?@ one set
expression on it. The nose: beautifully formed otherwise, was very slightly pinched at the
top of each nostril. In those two compressions, or dints, the only little change that the
face ever showed, resided. They persisted in changing colour come-times, and they would be
occasionally dilated and contracted by something like a faint pulsation; then, they gave a
look of treachery, and cruelty, to the whole countenance. Examined with attention, its
capacity of helping such a look was to be found in the line of the mouth, and the lines of
the orbits of the eyes, being much too horizontal and thin; still, in the effect the face
made, it was a handsome face, and a remarkable one.
Its owner went down stairs into the court-yard, got into his carriage, and drove away. Not
many people had talked with him at the reception; he had stood in a little space apart,
and Monseigneur might have been warmer in his manner. It appeared, under the
circumstances, rather agreeable to him to see the common people dispersed before his
horses, and often barely escaping from being run down. His man drove as if he were
charging an enemy, and the furious recklessness of the man brought no check into the face,
or to the lips, of the master. The complaint had sometimes made itself audible, even in
that deaf city and dumb age, that, in the narrow streets without footways, the fierce
patrician custom of hard driving endangered and maimed the mere vulgar in a barbarous
manner. But, few cared enough for that to think of it a second time, and, in this matter,
as in all others, the common wretches were left to get out of their difficulties as they
could.
With a wild rattle and clatter, and an inhuman abandonment of consideration not easy to be
understood in these days, the carriage dashed through streets and swept round corners,
with women screaming before it, and men clutching each other and clutching children out of
its way. At last, swooping at a street corner by a fountain, one of its wheels came to a
sickening little jolt, and there was a loud cry from a number of voices, and the horses
reared and plunged.
But for the latter inconvenience, the carriage probably would not have stopped; carriages
were often known to drive on, and leave their wounded behind, and why not? But the
frightened valet had got down in a hurry, and there were twenty hands at the
horses' bridles.
`What has gone wrong?' said Monsieur, calmly looking out.
A tall man in a nightcap had caught up a bundle from among the feet of the horses, and had
laid it on the basement of the fountain, and was down in the mud and wet, howling over it
like a wild animal.
`Pardon, Monsieur the Marquis!' said a ragged and submissive man, `it is a child.'
`Why does he make that abominable noise? Is it his child?'
`Excuse me, Monsieur the Marquis--it is a pity--yes.'
The fountain was a little removed; for the street opened, where it was, into a space some
ten or twelve yards square. As the tall man suddenly got up from the ground, and came
ruj@they had been mere rats come out of their holes.
He took out his purse.
`It is extraordinary to me,' said he, `that you people cannot take care of yourselves and
your children. One or the other of you is for ever in the way. How do I know what injury
you have done my horses? See! Give him that.'
He threw out a gold coin for the valet to pick up, and all the heads craned forward that
all the eyes might look down at it as it fell. The tall man called out again with a most
unearthly cry, `Dead!'
He was arrested by the quick arrival of another man, for whom the rest made way. On seeing
him, the miserable creature fell upon his shoulder, sobbing and crying, and pointing to
the fountain, where some women were stooping over the motionless bundle, and moving gently
about it. They were as silent, however, as the men.
`I know all, I know all,' said the last comer. `Be a brave man, my Gaspard! It is better
for the poor little plaything to die so, than to live. It has died in a moment without
pain. Could it have lived an hour as happily?'
`You are a philosopher, you there,' said the Marquis, smiling. `How do they call you?'
`They call me Defarge.'
`Of what trade?'
`Monsieur the Marquis, vendor of wine.'
`Pick up that, philosopher and vendor of wine,' said the Marquis, throwing him another
gold coin, `and spend it as you will. The horses there; are they right?
Without deigning to look at the assemblage a second time, Monsieur the Marquis leaned back
in his seat, and was just being driven away with the air of a gentleman who had
accidentally broken some common thing, and had paid for it, and could afford to pay for
it; when his ease was suddenly disturbed by a coin flying into his carriage, and ringing
on its floor.
`Hold!' said Monsieur the Marquis. `Hold the horses! Who threw that?'
He looked to the spot where Defarge the vendor of wine had stood, a moment before; but the
wretched father was grovelling on his face on the pavement in that spot, and the figure
that stood beside him was the figure of a dark stout woman, knitting.
`You dogs!' said the Marquis, but smoothly, and with an unchanged front, except as to the
spots on his nose: `I would ride over any of you very willingly, and exterminate you from
the earth. If I knew which rascal threw at the carriage, and if that brigand were
sufficiently near it, he should be crushed under the wheels.'
So cowed was their condition, and so long and hard their experience of what such a man
could do to them, within the law and beyond it, that not a voice, or a hand, or even an
eye was raised. Among the men, not one. But the woman who stood knitting looked up
steadily, and looked the Marquis in the face. It was not for his dignity to notice it; his
contemptuous eyes passed over her, and over all the other rats; and he leaned back in his
seat again, and gave the word `Go on!'
He was driven on, and other carriages came whirling by in quick succession; the Minister,
the State-Projector, the Farmer-General, the Doctor, the Lawyer, the Ecclesiastic, the
Grand Opera, the Comedy, the whole Fancy Ball in a bright continuous flow, came whirling
by. The rats had crept out of their holes to look on, and they remained looking on for
hours;
soldiers and police often passing between them and the spectacle, and making a barrier
behind which they slunk, and through which they peeped. The father had long ago taken up
his bundle and hidden himself away with it, when the women who had tended the bundle while
it lay on the base of the fountain, sat there watching the running of the water and the
rolling of the Fancy Ball--when the one woman who had stood conspicuous, knitting, still
knitted on with the steadfastness of Fate. The water of the fountain ran, the swift river
ran, the day ran into evening, so much life in the city ran into death according to rule,
time and tide waited for no man, the rats were sleeping close together in their dark holes
again, the Fancy Ball was lighted up at supper, all things ran their course. |
