Chapter-8
The Marquis St. Evremonde, a nobleman at the king’s court in France, had attended a fancy reception at the palace one day in 1780. The expensive clothes and jewellery worn by the guests and the delicious feast spread on the table contrasted sharply with the rags and the empty stomachs of the people who lived within a short ride of the palace.
When the reception was over, the Marquis, a haughty, handsomely dressed man of about sixty, climbed into his coach, anxious to leave Paris as quickly as possible. He had been ignored by the king at the reception, and his anger was still with him. So, he rather enjoyed the reckless speed with which his driver was handling his coach, for it made the common people scatter before him.
As the coach swooped around one corner, a sickening thud was heard. The horses reared, and loud cries reached the Marquis’ ears. He would have ordered the driver to proceed, had not twenty hands grabbed the horses’ reins. Leaning out the window, he saw a tall man in a nightcap picking up a bundle from under the horses’ hoofs. The man knelt down in the mud and began howling like a wild animal.
“Pardon, Monsieur the Marquis!” said a ragged man, “but it is his child.”
When the man rose and rushed towards the carriage, the Marquis reached for his sword.
“Killed!” screamed the father, “Dead!”
The. Marquis looked out at the crowd and reached for his purse. “I can’t understand why you people can’t take care of yourselves and your children!” he said, “One of you is always in the way of the coach. To think that you might have injured my horses! Here, give the man this!”
He tossed a gold coin down into the street. At that moment, a man rushed over to the sobbing father and comforted him, “Be brave, Gaspard! It is better for the poor child to die without pain than to live with the pain of hunger and such injuries.”
“You are a wise man,” said the Marquis, smiling. “What is your name?”
“I am Defarge, the wine seller.”
“Pick that up and spend it as you will,” said the Marquis, tossing another gold coin out of the carriage. But as he sat back in his seat with a satisfied smile, the coin came flying back into the carriage.
“Who threw that?” shouted the Marquis. He looked at the spot where Defarge had been standing. The poor father lay sobbing on the pavement, and beside him stood a darkhaired woman knitting.
Getting no reply from the silent peasants only a long, hard stare from Madame Defarge—the Marquis ordered his carriage on.
Hours later, the carriage entered a poor village at sunset and stopped at a posting house—a stable—to change horses. Many poor peasants gathered around the coach, including a grizzled man in a blue cap.
“Monsieur the Marquis,” said the man, removing his cap as he approached, “I am a road fixer. As your carriage was coming along the road outside the village,
I saw a man swinging by the chain underneath it. “
“Who was he?” snapped the Marquis, who hated to waste time talking with people of the lower classes.
“He wasn’t from this part of the country. I never saw him before in my life, Monsieur!”
“What did he look like?”
“Your carriage was travelling too quickly for me to get a good look, Monsieur.”
The Marquis sent for Monsieur Gabelle, who was in charge of the posting house and who thus knew whenever a stranger entered the village.
“Get your hands on this stranger if he tries to spend the night in this village!” ordered the Marquis. Then to his driver, he shouted, “Be off!”
The coach drove off at great speed, and later that evening the Marquis arrived at his castle to keep an appointment with his nephew Charles, who was arriving from England.
When the two were seated over dinner, the Marquis asked Charles Darnay why he had returned to France.
“Sir,” said Charles, “ours is an honourable family, but we have mistreated the people and now we are paying for it. My father punished everyone who interfered with his pleasures, and you; my father’s twin brother and heir to his property have also done wrong. My mother, on her deathbed, begged me to be merciful to the people and to make up for the wrongs you both have done. I have been trying to do this for years and have returned to France to continue to help the poor peasants.”
“We were born into this family,” said the Marquis sternly, “and I, for one, will fight to keep these revolutionary peasants from changing the ruling system in France, even if it means fighting and imprisoning you as well.”
“This property and my country are both lost to me,” Charles answered sadly, “France is a land of misery and ruin. I will live somewhere else and work to support myself.”
“Hah!” cried the Marquis, looking around the luxurious room, “You will live in England, I suppose?”
‘Yes. There, I will not feel ashamed of my family name, for I do not use it.”
“Other Frenchmen have fled to England. Do you know a doctor and his daughter?” the Marquis asked with a sly smile.
“Yes, I do. Why do you ask?”
Without replying to his nephew, the Marquis ended the conversation by calling a servant and ordering him to show Charles to his room. Then the Marquis went to his own bed chamber.
As he lay in bed waiting for sleep to come, he thought about the day that had passed: the palace reception, the child killed by the carriage, the grieving father, the fixer of roads, and the tale of the man hanging from the coach. “A very bad day, indeed,” he muttered as sleep finally came.
As the Marquis slept, the stone faces on the castle’s front walls stared out into the black night, sounding no alarm as silent footsteps crept towards the gates.
When the sun rose the following morning, there was another stone face at the castle—that of the Marquis on his pillow. A mask of fear was frozen on his face and a knife lay driven into his heart. Around the handle was a note: HE IS READY FOR HIS TOMB. FROM JACQUES.
