A Tale of Two Cities-CHAPTER 22 THE SEA STILL RISES

THE SEA STILL RISES,Haggard Saint Antoine had only one exultant ¹ week in which to soften ² his modicum ³ of hard and bitter bread to such extent as he could, with the relish ⁴ of fraternal embraces and congratulations, when Madame Defarge sat at her counter, as usual, presiding over the customers. Madame Defarge wore no rose in her head, for the great brotherhood ⁵ of Spies had become, even in one short week, extremely chary ⁶ of trusting themselves to the saint’s mercies. The lamps across his streets had a portentously ⁷ elastic ⁸ swing with them.,Madame Defarge, with her arms folded, sat in the morning light and heat, contemplating ⁹ the wine-shop and the street. In both, there were several knots of loungers, squalid and miserable ¹⁰, but now with a manifest sense of power enthroned on their distress ¹¹. The raggedest nightcap, awry ¹³ on the wretchedest head, had this crooked ¹⁵ significance in it: “I know how hard it has grown for me, the wearer of this, to support life in myself; but do you know how easy it has grown for me, the wearer of this, to destroy life in you?” Every lean bare arm, that had been without work before, had this work always ready for it now, that it could strike. The fingers of the knitting women were vicious, with the experience that they could tear. There was a change in the appearance of Saint Antoine; the image had been hammering into this for hundreds of years, and the last finishing blows had told mightily ¹⁶ on the expression.,Madame Defarge sat observing it, with such suppressed approval as was to be desired in the leader of the Saint Antoine women. One of her sisterhood knitted beside her. The short, rather plump wife of a starved grocer, and the mother of two children withal, this lieutenant ¹⁷ had already earned the complimentary ¹⁸ name of The Vengeance ¹⁹.,“Hark! ” said The Vengeance. “Listen, then! Who comes?
”,As if a train of powder laid from the outermost ²⁰ bound of the Saint Antoine Quarter to the wine-shop door, had been suddenly fired, a fast-spreading murmur ²¹ came rushing along.,Defarge came in breathless, pulled off a red cap he wore, and looked around him. “Listen, everywhere!” said madame again. “Listen to him! ” Defarge stood, panting, against a background of eager eyes and open mouths, formed outside the door; all those within the wine-shop had sprung to their feet.,“Say then, my husband. What is it?”,“News from the other world!
”,“How then?” cried madame, contemptuously. “The other world? ”,“Does everybody here recall old Foulon, who told the famished ²³ people that they might eat grass, and who died, and went to Hell?
”,He was exultant that she was still so much in his power.他仍然能轻而易举地摆布她 ，对此他欣喜若狂 。,Plastics will soften when exposed to heat.塑料适当加热就可以软化
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