did, methodically, and with as loud and harsh an accompaniment
of noise as he could make. Finally, he walked across the room with
a measured tread to where the window was. He stopped there and
faced round.
The garret, built to be a depository for firewood and the like,
was dim and dark; for, the window of dormer shape, was in truth a
door in the roof, with a little crane over it for the hoisting up of
stores from the street: unglazed, and closing up the middle in two
pieces, like any other door of French construction. To exclude the
cold, one half of this door was fast closed, and the other was
opened but a very little way. Such a scanty portion of light was
admitted through these means, that it was difficult, on first coming
in, to see anything; and long habit alone could have slowly formed
in any one, the ability to do any work requiring nicety in such
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A Tale of Two Cities
obscurity. Yet, work of that kind was being done in the garret; for,
with his back towards the door, and his face towards the window
where the keeper of the wine-shop stood looking at him, a white-
haired man sat on a low bench, stooping forward and very busy,
making shoes.
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A Tale of Two Cities
Chapter VI
THE SHOEMAKER
G ood day!” said Monsieur Defarge, looking down at the
white head that bent low over the shoemaking.
It was raised for a moment, and a very faint voice
responded to the salutation, as if it were at a distance: “Good day!”
“You are still hard at work, I see?”
After a long silence, the head was lifted for another moment,
and the voice replied, “Yes—I am working.” This time, a pair of
haggard eyes had looked at the questioner, before the face had
dropped again.
The faintness of the voice was pitiable and dreadful. It was not
the faintness of physical weakness, though confinement and hard
fare no doubt had their part in it. Its deplorable peculiarity was,
that it was the faintness of solitude and disuse. It was like the last
feeble echo of a sound made long and long ago. So entirely had it
lost the life and resonance of the human voice, that it affected the
senses like a once beautiful colour faded away into a poor weak
stain. So sunken and suppressed it was, that it was like a voice
underground. So expressive it was, of a hopeless and lost creature,
that a famished traveller, wearied out by lonely wandering in a
wilderness, would have remembered home and friends in such a
tone before lying down to die.
Some minutes of silent work had passed: and the haggard eyes
had looked up again: not with any interest or curiosity, but with a
dull mechanical perception, beforehand, that the spot where the
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A Tale of Two Cities
only visitor they were aware of had stood, was not yet empty.
“I want,” said Defarge, who had not removed his gaze from the
shoemaker, “to let in a little more light here. You can bear a little
more?”
The shoemaker stopped his work; looked with a vacant air of
listening, at the floor on one side of him; then similarly, at the floor
on the other side of him; then, upward at the speaker.
“What did you say?”
“You can bear a little more light?”
“I must bear it, if you let it in.” (Laying the palest shadow of a
stress upon the second word.) The opened half-door was opened a
little further, and secured at"};
