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1The Shoemaker "Good day!" said Monsieur Defarge, looking down at the white head that bent low over the shoemaking. It
2was raised for a moment, and a very faint voice responded to the salutation, as if it were at a distance: "Good day!"
3"You are still hard at work, I see?" After a long silence, the head was lifted for another moment, and the voice
4replied, "Yes--I am working." This time, a pair of haggard eyes had looked at the questioner, before the face had
5dropped again. The faintness of the voice was pitiable and dreadful. It was not the faintness of physical weakness,
6though confinement and hard fare no doubt had their part in it. Its deplorable peculiarity was, that it was the
7faintness of solitude and disuse. It was like the last feeble echo of a sound made long and long ago. So entirely had it
8lost the life and resonance of the human voice, that it affected the senses like a once beautiful colour faded away into
9a poor weak stain. So sunken and suppressed it was, that it was like a voice underground. So expressive it was, of a
10hopeless and lost creature, that a famished traveller, wearied out by lonely wandering in a wilderness, would have
11remembered home and friends in such a tone before lying down to die. Some minutes of silent work had passed: and the
12haggard eyes had looked up again: not with any interest or curiosity, but with a dull mechanical perception, beforehand,
13that the spot where the only visitor they were aware of had stood, was not yet empty. "I want," said Defarge, who had
14not removed his gaze from the shoemaker, "to let in a little more light here. You can bear a little more?" The shoemaker
15stopped his work; looked with a vacant air of listening, at the floor on one side of him; then similarly, at the floor
16on the other side of him; then, upward at the speaker. "What did you say?" "You can bear a little more light?" "I must
17bear it, if you let it in." (Laying the palest shadow of a stress upon the second word.) The opened half-door was opened
18a little further, and secured at that angle for the time. A broad ray of light fell into the garret, and showed the
19workman with an unfinished shoe upon his lap, pausing in his labour. His few common tools and various scraps of leather
20were at his feet and on his bench. He had a white beard, raggedly cut, but not very long, a hollow face, and exceedingly
21bright eyes. The hollowness and thinness of his face would have caused them to look large, under his yet dark eyebrows
22and his confused white hair, though they had been really otherwise; but, they were naturally large, and looked
23unnaturally so. His yellow rags of shirt lay open at the throat, and showed his body to be withered and worn. He, and
24his old canvas frock, and his loose stockings, and all his poor tatters of clothes, had, in a long seclusion from direct
25light and air, faded down to such a dull uniformity of parchment-yellow, that it would have been hard to say which was
26which. He had put up a hand between his eyes and the light, and the very bones of it seemed transparent. So he sat, with
27a steadfastly vacant gaze, pausing in his work. He never looked at the figure before him, without first looking down on
28this side of himself, then on that, as if he had lost the habit of associating place with sound; he never spoke, without
29first wandering in this manner, and forgetting to speak. "Are you going to finish that pair of shoes to-day?" asked
30Defarge, motioning to Mr. Lorry to come forward. "What did you say?" "Do you mean to finish that pair of shoes to-day?"
31"I can't say that I mean to. I suppose so. I don't know." But, the question reminded him of his work, and he bent over
32it again. Mr. Lorry came silently forward, leaving the daughter by the door. When he had stood, for a minute or two, by
33the side of Defarge, the shoemaker looked up. He showed no surprise at seeing another figure, but the unsteady fingers
34of one of his hands strayed to his lips as he looked at it (his lips and his nails were of the same pale lead-colour),
35and then the hand dropped to his work, and he once more bent over the shoe. The look and the action had occupied but an
36instant. "You have a visitor, you see," said Monsieur Defarge. "What did you say?" "Here is a visitor." The shoemaker
37looked up as before, but without removing a hand from his work. "Come!" said Defarge. "Here is monsieur, who knows a
38well-made shoe when he sees one. Show him that shoe you are working at. Take it, monsieur." Mr. Lorry took it in his
39hand. "Tell monsieur what kind of shoe it is, and the maker's name." There was a longer pause than usual, before the
40shoemaker replied: "I forget what it was you asked me. What did you say?" "I said, couldn't you describe the kind of
41shoe, for monsieur's information?" "It is a lady's shoe. It is a young lady's walking-shoe. It is in the present mode. I
42never saw the mode. I have had a pattern in my hand." He glanced at the shoe with some little passing touch of pride.
43"And the maker's name?" said Defarge. Now that he had no work to hold, he laid the knuckles of the right hand in the
44hollow of the left, and then the knuckles of the left hand in the hollow of the right, and then passed a hand across his
45bearded chin, and so on in regular changes, without a moment's intermission. The task of recalling him from the vagrancy
46into which he always sank when he had spoken, was like recalling some very weak person from a swoon, or endeavouring, in
47the hope of some disclosure, to stay the spirit of a fast-dying man. "Did you ask me for my name?" "Assuredly I did."
48"One Hundred and Five, North Tower." "Is that all?" "One Hundred and Five, North Tower." With a weary sound that was not
49a sigh, nor a groan, he bent to work again, until the silence was again broken. "You are not a shoemaker by trade?" said
50Mr. Lorry, looking steadfastly at him. His haggard eyes turned to Defarge as if he would have transferred the question
51to him: but as no help came from that quarter, they turned back on the questioner when they had sought the ground. "I am
52not a shoemaker by trade? No, I was not a shoemaker by trade. I-I learnt it here. I taught myself. I asked leave to--"
53He lapsed away, even for minutes, ringing those measured changes on his hands the whole time. His eyes came slowly back,
54at last, to the face from which they had wandered; when they rested on it, he started, and resumed, in the manner of a
55sleeper that moment awake, reverting to a subject of last night. "I asked leave to teach myself, and I got it with much
56difficulty after a long while, and I have made shoes ever since." As he held out his hand for the shoe that had been
57taken from him, Mr. Lorry said, still looking steadfastly in his face: "Monsieur Manette, do you remember nothing of
58me?" The shoe dropped to the ground, and he sat looking fixedly at the questioner. "Monsieur Manette"; Mr. Lorry laid
59his hand upon Defarge's arm; "do you remember nothing of this man? Look at him. Look at me. Is there no old banker, no
60old business, no old servant, no old time, rising in your mind, Monsieur Manette?"
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