`Aha, a perfect Frenchman! Good night, Englishman.’
It was ten o’clock at night when he stood before the prison of La Force, where she had stood hundreds of times. A little wood-sawyer, having closed his shop, was smoking his pipe at his shop-door.
`Good night, citizen,’ said Sydney Carton, pausing in going by; for, the man eyed him inquisitively.
`Good night, citizen.’
`How goes the Republic?’
`You mean the Guillotine. Not ill. Sixty-three to-day. We shall mount to a hundred soon. Samson and his men complain sometimes, of being exhausted. Ha, ha, ha! He is so droll, that Samson. Such a Barber!’
`Do you often go to see him—‘
`Shave? Always. Every day. What a barber! You have seen him at work?’
`Never.’
`Go and see him when he has a good batch. Figure this to yourself citizen; he shaved the sixty-three to-day, in less than two pipes! Less than two pipes. Word of honour!’
As the grinning little man held out the pipe he was smoking, to explain how he timed the executioner, Carton was so sensible of a rising desire to strike the life out of him, that he turned away.
`But you are not English,’ said the wood-sawyer, `though you wear English dress?’
`Yes,’ said Carton, pausing again, and answering over his shoulder.
`You speak like a Frenchman.’
`I am an old student here.’
`Aha, a perfect Frenchman! Good night, Englishman.’
`Good night, citizen.’
`But go and see that droll dog,’ the little man persisted, calling after him. `And take a pipe with you!’
Sydney had not gone far out of sight, when he stopped in the middle of the street under a glimmering lamp, and wrote with his pencil on a scrap of paper. Then, traversing with the decided step of one who remembered the way well, several dark and dirty streets–much dirtier than usual, for the best public thoroughfares remained uncleansed in those times of terror–he stopped at a chemist’s shop, which the owner was closing with his own hands. A small, dim, crooked shop, kept in a tortuous, up-hill thoroughfares, by a small, dim, crooked man.
Giving this citizen, too, good night, as he confronted him at his counter, he laid the scrap of paper before him. `Whew!’ the chemist whistled softly, as he read it. `Hi! hi! hi!’
Sydney Carton took no heed, and the chemist said:
`For you, citizen?’
`For me.
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