sphere one solitary wife, who, in her manners and appearance,
owned to being a Mother. Indeed, except for the mere act of
bringing a troublesome creature into this world—which does not
go far towards the realisation of the name of mother—there was
no such thing known to the fashion. Peasant women kept the
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unfashionable babies close, and brought them up, and charming
grandmammas of sixty dressed and supped as at twenty.
The leprosy of unreality disfigured every human creature in
attendance upon Monseigneur. In the outermost room were half a
dozen exceptional people who had had, for a few years, some
vague misgiving in them that things in general were going rather
wrong. As a promising way of setting them right, half of the half-
dozen had become members of a fantastic sect of Convulsionists,
and were even then considering within themselves whether they
should foam, rage, roar, and turn cataleptic on the spot—thereby
setting up a highly intelligible finger-post to the Future, for
Monseigneur’s guidance. Besides these Dervishes, were other
three who had rushed into another sect, which mended matters
with a jargon about “the Centre of Truth:” holding that Man had
got out of the Centre of Truth—which did not need much
demonstration—but had not got out of the Circumference, and
that he was to be kept from flying out of the Circumference, and
was even to be shoved back into the Centre, by fasting and seeing
of spirits. Among these, accordingly, much discoursing with spirits
went on—and it did a world of good which never became manifest.
But, the comfort was, that all the company at the grand hotel of
Monseigneur were perfectly dressed. If the Day of Judgment had
only been ascertained to be a dress day, everybody there would
have been eternally correct. Such frizzling and powdering and
sticking up of hair, such delicate complexions artificially preserved
and mended, such gallant swords to look at, and such delicate
honour to the sense of smell, would surely keep anything going,
for ever and ever. The exquisite gentlemen of the finest breeding
wore little pendent trinkets that chinked as they languidly moved;
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A Tale of Two Cities
these golden fetters rang like precious little bells; and what with
that ringing, and with the rustle of silk and brocade and fine linen,
there was a flutter in the air that fanned Saint Antoine and his
devouring hunger far away.
Dress was the one unfailing talisman and charm used for
keeping all things in their places. Everybody was dressed for a
Fancy Ball that was never to leave off. From the Palace of the
Tuileries, through Monseigneur and the whole Court, through the
Chambers, the Tribunals of Justice, and all society (except the
scarecrows), the Fancy Ball descended to the Common
Executioner: who, in pursuance of the charm, was required to
officiate “frizzled, powdered, in a gold-laced coat, pumps, and
white silk stockings.” At the gallows and the wheel—the axe was a
rarity—Monsieur Paris, as it was the episcopal mode among his
brother Professors of the provinces, Monsieur Orleans, and the
rest, to call him, presided in this dainty dress. And who among the
company at Monseigneur’s reception in that seventeen hundred
and eightieth year of Our Lord, could possibly doubt, that a system
rooted in a frizzled hangman, powdered, gold-laced, pumped, and
white-silk stockinged, would see the very stars out!
Monseigneur having eased his four men of their burdens and
taken his chocolate, caused the doors of the Holiest of Holiests to
be thrown open, and issued forth. Then, what submission, what
cringing and fawning, what servility, what abject humiliation! As
to bowing down in body and spirit, nothing in that way was left for
Heaven—which may have been one among other reasons why the
worshippers of"};
