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"What is it that your husband says in that little letter?" asked

Madame Defarge, with a lowering smile. "Influence; he says

something touching influence?"

"That my father," said Lucie, hurriedly taking the paper from her

breast, but with her alarmed eyes on her questioner and not on

it, "has much influence around him."

"Surely it will release him!" said Madame Defarge. "Let it do

so."

"As a wife and mother," cried Lucie, most earnestly, "I implore

you to have pity on me and not to exercise any power that you

possess, against my innocent husband, but to use it in his

behalf. O sister-woman, think of me. As a wife and mother!"

Madame Defarge looked, coldly as ever, at the suppliant, and

said, turning to her friend The Vengeance: