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His judges sat upon the Bench in feathered hats; but the rough

red cap and tricoloured cockade was the head-dress otherwise

prevailing. Looking at the Jury and the turbulent audience, he

might have thought that the usual order of things was reversed,

and that the felons were trying the honest men. The lowest,

cruelest, and worst populace of a city, never without its

quantity of low, cruel, and bad, were the directing spirits of

the scene: noisily commenting, applauding, disapproving,

anticipating, and precipitating the result, without a check. Of

the men, the greater part were armed in various ways; of the

women, some wore knives, some daggers, some ate and drank as they

looked on, many knitted. Among these last, was one, with a spare

piece of knitting under her arm as she worked. She was in a front

row, by the side of a man whom he had never seen since his

arrival at the Barrier, but whom he directly remembered as

Defarge.