The Chateau Annotation
A Tale of Two Cities
by Charles Dickens
Madame Defarge and monsieur her husband returned amicably to the bosom of Saint
Antoine, while a speck in a blue cap toiled through the darkness, and through the dust, and
down the weary miles of avenue by the wayside, slowly tending towards that point of the
compass where the chateau of Monsieur the Marquis, now in his grave, listened to the
whispering trees. Such ample leisure had the stone faces, now, for listening to the trees and
to the fountain, that the few village scarecrows who, in their quest for herbs to eat and
fragments of dead stick to bum, strayed within sight of the great stone courtyard and
terrace staircase, had it borne in upon their starved fancy that the expression of the faces
was altered. A rumour just lived in the village—had a faint and bare existence there, as its
people had—that when the knife struck home, the faces changed, from faces of pride to
faces of anger and pain; also, that when that dangling figure was hauled up forty feet above
the fountain, they changed again, and bore a cruel look of being avenged, which they would
henceforth bear for ever. In the stone face over the great window of the bed-chamber
where the murder was done, two fine dints were pointed out in the sculptured nose, which
everybody recognised, and which nobody had seen of old; and on the scarce occasions
when two or three ragged peasants emerged from the crowd to take a hurried peep at
Monsieur the Marquis petrified, a skinny finger would not have pointed to it for a minute,
before they all started away among the moss and leaves, like the more fortunate hares who
could find a living there.
Comment [ 1]: Saint Antoine is a dismal
place where hunger (personified earlier) is
everywhere, yet here the Defarges return to
its "bosom," as though they come home to a
welcoming mother. There is some irony in
such a warm and positive description of the
place; also, there is a sense of them
returning to their secret place.
Comment [ 2]: The Mender of Roads has
now returned to the country, where the
Revolution is bound to spread. These lines
read almost mockingly, like a fairy tale, with
a wandering man “tending towards” the
place where there are enchanted
“whispering trees.” This will not be a happy
tale, though, and the trees may be
whispering about the Revolution, which has
several times been compared to a force of
nature.
Comment [ 3]: Since the estate has been
abandoned after the murder, the “stone
faces,” which are the statues, have “ample
leisure.” This ironic tone makes it seem as
though the statues are like the aristocrats,
hanging about without much at all to do.
Meanwhile, the poor, who are compared to
scarecrows because they are so thin, hunt
for meager food.
Comment [ 4]: The stone faces again
represent the emotions of the aristocrats,
who first felt “pride" in their supremacy,
then “anger and pain” when the rebels killed
the Marquis, and finally a "cruel" sense of
being avenged when the accused killer was
punished.
Comment [ 5]: The poor people of the
village who visit the chateau, who are
compared to humble woodland creatures
(hares), imagine that the stone face on the
building looks like the Marquis himself, for
the “dints” in his nose are mentioned
elsewhere. The description suggests that the
chateau has become like a fabled haunted
house visited by local people who are
described as suffering (“ragged”) and
childlike (afraid to point to the statue for
long).
The Chateau Annotation
Chateau and hut, stone face and dangling figure, the red stain on the stone floor, and the
pure water in the village well—thousands of acres of land—a whole province of France—
all France itself—lay under the night sky, concentrated into a faint hair-breadth line. So
does a whole world, with all its greatnesses and littlenesses, lie in a twinkling star. And as
mere human knowledge can split a ray of light and analyse the manner of its composition,
so, sublimer intelligences may read in the feeble shining of this earth of ours, every thought
and act, every vice and virtue, of every responsible creature on it.
Comment [ 6]: In a cinematic description
that reads as though a camera moves from
item to item in the chateau and the village to
a view of the whole of France, the narrator
reflects that the vastness of France can
become just a thin line. Perhaps this is the
thin line between peace and Revolution.
Comment [ 7]: The narrator continues to
reflect on the vastness of the world which
can seem just a “twinkling star” if seen from
far away. He seems to be considering the
mystery of human action, the way that
individual human acts become part of the
sweep of history, perhaps understood by
greater “intelligences” in the way that
scientists can understand the elements.