Book II - Chapter VIII. Monseigneur in the Country A Tale of Two Cities

Q: What happens in Book 2, Chapter 8 of A Tale of Two Cities?

In Chapter 8, titled "Monseigneur in the Country," the Marquis St. Evrémonde travels by carriage from Paris to his country estate. As the setting sun bathes him in crimson light, he passes through a desperately poor village where the peasants survive on foraged leaves and onions, crushed under layers of taxation. A road-mender reports seeing a mysterious stranger — "whiter than the miller … tall as a spectre" — clinging beneath the carriage, who leaped away and vanished over the hillside. The Marquis orders the village postmaster Gabelle to apprehend the stranger. A grieving widow then intercepts the carriage at a burial ground, begging only for a small marker for her husband's grave so it will not be lost among the many graves of those who have died of want. The Marquis dismisses her with cold indifference, and his valet pushes her away. The chapter ends as the Marquis arrives at his château and asks whether "Monsieur Charles" has arrived from England — linking him to Charles Darnay.

Q: Who is the mysterious stranger hiding under the Marquis's carriage?

A road-mender in the village reports seeing a tall, dust-covered man clinging to the chain beneath the Marquis's carriage — described as "whiter than the miller … white as a spectre, tall as a spectre." When the carriage stopped, the man "precipitated himself over the hill-side, head first." Dickens does not reveal the stranger's identity in this chapter, but the spectral description and the villagers' reaction — all eyes turning to the Marquis "perhaps, to observe whether he had any spectre on his conscience" — create an atmosphere of ominous foreshadowing. The stranger is later revealed to be Gaspard, the father of the child killed by the Marquis's carriage in Chapter 7, who has followed the Marquis to exact his revenge.

Q: What does the widow's petition reveal about the Marquis's character?

Near a burial ground, a grief-stricken woman stops the Marquis's carriage. She does not ask for food or money — only for "a morsel of stone or wood, with my husband's name" to mark his grave so it will not be lost among the many graves of the poor. The Marquis responds with chilling indifference: "Well! He is quiet. Can I restore him to you?" His valet physically pushes the woman away, and the carriage speeds on. This scene reveals the Marquis's complete lack of compassion — he cannot be moved even by the most modest, heartbreaking request. Dickens uses the encounter to show that the aristocracy's cruelty extends beyond active violence to a passive refusal to acknowledge the humanity of those they govern.

Q: How does Dickens use repetition to depict poverty in this chapter?

Dickens employs anaphoric repetition of the word "poor" to convey the village's misery: "its poor brewery, poor tannery, poor tavern, poor stable-yard for relays of post-horses, poor fountain, all usual poor appointments. It had its poor people too." The relentless repetition creates a drumbeat effect that mirrors the inescapable, all-consuming nature of the villagers' deprivation. Dickens also lists the overlapping taxes — "the tax for the state, the tax for the church, the tax for the lord, tax local and tax general" — to show how the peasants are crushed under multiple layers of exploitation. The cumulative rhetorical effect builds the reader's sympathy for the poor and outrage at the system that sustains the Marquis's wealth.

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A beautiful landscape, with the corn bright in it, but not abundant. Patches of poor rye where corn should have been, patches of poor peas and beans, patches of most coarse vegetable substitutes for wheat. On inanimate nature, as on the men and women who cultivated it, a prevalent tendency towards an appearance of vegetating unwillingly--a dejected disposition to give up, and wither away.

Monsieur the Marquis in his travelling carriage (which might have been lighter), conducted by four post-horses and two postilions, fagged up a steep hill. A blush on the countenance of Monsieur the Marquis was no impeachment of his high breeding; it was not from within; it was occasioned by an external circumstance beyond his control--the setting sun.

The sunset struck so brilliantly into the travelling carriage when it gained the hill-top, that its occupant was steeped in crimson. "It will die out," said Monsieur the Marquis, glancing at his hands, "directly."

In effect, the sun was so low that it dipped at the moment. When the heavy drag had been adjusted to the wheel, and the carriage slid down hill, with a cinderous smell, in a cloud of dust, the red glow departed quickly; the sun and the Marquis going down together, there was no glow left when the drag was taken off.

But, there remained a broken country, bold and open, a little village at the bottom of the hill, a broad sweep and rise beyond it, a church- tower, a windmill, a forest for the chase, and a crag with a fortress on it used as a prison. Round upon all these darkening objects as the night drew on, the Marquis looked, with the air of one who was coming near home.

The village had its one poor street, with its poor brewery, poor tannery, poor tavern, poor stable-yard for relays of post-horses, poor fountain, all usual poor appointments. It had its poor people too. All its people were poor, and many of them were sitting at their doors, shredding spare onions and the like for supper, while many were at the fountain, washing leaves, and grasses, and any such small yieldings of the earth that could be eaten. Expressive sips of what made them poor, were not wanting; the tax for the state, the tax for the church, the tax for the lord, tax local and tax general, were to be paid here and to be paid there, according to solemn inscription in the little village, until the wonder was, that there was any village left unswallowed.

Few children were to be seen, and no dogs. As to the men and women, their choice on earth was stated in the prospect--Life on the lowest terms that could sustain it, down in the little village under the mill; or captivity and Death in the dominant prison on the crag.

Heralded by a courier in advance, and by the cracking of his postilions' whips, which twined snake-like about their heads in the evening air, as if he came attended by the Furies, Monsieur the Marquis drew up in his travelling carriage at the posting-house gate. It was hard by the fountain, and the peasants suspended their operations to look at him. He looked at them, and saw in them, without knowing it, the slow sure filing down of misery-worn face and figure, that was to make the meagreness of Frenchmen an English superstition which should survive the truth through the best part of a hundred years.

Monsieur the Marquis cast his eyes over the submissive faces that drooped before him, as the like of himself had drooped before Monseigneur of the Court--only the difference was, that these faces drooped merely to suffer and not to propitiate--when a grizzled mender of the roads joined the group.

"Bring me hither that fellow!" said the Marquis to the courier.

The fellow was brought, cap in hand, and the other fellows closed round to look and listen, in the manner of the people at the Paris fountain.

"I passed you on the road?"

"Monseigneur, it is true. I had the honour of being passed on the road."

"Coming up the hill, and at the top of the hill, both?"

"Monseigneur, it is true."

"What did you look at, so fixedly?"

"Monseigneur, I looked at the man."

He stooped a little, and with his tattered blue cap pointed under the carriage. All his fellows stooped to look under the carriage.

"What man, pig? And why look there?"

"Pardon, Monseigneur; he swung by the chain of the shoe--the drag."

"Who?" demanded the traveller.

"Monseigneur, the man."

"May the Devil carry away these idiots! How do you call the man? You know all the men of this part of the country. Who was he?"

"Your clemency, Monseigneur! He was not of this part of the country. Of all the days of my life, I never saw him."

"Swinging by the chain? To be suffocated?"

"With your gracious permission, that was the wonder of it, Monseigneur. His head hanging over--like this!"

He turned himself sideways to the carriage, and leaned back, with his face thrown up to the sky, and his head hanging down; then recovered himself, fumbled with his cap, and made a bow.

"What was he like?"

"Monseigneur, he was whiter than the miller. All covered with dust, white as a spectre, tall as a spectre!"

The picture produced an immense sensation in the little crowd; but all eyes, without comparing notes with other eyes, looked at Monsieur the Marquis. Perhaps, to observe whether he had any spectre on his conscience.

"Truly, you did well," said the Marquis, felicitously sensible that such vermin were not to ruffle him, "to see a thief accompanying my carriage, and not open that great mouth of yours. Bah! Put him aside, Monsieur Gabelle!"

Monsieur Gabelle was the Postmaster, and some other taxing functionary united; he had come out with great obsequiousness to assist at this examination, and had held the examined by the drapery of his arm in an official manner.

"Bah! Go aside!" said Monsieur Gabelle.

"Lay hands on this stranger if he seeks to lodge in your village to-night, and be sure that his business is honest, Gabelle."

"Monseigneur, I am flattered to devote myself to your orders."

"Did he run away, fellow?--where is that Accursed?"

The accursed was already under the carriage with some half-dozen particular friends, pointing out the chain with his blue cap. Some half-dozen other particular friends promptly hauled him out, and presented him breathless to Monsieur the Marquis.

"Did the man run away, Dolt, when we stopped for the drag?"

"Monseigneur, he precipitated himself over the hill-side, head first, as a person plunges into the river."

"See to it, Gabelle. Go on!"

The half-dozen who were peering at the chain were still among the wheels, like sheep; the wheels turned so suddenly that they were lucky to save their skins and bones; they had very little else to save, or they might not have been so fortunate.

The burst with which the carriage started out of the village and up the rise beyond, was soon checked by the steepness of the hill. Gradually, it subsided to a foot pace, swinging and lumbering upward among the many sweet scents of a summer night. The postilions, with a thousand gossamer gnats circling about them in lieu of the Furies, quietly mended the points to the lashes of their whips; the valet walked by the horses; the courier was audible, trotting on ahead into the dun distance.

At the steepest point of the hill there was a little burial-ground, with a Cross and a new large figure of Our Saviour on it; it was a poor figure in wood, done by some inexperienced rustic carver, but he had studied the figure from the life--his own life, maybe--for it was dreadfully spare and thin.

To this distressful emblem of a great distress that had long been growing worse, and was not at its worst, a woman was kneeling. She turned her head as the carriage came up to her, rose quickly, and presented herself at the carriage-door.

"It is you, Monseigneur! Monseigneur, a petition."

With an exclamation of impatience, but with his unchangeable face, Monseigneur looked out.

"How, then! What is it? Always petitions!"

"Monseigneur. For the love of the great God! My husband, the forester."

"What of your husband, the forester? Always the same with you people. He cannot pay something?"

"He has paid all, Monseigneur. He is dead."

"Well! He is quiet. Can I restore him to you?"

"Alas, no, Monseigneur! But he lies yonder, under a little heap of poor grass."

"Well?"

"Monseigneur, there are so many little heaps of poor grass?"

"Again, well?"

She looked an old woman, but was young. Her manner was one of passionate grief; by turns she clasped her veinous and knotted hands together with wild energy, and laid one of them on the carriage-door --tenderly, caressingly, as if it had been a human breast, and could be expected to feel the appealing touch.

"Monseigneur, hear me! Monseigneur, hear my petition! My husband died of want; so many die of want; so many more will die of want."

"Again, well? Can I feed them?"

"Monseigneur, the good God knows; but I don't ask it. My petition is, that a morsel of stone or wood, with my husband's name, may be placed over him to show where he lies. Otherwise, the place will be quickly forgotten, it will never be found when I am dead of the same malady, I shall be laid under some other heap of poor grass. Monseigneur, they are so many, they increase so fast, there is so much want. Monseigneur! Monseigneur!"

The valet had put her away from the door, the carriage had broken into a brisk trot, the postilions had quickened the pace, she was left far behind, and Monseigneur, again escorted by the Furies, was rapidly diminishing the league or two of distance that remained between him and his chateau.

The sweet scents of the summer night rose all around him, and rose, as the rain falls, impartially, on the dusty, ragged, and toil-worn group at the fountain not far away; to whom the mender of roads, with the aid of the blue cap without which he was nothing, still enlarged upon his man like a spectre, as long as they could bear it. By degrees, as they could bear no more, they dropped off one by one, and lights twinkled in little casements; which lights, as the casements darkened, and more stars came out, seemed to have shot up into the sky instead of having been extinguished.

The shadow of a large high-roofed house, and of many over-hanging trees, was upon Monsieur the Marquis by that time; and the shadow was exchanged for the light of a flambeau, as his carriage stopped, and the great door of his chateau was opened to him.

"Monsieur Charles, whom I expect; is he arrived from England?"

"Monseigneur, not yet."

Frequently Asked Questions about Book II - Chapter VIII. Monseigneur in the Country from A Tale of Two Cities

What happens in Book 2, Chapter 8 of A Tale of Two Cities?

In Chapter 8, titled "Monseigneur in the Country," the Marquis St. Evrémonde travels by carriage from Paris to his country estate. As the setting sun bathes him in crimson light, he passes through a desperately poor village where the peasants survive on foraged leaves and onions, crushed under layers of taxation. A road-mender reports seeing a mysterious stranger — "whiter than the miller … tall as a spectre" — clinging beneath the carriage, who leaped away and vanished over the hillside. The Marquis orders the village postmaster Gabelle to apprehend the stranger. A grieving widow then intercepts the carriage at a burial ground, begging only for a small marker for her husband's grave so it will not be lost among the many graves of those who have died of want. The Marquis dismisses her with cold indifference, and his valet pushes her away. The chapter ends as the Marquis arrives at his château and asks whether "Monsieur Charles" has arrived from England — linking him to Charles Darnay.

What does the setting sun symbolize in A Tale of Two Cities Chapter 8?

As the Marquis's carriage reaches the hilltop, the setting sun "struck so brilliantly into the travelling carriage" that the Marquis "was steeped in crimson." This image symbolically bathes the Marquis in blood. The Marquis remarks dismissively, "It will die out … directly," referring to the red glow — but Dickens invests his words with dramatic irony. The blood-red light foreshadows both the violence the aristocracy has inflicted on the poor and the Marquis's own violent death, which occurs in the very next chapter. When the sun sets and "the Marquis going down together," Dickens further links the fading light to the decline of the old French aristocracy itself.

Who is the mysterious stranger hiding under the Marquis's carriage?

A road-mender in the village reports seeing a tall, dust-covered man clinging to the chain beneath the Marquis's carriage — described as "whiter than the miller … white as a spectre, tall as a spectre." When the carriage stopped, the man "precipitated himself over the hill-side, head first." Dickens does not reveal the stranger's identity in this chapter, but the spectral description and the villagers' reaction — all eyes turning to the Marquis "perhaps, to observe whether he had any spectre on his conscience" — create an atmosphere of ominous foreshadowing. The stranger is later revealed to be Gaspard, the father of the child killed by the Marquis's carriage in Chapter 7, who has followed the Marquis to exact his revenge.

What does the widow's petition reveal about the Marquis's character?

Near a burial ground, a grief-stricken woman stops the Marquis's carriage. She does not ask for food or money — only for "a morsel of stone or wood, with my husband's name" to mark his grave so it will not be lost among the many graves of the poor. The Marquis responds with chilling indifference: "Well! He is quiet. Can I restore him to you?" His valet physically pushes the woman away, and the carriage speeds on. This scene reveals the Marquis's complete lack of compassion — he cannot be moved even by the most modest, heartbreaking request. Dickens uses the encounter to show that the aristocracy's cruelty extends beyond active violence to a passive refusal to acknowledge the humanity of those they govern.

Why does the Marquis ask about "Monsieur Charles" at the end of Chapter 8?

When the Marquis arrives at his château, his first question is: "Monsieur Charles, whom I expect; is he arrived from England?" The servant replies, "Monseigneur, not yet." This reveals that the Marquis has a connection to someone named Charles in England — strongly implying Charles Darnay, whose secretive trips to France have been noted earlier in the novel. The question establishes that Darnay is related to the Marquis (later confirmed as his nephew) and has been summoned to the family estate. This detail links the personal plot involving Darnay to the broader social conflict between the aristocracy and the oppressed peasantry, setting up the crucial confrontation between uncle and nephew in Chapter 9.

How does Dickens use repetition to depict poverty in this chapter?

Dickens employs anaphoric repetition of the word "poor" to convey the village's misery: "its poor brewery, poor tannery, poor tavern, poor stable-yard for relays of post-horses, poor fountain, all usual poor appointments. It had its poor people too." The relentless repetition creates a drumbeat effect that mirrors the inescapable, all-consuming nature of the villagers' deprivation. Dickens also lists the overlapping taxes — "the tax for the state, the tax for the church, the tax for the lord, tax local and tax general" — to show how the peasants are crushed under multiple layers of exploitation. The cumulative rhetorical effect builds the reader's sympathy for the poor and outrage at the system that sustains the Marquis's wealth.