Knitting

In Monsieur Defarge’s wine shop the patrons taste with every sip but, “No vivacious bacchanalian flame leapt out of the pressed grape of Monsieur Defarge; but, a smouldering fire that burnt in the dark, lay hidden in the dregs of it” (p 171). For now it lies in wait; only smoldering, hidden away in the dregs, until it bursts forth, a phoenix reborn in the cleansing fire. The phoenix is a mythical creature that bursts into flames when the time has come for it to die, but in the ashes created from his death, he is reborn again. The smoldering ashes in this wine is not only the smoldering ashes of the phoenix, but also the smoldering ashes of the revolutionaries. When it is time for them to die, they will be reborn from the ashes once more, except this time they will be younger and stronger than ever before. This smoldering fire is the fire of the revolution, driven forth from the grapes of the “vendor of wine”. This will be no ordinary wine though, but the blood of the aristocracy that abused the peasant phoenixes so.