Is Madame Defarge satisfied?

Madame Defarge is implacable. While a heart beats in that cell, the knitting needles won’t be put away. They will be put away only when dripping with blood.

Talk of a lynch mob reminded me of Edmund Burke’s description of the mob that led the captured French King and Queen into Paris ‘amidst the horrid yells, and shrilling screams, and frantic dances, and infamous contumelies, and all the unutterable abominations of the furies of hell in the abused shape of the vilest of women.’ (Reflections on the Revolution in France.)

Certainly, many taking part in the destruction of George Pell will end up rotting in hell. But Australia’s first Catholic martyr won’t be there with them.