tall and like a spectre. He says he later saw the man bound and left in a cage until he was hanged despite petitions asking to spare him. The Defarges and the other listeners—also each called Jacques—listen intently to the story.

The mender of roads is a “grizzled” and poor man who finds a way to make himself useful to the revolution by relating the story of the man under the Marquis’s carriage.

The mender of roads becomes popular overnight when he notices the man under the carriage and tells the Marquis.

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. (Book 2, Ch 8, p. 73)

The mender of roads sees a man hanging from the Marquis’s carriage.  We track his progress as he sees the events unfold and then goes to tell the Defarges.  He is known for his blue cap.

It was high noontide, when two dusty men passed through his streets and under his swinging lamps: of whom, one was Monsieur Defarge: the other a mender of roads in a blue cap. (ch 15, p. 107)

The mender of roads is young, and seems to enjoy his fifteen minutes of fame.

Again the mender of roads went through the whole performance; in which he ought to have been perfect by that time, seeing that it had been the infallible resource and indispensable entertainment of his village during a whole year. (p. 108)

The mender of roads is used by Dickens to demonstrate to the reader the progression of the revolution and its impact on people who were involved peripherally.

The mender of roads—known only as Jacques—tells Defarge and the other Jacques a story about one of the many victims of royal oppression. He recounts that a year earlier he saw a man hanging by a chain underneath the Marquis St. Evremonde's carriage. This is a pretty lurid story, but it has the ring of truth about it as the wicked Marquis is notorious for his unbridled contempt for the poor and downtrodden.

The road mender goes on to say that, months later, he saw the same poor, unfortunate wretch being marched along the road by soldiers. He was then led off to prison where he was kept in an iron cage for several days. There seems to be some confusion as to the eventual fate of the prisoner, but the road mender is adamant that the man was hanged as a parricide, someone who kills a close relative.

Whatever the truth of the matter, Defarge and the other Jacques regard this as yet another example of the aristocracy's irredeemable cruelty and barbarism, and one for which they must pay the price.

In Book the Second, Chapter 15, the mender of roads tells the DeFarges and the "Jacques" how he first saw "the tall man in the nightcap" clinging to the Marquis' carriage, then later saw him being taken away by soldiers with his hands bound.  Although he doesn't actually know what happened to the man, he has heard that he was taken to the King and his life spared because of a petition explaining that the man "was in great distress because the Marquis had callously killed his child".  One of the Jacques corrects him, telling him that the petition was ignored, and the man was hung from the gallows. 

By spreading the news of the ruling class's atrocities among the simple workingmen and peasants, the DeFarges and the Jacques are fomenting the seeds of the coming insurrection.