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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Barlasch of the Guard, by H. S. Merriman
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Barlasch of the Guard
+
+Author: H. S. Merriman
+
+Release Date: May, 2005  [EBook #8158]
+Posting Date: July 30, 2009
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BARLASCH OF THE GUARD ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Les Bowler
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+BARLASCH OF THE GUARD
+
+
+By Henry Seton Merriman
+
+
+
+
+     "And they that have not heard shall understand"
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+CHAPTER
+
+     I.       ALL ON A SUMMER'S DAY
+     II.      A CAMPAIGNER
+     III.     FATE
+     IV.      THE CLOUDED MOON
+     V.       THE WEISSEN ROSS'L
+     VI.      THE SHOEMAKER OF KONIGSBERG
+     VII.     THE WAY OF LOVE
+     VIII.    A VISITATION
+     IX.      THE GOLDEN GUESS
+     X.       IN DEEP WATER
+     XI.      THE WAVE MOVES ON
+     XII.     FROM BORODINO
+     XIII.    IN THE DAY OF REJOICING
+     XIV.     MOSCOW
+     XV.      THE GOAL
+     XVI.     THE FIRST OF THE EBB
+     XVII.    A FORLORN HOPE
+     XVIII.   MISSING
+     XIX.     KOWNO
+     XX.      DESIREE'S CHOICE
+     XXI.     ON THE WARSAW ROAD
+     XXII.    THROUGH THE SHOALS
+     XXIII.   AGAINST THE STREAM
+     XXIV.    MATHILDE CHOOSES
+     XXV.     A DESPATCH
+     XXVI.    ON THE BRIDGE
+     XXVII.   A FLASH OF MEMORY
+     XXVIII.  VILNA
+     XXIX.    THE BARGAIN
+     XXX.     THE FULFILMENT
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I. ALL ON A SUMMER'S DAY.
+
+
+
+     Il faut devoir lever les yeux pour regarder ce qu'on aime.
+
+A few children had congregated on the steps of the Marienkirche at
+Dantzig, because the door stood open. The verger, old Peter Koch--on
+week days a locksmith--had told them that nothing was going to happen;
+had been indiscreet enough to bid them go away. So they stayed, for they
+were little girls.
+
+A wedding was in point of fact in progress within the towering walls of
+the Marienkirche--a cathedral built of red brick in the great days of
+the Hanseatic League.
+
+"Who is it?" asked a stout fishwife, stepping over the threshold to
+whisper to Peter Koch.
+
+"It is the younger daughter of Antoine Sebastian," replied the verger,
+indicating with a nod of his head the house on the left-hand side of the
+Frauengasse where Sebastian lived. There was a wealth of meaning in the
+nod. For Peter Koch lived round the corner in the Kleine Schmiedegasse,
+and of course--well, it is only neighbourly to take an interest in those
+who drink milk from the same cow and buy wood from the same Jew.
+
+The fishwife looked thoughtfully down the Frauengasse where every house
+has a different gable, and none of less than three floors within the
+pitch of the roof. She singled out No. 36, which has a carved stone
+balustrade to its broad verandah and a railing of wrought-iron on either
+side of the steps descending from the verandah to the street.
+
+"They teach dancing?" she inquired.
+
+And Koch nodded again, taking snuff.
+
+"And he--the father?"
+
+"He scrapes a fiddle," replied the verger, examining the lady's basket
+of fish in a non-committing and final way. For a locksmith is almost
+as confidential an adviser as a notary. The Dantzigers, moreover, are a
+thrifty race and keep their money in a safe place; a habit which was to
+cost many of them their lives before the coming of another June.
+
+The marriage service was a long one and not exhilarating. Through the
+open door came no sound of organ or choir, but the deep and monotonous
+drawl of one voice. There had been no ringing of bells. The north
+countries, with the exception of Russia, require more than the ringing
+of bells or the waving of flags to warm their hearts. They celebrate
+their festivities with good meat and wine consumed decently behind
+closed doors.
+
+Dantzig was in fact under a cloud. No larger than a man's hand,
+this cloud had risen in Corsica forty-three years earlier. It had
+overshadowed France. Its gloom had spread to Italy, Austria, Spain; had
+penetrated so far north as Sweden; was now hanging sullen over Dantzig,
+the greatest of the Hanseatic towns, the Free City. For a Dantziger
+had never needed to say that he was a Pole or a Prussian, a Swede or a
+subject of the Czar. He was a Dantziger. Which is tantamount to having
+for a postal address a single name that is marked on the map.
+
+Napoleon had garrisoned the Free City with French troops some years
+earlier, to the sullen astonishment of the citizens. And Prussia had not
+objected for a very obvious reason. Within the last fourteen months the
+garrison had been greatly augmented. The clouds seemed to be gathering
+over this prosperous city of the north, where, however, men continued to
+eat and drink, to marry and to be given in marriage as in another city
+of the plain.
+
+Peter Koch replaced his snuff-stained handkerchief in the pocket of his
+rusty cassock and stood aside. He murmured a few conventional words
+of blessing, hard on the heels of stronger exhortations to the waiting
+children. And Desiree Sebastian came out into the sunlight--Desiree
+Sebastian no more.
+
+That she was destined for the sunlight was clearly written on her face
+and in her gay, kind blue eyes. She was tall and straight and slim,
+as are English and Polish and Danish girls, and none other in all the
+world. But the colouring of her face and hair was more pronounced than
+in the fairness of Anglo-Saxon youth. For her hair had a golden tinge in
+it, and her skin was of that startlingly milky whiteness which is only
+found in those who live round the frozen waters. Her eyes, too, were of
+a clearer blue--like the blue of a summer sky over the Baltic sea. The
+rosy colour was in her cheeks, her eyes were laughing. This was a bride
+who had no misgivings.
+
+On seeing such a happy face returning from the altar the observer might
+have concluded that the bride had assuredly attained her desire; that
+she had secured a title; that the pre-nuptial settlement had been safely
+signed and sealed.
+
+But Desiree had none of these things. It was nearly a hundred years ago.
+
+Her husband must have whispered some laughing comment on Koch, or
+another appeal to her quick sense of the humorous, for she looked into
+his changing face and gave a low, girlish laugh of amusement as they
+descended the steps together into the brilliant sunlight.
+
+Charles Darragon wore one of the countless uniforms that enlivened the
+outward world in the great days of the greatest captain that history has
+seen. He was unmistakably French--unmistakably a French gentleman, as
+rare in 1812 as he is to-day. To judge from his small head and clean-cut
+features, fine and mobile; from his graceful carriage and slight limbs,
+this man was one of the many bearing names that begin with the fourth
+letter of the alphabet since the Terror only.
+
+He was merely a lieutenant in a regiment of Alsatian recruits; but that
+went for nothing in the days of the Empire. Three kings in Europe had
+begun no farther up the ladder.
+
+The Frauengasse is a short street, made narrow by the terrace that each
+house throws outward from its face, each seeking to gain a few inches
+on its neighbour. It runs from the Marienkirche to the Frauenthor, and
+remains to-day as it was built three hundred years ago.
+
+Desiree nodded and laughed to the children, who interested her. She was
+quite simple and womanly, as some women, it is to be hoped, may succeed
+in continuing until the end of time. She was always pleased to see
+children; was glad, it seemed, that they should have congregated on the
+steps to watch her pass. Charles, with a faint and unconscious reflex of
+that grand manner which had brought his father to the guillotine, felt
+in his pocket for money, and found none.
+
+He jerked his hand out with widespread fingers, in a gesture indicative
+of familiarity with the nakedness of the land.
+
+"I have nothing, little citizens," he said with a mock gravity; "nothing
+but my blessing."
+
+And he made a gay gesture with his left hand over their heads, not the
+act of benediction, but of peppering, which made them all laugh. The
+bride and bridegroom passing on joined in the laughter with hearts as
+light and voices scarcely less youthful.
+
+The Frauengasse is intersected by the Pfaffengasse at right angles,
+through which narrow and straight street passes much of the traffic
+towards the Langenmarkt, the centre of the town. As the little bridal
+procession reached the corner of this street, it halted at the approach
+of some mounted troops. There was nothing unusual in this sight in the
+streets of Dantzig, which were accustomed now to the clatter of the
+Saxon cavalry.
+
+But at the sight of the first troopers Charles Darragon threw up his
+head with a little exclamation of surprise.
+
+Desiree looked at him and then turned to follow the direction of his
+gaze.
+
+"What are these?" she murmured. For the uniforms were new and
+unfamiliar.
+
+"Cavalry of the Old Guard," replied her husband, and as he spoke he
+caught his breath.
+
+The horsemen vanished into the continuation of the Pfaffengasse, and
+immediately behind them came a travelling carriage, swung on high
+wheels, three times the size of a Dantzig drosky, white with dust.
+It had small square windows. As Desiree drew back in obedience to a
+movement of her husband's arm, she saw a face for an instant--pale and
+set--with eyes that seemed to look at everything and yet at something
+beyond.
+
+"Who was it? He looked at you, Charles," said Desiree.
+
+"It is the Emperor," answered Darragon. His face was white. His eyes
+were dull, like the eyes of one who has seen a vision and is not yet
+back to earth.
+
+Desiree turned to those behind her.
+
+"It is the Emperor," she said, with an odd ring in her voice which none
+had ever heard before. Then she stood looking after the carriage.
+
+Her father, who was at her elbow--tall, white-haired, with an
+aquiline, inscrutable face--stood in a like attitude, looking down the
+Pfaffengasse. His hand was raised before his face with outspread fingers
+which seemed rigid in that gesture, as if lifted hastily to screen his
+face and hide it.
+
+"Did he see me?" he asked in a low voice which only Desiree heard.
+
+She glanced at him, and her eyes, which were clear as a cloudless sky,
+were suddenly shadowed by a suspicion quick and poignant.
+
+"He seemed to see everything, but he only looked at Charles," she
+answered. For a moment they all stood in the sunshine looking towards
+the Langenmarkt where the tower of the Rathhaus rose above the high
+roofs. The dust raised by the horses' feet and the carriage wheels
+slowly settled on their bridal clothes.
+
+It was Desiree who at length made a movement to continue their way
+towards her father's house.
+
+"Well," she said with a slight laugh, "he was not bidden to my wedding,
+but he has come all the same."
+
+Others laughed as they followed her. For a bride at the church-door, or
+a judge on the bench, or a criminal on the scaffold-steps, need make but
+a very small joke to cause merriment. Laughter is often nothing but the
+froth of tears.
+
+There were faces suddenly bleached in the little group of
+wedding-guests, and none were whiter than the handsome features of
+Mathilde Sebastian, Desiree's elder sister, who looked angry, had
+frowned at the children, and seemed to find this simple wedding too
+bourgeois for her taste. She carried her head with an air that told the
+world not to expect that she should ever be content to marry in such
+a humble style, and walk from the church in satin slippers like any
+daughter of a burgher.
+
+This, at all events, was what old Koch the locksmith must have read in
+her beautiful, discontented face.
+
+"Ah! ah!" he muttered to the bolts as he shot them. "But it is not the
+lightest hearts that quit the church in a carriage."
+
+So simple were the arrangements that bride and bridegroom and
+wedding-guests had to wait in the street while the servant unlocked
+the front door of No. 36 with a great key hurriedly extracted from her
+apron-pocket.
+
+There was no unusual stir in the street. The windows of one or two of
+the houses had been decorated with flowers. These were the houses of
+friends. Others were silent and still behind their lace curtains, where
+there doubtless lurked peeping and criticizing eyes--the house of a
+neighbour.
+
+The wedding-guests were few in number. Only one of them had a
+distinguished air, and he, like the bridegroom, wore the uniform of
+France. He was a small man, somewhat brusque in attitude, as became
+a soldier of Italy and Egypt. But he had a pleasant smile and that
+affability of manner which many learnt in the first years of the great
+Republic. He and Mathilde Sebastian never looked at each other: either
+an understanding or a misunderstanding.
+
+The host, Antoine Sebastian, played his part well enough when he
+remembered that he had a part to play. He listened with a kind attention
+to the story of a very old lady, who it seemed had been married herself,
+but it was so long ago that the human interest of it all was lost in a
+pottle of petty detail which was all she could recall. Before the story
+was half finished, Sebastian's attention had strayed elsewhere, though
+his spare figure remained in its attitude of attention and polite
+forbearance. His mind had, it would seem, a trick of thus wandering away
+and leaving his body rigid in the last attitude that it had dictated.
+
+Sebastian did not notice that the door was open and all the guests were
+waiting for him to lead the way.
+
+"Now, old dreamer," whispered Desiree, with a quick pinch on his arm,
+"take the Grafin upstairs to the drawing-room and give her wine. You are
+to drink our healths, remember."
+
+"Is there wine?" he asked with a vague smile. "Where has it come from?"
+
+"Like other good things, my father-in-law," replied Charles with his
+easy laugh, "it comes from France."
+
+They spoke together thus in confidence, in the language of that same
+sunny land. But when Sebastian turned again to the old lady, still
+recalling the details of that other wedding, he addressed her in German,
+offering his arm with a sudden stiffness of gesture which he seemed to
+put on with the change of tongue.
+
+They passed up the low time-worn steps arm-in-arm, and beneath the high
+carved doorway, whereon some pious Hanseatic merchant had inscribed
+his belief that if God be in the house there is no need of a watchman,
+emphasizing his creed by bolts and locks of enormous strength, and bars
+to every window.
+
+The servant in her Samland Sunday dress, having shaken her fist at the
+children, closed the door behind the last guest, and, so far as the
+Frauengasse was concerned, the exciting incident was over. From the open
+window came only the murmur of quiet voices, the clink of glasses at the
+drinking of a toast, or a laugh in the clear voice of the bride herself.
+For Desiree persisted in her optimistic view of these proceedings,
+though her husband scarcely helped her now at all, and seemed a
+different man since the passage through the Pfaffengasse of that dusty
+travelling carriage which had played the part of the stormy petrel from
+end to end of Europe.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II. A CAMPAIGNER.
+
+
+
+     Not what I am, but what I Do, is my Kingdom.
+
+Desiree had made all her own wedding-clothes. "Her poor little
+marriage-basket," she called it. She had even made the cake which was
+now cut with some ceremony by her father.
+
+"I tremble," she exclaimed aloud, "to think what it may be like in the
+middle."
+
+And Mathilde was the only person there who did not smile at the
+unconscious admission. The cake was still under discussion, and the
+Grafin had just admitted that it was almost as good as that other cake
+which had been consumed in the days of Frederick the Great, when the
+servant called Desiree from the room.
+
+"It is a soldier," she said in a whisper at the head of the stairs. "He
+has a paper in his hand. I know what that means. He is quartered on us."
+
+Desiree hurried downstairs. In the entrance-hall, a broad-built little
+man stood awaiting her. He was stout and red, with hair all ragged at
+the temples, almost white. His eyes were lost behind shaggy eyebrows.
+His face was made broader by little whiskers stopping short at the level
+of his ear. He had a snuff-blown complexion, and in the wrinkles of his
+face the dust of a dozen campaigns seemed to have accumulated.
+
+"Barlasch," he said curtly, holding out a long strip of blue paper. "Of
+the Guard. Once a sergeant. Italy, Egypt, the Danube."
+
+He frowned at Desiree while she read the paper in the dim light that
+filtered through the twisted bars of the fanlight above the door.
+
+Then he turned to the servant who stood, comely and breathless, looking
+him up and down.
+
+"Papa Barlasch," he added for her edification, and he drew down his left
+eyebrow with a jerk, so that it almost touched his cheek. His right
+eye, grey and piercing, returned her astonished gaze with a fierce
+steadfastness.
+
+"Does this mean that you are quartered upon us?" asked Desiree without
+seeking to hide her disgust. She spoke in her own tongue.
+
+"French?" said the soldier, looking at her. "Good. Yes. I am quartered
+here. Thirty-six, Frauengasse. Sebastian; musician. You are lucky to get
+me. I always give satisfaction--ha!"
+
+He gave a curt laugh in one syllable only. His left arm was curved
+round a bundle of wood bound together by a red pocket-handkerchief not
+innocent of snuff. He held out this bundle to Desiree, as Solomon may
+have held out some great gift to the Queen of Sheba to smooth the first
+doubtful steps of friendship.
+
+Desiree accepted the gift and stood in her wedding-dress holding the
+bundle of wood against her breast. Then a gleam of the one grey eye that
+was visible conveyed to her the fact that this walnut-faced warrior was
+smiling. She laughed gaily.
+
+"It is well," said Barlasch. "We are friends. You are lucky to get me.
+You may not think so now. Would this woman like me to speak to her in
+Polish or German?"
+
+"Do you speak so many languages?"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders and spread out his arms as far as his many
+burdens allowed. For he was hung round with a hundred parcels and
+packages.
+
+"The Old Guard," he said, "can always make itself understood."
+
+He rubbed his hands together with the air of a brisk man ready for any
+sort of work.
+
+"Now, where shall I sleep?" he asked. "One is not particular, you
+understand. A few minutes and one is at home--perhaps peeling the
+potatoes. It is only a civilian who is ashamed of using his knife on a
+potato. Papa Barlasch, they call me."
+
+Without awaiting an invitation he went forward towards the kitchen. He
+seemed to know the house by instinct. His progress was accompanied by
+a clatter of utensils like that which heralds the coming of a carrier's
+cart.
+
+At the kitchen door he stopped and sniffed loudly. There certainly was
+a slight odour of burning fat. Papa Barlasch turned and shook an
+admonitory finger at the servant, but he said nothing. He looked round
+at the highly polished utensils, at the table and floor both alike
+scrubbed clean by a vigorous northern arm. And he was kind enough to nod
+approval.
+
+"On a campaign," he said to no one in particular, "a little bit of
+horse thrust into the cinders on the end of a bayonet--but in times of
+peace..."
+
+He broke off and made a gesture towards the saucepans which indicated
+quite clearly that he was between campaigns--inclined to good living.
+
+"I am a rude fork," he jerked to Desiree over his shoulder in the
+dialect of the Cotes du Nord.
+
+"How long will you be here?" asked Desiree, who was eminently practical.
+A billet was a misfortune which Charles Darragon had hitherto succeeded
+in warding off. He had some small influence as an officer of the
+head-quarters' staff.
+
+Barlasch held up a reproving hand. The question, he seemed to think, was
+not quite delicate.
+
+"I pay my own," he said. "Give and take--that is my motto. When you have
+nothing to give... offer a smile."
+
+With a gesture he indicated the bundle of firewood which Desiree still
+absent-mindedly carried against her white dress. He turned and opened a
+cupboard low down on the floor at the left-hand side of the fireplace.
+He seemed to know by an instinct usually possessed by charwomen and
+other domesticated persons of experience where the firewood was kept.
+Lisa gave a little exclamation of surprise at his impertinence and his
+perspicacity. He took the firewood, unknotted his handkerchief, and
+threw his offering into the cupboard. Then he turned and perceived for
+the first time that Desiree had a bright ribbon at her waist and on her
+shoulders; that a thin chain of gold was round her throat and that there
+were flowers at her breast.
+
+"A fete?" he inquired curtly.
+
+"My marriage fete," she answered. "I was married half an hour ago."
+
+He looked at her beneath his grizzled brows. His face was only capable
+of producing one expression--a shaggy weather-beaten fierceness. But,
+like a dog which can express more than many human beings, by a hundred
+instinctive gestures he could, it seemed, dispense with words on
+occasion and get on quite as well without them. He clearly disapproved
+of Desiree's marriage, and drew her attention to the fact that she was
+no more than a schoolgirl with an inconsequent brain, and little limbs
+too slight to fight a successful battle in a world full of cruelty and
+danger.
+
+Then he made a gesture half of apology as if recognizing that it was no
+business of his, and turned away thoughtfully.
+
+"I had troubles of that sort myself," he explained, putting together the
+embers on the hearth with the point of a twisted, rusty bayonet,
+"but that was long ago. Well, I can drink your health all the same,
+mademoiselle."
+
+He turned to Lisa with a friendly nod and put out his tongue, in the
+manner of the people, to indicate that his lips were dry.
+
+Desiree had always been the housekeeper. It was to her that Lisa
+naturally turned in her extremity at the invasion of her kitchen by Papa
+Barlasch. And when that warrior had been supplied with beer it was with
+Desiree, in an agitated whisper in the great dark dining-room with its
+gloomy old pictures and heavy carving, that she took counsel as to where
+he should be quartered.
+
+The object of their solicitude himself interrupted their hurried
+consultation by opening the door and putting his shaggy head round the
+corner of it.
+
+"It is not worth while to consult long about it," he said. "There is a
+little room behind the kitchen, that opens into the yard. It is full of
+boxes. But we can move them--a little straw--and there!"
+
+With a gesture he described a condition of domestic peace and comfort
+which far exceeded his humble requirements.
+
+"The blackbeetles and I are old friends," he concluded cheerfully.
+
+"There are no blackbeetles in the house, monsieur," said Desiree,
+hesitating to accept his proposal.
+
+"Then I shall resign myself to my solitude," he answered. "It is quiet.
+I shall not hear the patron touching on his violin. It is that which
+occupies his leisure, is it not?"
+
+"Yes," answered Desiree, still considering the question.
+
+"I too am a musician," said Papa Barlasch, turning towards the kitchen
+again. "I played a drum at Marengo."
+
+And as he led the way to the little room in the yard at the back of the
+kitchen, he expressed by a shake of the head a fellow-feeling for the
+gentleman upstairs, whose acquaintance he had not yet made, who occupied
+his leisure by touching the violin.
+
+They stood together in the small apartment which Barlasch, with the
+promptitude of an experienced conqueror, had set apart for his own
+accommodation.
+
+"Those trunks," he observed casually, "were made in France"--a mental
+note which he happened to make aloud, as some do for better remembrance.
+"This solid girl and I will soon move them. And you, mademoiselle, go
+back to your wedding."
+
+"The good God be merciful to you," he added under his breath when
+Desiree had gone.
+
+She laughed as she mounted the stairs, a slim white figure amid the
+heavy woodwork long since blackened by time. The stairs made no sound
+beneath her light step. How many weary feet had climbed them since they
+were built! For the Dantzigers have been a people of sorrow, torn by
+wars, starved by siege, tossed from one conqueror to another from the
+beginning until now.
+
+Desiree excused herself for her absence and frankly gave the cause. She
+was disposed to make light of the incident. It was natural to her to be
+optimistic. Both she and Mathilde made a practice of withholding from
+their father's knowledge the smaller worries of daily life which sour so
+many women and make them whine on platforms to be given the larger woes.
+
+She was glad to note that her father did not attach much importance
+to the arrival of Papa Barlasch; though Mathilde found opportunity to
+convey her displeasure at the news by a movement of the eyebrows.
+
+Antoine Sebastian had applied himself seriously now to his role of host,
+so rarely played in the Frauengasse. He was courteous and quick to see
+a want or a possible desire of any one of his guests. It was part of his
+sense of hospitality to dismiss all personal matters, and especially a
+personal trouble, from public attention.
+
+"They will attend to him in the kitchen, no doubt," he said with that
+grand air which the dancing academy tried to imitate.
+
+Charles hardly noted what Desiree said. So sunny a nature as his might
+have been expected to make light of a minor trouble, more especially the
+minor trouble of another. He was unusually thoughtful. Some event of the
+morning had, it would appear, given him pause on his primrose path. He
+glanced more than once over his shoulder towards the window, which stood
+open. He seemed at times to listen.
+
+Suddenly he rose and went to the window. His action caused a brief
+silence, and all heard the clatter of a horse's feet and the quick
+rattle of a sword against spur and buckle.
+
+After a glance he came back into the room.
+
+"Excuse me," he said, with a bow towards Mathilde. "It is, I think, a
+messenger for me."
+
+And he hurried downstairs. He did not return at once, and soon the
+conversation became general again.
+
+"You," said the Grafin, touching Desiree's arm with her fan, "you, who
+are now his wife, must be dying to know what has called him away. Do not
+consider the 'convenances,' my child."
+
+Desiree, thus admonished, followed Charles. She had not been aware of
+this consuming curiosity until it was suggested to her.
+
+She found Charles standing at the open door. He thrust a letter into his
+pocket as she approached him, and turned towards her the face that
+she had seen for a moment when he drew her back at the corner of the
+Pfaffengasse to allow the Emperor's carriage to pass on its way. It
+was the white, half-stupefied face of one who has for an instant seen a
+vision of things not earthly.
+
+"I have been sent for by the... I am wanted at head-quarters," he said
+vaguely. "I shall not be long..."
+
+He took his shako, looked at her with an odd attempt to simulate
+cheerfulness, kissed her fingers and hurried out into the street.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III. FATE.
+
+
+     We pass; the path that each man trod
+     Is dim; or will be dim, with weeds.
+
+When Desiree turned towards the stairs, she met the guests descending.
+They were taking their leave as they came down, hurriedly, like persons
+conscious of having outstayed their welcome.
+
+Mathilde listened coldly to the conventional excuses. So few people
+recognize the simple fact that they need never apologize for going away.
+Sebastian stood at the head of the stairs bowing in his most Germanic
+manner. The urbane host, with a charm entirely French, who had dispensed
+a simple hospitality so easily and gracefully a few minutes earlier,
+seemed to have disappeared behind a pale and formal mask.
+
+Desiree was glad to see them go. There was a sense of uneasiness, a
+vague unrest in the air. There was something amiss. The wedding party
+had been a failure. All had gone well and merrily up to a certain
+point--at the corner of the Pfaffengasse, when the dusty travelling
+carriage passed across their path. From that moment there had been a
+change. A shadow seemed to have fallen across the sunny nature of the
+proceedings; for never had bride and bridegroom set forth together with
+lighter hearts than those carried by Charles and Desiree Darragon down
+the steps of the Marienkirche.
+
+During its progress across the whole width of Germany, the carriage
+had left unrest behind it. Men had travelled night and day to stand
+sleepless by the roadside and see it pass. Whole cities had been kept
+astir till morning by the mere rumour that its flying wheels would be
+heard in the streets before dawn. Hatred and adoration, fear and that
+dread tightening of the heart-strings which is caused by the shadow of
+the superhuman, had sprung into being at the mere sound of its approach.
+
+When therefore it passed across the Frauengasse, throwing its dust upon
+Desiree's wedding-dress, it was only fulfilling a mission. When it
+broke in upon the lives of these few persons seeking dimly for their
+happiness--as the heathen grope for an unknown God--and threw down
+carefully constructed plans, swept aside the strongest will and crushed
+the stoutest heart, it was only working out its destiny. The dust
+sprinkled on Desiree's hair had fallen on the faces of thousands
+of dead. The unrest that entered into the quiet little house on the
+left-hand side of the Frauengasse had made its way across a thousand
+thresholds, of Arab tent and imperial palace alike. The lives of
+millions were affected by it, the secret hopes of thousands were
+undermined by it. It disturbed the sleep of half the world, and made men
+old before their time.
+
+"More troops must have arrived," said Desiree, already busying herself
+to set the house in order, "since they have been forced to billet this
+man with us. And now they have sent for Charles, though he is really on
+leave of absence."
+
+She glanced at the clock.
+
+"I hope he will not be late. The chaise is to come at four o'clock.
+There is still time for me to help you."
+
+Mathilde made no answer. Their father stood near the window. He was
+looking out with thoughtful eyes. His face was drawn downwards by a
+hundred fine wrinkles. It was the face of one brooding over a sorrow
+or a vengeance. There was something in his whole being suggestive of a
+bygone prosperity. This was a lean man who had once been well-seeming.
+
+"No!" said Desiree gaily, "we were a dull company. We need not disguise
+it. It all came from that man crossing our path in his dusty carriage."
+
+"He is on his way to Russia," Sebastian said jerkily. "God spare me to
+see him return!"
+
+Desiree and Mathilde exchanged a glance of uneasiness. It seemed that
+their father was subject to certain humours which they had reason to
+dread. Desiree left her occupation and went to him, linking her arm in
+his and standing beside him.
+
+"Do not let us think of disagreeable things to-day," she said. "God will
+spare you much longer than that, you depressing old wedding-guest!"
+
+He patted her hand which rested on his arm and looked down at her with
+eyes softened by affection. But her fair hair, rather tumbled, which met
+his glance must have awakened some memory that made his face a marble
+mask again.
+
+"Yes," he said grimly, "but I am an old man and he is a young one. And I
+want to see him dead before I die."
+
+"I will not have you think such bloodthirsty thoughts on my
+wedding-day," said Desiree. "See, there is Charles returning already,
+and he has not been absent ten minutes. He has some one with him--who is
+it? Papa... Mathilde, look! Who is it coming back with Charles in such a
+hurry?"
+
+Mathilde, who was setting the room in order, glanced through the lace
+curtains.
+
+"I do not know," she answered indifferently. "Just an ordinary man."
+
+Desiree had turned away from the window as if to go downstairs and meet
+her husband. She paused and looked back again over her shoulder towards
+the street.
+
+"Is it?" she said rather oddly. "I do not know--I--"
+
+And she stood with the incompleted sentence on her lips waiting
+irresolutely for Charles to come upstairs.
+
+In a moment he burst into the room with all his usual exuberance and
+high spirit.
+
+"Picture to yourselves!" he cried, standing in the doorway with his arms
+extended before him. "I was hurrying to head-quarters when I ran into
+the embrace of my dear Louis--my cousin. I have told you a hundred times
+that he is brother and father and everything to me. I am so glad that he
+should come to-day of all days."
+
+He turned towards the stairs with a gesture of welcome, still with
+his two arms outheld, as if inviting the man, who came rather slowly
+upstairs, to come to his embrace and to the embrace of those who were
+now his relations.
+
+"There was a little suspicion of sadness--I do not know what it was--at
+the table; but now it is all gone. All is well now that this unexpected
+guest has come. This dear Louis."
+
+He went to the landing as he spoke, and returned bringing by the arm a
+man taller than himself and darker, with a still brown face and steady
+eyes set close together. He had a lean look of good breeding.
+
+"This dear Louis!" repeated Charles. "My only relative in all the world.
+My cousin, Louis d'Arragon. But he, par exemple, spells his name in two
+words."
+
+The man bowed gravely--a comprehensive bow; but he looked at Desiree.
+
+"This is my father-in-law," continued Charles breathlessly. "Monsieur
+Antoine Sebastian, and Desiree and Mathilde--my wife, my dear
+Louis--your cousin, Desiree."
+
+He had turned again to Louis and shook him by the shoulders in the
+fulness of his joy. He had not distinguished between Mathilde and
+Desiree, and it was towards Mathilde that D'Arragon looked with a polite
+and rather formal repetition of his bow.
+
+"It is I... I am Desiree," said the younger sister, coming forward with
+a slow gesture of shyness.
+
+D'Arragon took her hand.
+
+"I have been happy," he said, "in the moment of my arrival."
+
+Then he turned to Mathilde and bowed over the hand she held out to him.
+Sebastian had come forward with a sudden return of his gracious and
+rather old-world manner. He did not offer to shake hands, but bowed.
+
+"A son of Louis d'Arragon who was fortunate enough to escape to
+England?" he inquired with a courteous gesture.
+
+"The only son," replied the new-comer.
+
+"I am honoured to make the acquaintance of Monsieur le Marquis," said
+Antoine Sebastian slowly.
+
+"Oh, you must not call me that," replied D'Arragon with a short laugh.
+"I am an English sailor--that is all."
+
+"And now, my dear Louis, I leave you," broke in Charles, who had rather
+impatiently awaited the end of these formalities. "A brief half-hour and
+I am with you again. You will stay here till I return."
+
+He turned, nodded gaily to Desiree and ran downstairs.
+
+Through the open windows they heard his quick, light footfall as he
+hurried up the Frauengasse. Something made them silent, listening to it.
+
+It was not difficult to see that D'Arragon was a sailor. Not only had he
+the brown face of those who live in the open, but he had the attentive
+air of one whose waking moments are a watch.
+
+"You look at one as if one were the horizon," Desiree said to him
+long afterwards. But it was at this moment in the drawing-room in the
+Frauengasse that the comparison formed itself in her mind.
+
+His face was rather narrow, with a square chin and straight lips. He was
+not quick in speech like Charles, but seemed to think before he spoke,
+with the result that he often appeared to be about to say something, and
+was interrupted before the words had been uttered.
+
+"Unless my memory is a bad one, your mother was an Englishwoman,
+monsieur," said Sebastian, "which would account for your being in the
+English service."
+
+"Not entirely," answered d'Arragon, "though my mother was indeed English
+and died--in a French prison. But it was from a sense of gratitude that
+my father placed me in the English service--and I have never regretted
+it, monsieur."
+
+"Your father received kindnesses at English hands, after his escape,
+like many others."
+
+"Yes, and he was too old to repay them by doing the country any service
+himself. He would have done it if he could--"
+
+D'Arragon paused, looking steadily at the tall old man who listened to
+him with averted eyes.
+
+"My father was one of those," he said at length, "who did not think that
+in fighting for Bonaparte one was necessarily fighting for France."
+
+Sebastian held up a warning hand.
+
+"In England--" he corrected, "in England one may think such things. But
+not in France, and still less in Dantzig."
+
+"If one is an Englishman," replied D'Arragon with a smile, "one may
+think them where one likes, and say them when one is disposed. It is one
+of the privileges of the nation, monsieur."
+
+He made the statement lightly, seeing the humour of it with a
+cosmopolitan understanding, without any suggestion of the boastfulness
+of youth. Desiree noticed that his hair was turning grey at the temples.
+
+"I did not know," he said, turning to her, "that Charles was in Dantzig,
+much less that he was celebrating so happy an occasion. We ran against
+each other by accident in the street. It was a lucky accident that
+allowed me to make your acquaintance so soon after you have become his
+wife."
+
+"It scarcely seems possible that it should be an accident," said
+Desiree. "It must have been the work of fate--if fate has time to think
+of such an insignificant person as myself and so small an event as my
+marriage in these days."
+
+"Fate," put in Mathilde in her composed voice and manner, "has come to
+Dantzig to-day."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+"Yes. You are the second unexpected arrival this afternoon."
+
+D'Arragon turned and looked at Mathilde. His manner, always grave and
+attentive, was that of a reader who has found an interesting book on a
+dusty shelf.
+
+"Has the Emperor come?" he asked.
+
+Mathilde nodded.
+
+"I thought I saw something in Charles's face," he said reflectively,
+looking back through the open door towards the stairs where Charles had
+nodded farewell to them. "So the Emperor is here, in Dantzig?"
+
+He turned towards Sebastian, who stood with a stony face.
+
+"Which means war," he said.
+
+"It always means war," replied Sebastian in a tired voice. "Is he again
+going to prove himself stronger than any?"
+
+"Some day he will make a mistake," said D'Arragon cheerfully. "And then
+will come the day of reckoning."
+
+"Ah!" said Sebastian, with a shake of the head that seemed to indicate
+an account so one-sided that none could ever liquidate it. "You are
+young, monsieur. You are full of hope."
+
+"I am not young--I am thirty-one--but I am, as you say, full of hope. I
+look to that day, Monsieur Sebastian."
+
+"And in the mean time?" suggested the man who seemed but a shadow of
+someone standing apart and far away from the affairs of daily life.
+
+"In the mean time one must play one's part," returned D'Arragon, with
+his almost inaudible laugh, "whatever it may be."
+
+There was no foreboding in his voice; no second meaning in the words. He
+was open and simple and practical, like the life he led.
+
+"Then you have a part to play, too," said Desiree, thinking of Charles,
+who had been called away at such an inopportune moment, and had gone
+without complaint. "It is the penalty we pay for living in one of the
+less dull periods of history. He touches your life too."
+
+"He touches every one's life, mademoiselle. That is what makes him so
+great a man. Yes. I have a little part to play. I am like one of the
+unseen supernumeraries who has to see that a door is open to allow the
+great actors to make an effective entree. I am lent to Russia for the
+war that is coming. It is a little part. I have to keep open one small
+portion of the line of communication between England and St. Petersburg,
+so that news may pass to and fro."
+
+He glanced towards Mathilde as he spoke. She was listening with an
+odd eagerness which he noted, as he noted everything, methodically and
+surely. He remembered it afterwards.
+
+"That will not be easy, with Denmark friendly to France," said
+Sebastian, "and every Prussian port closed to you."
+
+"But Sweden will help. She is not friendly to France."
+
+Sebastian laughed, and made a gesture with his white and elegant hand,
+of contempt and ridicule.
+
+"And, bon Dieu! what a friendship it is," he exclaimed, "that is based
+on the fear of being taken for an enemy."
+
+"It is a friendship that waits its time, monsieur," said D'Arragon
+taking up his hat.
+
+"Then you have a ship, monsieur, here in the Baltic?" asked Mathilde
+with more haste than was characteristic of her usual utterance.
+
+"A very small one, mademoiselle," he answered. "So small that I could
+turn her round here in the Frauengasse."
+
+"But she is fast?"
+
+"The fastest in the Baltic, mademoiselle," he answered. "And that is why
+I must take my leave--with the news you have told me."
+
+He shook hands as he spoke, and bowed to Sebastian, whose generation was
+content with the more formal salutation. Desiree went to the door, and
+led the way downstairs.
+
+"We have but one servant," she said, "who is busy."
+
+On the doorstep he paused for a moment. And Desiree seemed to expect him
+to do so.
+
+"Charles and I have always been like brothers--you will remember that
+always, will you not?"
+
+"Yes," she answered with her gay nod. "I will remember."
+
+"Then good-bye, mademoiselle."
+
+"Madame," she corrected lightly.
+
+"Madame, my cousin," he said, and departed smiling.
+
+Desiree went slowly upstairs again.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV. THE CLOUDED MOON.
+
+
+
+  Quand on se mefie on se trompe, quand on ne se mefie pas, on est
+trompe.
+
+Charles Darragon had come to Dantzig a year earlier. He was a
+lieutenant in an infantry regiment, and he was twenty-five. Many of his
+contemporaries were colonels in these days of quick promotion, when men
+lived at such a rate that few of them lived long. But Charles was too
+easy-going to envy any man.
+
+When he arrived he knew no one in Dantzig, had few friends in the army
+of occupation. In six months he possessed acquaintances in every street,
+and was on terms of easy familiarity with all his fellow-officers.
+
+"If the army of occupation had more officers like young Darragon," a
+town councillor had grimly said to Rapp, "the Dantzigers would soon be
+resigned to your presence."
+
+It seemed that Charles had the gift of popularity. He was open and
+hearty, hail-fellow-well-met with the new-comers, who were numerous
+enough at this time, quick to understand the quiet men, ready to make
+merry with the gay. Regarding himself, he was quite open and frank.
+
+"I am a poor devil of a lieutenant," he said, "that is all."
+
+Reserve is fatal to popularity, yet friendship cannot exist without
+it. Charles had, it seemed, nothing to hide, and was indifferent to the
+secrets of others. It is such people who receive many confidences.
+
+"But it must go no farther..." a hundred men had said to him.
+
+"My friend, by to-morrow I shall have forgotten all about it," he
+invariably replied, which men remembered afterwards and were glad.
+
+A certain sort of friendship seemed to exist between Charles Darragon
+and Colonel de Casimir--not without patronage on one side and a slightly
+constraining sense of obligation on the other. It was de Casimir who
+had introduced Charles to Mathilde Sebastian at a formal reception at
+General Rapp's. Charles, of course, fell in love with Mathilde, and out
+again after half-an-hour's conversation. There was something cold and
+calculating about Mathilde which held him at arm's length with as much
+efficacy as the strictest duenna. Indeed, there are some maidens who
+require no better chaperon for their hearts than their own heads.
+
+A few days after this introduction Charles met Mathilde and Desiree in
+the Langgasse, and he fell in love with Desiree. He went about for
+a whole week seeking opportunity to tell her without delay what had
+happened to him. The opportunity presented itself before long; for
+one morning he saw her walking quickly towards the Kuh-brucke with her
+skates swinging from her wrist. It was a sunny, still, winter morning,
+such as temperate countries never know. Desiree's eyes were bright
+with youth and happiness. The cold air had slightly emphasized the rosy
+colour of her cheeks.
+
+Charles caught his breath at the sight of her, though she did not happen
+to perceive him. He called a sleigh and drove to the barracks for his
+own skates. Then to the Kuh-brucke, where a reach of the Mottlau was
+cleared and kept in order for skating. He overpaid the sleigh-driver and
+laughed aloud at the man's boorish surprise. There was no one so happy
+as Charles Darragon in all the world. He was going to tell Desiree that
+he loved her.
+
+At first Desiree was surprised, as was only natural. For she had
+not thought again of the pleasant young officer introduced to her by
+Mathilde. They had not even commented on him after he had made his gay
+bow and gone.
+
+She had of course thought of these things in the abstract when her
+busy mind had nothing more material and immediate to consider. She had
+probably arranged how some abstract person should some day tell her of
+his love and how she should make reply. But she had never imagined the
+incident as it actually happened. She had never pictured a youth in a
+gay uniform looking down at her with ardent eyes as he skated by her
+side through the crisp still air, while the ice sang a high clear song
+beneath their feet in accompaniment to his hurried laughing words of
+protestation. He seemed to touch life lightly and to anticipate nothing
+but happiness. In truth, it was difficult to be tragic on such a
+morning.
+
+These were the heedless days of the beginning of the century, when men
+not only threw away their lives, but played ducks-and-drakes with their
+chances of happiness in a manner quite incomprehensible to the careful
+method of human thought to-day. Charles Darragon lived only in the
+present moment. He was in love with her. Desiree must marry him.
+
+It was quite different from what she had anticipated. She had looked
+forward to such a moment with a secret misgiving. The abstract person
+of her thoughts had always inspired her with a painful shyness and an
+indefinite, breathless fear. But the lover who was here now in the flesh
+by her side inspired none of these feelings. On the contrary, she felt
+easy and natural and quite at home with him. There was nothing alarming
+about his flushed face and laughing eyes. She was not at all afraid of
+him. She even felt in some vague way older than he, though he had just
+told her that he was twenty-five, and four years her senior.
+
+She accepted the violets which he had hurriedly bought for her as he
+came through the Langenmarkt, but she would not say that she loved him,
+because she did not. She was in most ways quite a matter-of-fact person,
+and she was of an honest mind. She said she would think about it. She
+did not love him now--she knew that. She could not say that she would
+not learn to love him some day, but there seemed no likelihood of it at
+present. Then he would shoot himself! He would certainly shoot himself
+unless she learnt to love him! And she asked "When?" and they both
+laughed. They changed the subject, but after a time they came back to
+it; which is the worst of love--one always comes back to it.
+
+Then suddenly he began to assume an air of proprietorship, and burst
+into a hundred explanations of what fears he felt for her; for her
+happiness and welfare. Her father was absent-minded and heedless. He
+was not a fit guardian for her. Was she not the prettiest girl in all
+Dantzig--in all the world? Her sister was not fond enough of her to care
+for her properly. He announced his intention of seeing her father the
+next day. Everything should be done in order. Not a word must be hinted
+by the most watchful neighbour against the perfect propriety of their
+betrothal.
+
+Desiree laughed and said that he was progressing rather rapidly. She had
+only her instinct to guide her through these troubled waters; which was
+much better than experience. Experience in a woman is tantamount to a
+previous conviction against a prisoner.
+
+Charles was grave, however; a rare tribute. He was in love for the
+first time, which often makes men quite honest for a brief period--even
+unselfish. Of course, some men are honest and unselfish all their lives;
+which perhaps means that they remain in love--for the first time--all
+their lives. They are rare, of course. But the sort of woman with whom
+it is possible to remain in love all through a lifetime is rarer.
+
+So Charles waylaid Antoine Sebastian the next day as he went out of the
+Frauenthor for his walk in the morning sun by the side of the frozen
+Mottlau. He was better received than he had any reason to expect.
+
+"I am only a lieutenant," he said, "but in these days, monsieur, you
+know--there are possibilities."
+
+He laughed gaily as he waved his gloves in the direction of Russia,
+across the river. But Sebastian's face clouded, and Charles, who was
+quick and sympathetic, abandoned that point in his argument almost
+before the words were out of his lips.
+
+"I have a little money," he said, "in addition to my pay. I assure you,
+monsieur, I am not of mean birth."
+
+"You are an orphan?" said Sebastian curtly.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Of the... Terror?"
+
+"Yes; I--well, one does not make much of one's parentage in these rough
+times--monsieur."
+
+"Your father's name was Charles--like your own?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"The second son?"
+
+"Yes, monsieur. Did you know him?"
+
+"One remembers a name here and there," answered Sebastian, in his stiff
+manner, looking straight in front of him.
+
+"There was a tone in your voice--," began Charles, and, again perceiving
+that he was on a false scent, broke off abruptly. "If love can make
+mademoiselle happy--," he said; and a gesture of his right hand seemed
+to indicate that his passion was beyond the measure of words.
+
+So Charles Darragon was permitted to pay his addresses to Desiree in the
+somewhat formal manner of a day which, upon careful consideration,
+will be found to have been no more foolish than the present. He made no
+inquiries respecting Desiree's parentage. It was Desiree he wanted, and
+that was all. They understood the arts of love and war in the great days
+of the Empire.
+
+The rest was easy enough, and the gods were kind. Charles had even
+succeeded in getting a month's leave of absence. They were to spend
+their honeymoon at Zoppot, a little fishing-village hidden in the pines
+by the Baltic shore, only eight miles from Dantzig, where the Vistula
+loses itself at last in the salt water.
+
+All these arrangements had been made, as Desiree had prepared her
+trousseau, with a zest and gaiety which all were invited to enjoy. It is
+said that love is an egoist. Charles and Desiree had no desire to keep
+their happiness to themselves, but wore it, as it were, upon their
+sleeves.
+
+The attitude of the Frauengasse towards Desiree's wedding was only
+characteristic of the period. Every house in Dantzig looked askance upon
+its neighbour at this time. Each roof covered a number of contending
+interests.
+
+Some were for the French, and some for the conqueror's unwilling ally,
+William of Prussia. The names above the shops were German and Polish.
+There are to-day Scotch names also, here as elsewhere on the Baltic
+shores. When the serfs were liberated it was necessary to find surnames
+for these free men--these Pauls-the-son-of-Paul; and the nobles of
+Esthonia and Lithuania were reading Sir Walter Scott at the time.
+
+The burghers of Dantzig ("They must be made to pay, these rich
+Dantzigers," wrote Napoleon to Rapp) trembled for their wealth, and
+stood aghast by their empty counting-houses; for their gods had been
+cast down; commerce was at a standstill. There were many, therefore,
+who hated the French, and cherished a secret love of those bluff British
+captains--so like themselves in build, and thought, and slowness of
+speech--who would thrash their wooden brigs through the shallow seas,
+despite decrees and threats and sloops-of-war, so long as they could lay
+them alongside the granaries of the Vistula. Lately the very tolls had
+been collected by a French customs service, and the wholesale smuggling,
+to which even Governor Rapp--that long-headed Alsatian--had closed his
+eyes, was at an end.
+
+Again, the Poles who looked on Dantzig as the seaport of that great
+kingdom of Eastern Europe which was and is no more, had been assured
+that France would set up again the throne of the Jagellons and the
+Sobieskis. There was a Poniatowski high in the Emperor's service and
+esteem. The Poles were for France.
+
+The Jew, hurrying along close by the wall--always in the shadow--traded
+with all and trusted none. Who could tell what thoughts were hidden
+beneath the ragged fur cap--what revenge awaited its consummation in the
+heart crushed by oppression and contempt?
+
+Besides these civilians there were many who had a military air within
+their civil garb. For the pendulum of war had swung right across from
+Cadiz to Dantzig, and swept northwards in its wake the merchants of
+death, the men who live by feeding soldiers and rifling the dead.
+
+All these were in the streets, rubbing shoulders with the gay epaulettes
+of the Saxons, the Badeners, the Wurtembergers, the Westphalians, and
+the Hessians, who had been poured into Dantzig by Napoleon during the
+months when he had continued to exchange courteous and affectionate
+letters with Alexander of Russia. For more than a year the broad-faced
+Bavarians (who have borne the brunt of every war in Central Europe) had
+been peaceably quartered in the town. Half a dozen different tongues
+were daily heard in this city of the plain, and no man knew who might
+be his friend and who his enemy. For some who were allies to-day were
+commanded by their kings to slay each other to-morrow.
+
+In the wine-cellars and the humbler beer-shops, in the great houses of
+the councillors, and behind the snowy lace curtains of the Frauengasse
+and the Portchaisengasse a thousand slow Northerners spoke of these
+things and kept them in their hearts. A hundred secret societies passed
+from mouth to mouth instruction, warning, encouragement. Germany has
+always been the home of the secret society. Northern Europe gave birth
+to those countless associations which have proved stronger than
+kings and surer than a throne. The Hanseatic League, the first of the
+commercial unions which were destined to build up the greatest empire of
+the world, lived longest in Dantzig.
+
+The Tugendbund, men whispered, was not dead but sleeping. Napoleon, who
+had crushed it once, was watching for its revival; had a whole army of
+his matchless secret police ready for it. And the Tugendbund had had its
+centre in Dantzig.
+
+Perhaps, in the Rathskeller itself--one of the largest wine stores in
+the world, where tables and chairs are set beneath the arches of the
+Exchange, a vast cave under the streets--perhaps here the Tugendbund
+still encouraged men to be virtuous and self-denying for no other or
+higher purpose than the overthrow of the Scourge of Europe. Here the
+richer citizens have met from time immemorial to drink with solemnity
+and a decent leisure the wines sent hither in their own ships from the
+Rhine, from Greece and the Crimea, from Bordeaux and Burgundy, from
+the Champagne and Tokay. This is not only the Rathskeller, but the real
+Rathhaus, where the Dantzigers have taken counsel over their afternoon
+wine from generation to generation, whence have been issued to all the
+world those decrees of probity and a commercial uprightness between
+buyer and seller, debtor and creditor, master and man, which reached to
+every corner of the commercial world. And now it was whispered that
+the latter-day Dantzigers--the sons of those who formed the Hanseatic
+League: mostly fat men with large faces and shrewd, calculating eyes;
+high foreheads; good solid men, who knew the world, and how to make
+their way in it; withal, good judges of a wine and great drinkers, like
+that William the Silent, who braved and met and conquered the European
+scourge of mediaeval times--it was whispered that these were reviving
+the Tugendbund.
+
+Amid such contending interests, and in a free city so near to several
+frontiers, men came and went without attracting undesired attention.
+Each party suspected a new-comer of belonging to the other.
+
+"He scrapes a fiddle," Koch had explained to the inquiring fishwife. And
+perhaps he knew no more than this of Antoine Sebastian. Sebastian was
+poor. All the Frauengasse knew that. But the Frauengasse itself was
+poor, and no man in Dantzig was so foolish at this time as to admit that
+he had possessions.
+
+This was, moreover, not the day of display or snobbery. The king of
+snobs, Louis XVI., had died to some purpose, for a wave of manliness had
+swept across human thought at the beginning of the century. The world
+has rarely been the poorer for the demise of a Bourbon.
+
+The Frauengasse knew that Antoine Sebastian played the fiddle to gain
+his daily bread, while his two daughters taught dancing for that same
+safest and most satisfactory of all motives.
+
+"But he holds his head so high!" once observed the stout and
+matter-of-fact daughter of a Councillor. "Why has he that grand manner?"
+
+"Because he is a dancing-master," replied Desiree with a grave
+assurance. "He does it so that you may copy him. Chin up. Oh! how fat
+you are."
+
+Desiree herself was slim enough and as yet only half grown. She did not
+dance so well as Mathilde, who moved through a quadrille with the air of
+a duchess, and threw into a polonaise or mazurka a quiet grace which was
+the envy and despair of her pupils. Mathilde was patient with the slow
+and heavy of foot, while Desiree told them bluntly that they were fat.
+Nevertheless, they were afraid of Mathilde, and only laughed at Desiree
+when she rushed angrily at them, and, seizing them by the arms, danced
+them round the room with the energy of despair.
+
+Sebastian, who had an oddly judicial air, such as men acquire who are
+in authority, held the balance evenly between the sisters, and
+smiled apologetically over his fiddle towards the victim of Desiree's
+impetuosity.
+
+"Yes," he would reply to watching mothers, who tried to lead him to say
+that their daughter was the best dancer in the school: "Yes, Mathilde
+puts it into their heads, and Desiree shakes it down to their feet."
+
+In all matters of the household Desiree played a similar part. She was
+up early and still astir after nine o'clock at night, when the other
+houses in the Frauengasse were quiet, if there were work to do.
+
+"It is because she has no method," said Mathilde, who had herself a
+well-ordered mind, and that quickness which never needs to hurry.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V. THE WEISSEN ROSS'L.
+
+
+
+     The moth will singe her wings, and singed return,
+     Her love of light quenching her fear of pain.
+
+There are quite a number of people who get through life without
+realizing their own insignificance. Ninety-nine out of a hundred persons
+signify nothing, and the hundredth is usually so absorbed in the message
+which he has been sent into the world to deliver that he loses sight of
+the messenger altogether.
+
+By a merciful dispensation of Providence we are permitted to bustle
+about in our immediate little circle like the ant, running hither and
+thither with all the sublime conceit of that insect. We pick up, as he
+does, a burden which on close inspection will be found to be absolutely
+valueless, something that somebody else has thrown away. We hoist it
+over obstructions while there is usually a short way round; we fret and
+sweat and fume. Then we drop the burden and rush off at a tangent to
+pick up another. We write letters to our friends explaining to them what
+we are about. We even indite diaries to be read by goodness knows whom,
+explaining to ourselves what we have been doing. Sometimes we find
+something that really looks valuable, and rush to our particular
+ant-heap with it while our neighbours pause and watch us. But they
+really do not care; and if the rumour of our discovery reach so far as
+the next ant-heap, the bustlers there are almost indifferent, though a
+few may feel a passing pang of jealousy. They may perhaps remember our
+name, and will soon forget what we discovered--which is Fame. While we
+are falling over each other to attain this, and dying to tell each other
+what it feels like when we have it, or think we have it, let us pause
+for a moment and think of an ant--who kept a diary.
+
+Desiree did not keep a diary. Her life was too busy for ink. She had had
+to work for her daily bread, which is better than riches. Her life had
+been full of occupation from morning till night, and God had given her
+sleep from night till morning. It is better to work for others than to
+think for them. Some day the world will learn to have a greater respect
+for the workers than for the thinkers, who are idle, wordy persons,
+frequently thinking wrong.
+
+Desiree remembered the siege and the occupation of Dantzig by French
+troops. She was at school in the Jopengasse when the Treaty of
+Tilsit--that peace which was nothing but a pause--was concluded. She
+had seen Luisa of Prussia, the good Queen who baffled Napoleon. Her
+childhood had passed away in the roar of siege-guns. Her girlhood, in
+the Frauengasse, had been marked by the various woes of Prussia, by each
+successive step in the development of Napoleon's ambition. There were
+no bogey-men in the night-nursery at the beginning of the century. One
+Aaron's rod of a bogey had swallowed all the rest, and children buried
+their sobs in the pillow for fear of Napoleon. There were no ghosts in
+the dark corners of the stairs when Desiree, candle in hand, went to bed
+at eight o'clock, half an hour before Mathilde. The shadows on the wall
+were the shadows of soldiers--the wind roaring in the chimney was
+like the sound of distant cannon. When the timid glanced over their
+shoulders, the apparition they looked for was that of a little man in a
+cocked hat and a long grey coat.
+
+This was not an age in which the individual life was highly valued. Men
+were great to-day and gone to-morrow. Women were of small account. It
+was the day of deeds and not of words.
+
+Desiree had never been oppressed by a sense of her own importance, which
+oppression leaves its mark on many a woman's face in these times. She
+had not, it would seem, expected much from life; and when much was
+given to her she received it without misgivings. She was young and
+light-hearted, and she lived in a reckless age.
+
+She was not surprised when Charles failed to return. The chaise that was
+to carry them to Zoppot stood in the Frauengasse on the shady side of
+the street in the heat of the afternoon for more than an hour. Then she
+ran out and told the driver to go back to his stables.
+
+"One cannot go for a honeymoon alone," she explained airily to her
+father, who was peevish and restless, standing by the window with the
+air of one who expects without knowing what to expect. "It is, at all
+events, quite clear that there is nothing for me to do but wait."
+
+She made light of it, and laughed at her father's grave face. Mathilde
+said nothing, but her silence seemed to suggest that this was no more
+than she had foretold, or at all events foreseen. She was too proud or
+too generous to put her thoughts into words. For pride and generosity
+are often confounded. There are many who give because they are too proud
+to withhold.
+
+Desiree got her needlework and sat by the open window awaiting Charles.
+She could hear the continuous clatter of carts on the quay, and the
+voices of the men working in the great granaries across the river.
+
+The whole city seemed to be astir, and men hurried to and fro in even
+the quiet Frauengasse, while the clatter of cavalry and the heavy rumble
+of gun carriages could be heard over the roofs from the direction of the
+Langenmarkt. There was a sense of hurry in the dusty air. The Emperor
+had arrived, and the magic of his name lifted men out of themselves. It
+seemed nothing extraordinary to Desiree that her life should be taken up
+by this whirlwind, and carried on she knew not whither.
+
+At dinner-time Charles had not returned. Antoine Sebastian dined at
+half-past four, in the manner of Northern Europe; but his daughters
+provided his table with the lighter meats of France, which he preferred
+to the German cuisine. Sebastian's dinner was an event in the day,
+though he ate sparingly enough, and found a mental rather than a
+physical pleasure in the ceremonious sequence of courses.
+
+It was now too late to think of going to Zoppot. After dinner Mathilde
+and Desiree prepared the rooms which had been destined for the
+occupation of the married pair after the honeymoon.
+
+"We shall have to omit Zoppot, that is all," said Desiree cheerfully,
+and fell to unpacking the bridal clothes which had been so merrily laid
+in the trunks.
+
+At half-past six a soldier brought a hurried note from Charles.
+
+"I cannot return to-night, as I am about to start for Konigsberg," he
+wrote. "It is a commission which I could not refuse if I wished to. You,
+I know, would have me go and do my duty."
+
+There was more which Desiree did not read aloud. Charles had always
+found it easy enough to tell Desiree how much he loved her, and was
+gaily indifferent to the ears of others. But she seemed to be restrained
+by some feeling which had found birth in her heart during her wedding
+day. She said nothing of Charles's protestations of love.
+
+"Decidedly," she said, folding the letter, and placing it in her
+work-basket, "Fate is interfering in our affairs to-day."
+
+She turned to her work again without further complaint, almost with
+a sense of relief. Mathilde, whose steady grey eyes saw everything,
+penetrating every thought, glanced at her with a suddenly aroused
+interest. Desiree herself was half surprised at the philosophy with
+which she met this fresh misfortune.
+
+Antoine Sebastian had never acquired the habit of drinking tea in the
+evening, which had found favour in these northern countries bordering
+on Russia. Instead, he usually went out at this time to one of the many
+wine-rooms or Bier Halles in the town to drink a slow and meditative
+glass of beer with such friends as he had made in Dantzig. For he was a
+lonely man, whose face was quite familiar to many who looked for a bow
+or a friendly salutation in vain.
+
+If he went to the Rathskeller it was on the invitation of a friend; for
+he could not afford to pay the vintage of that cellar, though he drank
+the wine with the slow mouthing of a connoisseur when he had it.
+
+More often than not he took a walk first, passing out of the Frauenthor
+on to the quay, where he turned to left or right and made his way back
+through one or other of the town gates, by devious narrow streets
+to that which is still called the Portchaisengasse though chairs and
+carriers have long ceased to pass along it. Here, on the northern
+side of the street is an old inn, "Zum weissen Ross'l," with a broken,
+ill-carved head of a white horse above the door. Across the face of the
+house is written, in old German letters, an invitation:
+
+                    Gruss Gott.  Tritt ein!
+                    Bring Gluck herein.
+
+But few seemed to accept it. Even a hundred years ago the White Horse
+was behind the times, and fashion sought the wider streets.
+
+Antoine Sebastian was perhaps ashamed of frequenting so humble a house
+of entertainment, where for a groschen he could have a glass of beer.
+He seemed to make his way through the narrower streets for some purpose,
+changing his route from day to day, and hurrying across the wider
+thoroughfares with the air of one desirous to attract but little
+attention. He was not alone in the quiet streets, for there were many
+in Dantzig at this time who from wealth had fallen to want. Many
+counting-houses once noisy with prosperity were now closed and silent.
+For five years the prosperous Dantzig had lain crushed beneath the iron
+heel of the conqueror.
+
+It would seem that Sebastian had only waited for the explanation of
+Charles's most ill-timed absence to carry out his usual programme. The
+clock in the tower of the Rathhaus had barely struck seven when he took
+his hat and cloak from the peg near the dining-room door. He was so
+absorbed that he did not perceive Papa Barlasch seated just within the
+open door of the kitchen. But Barlasch saw him, and scratched his head
+at the sight.
+
+The northern evenings are chill even in June, and Sebastian fumbled with
+his cloak. It would appear that he was little used to helping himself in
+such matters. Barlasch came out of the kitchen when Sebastian's back
+was turned and helped him to put the flowing cloak straight upon his
+shoulders.
+
+"Thank you, Lisa, thank you," said Sebastian in German, without looking
+round. By accident Barlasch had performed one of Lisa's duties, and
+the master of the house was too deeply engaged in thought to notice
+any difference in the handling or to perceive the smell of snuff that
+heralded the approach of Papa Barlasch. Sebastian took his hat and went
+out closing the door behind him, and leaving Barlasch, who had followed
+him to the door, standing rather stupidly on the mat.
+
+"Absent-minded--the citizen," muttered Barlasch, returning to the
+kitchen, where he resumed his seat on a chair by the open door. He
+scratched his head and appeared to lapse into thought. But his brain was
+slow as were his movements. He had been drinking to the health of the
+bride. He thumped himself on the brow with his closed fist.
+
+"Sacred-name-of-a-thunderstorm," he said. "Where have I seen that face
+before?"
+
+Sebastian went out by the Frauenthor to the quay. Although it was dusk,
+the granaries were still at work. The river was full of craft and the
+roadway choked by rows and rows of carts, all of one pattern, too big
+and too heavy for roads that are laid across a marsh.
+
+He turned to the right, but found his way blocked at the corner of the
+Langenmarkt, where the road narrows to pass under the Grunes Thor. Here
+the idlers of the evening hour were collected in a crowd, peering over
+each other's shoulders towards the roadway and the bridge. Sebastian
+was a tall man, and had no need to stand on tip-toe in order to see the
+straight rows of bayonets swinging past, and the line of shakos rising
+and falling in unison with the beat of a thousand feet on the hollow
+woodwork of the drawbridge.
+
+The troops had been passing out of the city all the afternoon on the
+road to Elbing and Konigsberg.
+
+"It is the same," said a man standing near to Sebastian, "at the Hohes
+Thor, where they are marching out by the road leading to Konigsberg by
+way of Dessau."
+
+"It is farther than Konigsberg that they are going," was the significant
+answer of a white-haired veteran who had probably been at Eylau, for he
+had a crushed look.
+
+"But war is not declared," said the first speaker.
+
+"Does that matter?"
+
+And both turned towards Sebastian with the challenging air that invites
+opinion or calls for admiration of uncommon shrewdness. He was better
+clad than they. He must know more than they did. But Sebastian looked
+over their heads and did not seem to have heard their conversation.
+
+He turned back and went another way, by side streets and the little
+narrow alleys that nearly always encircle a cathedral, and are still
+to be found on all sides of the Marienkirche. At last he came to the
+Portchaisengasse, which was quiet enough in the twilight, though he
+could hear the tramp of soldiers along the Langgasse and the rumble of
+the guns.
+
+There were only two lamps in the Portchaisengasse, swinging on
+wrought-iron gibbets at each end of the street. These were not yet
+alight, though the day was fading fast, and the western light could
+scarcely find its way between the high gables which hung over the road
+and seemed to lean confidentially towards each other.
+
+Sebastian was going towards the door of the Weissen Ross'l when some
+one came out of the hostelry, as if he had been awaiting him within the
+porch.
+
+The new-comer, who was a fat man with baggy cheeks and odd, light blue
+eyes--the eyes of an enthusiast, one would say--passed Sebastian, making
+a little gesture which at once recommended silence, and bade him turn
+and follow. At the entrance to a little alley leading down towards
+the Marienkirche the fat man awaited Sebastian, whose pace had not
+quickened, nor had his walk lost any of its dignity.
+
+"Not there to-night," said the man, holding up a thick forefinger and
+shaking it sideways.
+
+"Then where?"
+
+"Nowhere to-night," was the answer. "He has come--you know that?"
+
+"Yes," answered Sebastian slowly, "for I saw him."
+
+"He is at supper now with Rapp and the others. The town is full of his
+people. His spies are everywhere. There are two in the Weissen Ross'l
+who pretend to be Bavarians. See! There is another--just there."
+
+He pointed the thick forefinger down the Portchaisengasse where it
+widens to meet the Langgasse, where the last remains of daylight,
+reflected to and fro between the houses, found freer play than in the
+narrow alley where they stood.
+
+Sebastian looked in the direction indicated. An officer was walking away
+from them. A quick observer would have noticed that his spurs made no
+noise, and that he carried his sword instead of allowing it to clatter
+after him. It was not clear whence he had come. It must have been from a
+doorway nearly opposite to the Weissen Ross'l.
+
+"I know that man," said Sebastian.
+
+"So do I," was the reply. "It is Colonel de Casimir."
+
+With a little nod the fat man went out again into the Portchaisengasse
+in the direction of the inn, as if he were keeping watch there.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI. THE SHOEMAKER OF KONIGSBERG.
+
+
+
+     Chacun ne comprend que ce qu'il trouve en soi.
+
+Nearly two years had passed since the death of Queen Luisa of Prussia.
+And she from her grave yet spake to her people--as sixty years later she
+was destined to speak to another King of Prussia, who said a prayer by
+her tomb before departing on a journey that was to end in Fontainebleau
+with an imperial crown and the reckoning for all time of the seven years
+of woe that followed Tilsit and killed a queen.
+
+Two years earlier than that, in 1808, while Luisa yet lived, a
+few scientists and professors of Konigsberg had formed a sort of
+Union--vague enough and visionary--to encourage virtue and discipline
+and patriotism. And now, in 1812, four years later, the memory of Luisa
+still lingered in those narrow streets that run by the banks of the
+Pregel beneath the great castle of Konigsberg, while the Tugendbund,
+like a seed that has been crushed beneath an iron heel, had spread its
+roots underground.
+
+From Dantzig, the commercial, to Konigsberg, the kingly and the learned,
+the tide of war rolled steadily onwards. It is a tide that carries
+before it a certain flotsam of quick and active men, keen-eyed,
+restless, rising--men who speak with a sharp authority and pay from a
+bottomless purse. The arrival of Napoleon in Dantzig swept the first of
+the tide on to Konigsberg.
+
+Already every house was full. The high-gabled warehouses on the
+riverside could not be used for barracks, for they too had been crammed
+from floor to roof with stores and arms. So the soldiers slept where
+they could. They bivouacked in the timber-yards by the riverside. The
+country-women found the Neuer Markt transformed into a camp when they
+brought their baskets in the early morning, but they met with eager
+buyers, who haggled laughingly in half a dozen different tongues. There
+was no lack of money, however.
+
+Cartloads of it were on the road.
+
+The Neuer Markt in Konigsberg is a square, of which the lower side is a
+quay on the Pregel. The river is narrow here. Across it the country is
+open. The houses surrounding the quadrangle are all alike--two-storied
+buildings with dormer windows in the roof. There are trees in front. In
+front of that which is now Number Thirteen, at the right-hand corner,
+facing west, sideways to the river, the trees grow quite close to the
+windows, so that an active man or a boy might without great risk leap
+from the eaves below the dormer window into the topmost branches of the
+linden, which here grows strong and tough, as it surely should do in the
+fatherland.
+
+A young soldier, seeking lodgings, who happened to knock at the door of
+Number Thirteen less than thirty hours after the arrival of Napoleon at
+Dantzig, looked upward through the shady boughs, and noted their growth
+with the light of interest in his eye. It would almost seem that the
+house had been described to him as that one in the Neuer Markt against
+which the lindens grew. For he had walked all round the square between
+the trees and houses before knocking at this door, which bore no number
+then, as it does to-day.
+
+His tired horse had followed him meditatively, and now stood with
+drooping head in the shade. The man himself wore a dark uniform, white
+with dust. His hair was dusty and rather lank. He was not a very tidy
+soldier.
+
+He stood looking at the sign which swung from the doorpost, a relic
+of the Polish days. It bore the painted semblance of a boot. For in
+Poland--a frontier country, as in frontier cities where many tongues are
+heard--it is the custom to paint a picture rather than write a word. So
+that every house bears the sign of its inmate's craft, legible alike to
+Lithuanian or Ruthenian, Swede or Cossack of the Don.
+
+He knocked again, and at last the door was opened by a thickly-built
+man, who looked, not at his face, but at his boots. As these wanted no
+repair he half closed the door again and looked at the newcomer's face.
+
+"What do you want?" he asked.
+
+"A lodging."
+
+The door was almost closed, when the soldier made an odd and, as it
+would seem, tentative gesture with his left hand. All the fingers were
+clenched, and with his extended thumb he scratched his chin slowly from
+side to side.
+
+"I have no lodging to let," said the bootmaker. But he did not shut the
+door.
+
+"I can pay," said the other, with his thumb still at his chin. He had
+quick, blue eyes beneath the shaggy hair that wanted cutting. "I am very
+tired--it is only for one night."
+
+"Who are you?" asked the bootmaker.
+
+The soldier was a dull and slow man. He leant against the doorpost with
+tired gestures before replying.
+
+"Sergeant in a Schleswig regiment, in charge of spare horses."
+
+"And you have come far?"
+
+"From Dantzig without a halt."
+
+The shoemaker looked him up and down with a doubting eye, as if there
+were something about him that was not quite clear and above-board. The
+dust and fatigue were, however, unmistakable.
+
+"Who sent you to me, anyway?" he grumbled.
+
+"Oh, I do not know," was the half-impatient answer; "the man I lodged
+with in Dantzig or another, I forget. It was Koch the locksmith in the
+Schmiedegasse. See, I have money. I tell you it is for one night. Say
+yes or no. I want to get to bed and to sleep."
+
+"How much do you pay?"
+
+"A thaler--if you like. Among friends, one is willing to pay."
+
+After a short minute of hesitation the shoemaker opened the door wider
+and came out.
+
+"And there will be another thaler for the horse, which I shall have
+to take to the stable of the wood-merchant at the corner. Go into the
+workshop and sit down till I come."
+
+He stood in the doorway and watched the soldier seat himself wearily on
+a bench in the workshop among the ancient boots, past repair, one would
+think, and lean his head against the wall.
+
+He was half asleep already, and the bootmaker, who was lame, shrugged
+his shoulders as he led away the tired horse, with a gesture half of
+pity, half of doubting suspicion. Had it suggested itself to his mind,
+and had it been within the power of one so halt and heavy-footed to turn
+back noiselessly, he would have found his visitor wide-awake enough,
+hurriedly opening every drawer and peering under the twine and needles,
+lifting every bale of leather, shaking out the very boots awaiting
+repair.
+
+When the dweller in Number Thirteen returned, the soldier was asleep,
+and had to be shaken before he would open his eyes.
+
+"Will you eat before you go to bed?" asked the bootmaker not unkindly.
+
+"I ate as I came along the street," was the reply. "No, I will go to
+bed. What time is it?"
+
+"It is only seven o'clock--but no matter."
+
+"No, it is no matter. To-morrow I must be astir by five."
+
+"Good," said the shoemaker. "But you will get your money's worth. The
+bed is a good one. It is my son's. He is away, and I am alone in the
+house."
+
+He led the way upstairs as he spoke, going heavily one step at a time,
+so that the whole house seemed to shake beneath his tread. The room was
+that attic in the roof which has a dormer window overhanging the linden
+tree. It was small and not too clean; for Konigsberg was once a Polish
+city, and is not far from the Russian frontier.
+
+The soldier hardly noticed his surroundings, but sat down instantly,
+with the abandonment of a shepherd's dog at the day's end.
+
+"I will put a stitch in your boots for you while you sleep," said the
+host casually. "The thread is rotten, I can see. Look here--and here!"
+
+He stooped, and with a quick turn of the awl which he carried in his
+belt he snapped the sewing at the join of the leg and the upper leather,
+bringing the frayed ends of the thread out to view.
+
+Without answering, the soldier looked round for the boot-jack, lacking
+which, no German or Polish bedroom is complete.
+
+When the bootmaker had gone, carrying the boots under his arm, the
+soldier, left to himself, made a grimace at the closed door. Without
+boots he was a prisoner in the house. He could hear his host at work
+already, downstairs in the shop, of which the door opened to the stairs
+and allowed passage to that smell of leather which breeds Radical
+convictions.
+
+The regular "tap-tap" of the cobbler's hammer continued for an hour
+until dusk, and all the while the soldier lay dressed on his bed. Soon
+after, a creaking of the stairs told of the surreptitious approach of
+the unwilling host. He listened outside, and even tried the door, but
+found it bolted. The soldier, open-eyed on the bed, snored aloud. At the
+sound of the key on the outside of the door he made a grimace again. His
+features were very mobile, for Schleswig.
+
+He heard the bootmaker descend the stairs again almost noiselessly,
+and, rising from the bed, he took his station at the window. All the
+Langgasse would seem to be eating-houses. The basement, which has a
+separate door, gives forth odours of simple Pomeranian meats, and every
+other house bears to this day the curt but comforting inscription, "Here
+one eats." It was only to be supposed that the bootmaker at the end of
+his day would repair for supper to some special haunt near by.
+
+But the smell of cooking mingling with that of leather told that he was
+preparing his own evening meal. He was, it seemed, an unsociable man,
+who had but a son beneath his roof, and mostly lived alone.
+
+Seated near the window, where the sunset light yet lingered, the
+Schleswiger opened his haversack, which was well supplied, and finding
+paper, pens and ink, fell to writing with one eye watchful of the window
+and both ears listening for any movement in the room below.
+
+He wrote easily with a running pen, and sometimes he smiled as he wrote.
+More than once he paused and looked across the Neuer Markt above the
+trees and the roofs, towards the western sky, with a sudden grave
+wistfulness. He was thinking of some one in the west. It was assuredly
+not of war that this soldier wrote. Then, again, his attention would be
+attracted to some passer in the street below. He only gave half of his
+attention to his letter. He was, it seemed, a man who as yet touched
+life lightly; for he was quite young. But, nevertheless, his pen, urged
+by only half a mind that had all the energy of spring, flew over the
+paper. Sowing is so much easier than reaping.
+
+Suddenly he threw his pen aside and moved quickly to the window which
+stood open. The shoemaker had gone out, closing the door softly behind
+him.
+
+It was to be expected that he would turn to the left, upwards towards
+the town and the Langgasse, but it was in the direction of the river
+that his footsteps died away. There was no outlet on that side except by
+boat.
+
+It was almost dark now, and the trees growing close to the window
+obscured the view. So eager was the lodger to follow the movements of
+his landlord that he crept in stocking-feet out on to the roof. By lying
+on his face below the window he could just distinguish the shadowy form
+of a lame man by the river edge. He was moving to and fro, unchaining a
+boat moored to the steps, which are more used in winter when the Pregel
+is a frozen roadway than in summer. There was no one else in the Neuer
+Markt, for it was the supper hour.
+
+Out in the middle of the river a few ships were moored: high-prowed,
+square-sterned vessels of a Dutch build trading in the Frische Haaf and
+in the Baltic.
+
+The soldier saw the boat steal out towards them. There was no other boat
+at the steps or in sight. He stood up on the edge of the roof, and after
+carefully measuring his distance, with quick eyes aglow with excitement,
+he leapt lightly across the leafy space into the topmost boughs, where
+he alighted in a forked branch almost without sound.
+
+At dawn the next morning, while the shoemaker still slept, the soldier
+was astir again. He shivered as he rose, and went to the window, where
+his clothes were hanging from a rafter. The water was still dripping
+from them. Wrapt in a blanket he sat down by the open window to write
+while the morning air should dry his clothes.
+
+That which he wrote was a long report--sheet after sheet closely
+written. And in the middle of his work he broke off to read again the
+letter that he had written the night before. With a quick, impulsive
+gesture he kissed the name it bore. Then he turned to his work again.
+
+The sun was up before he folded the papers together. By way of a
+postscript he wrote a brief letter.
+
+"DEAR C.--I have been fortunate, as you will see from the enclosed
+report. His Majesty cannot again say that I have been neglectful. I was
+quite right. It is Sebastian and only Sebastian that we need fear. Here
+they are clumsy conspirators compared to him. I have been in the river
+half the night listening at the open stern-window of a Reval pink to
+every word they said. His Majesty can safely come to Konigsberg. Indeed,
+he is better out of Dantzig. For the whole country is riddled with that
+which they call patriotism, and we treason. But I can only repeat what
+his Majesty disbelieved the day before yesterday--that the heart of the
+ill is Dantzig, and the venom of it Sebastian. Who he really is and
+what he is about you must find out how you can. I go forward to-day to
+Gumbinnen. The enclosed letter to its address, I beg of you, if only in
+acknowledgment of all that I have sacrificed."
+
+The letter was unsigned, and bore the date, "Dawn, June 10." This and
+the report, and that other letter (carefully sealed with a wafer)
+which did not deal with war or its alarms, were all placed in one large
+envelope. He did not seal it, however, but sat thinking while the sun
+began to shine on the opposite houses. Then he withdrew the open letter,
+and added a postscript to it:
+
+"If an attempt were made on N.'s life--I should say Sebastian. If
+Prussia were to play us false suddenly, and cut us off from France--I
+should say nothing else than Sebastian. He is more dangerous than a
+fanatic; for he is too clever to be one."
+
+The writer shivered and laughed in sheer amusement at his own misery
+as he drew on his wet clothes. The shoemaker was already astir, and
+presently knocked at his door.
+
+"Yes, yes," the soldier cried, "I am astir."
+
+And as his host rattled the door he opened it. He had unrolled his long
+cavalry cloak, and wore it over his wet clothes.
+
+"You never told me your name," said the shoemaker. A suspicious man is
+always more suspicious at the beginning of the day.
+
+"My name," answered the other carelessly. "Oh! my name is Max Brunner."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII. THE WAY OF LOVE.
+
+
+
+   Celui qui souffle le feu s'expose a etre brule par les
+etincelles.
+
+It was said that Colonel de Casimir--that guest whose presence
+and uniform lent an air of distinction to the quiet wedding in the
+Frauengasse--was a Pole from Cracow. Men also whispered that he was in
+the confidence of the Emperor. But this must only have been a manner of
+speaking. For no man was ever admitted fully into the thoughts of that
+superhuman mind.
+
+De Casimir was left behind in Dantzig when the army moved forward.
+
+"There will be a great battle," he said, "somewhere near Vilna--and I
+shall miss it."
+
+Indeed, every man was striving to get to the front. He who, himself, had
+given a new meaning to human ambition seemed able to inspire not only
+Frenchmen but soldiers of every nationality with fire from his own
+consuming flame.
+
+"Yes! madame," said de Casimir; for it was to Desiree that he spoke,
+"and your husband is more fortunate than I. He is sure of a staff
+appointment. He will be among the first. It will soon be over. To-morrow
+war is to be declared."
+
+They were in the street--not far from the Frauengasse, whence Desiree,
+always practical, was hurrying towards the market-place. De Casimir had
+seemed idle until he perceived her.
+
+Desiree made a little movement of horror at the announcement. She did
+not know that the fighting had already begun.
+
+"Ah!" cried de Casimir with a reassuring smile. "You must be of good
+cheer. There will be no war at all. I tell you that in confidence.
+Russia will be paralyzed. I was going towards the Frauengasse when I
+perceived you; to pay my respects to your father, to say a word to you.
+Come--you are smiling again. That is right. You were so grave, madame,
+as you hurried along with your eyes looking far away. You must not think
+of Charles, if the thoughts make you look as you looked then."
+
+His manner was kind and confidential and easy--inviting in response that
+which the confidential always expect, a return in kind. It is either
+hit or miss with such people; and de Casimir missed. He saw Desiree draw
+back. She was young, and of that clear fairness of skin which seems to
+let the thoughts out through the face so that any can read them. That
+which her face expressed at that moment was a clear and definite refusal
+to confide anything whatsoever in this little dark man who stood in
+front of her, looking into her eyes with a deferential and sympathetic
+glance.
+
+"I know for certain," he said, "that Charles was well two days ago, and
+that he is highly thought of in high quarters. I can tell you that, at
+all events."
+
+"Thank you," said Desiree. She had nothing against de Casimir. She had
+only seen him once or twice, and she knew him to be Charles's friend,
+and in some sense his patron. For de Casimir held a high position in
+Dantzig. She was quite ready to like him since Charles liked him; but
+she intended to do so at her own range. It is always the woman who
+measures the distance.
+
+Desiree made a little movement as if to continue on her way; and de
+Casimir instantly stood aside, with a bow.
+
+"Shall I find your father at home?" he asked.
+
+"I think so. He was at home when I left," she answered, responding to
+his salute with a friendly nod.
+
+De Casimir watched her go and stood for a moment in reflection, as if
+going over in his mind that which had passed between them.
+
+"I must try the other one," he said to himself as he turned down the
+Pfaffengasse. He continued his way at a leisurely pace. At the corner of
+the Frauengasse he lingered in the shadow of the linden trees, and while
+so doing saw Antoine Sebastian quit the door of No. 36, going in
+the opposite direction towards the river, and pass out through the
+Frauenthor on to the quay.
+
+He made a little gesture of annoyance on being told by the servant that
+Sebastian was out. After a moment's reflection, he seemed to make up his
+mind to ignore the conventionalities.
+
+"It is merely," he said in his friendly and confidential manner to the
+servant, in perfect German, "that I have news from Monsieur Darragon,
+the husband of Mademoiselle Desiree. Madame is out--you say. Well, then,
+what is to be done?"
+
+He had a most charming, grave manner of asking advice which few could
+resist.
+
+The servant nodded at him with a twinkle of understanding in her eye.
+
+"There is Fraulein Mathilde."
+
+"But... well, ask her if she will do me the honour of speaking to me for
+an instant. I leave it to you...."
+
+"But come in," protested the servant. "Come upstairs. She will see you;
+why not?"
+
+And she led the way upstairs. Papa Barlasch, sitting just within the
+kitchen door, where he sat all day doing nothing, glanced upwards
+through his overhanging eyebrows at the clink of spurs and the clatter
+of de Casimir's sword against the banisters. He had the air of a
+watchdog.
+
+Mathilde was not in the drawing-room, and the servant left the visitor
+there alone, saying that she would seek her mistress. There were one or
+two books on the tables. One table was rather untidy; it was Desiree's.
+A writing-desk stood in the corner of the room. It was locked--and the
+lock was a good one. De Casimir was an observant man. He had time
+to make this observation, and to see that there were no letters in
+Desiree's work-basket; to note the titles of the books and the absence
+of name on the flyleaf, and was looking out of the window when the door
+opened and Mathilde came in.
+
+This was a day when women were treated with a great show of deference,
+while in reality they had but little voice in the world's affairs. De
+Casimir's bow was deeper and more elaborate than would be considered
+polite to-day. On standing erect he quickly suppressed a glance of
+surprise.
+
+Mathilde must have expected him. She was dressed in white, and her hair
+was tied with a bright ribbon. In her cheeks, usually so pale, was a
+little touch of colour. It may have been because Desiree was not near,
+but de Casimir had never known until this moment how pretty Mathilde
+really was. There was something in her eyes, too, which gripped his
+attention. He remembered that at the wedding he had never seen her eyes.
+They had always been averted. But now they met his with a troubling
+directness.
+
+De Casimir had a gallant manner. All women commanded his eager
+respect, which they could assess at such value as their fancy painted,
+remembering that it is for the woman to measure the distance. On the few
+occasions of previous encounters, de Casimir had been empresse in his
+manner towards Mathilde. As he looked at her, his quick mind ran back to
+former meetings. He had no recollection of having actually made love to
+her.
+
+"Mademoiselle," he said, "for a soldier--in time of war--the conventions
+may, perhaps, be slightly relaxed. I was told that you were alone--that
+your father is out, and yet I persisted--"
+
+He spread out his hands and laughed appealingly, begging her, it
+would seem, to help him out of the social difficulty in which he found
+himself.
+
+"My father will be sorry--" she began.
+
+"That is hardly the question," he interrupted; "I was thinking of your
+displeasure. But I have an excuse, I assure you. I only ask a moment to
+tell you that I have heard from Konigsberg that Charles Darragon is in
+good health there, and is moving forward with the advance-guard to the
+frontier."
+
+"You are kind to come so soon," answered Mathilde, and there was an odd
+note of disappointment in her voice. De Casimir must have heard it, for
+he glanced at her again with a gleam of surprise in his eyes.
+
+"That is my excuse, Mademoiselle," he said with a tentative emphasis, as
+if he were feeling his way. He was an opportunist with all the quickness
+of one who must live by his wits among others existing on the same
+uncertain fare. He saw her flush, and again he hesitated as a wayfarer
+may hesitate when he finds an easy road where he had expected to climb a
+hill. What was the meaning of it? he seemed to ask himself.
+
+"Charles does not interest you so much as he interests your sister?" he
+suggested.
+
+"He has never interested me much," she replied indifferently. She did
+not ask him to sit down. It would not have been etiquette in an age
+when women were by some odd misjudgment considered incapable of managing
+their own hearts.
+
+"Is that because he is in love, Mademoiselle?" inquired de Casimir with
+a guarded laugh.
+
+"Perhaps so."
+
+She did not look at him. De Casimir had not missed this time. His air
+of candid confidence had met with a quick response. He laughed again and
+moved towards the door. Mathilde stood motionless, and although she said
+no word, nor by any gesture bade him stay, he stopped on the threshold
+and turned again towards her.
+
+"It was my conscience," he said, looking at her over his shoulder, "that
+bade me go."
+
+Her face and her averted eyes asked why, but her straight lips were
+silent.
+
+"Because I cannot claim to be more interesting than Charles Darragon,"
+he hazarded. "And you, Mademoiselle, confess that you have no tolerance
+for a man who is in love."
+
+"I have no tolerance for a man who is weakened by love. He should be
+strengthened and hardened by it."
+
+"To--?"
+
+"To do a man's work in the world," said Mathilde coldly.
+
+De Casimir was standing by the open door. He closed it with his foot.
+He was professedly a man alert for the chance of a moment, which he
+was content to grasp without pausing to look ahead. Should there be
+difficulties yet unperceived, these in turn might present an opportunity
+to be seized by the quick-witted.
+
+"Then you would admit, Mademoiselle," he said gravely, "that there may
+be good in a love that fights continually against ambition, and--does
+not prevail."
+
+Mathilde did not answer at once. There was an odd suggestion of
+antagonism in their attitude towards each other--not irreconcilable, the
+poets tell us, with love--but this is assuredly not the Love that comes
+from Heaven and will go back there to live through eternity.
+
+"Yes," said she at length.
+
+"Such is my love for you," he said, his quick instinct telling him that
+with Mathilde few words were best.
+
+He only spoke the thoughts of his age; for ambition was the ruling
+passion in men's hearts at this time. All who served the Great
+Adventurer gave it the first place in their consideration, and de
+Casimir only aped his betters. Though oddly enough the only two of
+all the great leaders who were to emerge still greater from the coming
+war--Ney and Eugene--thought otherwise on these matters.
+
+"I mean to be great and rich, Mademoiselle," he added after a pause. "I
+have risked my life for that purpose half a dozen times."
+
+Mathilde stood looking across the room towards the window. He could
+only see her profile and the straight line of her lips. She too was the
+product of a generation in which men rose to dazzling heights without
+the aid of women.
+
+"I should not have troubled you with these details, Mademoiselle," he
+said, watching her. His instinct was very keen, for not one woman in
+a thousand, even in those days, would have admitted that love was a
+detail. "I should not have mentioned it--had you not given me your
+views--so strangely in harmony with my own."
+
+Whatever his nationality, his voice was that of a Pole--rich, musical,
+and expressive. He could have made, one would have thought, a very
+different sort of love had he wished, or had he been sincere. But he was
+an opportunist. This was the sort of love that Mathilde wanted.
+
+He came a step nearer to her and stood resting on his sword--a lean hard
+man who had seen much war.
+
+"Until you opened my eyes," he said, "I did not know, or did not care to
+know, that love, far from being a drag on ambition, may be a help."
+
+Mathilde made a little movement towards him which she instantly
+repressed. The heart is quicker, but the head nearly always has the last
+word.
+
+"Mademoiselle," he said--and no doubt he saw the movement and the
+restraint--"will you help me now at the beginning of the war, and listen
+to me again at the end of it--if I succeed?"
+
+After all, he was modest in his demands.
+
+"Will you help me? Together, Mademoiselle--to what height may we not
+rise in these days?"
+
+There was a ring of sincerity in his voice, and her eyes answered it.
+
+"How can I help you?" she asked in a doubting voice.
+
+"Oh, it is a small matter," was the reply. "But it is one in which the
+Emperor is personally interested. Such things have a special attraction
+for him. The human interest never fails to hold his attention. If I do
+well, he will know it and remember me. It is a question, Mademoiselle,
+of secret societies. You know that Prussia is riddled with them."
+
+Mathilde did not answer. He studied her face, which was clean cut and
+hard like a marble bust--a good face to hide a secret.
+
+"It is my duty to watch here in Dantzig and to report to the Emperor.
+In serving myself I could also perhaps serve a friend, one who might
+otherwise run into danger--who may be in danger while you and I stand
+here. For the Emperor strikes hard and quickly. I speak of your father,
+Mademoiselle--and of the Tugendbund."
+
+Still he could not see from the pale profile whether Mathilde knew
+anything at all.
+
+"And if I procure information for you?" asked she at length, in a quiet
+and collected voice.
+
+"You will help me to attain a position such as I could ask--even you--to
+share with me. And you would do your father no harm. You would even
+render him a service. For all the secret societies in Germany will not
+stop Napoleon. It is only God who can stop him now, Mademoiselle. All
+men who attempt it will only be crushed beneath the wheels. I might save
+your father."
+
+But Mathilde did not seem to be thinking of her father.
+
+"I am hampered by poverty," de Casimir said, changing his ground. "In
+the old days it did not matter. But now, in the Empire, one must be
+rich. I shall be rich--at the end of this campaign."
+
+Again his voice was sincere, and again her eyes responded. He made a
+step forward, and gently taking her hand, he raised it to his lips.
+
+"You will help me!" he said, and, turning abruptly on his heel, he left
+her.
+
+De Casimir's quarters were in the Langenmarkt. On returning to them, he
+took from his despatch-case a letter which he turned over thoughtfully
+in his hand. It was addressed to Desiree, and sealed carefully with a
+wafer.
+
+"She may as well have it," he said. "It will be as well that she should
+be occupied with her own affairs."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII. A VISITATION.
+
+
+
+     Be wiser than other people if you can, but do not tell them so.
+
+Whenever Papa Barlasch caught sight of his unwilling host's face, he
+turned his own aside with a despairing upward nod. Once or twice, during
+the early days of his occupation of the room behind the kitchen in the
+Frauengasse, he smote himself sharply on the brow, as if calling upon
+his brain to make an effort. But afterwards he seemed to resign himself
+to this lapse of memory, and the upward despairing nod gradually lost
+intensity until at last he brought himself to pass Antoine Sebastian in
+the narrow passage with no more emphatic notice than a scowl.
+
+"You and I," he said to Desiree, "are the friends. The others--"
+
+And his gesture seemed to permit the others to go hang if they so
+desired. The army had gone forward, leaving Dantzig in that idle
+restlessness which holds those who, finding themselves in a house of
+sickness, are not permitted entry to the darkened chamber, but must
+await the crisis elsewhere.
+
+There were some busy enough in the commerce that must exist between a
+huge army and its base, in the forwarding of war material and stores, in
+accommodating the sick and sending out in return those who were to
+fill the gaps. But the Dantzigers themselves had nothing to do. Their
+prosperous trade was paralyzed. Those who had aught to sell had sold it.
+The high-seas and the high-roads were alike blocked by the French. And
+rumour, ever busy among those that wait, ran to and fro in the town.
+
+The Emperor of Russia had been taken prisoner. Napoleon had been
+checked at the passage of the Niemen. There had been a great battle at
+Gumbinnen, and the French were in full retreat. Vilna had capitulated to
+Murat, and the war was at an end. A hundred authentic despatches of the
+morning were the subject of contemptuous laughter at the supper-table.
+
+Lisa heard these tales in the market-place, and told Desiree, who,
+as often as not, translated them to Barlasch. But he only held up his
+wrinkled forefinger and shook it slowly from side to side.
+
+"Woman's chatter!" he said. "What is the German for 'magpie'?"
+
+And on being told the word, he repeated it gravely to Lisa. For he had
+not only fulfilled his promise of settling down in the house, but had
+assumed therein a distinct and clearly defined position. He was the
+counsellor, and from his chair just within the kitchen he gave forth
+judgment.
+
+"And you," he said to Desiree one morning, when household affairs had
+taken her to the kitchen, "you are troubled this morning. You have had a
+letter from your husband?"
+
+"Yes--and he is in good health."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+Barlasch glared at her beneath his brows, looking her up and down,
+noting her quick movements, which had the uncertainty of youth.
+
+"And now that he is gone," he said, "and that there is war, you are
+going to employ yourself by falling in love with him, when you had all
+the time before, and did not take advantage of it."
+
+Desiree laughed at him and made no other answer. While she spoke to Lisa
+he sat and watched them.
+
+"It would be like a woman to do such a thing," he pursued. "They are
+so inconvenient--women. They get married for fun, and then one fine
+Thursday they find they have missed all the fun, like one who comes late
+to the theatre--when the music is over."
+
+He went to the table and examined the morning marketing, which Lisa
+had laid out in preparation for dinner. Of some of her purchases he
+approved, but he laughed aloud at a lettuce which had no heart, and at
+such a buyer.
+
+Then Desiree attracted his scrutiny again.
+
+"Yes," he said, half to himself, "I see it. You are in love. Just
+Heaven, I know! I have had them in love with me.... Barlasch."
+
+"That must have been a long time ago," answered Desiree with her gay
+laugh, only giving him half her attention.
+
+"Yes, it was a century ago. But they were the same then as they are now,
+as they always will be--inconvenient. They waited, however, till they
+were grown up!"
+
+And with his ever-ready accusing finger he drew Desiree's attention to
+her own slimness. They were left alone for a minute while Lisa answered
+a knock at the door, during which time Barlasch sat in grim silence.
+
+"It is a letter," said Lisa, returning. "A sailor brought it."
+
+"Another?" said Barlasch, with a gesture of despair.
+
+"Can you give me news of Charles?" Desiree read, in a writing that was
+unknown to her. "I shall wait a reply until midnight on board the
+Elsa, lying off the Krahn-Thor." The letter bore the signature, "Louis
+d'Arragon." Desiree turned slowly and went upstairs, carrying it folded
+small in her closed hand.
+
+She was alone in the house, for Mathilde was out and her father had not
+yet returned from his evening walk. She stood at the head of the stairs,
+where the last of the daylight filtered through the barred window, and
+read the letter again. Then she turned and gave a slight start to see
+Barlasch at the foot of the stairs beckoning to her. He made no attempt
+to come up, but stood on the mat like a dog that has been forbidden the
+upper rooms.
+
+"Is it about your father?" he asked, in a hoarse whisper.
+
+"No!"
+
+He made a gesture commanding secrecy and silence. Then he went to close
+the kitchen door and returned on tip-toe.
+
+"It is," he explained, "that they are talking of him in the cafes. There
+are many to be arrested to-morrow. They say the patron is one of them,
+and employs himself in plotting. That his name is not Sebastian at all.
+That he is a Frenchman who escaped the guillotine. What do I know? It is
+the gossip of the cafes. But I tell it you because we are friends, you
+and I. And some day I may want you to do something for me. One thinks
+of one's self, eh? It is good to make friends. For some day one may want
+them. That is why I do it. I think of myself. An old soldier. Of the
+Guard."
+
+With many gestures of tremendous import, and a face all wrinkled and
+twisted with mystery, he returned to the kitchen.
+
+Mathilde was not to return until late. She had gone to the house of the
+old Grafin whose reminiscences had been a fruitful topic at Desiree's
+wedding. After dining there she and the Grafin were to go together to
+a farewell reception given by the Governor. For Rapp was bound for the
+frontier with the rest, and was to go to the war as first aide-de-camp
+to the Emperor.
+
+Mathilde could not be back until ten o'clock. She, who was so quick and
+quiet, had been much occupied in social observances lately, and had made
+fast friends with the Grafin during the last few days, constantly going
+to see her.
+
+Desiree knew that what Barlasch had repeated as the gossip of the cafes
+was in part, if not wholly, true. She and Mathilde had long known that
+any mention of France had the instant effect of turning their father
+into a man of stone. It was the skeleton in this quiet house that sat at
+table with its inmates, a shadowy fourth tying their tongues. The rattle
+of its bones seemed to paralyze Sebastian's mind, and at any moment he
+would fall into a dumb and stricken apathy which terrified those about
+him. At such times it seemed that one thought in his mind had swallowed
+all the rest, so that he heard without understanding and saw without
+perceiving.
+
+He was in such a humour when he came back to dinner. He passed Desiree
+on the stairs without speaking and went to his room to change his
+clothes, for he never relaxed his formal habits. At the dinner-table he
+glanced at her as a dog, knowing that he is ill, may be seen to glance
+with a secret air at his master, wondering whether he is detected.
+
+Desiree had always hoped that her father would speak to her when this
+humour was upon him and tell her the meaning of it. Perhaps it would
+come to-night, when they were alone. There was an unspoken sympathy
+existing between them in which Mathilde took no share, which had even
+shut out Charles as out of a room where there was no light, into which
+Desiree and her father went at times and stood hand-in-hand without
+speaking.
+
+They dined in silence, while Lisa hurried about her duties, oppressed by
+a sense of unknown fear. After dinner they went to the drawing-room as
+usual. It had been a dull day, with great clouds creeping up from the
+West. The evening fell early, and the lamps were already alight. Desiree
+looked to the wicks with the eye of experience when she entered the
+room. Then she went to the window. Lisa did not always draw the curtains
+effectually. She glanced down into the street, and turned suddenly on
+her heel, facing her father.
+
+"They are there," she said. For she had seen shadowy forms lurking
+beneath the trees of the Frauengasse. The street was ill-lighted, but
+she knew the shadows of the trees.
+
+"How many?" asked Sebastian, in a dull voice.
+
+She glanced at him quickly--at his still, frozen face and quiescent
+hands. He was not going to rise to the occasion, as he sometimes did
+even from his deepest apathy. She must do alone anything that was to be
+accomplished to-night.
+
+The house, like many in the Frauengasse, had been built by a careful
+Hanseatic merchant, whose warehouse was his own cellar half sunk beneath
+the level of the street. The door of the warehouse was immediately under
+the front door, down a few steps below the street, while a few more
+steps, broad and footworn, led up to the stone veranda and the level of
+the lower dwelling-rooms. A guard placed in the street could thus watch
+both doors without moving.
+
+There was a third door, giving exit from the little room where Barlasch
+slept to the small yard where he had placed those trunks which were made
+in France.
+
+Desiree had no time to think. She came of a race of women of a brighter
+intelligence than any women in the world. She took her father by the
+arm and hastened downstairs. Barlasch was at his post within the kitchen
+door. His eyes shone suddenly as he saw her face. It was said of Papa
+Barlasch that he was a gay man in battle, laughing and making a hundred
+jests, but at other times lugubrious. Desiree saw him smile for the
+first time, in the dim light of the passage.
+
+"They are there in the street," he said; "I have seen them. I thought
+you would come to Barlasch. They all do--the women. In here. Leave him
+to me. When they ring the bell, receive them yourself--with smiles. They
+are only men. Let them search the house if they want to. Tell them he
+has gone to the reception with Mademoiselle."
+
+As he spoke the bell rang just above his head. He looked up at it and
+laughed.
+
+"Ah, ah!" he said, "the fanfare begins."
+
+He drew Sebastian within and closed the door of his little room. Lisa
+had already gone to answer the bell. When she opened the door three
+men stepped quickly over the threshold, and one of them, thrusting her
+aside, closed the door and turned the key. Desiree, in her white evening
+dress, on the bottom step, just beneath the lamp that hung from the
+ceiling, made them pause and look at each other. Then one of the three
+came towards her, hat in hand.
+
+"Our duty, Fraulein," he said awkwardly. "We are but obeying orders. A
+mere formality. It will all be explained, no doubt, if the householder,
+Antoine Sebastian, will put on his hat and come with us."
+
+"His hat is not there, as you see," answered Desiree. "You must seek him
+elsewhere."
+
+The man shook his head with a knowing smile. "We must seek him in
+this house," he said. "We will make it as easy for you as we can,
+Fraulein--if you make it easy for us."
+
+As he spoke he produced a candle from his pocket, and encouraged the
+broken wick with his finger-nail.
+
+"It will make it pleasanter for all," said Desiree cheerfully, "if you
+will accept a candlestick."
+
+The man glanced at her. He was a heavy man, with little suspicious eyes
+set close together. He seemed to be concluding that she had outwitted
+him--that Sebastian was not in the house.
+
+"Where are the cellar-stairs?" he asked. "I warn you, Fraulein, it is
+useless to conceal your father. We shall, of course, find him."
+
+Desiree pointed to the door next to that giving entry to the kitchen. It
+was bolted and locked. Desiree found the key for them. She not only gave
+them every facility, but was anxious that they should be as quick as
+possible. They did not linger in the cellar, which, though vast, was
+empty; and when they returned, Desiree, who was waiting for them, led
+the way upstairs.
+
+They were rather abashed by her silence. They would have preferred
+protestations and argument. Discussion always belittles. The smile
+recommended by Papa Barlasch, lurking at the corner of her lips, made
+them feel foolish. She was so slight and young and helpless, that a sort
+of shame rendered them clumsy.
+
+They felt more at home in the kitchen when they arrived there, and the
+sight of Lisa, sturdy and defiant, reminded them of the authority upon
+which Desiree had somehow cast a mystic contempt.
+
+"There is a door there," said the heavy official, with a brusque return
+of his early manner. "Come, what is that door?"
+
+"That is a little room."
+
+"Then open it."
+
+"I cannot," returned Lisa. "It is locked."
+
+"Aha!" said the man, with a laugh of much meaning. "On the inside, eh?"
+
+He went to it, and banged on it with his fist.
+
+"Come," he shouted, "open it and be done."
+
+There was a short silence, during which those in the kitchen listened
+breathlessly. A shuffling sound inside the door made the officer of the
+law turn and beckon to his two men to come closer.
+
+Then, after some fumbling, as of one in the dark, the door was unlocked
+and slowly opened.
+
+Papa Barlasch stood in a very primitive night-apparel within the door.
+He had not done things by halves, for he was an old campaigner, and knew
+that a thing half done is better left undone in times of war. He noted
+the presence of Desiree and Lisa, but was not ashamed. The reason of it
+was soon apparent. For Papa Barlasch was drunk, and the smell of drink
+came out of his apartment in a warm wave.
+
+"It is the soldier billeted in the house," explained Lisa, with a
+half-hysterical laugh.
+
+Then Barlasch harangued them in the language of intoxication. If he had
+not spared Desiree's feelings, he spared her ears less now; for he was
+an ignorant man, who had lived through a brutal period in the world's
+history the roughest life a man can lead. Two of the men held him
+with difficulty against the wall, while the third hastily searched the
+room--where, indeed, no one could well be concealed.
+
+Then they quitted the house, followed by the polyglot curses of
+Barlasch, who was now endeavouring to find his bayonet amidst his
+chaotic possessions.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX. THE GOLDEN GUESS.
+
+
+
+                              The golden guess
+     Is morning star to the full round of truth.
+
+Barlasch was never more sober in his life than when he emerged a minute
+later from his room, while Lisa was still feverishly bolting the door.
+He had not wasted much time at his toilet. In his flannel shirt, his
+arms bare to the elbow, knotted and muscular, he looked like some rude
+son of toil.
+
+"One thinks of one's self," he hastened to explain to Desiree, fearing
+that she might ascribe some other motive to his action. "Some day the
+patron may be in power again, and then he will remember a poor soldier.
+It is good to think of the future."
+
+He shook his head pessimistically at Lisa as belonging to a sex liable
+to error: instanced in this case by bolting the door too eagerly.
+
+"Now," he said, turning to Desiree again, "have you any in Dantzig to
+help you?"
+
+"Yes," she answered rather slowly.
+
+"Then send for him."
+
+"I cannot do that."
+
+"Then go for him yourself," snapped Barlasch impatiently.
+
+He looked at her fiercely beneath his shaggy eyebrows.
+
+"It is no use to be afraid," he said; "you are afraid--I see it in your
+face. And it is never any use. Before they hammered on that door there,
+my legs shook. For I am easily afraid--I. But it is never any use. And
+when one opens the door, it goes."
+
+He looked at her with a puzzled frown, seeking in vain, it may have
+been, the ordinary symptoms of fear. She was hesitating but not afraid.
+There ran blood in her veins which will for all time be associated by
+history with a gay and indomitable courage.
+
+"Come," he said sharply; "there is nothing else to do."
+
+"I will go," said Desiree, at length, deciding suddenly to do the one
+thing that is left to a woman once or twice in her life--to go to the
+one man and trust him.
+
+"By the back way," said Barlasch, helping her with the cloak that Lisa
+had brought, and pulling the hood forward over her face with a jerk.
+"Ah, I know that way. The patron is hiding in the yard. An old soldier
+looks to the retreat--though the Emperor has saved us that, so far.
+Come, I will help you over the wall, for the door is rusted."
+
+The way, which Barlasch had perceived, led through the room at the back
+of the kitchen to a yard, and thence through a door not opened by the
+present occupiers of the old house, into a very labyrinth of narrow
+alleys running downward to the river and round the tall houses that
+stand against the cathedral walls.
+
+The wall was taller than Barlasch, but he ran at it like a cat,
+and Desiree standing below could see the black outline of his limbs
+crouching on the top. He stooped down, and grasping her hands, lifted
+her by the sheer strength of one arm, balanced her for an instant on the
+wall, and then lowered her on the outer side.
+
+"Run," he whispered.
+
+She knew the way, and although the night was dark, and these narrow
+alleys between high walls had no lamps, Desiree lost no time. The
+Krahn-Thor is quite near to the Frauengasse. Indeed, the whole
+of Dantzig occupied but a small space between the rivers in those
+straitened days. The town was quieter than it had been for months, and
+Desiree passed unmolested through the narrow streets. She made her way
+to the quay, passing through the low gateway known as the door of the
+Holy Ghost, and here found people still astir. For the commerce that
+thrives on a northern river is paralyzed all the winter, and feverishly
+active when the ice has gone.
+
+"The Elsa," replied a woman, who had been selling bread all day on the
+quay, and was now packing up her stall, "you ask for the Elsa. There is
+such a ship, I know. But how can I say which she is? See, they lie right
+across the river like a bridge. Besides, it is late, and sailors are
+rough men."
+
+Desiree hurried on. Louis d'Arragon had said that the ship was lying
+near to the Krahn-Thor, of which the great hooded roof loomed darkly
+against the stars above her. She was looking about her when a man came
+forward with the hesitating step of one who has been told to wait the
+arrival of some one unknown to him.
+
+"The Elsa," she said to him; "which ship is it?"
+
+"Come along with me, Mademoiselle," the man replied; "though I was not
+told to look for a woman."
+
+He spoke in English, which Desiree hardly understood; for she had never
+heard it from English lips, and looked for the first time on one of that
+race upon which all the world waited now for salvation. For the
+English, of all the nations, were the only men who from the first had
+consistently defied Napoleon.
+
+The sailor led the way towards the river. As he passed the lamp burning
+dimly above some steps, Desiree saw that he was little more than a boy.
+He turned and offered her his hand with a shy laugh, and together they
+stood at the bottom of the steps with the water lapping at their feet.
+
+"Have you a letter," he said, "or will you come on board?"
+
+Then perceiving that she did not understand, he repeated the question in
+German.
+
+"I will come on board," she answered.
+
+The Elsa was lying in the middle of the river, and the boat into which
+Desiree stepped shot across the water without sound of oars. The sailor
+was paddling it noiselessly at the stern. Desiree was not unused to
+boats, and when they came alongside the Elsa she climbed on board
+without help.
+
+"This way," said the sailor, leading her towards the deckhouse where
+a light burned dimly behind red curtains. He knocked at the door and
+opened it without awaiting a reply. In the little cabin two men sat at a
+table, and one of them was Louis d'Arragon dressed in the rough clothes
+of a merchant seaman. He seemed to recognize Desiree at once, though she
+still stood without the door, in the darkness.
+
+"You?" he said in surprise. "I did not expect you, madame. You want me?"
+
+"Yes," answered Desiree, stepping over the combing. Louis's companion,
+who was also a sailor, coarsely clad, rose and, awkwardly taking off his
+cap, hurried to the door, murmuring some vague apology. It is not always
+the roughest men who have the worst manners towards women.
+
+He closed the door behind him, leaving Desiree and Louis looking at each
+other by the light of an oil lamp that flickered and gave forth a greasy
+smell. The little cabin was smoke-ridden, and smelt of ancient tar. It
+was no bigger than the table in the drawing-room in the Frauengasse,
+across which he had bowed to her in farewell a few days earlier, little
+knowing when and where they were to meet again. For fate can always turn
+a surprise better than the human fancy.
+
+Behind the curtain, the window stood open, and the high, clear song of
+the wind through the rigging filled the little cabin with a continuous
+minor note of warning which must have been part of his life; for he must
+have heard it, as all sailors do, sleeping or waking, night and day.
+
+He was probably so accustomed to it that he never heeded it. But it
+filled Desiree's ears, and whenever she heard it in after-life, in
+memory this moment came again to her, and she looked back to it, as a
+traveller may look back to a milestone at a cross-road, and wonder where
+his journey might have ended had he taken another turning.
+
+"My father," she said quickly, "is in danger. There is no one else in
+Dantzig to whom we can turn, and--"
+
+She paused. What was she going to add? She hesitated, and then was
+silent. There was no reason why she should have elected to come to him.
+At all events she gave none.
+
+"I am glad I was in Dantzig when it happened," he said, turning to take
+up his cap, which was of rough dark fur, such as seamen wear even in
+summer at night in the Northern seas.
+
+"Come," he added, "you can tell me as we go ashore."
+
+But they did not speak while the sailor sculled the boat to the steps.
+On the quay they would probably pass unnoticed, for there were many
+strange sailors at this time in Dantzig, and Louis d'Arragon might
+easily be mistaken for one of the French seamen who had brought stores
+by sea from Bordeaux and Brest and Cherbourg.
+
+"Now tell me," he said, as they walked side by side; and in voluble
+French, Desiree launched into her story. It was rather incoherent, by
+reason, perhaps, of its frankness.
+
+"Stop--stop," he interrupted gravely, "who is Barlasch?"
+
+Louis walked rather slowly in his stiff sea-boots at her side, and she
+instinctively spoke less rapidly as she explained the part that Barlasch
+had played.
+
+"And you trust him?"
+
+"Of course," she answered.
+
+"But why?"
+
+"Oh, you are so matter-of-fact," she exclaimed; "I do not know. Because
+he is trustworthy, I suppose."
+
+She continued the story, but suddenly stopped and looked up at him under
+the shadow of her hood.
+
+"You are silent," she said. "Do you know something about my father of
+which I am ignorant? Is that it?"
+
+"No," he answered, "I am trying to follow--that is all. You leave so
+much to my imagination."
+
+"But I have no time to explain things," she protested. "Every moment
+is of value. I will explain all those things some other time. At this
+moment all I can think of is my father and the danger he is in. If it
+had not been for Barlasch, he would have been in prison by now. And as
+it is, the danger is only half averted. For he, himself, is so little
+help. All must be done for him. He will do nothing for himself while
+this humour is upon him; you understand?"
+
+"Partly," he answered slowly.
+
+"Oh!" she exclaimed half-impatiently, "one sees that you are an
+Englishman."
+
+And she found time, even in her hurry, to laugh. For she was young
+enough to float buoyant upon that sea of hope which ebbs in the course
+of years and leaves men stranded on the hard facts of life.
+
+"You forget," he said in self-defence.
+
+"I forget what?"
+
+"That a week ago I had never seen Dantzig, or your father, or your
+sister, or the Frauengasse. A week ago I did not know that there was
+anybody called Sebastian in the world--and did not care."
+
+"Yes," she admitted thoughtfully, "I had forgotten that."
+
+And they walked on in silence, a long way, till they came to the Gate of
+the Holy Ghost.
+
+"But you can help him to escape?" she said at length, as if following
+the course of her own thoughts.
+
+"Yes," he answered, and that was all.
+
+They passed through the smaller streets in silence, and Desiree led the
+way into a narrow alley running between the street of the Holy Ghost and
+the Frauengasse.
+
+"There is the wall to be climbed," she said; but, as she spoke, the door
+giving exit to the alley was cautiously opened by Barlasch.
+
+"A little oil," he whispered, "and it was soon done."
+
+The yard was dark within, for there might be watchers at any of the
+windows above them in the pointed gables that made patterns against the
+star-lit sky.
+
+"All is well," said Barlasch; "those sons of dogs have not returned, and
+the patron is waiting in the kitchen, cloaked and ready for a journey.
+He has collected himself--the patron."
+
+He led the way through his own room, which was dark, save for a shaft
+of lamp-light coming from the kitchen. He looked back keenly at Louis
+d'Arragon.
+
+"Salut!" he growled, scowling at his boots. "A sailor," he muttered
+after a pause. "Good. She has her wits at the top of the basket--that
+child."
+
+Desiree was throwing back her hood and looking at her father with a
+reassuring smile.
+
+"I have brought Monsieur d'Arragon," she said, "to help us."
+
+For Sebastian has not recognized the new-comer. He now bowed in his
+stiff way, and began a formal apology, which D'Arragon cut short with a
+quick gesture.
+
+"It is the least I could do," he said, "in the absence of Charles. Have
+you money?"
+
+"Yes--a little."
+
+"You will require money and a few clothes. I can get you a passage to
+Riga or to Helsingborg to-night. From there you can communicate with
+your daughter. Events will follow each other rapidly. One never knows
+what a week may bring forth in time of war. It may be safe for you to
+return soon. Come, monsieur, we must go."
+
+Sebastian made a gesture with his outspread arms, half of protestation,
+half of acquiescence. It was plain that he had no sympathy with these
+modern, hurried methods of meeting the emergencies of daily life. A
+valise, packed and strapped, lay on the table. D'Arragon weighed it in
+his hand, and then lifted it to his shoulder.
+
+"Come, monsieur," he repeated leading the way through Barlasch's room to
+the yard. "And you," he added, addressing himself to that soldier, "shut
+the door behind us."
+
+With another gesture of protest Sebastian gathered his cloak round him
+and followed. D'Arragon had taken Desiree so literally at her word
+that he allowed her father no time for hesitation, nor a moment to say
+farewell.
+
+She was alone in the kitchen before she had realized that they were
+going. In a minute Barlasch returned. She could hear him setting in
+order the room which had been hurriedly disorganized in order to open
+the door leading to the yard, where her father had concealed himself. He
+was muttering to himself as he lifted the furniture.
+
+Coming back into the kitchen, he found Desiree standing where he had
+left her. Glancing at her, he scratched his grey head in a plebeian way,
+and gave a little laugh.
+
+"Yes," he said, pointing to the spot where D'Arragon had stood. "That
+was a man, that you fetched to help us--a man. It makes a difference
+when such as that goes out of the room--eh?"
+
+He busied himself in the kitchen, setting in order that which remained
+of the mise en scene of his violent reception of the secret police.
+Suddenly he turned in his emphatic manner, and threw out his rugged
+forefinger to hold her attention.
+
+"If there had been some like that in Paris, there would have been no
+Revolution. Za-za, za-za!" he concluded, imitating effectively the
+buzz of many voices in an assembly. "Words and not deeds," Barlasch
+protested. Whereas to-night, he clearly showed by two gestures, they had
+met a man of deeds.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X. IN DEEP WATER.
+
+
+
+     Le coeur humain est un abime qui trompe tous les calculs.
+
+It is to be presumed that Colonel de Casimir met friends at the
+reception given by Governor Rapp in the great rooms of the Rathhaus.
+For there were many Poles present, and not a few officers of other
+nationalities.
+
+The army indeed that set forth to conquer Russia was not a
+French-speaking army. Less than half of the regiments were of that
+nationality, while Italians, Bavarians, Saxons, Wurtembergers,
+Westphalians, Prussians, Swiss, and Portuguese went gaily forward on the
+great venture. There were soldiers from the numerous petty states of the
+German Confederation which acknowledged Napoleon as their protector,
+for the good reason that they could not protect themselves against him.
+Finally, there were those Poles who had fought in Spain for Napoleon,
+hoping that in return he would some day set the ancient kingdom upon its
+feet among the nations. Already the whisperers pointed to Davoust as the
+future king of the new Poland.
+
+Many present at the farewell reception of the Governor carried a sword,
+though they were the merest civilians, plotting, counter-plotting,
+and whispering a hundred rumours. Perhaps Rapp himself, speaking bluff
+French with a German accent, was as honest as any man in the room,
+though he lacked the polish of the Parisian and had not the subtlety of
+the Pole. Rapp was not a shining light in these brilliant circles. He
+was a Governor not for peace, but for war. His day was yet to come.
+
+Such men as de Casimir shrugged their supple shoulders at his simple
+talk. They spoke of him half-contemptuously as of one who had had a
+thousand chances and had never taken them. He was not even rich, and he
+had handled great sums of money. He was only a General, and he had slept
+in the Emperor's tent--had had access to him in every humour. He might
+do the same again in the coming campaign. He was worth cultivating. De
+Casimir and his like were full of smiles which in no wise deceived the
+shrewd Alsatian.
+
+Mathilde Sebastian was among the ladies to whom these brilliant warriors
+paid their uncouth compliments. Perhaps de Casimir was aware that her
+measuring eyes followed him wherever he went. He knew, at all events,
+that he could hold his own amid these adventurers, many of whom had
+risen from the ranks; while others, from remote northern States, had
+birth but no manners at all. He was easy and gay, carrying lightly that
+subtle air of distinction which is vouchsafed to many Poles.
+
+"Here to-day, Mademoiselle, and gone to-morrow," he said. "All these
+eager soldiers. And who can tell which of us may return?"
+
+If he had expected Mathilde to flinch at this reminder of his calling,
+he was disappointed. Her eyes were hard and bright. She had had so few
+chances of moving amidst this splendour, of seeing close at hand the
+greatness which Napoleon shed around him as the sun its rays. She was
+carried away by the spirit of the age. Anything was better, she felt,
+than obscurity.
+
+"And who can tell," whispered de Casimir with a careless and confident
+laugh, "which of us shall come back rich and great?"
+
+This brought the glance from her dark eyes for which his own lay
+waiting. She was certainly beautiful, and wore the difficult dress of
+that day with assurance and grace. She possessed something which the
+German ladies about her lacked; something which many suddenly lack when
+a Frenchwoman is near.
+
+His manner, half respectful, half triumphant, betrayed an understanding
+to which he did not refer in words. She had bestowed some favour upon
+him--had acceded to some request. He hoped for more. He had overstepped
+some barrier. She, who should have measured the distance, had allowed
+him to come too close. The barriers of love are one-sided; there is no
+climbing back.
+
+"A hundred envious eyes are watching me," he said in an undertone as he
+passed on; "I dare not stay longer. I am on duty to-night."
+
+She bowed and watched him go. She was, it would seem, aware of that
+fallen barrier. She had done nothing, had permitted nothing from
+weakness. There was no weakness at all perhaps in Mathilde Sebastian.
+She had the quiet manner of a skilled card-player with folded cards laid
+face down upon the table, who knows what is in her hand and is waiting
+for the foe to lead.
+
+De Casimir did not see her again. In such a throng it would have been
+difficult to find her had he so desired. But, as he had told her, he was
+on duty to-night. There were to be a hundred arrests before dawn. Many
+who were laughing and talking with the French officers to-night were
+already in the grasp of Napoleon's secret police, and would drive
+straight from the door of the Rathhaus to the town prison or to the old
+Watch-house in the Portchaisengasse. Others, moving through the great
+rooms with a high head, were already condemned out of their own bureaux
+and escritoires now being rifled by the Emperor's spies.
+
+The Emperor himself had given the order, before quitting Dantzig to take
+command of the maddest and greatest enterprise conceived by the mind
+of man. There was nothing above the reach of his mind, it seemed, and
+nothing too low for him to bend down and touch. Every detail had been
+considered by himself. He was like a man who, having an open wound on
+his back, attends to it hurriedly before showing an undaunted face to
+the enemy.
+
+His inexorable finger had come down on the name of Antoine Sebastian,
+figuring on all the secret reports--first in many.
+
+"Who is this man?" he asked, and none could answer.
+
+He had gone to the frontier without awaiting the solution to the
+question. Such was his method now. He had so much to do that he could
+but skim the surface of his task. For the human mind, though it be
+colossal, can only work within certain limits. The greatest orator in
+the world can only move his immediate hearers. Those beyond the inner
+circle catch a word here and there, and imagination supplies the rest or
+improves upon it. But those in the farthest gallery hear nothing and see
+a little man gesticulating.
+
+De Casimir was not entrusted with the execution of the Emperor's orders.
+As a member of General Rapp's staff, resident in Dantzig since the
+city's occupation by the French, he had been called upon to make
+exhaustive reports upon the feeling of the burghers. There were many
+doubtful cases. De Casimir did not pretend to be better than his
+fellows. To some he had sold the benefit of the doubt. Some had paid
+willingly enough for their warning. Others had put off the payment; for
+there were many Jews, then as now, in Dantzig; slow payers requiring
+something stronger than a threat to make them disburse.
+
+De Casimir therefore quitted the Rathhaus among the first to go, and
+walked through the busy streets to his rooms in the Langenmarkt,
+where he not only lived but had a small office to which orderlies and
+aides-de-camp came by day or night. Two sentries kept guard on the
+pavement. Since the spring, this office had been one of the busiest
+military posts in Dantzig. Its doors were open at all hours, and in
+truth many of de Casimir's assistants preferred to transact their
+business in the dark.
+
+There might be some recalcitrant debtor driven by stress of circumstance
+to clear his conscience to-night. It would be as well, de Casimir
+thought, to be at one's post. Nor was he mistaken. Though it was only
+ten o'clock, two men were awaiting his return, and, their business
+despatched, de Casimir deemed it wise to send away his assistants.
+Immediately after they had gone a woman came. She was half distracted
+with fear, and the tears ran down her pallid cheeks. But she dried them
+at the mention of de Casimir's price, and fell to abusing him.
+
+"If your husband is innocent, there is all the more reason why he should
+be grateful to me for warning him," he said, with a smile. And at last
+the lady paid and went away.
+
+The town clocks had struck eleven before another footstep on the
+pavement made de Casimir raise his head. He did not actually expect any
+one, but a certain surreptitiousness in the approach of this visitor,
+and the low knock on the door, made him suspect that this was grist for
+his mill.
+
+He opened the door and, seeing that it was a woman, stepped back. When
+she had entered, he closed the door while she stood watching him in the
+dark passage, beneath the shadow of her hood. Knowing the value of such
+small details, he locked the door rather ostentatiously and dropped the
+key into his pocket.
+
+"And now, madame," he said reassuringly, as he followed his visitor into
+the room where a shaded lamp lighted his writing-table. She threw back
+her hood, and it was Mathilde! The surprise on de Casimir's face was
+genuine enough. Romance could not have brought about this visit, nor
+love be its motive.
+
+"Something has happened," he said, looking at her doubtfully.
+
+"Where is my father?" was the reply.
+
+"Unless there has been some mistake," he answered glibly, "he is at home
+in bed."
+
+She smiled contemptuously into his innocent face.
+
+"There has been a mistake," she said; "they came to arrest him
+to-night."
+
+De Casimir made a gesture of anger and seemed to be mentally assigning a
+punishment to some blunderer.
+
+"And?" he asked, without looking at her.
+
+"And he escaped."
+
+"For the moment?"
+
+"No; he has left Dantzig."
+
+Something in her voice--the cold note of warning--made him glance
+uneasily at her. This was not a woman to be deceived, and yet she was
+womanly enough to fear deception and to resent her own fears, visiting
+her anger on any who aroused them. In the flash of an eye he understood
+her, and forestalled the words that were upon her lips.
+
+"And I promised that he should come to no harm--I know that," he said
+quickly. "At first I thought that it must have been a blunder, but on
+reflection I am sure that it is not. It is the Emperor. He must have
+given the order for the arrest himself, behind my back. That is his way.
+He trusts no one. He deceives those nearest to him. I made out the list
+of those to be arrested to-night, and your father's name was not on it.
+Do you believe me? Mademoiselle, do you believe me?"
+
+It was only natural in such a man to look for disbelief. The air he
+breathed was infected by suspicion. No deception was too small for the
+great man whom he served. Mathilde made no answer.
+
+"You came here to accuse me of having deceived you," he said rather
+anxiously. "Is that it?"
+
+She nodded without meeting his eyes. It was not the truth. She had
+come to hear his defence, hoping against hope that she might be able to
+believe him.
+
+"Mathilde," he asked slowly, "do you believe me?"
+
+He came a step nearer, looking down at her averted face, which was oddly
+white. Then suddenly she turned, without a sound, without lifting her
+eyes--and was in his arms. It seemed that she had done it against her
+will, and it took him by surprise. He had thought that she was trying
+to attract his love because she believed in his capability to make his
+fortune like so many soldiers of France; that she was only playing a
+woman's subtle game. And, after all, she was like the rest--a little
+cleverer, a little colder--but, like the rest.
+
+While his arms were still round her, his quick mind leapt forward to the
+future, wondering already to what end this would lead them. For a moment
+he was taken aback. He was over the last of those barriers which are so
+easy from the outside and unclimbable from within. She had thrust into
+his hands a power greater than, for the moment, he knew how to wield. It
+was characteristic of him to think first whither it would lead him, and
+next how he could turn it to good account.
+
+Some instinct told him that this was a different love from any that he
+had met before. The same instinct made him understand that it was crying
+aloud to be convinced; and, oddly enough, he had told her the truth.
+
+"See," he said, "here is a copy of the list, and your father's name is
+not on it. See, here is Napoleon's letter, expressing satisfaction with
+my work here and in Konigsberg, where I have been served by an agent
+of my own choosing. Many have climbed to a throne with less than that
+letter for their first step. See...!" he opened another drawer. It was
+full of money.
+
+"See, again!" he said with a low laugh, and from an iron chest he
+took two or three bags which fell upon the table with the discreet
+unmistakable chink of gold. "That is the Emperor's. He trusts me, you
+see. These bags are mine. They are to be sent back to France before I
+follow the army to Russia. What I have told you is true, you see."
+
+It was an odd way of wooing, but this man rarely made a mistake. There
+are many women who, like Mathilde Sebastian, are readier to love success
+than console failure.
+
+"See," he said, after a moment's hesitation, opening another drawer
+in his writing-table, "before I went away I had intended to ask you to
+remember me."
+
+As he spoke he drew a jewel-case from under some papers, and slowly
+opened it. He had others like it in the drawer; for emergencies.
+
+"But I never hoped," he went on, "to have an opportunity of seeing you
+thus alone--to ask you never to forget me. You permit me?"
+
+He clasped the diamonds round her throat, and they glittered on the
+poor, cheap dress, which was the best she had. She looked down at them
+with a catching breath, and for an instant the glitter was reflected in
+her eyes.
+
+She had come asking for reassurance, and he gave her diamonds; which
+is an old tale told over and over again. For in human love we have to
+accept not what we want, but what is given to us.
+
+"No one in Dantzig," he said, "is so glad to hear that your father has
+escaped as I am."
+
+And, with the glitter still lurking in her dark-grey eyes, she believed
+him. He drew her cloak round her, and gently brought her hood over her
+hair.
+
+"I must take you home," he said tenderly, "without delay. And as we go
+through the streets you must tell me how it happened, and how you were
+able to come to me."
+
+"Desiree was not asleep," she answered; "she was waiting for me to
+return, and told me at once. Then she went to bed, and I waited until
+she was asleep. It was she who managed the escape."
+
+De Casimir, who was locking the drawers of his writing-table, glanced up
+sharply.
+
+"Ah! but not alone?"
+
+"No--not alone. I will tell you as we go through the streets."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI. THE WAVE MOVES ON.
+
+
+
+     La meme fermete qui sert a resister a l'amour sert aussi a le
+rendre violent et durable.
+
+It is only in war that the unexpected admittedly happens. In love and
+other domestic calamities there is always a relative who knew it all the
+time.
+
+The news that Napoleon was in Vilna, hastily evacuated by the Russians
+in full retreat, came as a surprise and not to all as a pleasant one, in
+Dantzig.
+
+It was Papa Barlasch who brought the tidings to the Frauengasse, one
+hot afternoon in July. He returned before his usual hour, and sent Lisa
+upstairs, with a message given in dumb show and interpreted by her into
+matter-of-fact German, that he must see the young ladies without delay.
+Far back in the great days of the monarchy, Papa Barlasch must have
+been a little child in a peasant's hut on those Cotes du Nord where
+they breed a race of Frenchmen startlingly similar to the hereditary foe
+across the Channel, where to this day the men kick off their sabots at
+the door and hold that an honest labourer has no business under a roof
+except in stocking-feet and shirt-sleeves.
+
+Barlasch had never yet been upstairs in the Sebastians' house, and
+deemed it only respectful to the ladies to take off his boots on
+the mat, and prowl to the kitchen in coarse blue woollen stockings,
+carefully darned by himself, under the scornful immediate eye of Lisa.
+
+He was in the kitchen when Mathilde and Desiree, in obedience to his
+command, came downstairs. The floor in one corner of the room was
+littered with his belongings; for he never used the table. "He takes
+up no more room than a cat," Lisa once said of him. "I never fall over
+him."
+
+"She leaves her greasy plates here and there," explained Barlasch in
+return. "One must think of one's self and one's uniform."
+
+He was in his stocking-feet with unbuttoned tunic when the two girls
+came to him.
+
+"Ai, ai, ai," he said, imitating with his two hands the galloping of a
+horse. "The Russians," he explained confidentially.
+
+"Has there been a battle?" asked Desiree.
+
+And Barlasch answered "Pooh!" not without contempt for the female
+understanding.
+
+"Then what is it?" she inquired. "You must remember we are not
+soldiers--we do not understand those manoeuvres--ai, ai, like that."
+
+And she copied his gesture beneath his scowling contempt.
+
+"It is Vilna," he said. "That is what it is. Then it will be Smolensk,
+and then Moscow. Ah, ah! That little man!"
+
+He turned and took up his haversack.
+
+"And I--I have my route. It is good-bye to the Frauengasse. We have been
+friends. I told you we should be. It is good-bye to these ladies--and to
+that Lisa. Look at her!"
+
+He pointed with his curved and derisive finger into Lisa's eyes. And in
+truth the tears were there. Lisa was in heart and person that which
+is comprehensively called motherly. She saw perhaps some pathos in the
+sight of this rugged man--worn by travel, bent with hardship and many
+wounds, past his work--shouldering his haversack and trudging off to the
+war.
+
+"The wave moves on," he said, making a gesture, and a sound illustrating
+that watery progress. "And Dantzig will soon be forgotten. You will be
+left in peace--but we go on to--" He paused and shrugged his shoulders
+while attending to a strap. "India or the devil," he concluded.
+
+"Colonel Casimir has gone," he added in what he took to be an aside to
+Mathilde. Which made her wonder for a moment. "I saw him depart with his
+staff soon after daybreak. And the Emperor has forgotten Dantzig. It is
+safe enough for the patron now. You can write him a letter to tell him
+so. Tell him that I said it was safe for him to return quietly here, and
+live in the Frauengasse--I, Barlasch."
+
+He was ready now, and, buttoning his tunic, he fixed the straps across
+his chest, looking from one to the other of the three women watching
+him, not without some appreciation of an audience. Then he turned to
+Desiree, who had always been his friend, with whom he now considered
+that he had the soldier's bond of a peril passed through together.
+
+"The Emperor has forgotten Dantzig," he repeated, "and those against
+whom he had a grudge. But he has also forgotten those who are in prison.
+It is not good to be forgotten in prison. Tell the patron that--to put
+it in his pipe and smoke it. Some day he may remember an old soldier.
+Ah, one thinks of one's self."
+
+And beneath his bushy brows he looked at her with a gleam of cunning.
+He went to the door and, turning there, pointed the finger of scorn at
+Lisa, stout and tearful. He gave a short laugh of a low-born contempt,
+and departed without further parley.
+
+On the doorstep he paused to put on his boots and button his gaiters,
+stooping clumsily with a groan beneath his burden of haversack and kit.
+Desiree, who had had time to go upstairs to her bedroom, ran after him
+as he descended the steps. She had her purse in her hand, and she thrust
+it into his, quickly and breathlessly.
+
+"If you take it," she said, "I shall know that we are friends."
+
+He took it ungraciously enough. It was a silken thing with two small
+rings to keep the money in place, and he looked at it with a grimace,
+weighing it in his hand. It was very light.
+
+"Money," he said. "No, thank you. To get drink with, and be degraded and
+sent to prison. Not for me, madame. No, thank you. One thinks of one's
+career."
+
+And with a gruff laugh of worldly wisdom he continued his way down
+the worn steps, never looking back at her as she stood in the sunlight
+watching him, with the purse in her hand.
+
+So in his old age Papa Barlasch was borne forward to the war on that
+human tide which flooded all Lithuania, and never ebbed again, but sank
+into the barren ground, and was no more seen.
+
+As the slow autumn approached, it became apparent that Dantzig no longer
+interested the watchers. Vilna became the base of operations. Smolensk
+fell, and, most wonderful of all, the Russians were retiring on Moscow.
+Dantzig was no longer on the route. For a time it was of the world
+forgotten, while, as Barlasch had predicted, free men continued at
+liberty, though their names had an evil savour, while innocent persons
+in prison were left to rot there.
+
+Desiree continued to receive letters from her husband, full of love and
+war. For a long time he lingered at Konigsberg, hoping every day to be
+sent forward. Then he followed Murat across the Niemen, and wrote of
+weary journeys over the rolling plains of Lithuania.
+
+Towards the end of July he mentioned curtly the arrival of de Casimir at
+head-quarters.
+
+"With him came a courier," wrote Charles, "bringing your dead letter. I
+don't believe you love me as I love you. At all events, you do not seem
+to tell me that you do so often as I want to tell you. Tell me what you
+do and think every moment of the day...." And so on. Charles seemed
+to write as easily as he talked, and had no difficulty in setting forth
+his feelings. "The courier is in the saddle," he concluded. "De Casimir
+tells me that I must finish. Write and tell me everything. How is
+Mathilde? And your father? Is he in good health? How does he pass his
+day? Does he still go out in the evening to his cafe?"
+
+This seemed to be an afterthought, suggested perhaps by conversation
+passing in the room in which he sat.
+
+The other exile, writing from Stockholm, was briefer in his
+communications.
+
+"I am well," wrote Antoine Sebastian, "and hope to arrive soon after you
+receive this. Felix Meyer, the notary, has instructions to furnish you
+with money for household expenses."
+
+It would appear that Sebastian possessed other friends in Dantzig, who
+had kept him advised of all that passed in the city.
+
+For neither Mathilde nor Desiree had obeyed Barlasch's blunt order to
+write to their father. They did not know whither he had fled, neither
+had they received any communication giving an address or a hint as to
+his future movements. It would appear that the same direct and laconic
+mind which had carried out his escape deemed it wiser that those left
+behind should be in no position to furnish information.
+
+In fairness to Barlasch, Desiree had made little of that soldier's part
+in Sebastian's evasion, and Mathilde displayed small interest in such
+details. She rather fastened, however, upon the assistance rendered by
+Louis d'Arragon.
+
+"Why did he do it?" she asked.
+
+"Oh, because I asked him," was the reply.
+
+"And why did you ask him?"
+
+"Who else was there to ask?" returned Desiree, which was indeed
+unanswerable.
+
+Perhaps the question had been suggested to her by de Casimir, who, on
+learning that Louis d'Arragon had helped her father to slip through the
+Emperor's fingers, had asked the same in his own characteristic way.
+
+"What could he hope to gain by doing it?" he had inquired as he
+walked by Mathilde's side, along the Pfaffengasse. And he made other
+interrogations respecting D'Arragon which Mathilde was no more able to
+satisfy, as he accompanied her to the Frauengasse.
+
+Since that time the dancing-lessons had been resumed to the music of a
+hired fiddler, and Desiree had once more taken up her household task of
+making both ends meet. She approached the difficulties as impetuously
+as ever, and danced the stout pupils round the room with undiminished
+energy.
+
+"It seems no good at all, your being married," said one of these
+breathlessly, while Desiree laughingly attended to her dishevelled hair.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because you still make your own dresses and teach dancing," replied
+the pupil, with a quick sigh at the thought of some smart bursch in the
+Prussian contingent.
+
+"Ah, but Charles will return a colonel, and I shall bow to you in a
+silk dress from a chaise and pair--come, left foot first. You are not so
+tired as you think you are."
+
+For those that are busy, time flies quickly enough. And there is nothing
+more absorbing than keeping the wolf from the door, else assuredly the
+hungry thousands would find time to arise and rend the overfed few.
+
+August succeeded a hot July and brought with it Sebastian's curt letter.
+Sebastian himself--that shadowy father--returned to his home a few
+hours later. He was not alone, for a heavier step followed his into the
+passage, and Desiree, always quick to hear and see and act, coming to
+the head of the stairs, perceived her father looking upwards towards
+her, while his companion in rough sailor's clothes turned to lay aside
+the valise he had carried on his shoulder.
+
+Mathilde was close behind Desiree, and Sebastian kissed his daughters
+with that cold repression of manner which always suggested a strenuous
+past in which the emotions had been relinquished for ever as an
+indulgence unfit for a stern and hard-bitten age.
+
+"I took him away and now return him," said the sailor coming forward.
+Desiree had always known that it was Louis, but Mathilde gave a little
+start at the sound of the neat clipping French in the mouth of an
+educated Frenchman so rarely heard in Dantzig--so rarely heard in all
+broad France to-day.
+
+"Yes--that is true," answered Sebastian, turning to him with a sudden
+change of manner. There was that in voice and attitude which his hearers
+had never noted before, although Charles had often evoked something
+approaching it. It seemed to indicate that, of all the people with whom
+they had seen their father hold intercourse, Louis d'Arragon was the
+only man who stood upon equality with him.
+
+"That is true--and at great risk to yourself," he said, not assigning,
+however, so great an importance to personal danger as men do in these
+careful days. As he spoke, he took Louis by the arm and by a gesture
+invited him to precede him upstairs with a suggestion of camaraderie
+somewhat startling in one usually so cold and formal as Antoine
+Sebastian, the dancing-master of the Frauengasse.
+
+"I was writing to Charles," said Desiree to D'Arragon, when they reached
+the drawing-room, and, crossing to her own table, she set the papers in
+order there. These consisted of a number of letters from her husband,
+read and re-read, it would appear. And the answer to them, a clean sheet
+of paper bearing only the date and address, lay beneath her hand.
+
+"The courier leaves this evening," she said, with a queer ring of
+anxiety in her voice, as if she feared that for some reason or another
+she ran the risk of failing to despatch her letter. She glanced at the
+clock, and stood, pen in hand, thinking of what she should write.
+
+"May I enclose a line?" asked Louis. "It is not wise, perhaps, for me
+to address to him a letter--since I am on the other side. It is a small
+matter of a heritage which he and I divide. I have placed some money in
+a Dantzig bank for him. He may require it when he returns."
+
+"Then you do not correspond with Charles?" said Mathilde, clearing a
+space for him on the larger table, and setting before him ink and pens
+and paper.
+
+"Thank you, Mademoiselle," he said, glancing at her with that light
+of interest in his dark eyes which she had ignited once before by a
+question on the only occasion that they had met. He seemed to detect
+that she was more interested in him than her indifferent manner would
+appear to indicate. "No, I am a bad correspondent. If Charles and I,
+in our present circumstances, were to write to each other it could only
+lead to intrigue, for which I have no taste and Charles no capacity."
+
+"You seem to hint that Charles might have such a taste then," she said,
+with her quiet smile, as she moved away leaving him to write.
+
+"Charles has probably found out by this time," he answered with the
+bluntness which he claimed as a prerogative of his calling and nation,
+"that a soldier of Napoleon's who intrigues will make a better career
+than one who merely fights."
+
+He took up his pen and wrote with the absorption of one who has but
+little time and knows exactly what to say. By chance he glanced towards
+Desiree, who sat at her own table near the window. She was stroking
+her cheek with the feather of her pen, looking with puzzled eyes at the
+blank paper before her. Each time D'Arragon dipped his pen he glanced at
+her, watching her. And Mathilde, with her needlework, watched them both.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII. FROM BORODINO.
+
+
+
+     However we brave it out, we men are a little breed.
+
+War is the gambling of kings. Napoleon, the arch-gambler, from that
+Southern sea where men, lacking cards or dice and the money to buy
+either, will yet play a game of chance with the ten fingers that God
+gave them for another purpose--Napoleon had dealt a hand with every
+monarch in Europe before he met for the second time that Northern
+adversary of cool blood who knew the waiting game.
+
+It is only where the stakes are small that the leisurely players, idly
+fingering the fallen cards, return in fancy to certain points--to this
+trick trumped or that chance missed, playing the game over again. But
+when the result is great it overshadows the game, and all men's thoughts
+fly to speculation on the future. How will the loser meet his loss? What
+use will the winner make of his gain?
+
+The results of the Russian campaign were so stupendous to history that
+the historians of the day, in their bewilderment, sought rather to
+preserve these than the details of the war. Thus the student of to-day,
+in piecing together an impression of bygone times, will inevitably find
+portions of his picture missing. As a matter of fact, no one can say for
+certain whether Alexander gently led Napoleon onward to Moscow or was
+himself driven thither in confusion by the conqueror.
+
+Perhaps each merely pushed on from day to day, as men who are not
+Emperors must needs do in the stress of life. It is only in calm weather
+that the eye is able to discern things afar off and make ready; but in
+a storm the horizon is dimmed by cloud and spray. All Europe was so
+obscured at this time. And even Emperors, being only men, could look no
+farther than the immediate and urgent danger of the moment.
+
+Napoleon's generals were scarcely social lights. Ney, the hero of the
+retreat, the bravest of the brave, was a rough man who ate horseflesh
+without troubling to cook it. Rapp, whose dogged defence of an abandoned
+city is without compare in the story of war, had the manners and the
+mind of a peasant. These gentlemen dealt more in deeds than in words.
+They had not much to say for themselves.
+
+As for the Russians, Russia remains at this time the one European
+country unhampered and unharassed by a cheap press--the one country
+where prominent men have a quiet tongue. A hundred years ago Russians
+did great deeds, and the rest was silence. Neither Kutusoff nor
+Alexander ever stated clearly whether the retreat to Moscow was
+intentional or unavoidable; and these are the only men who knew. Perhaps
+Napoleon knew; at all events, he thought he did, or pretended to
+think it long afterwards at St. Helena, for Napoleon the Great was a
+consummate liar.
+
+Be that as it may, the Russians retreated, and the French advanced
+farther and farther from their base. It was a great army--the greatest
+ever seen. For Napoleon had eight monarchs serving with the eagles;
+generals innumerable, many of them immortal--Davoust, the greatest
+strategist; Prince Eugene, the incomparable lieutenant; Ney, the
+fearless; four hundred thousand men. And they carried with them only
+twenty days' provision.
+
+They had marched from the Vistula, full of shipping, across the Pregel,
+loaded with stores, to the Niemen, where there was no navigation.
+Dantzig, behind them--that Gibraltar of the North--was stored with
+provision enough for the whole army. But there was no transport; for the
+roads of Lithuania were unsuitable for the heavy carts provided.
+
+The country across the Niemen could scarce sustain its own sparse
+population, and had nothing to spare for an invading army. This had once
+been Poland, and was now inimical to Russia; but Russia did not care,
+and the friendship of Lithuania was like many human friendships which we
+make sacrifices to preserve--not worth having.
+
+All the while the Russians retreated, and, stranger still, the French
+followed them, eking out their twenty days' provision.
+
+"I will make them fight a big battle, and beat them," said Napoleon;
+"and then the Emperor will sue for peace."
+
+But Barclay de Tolly continued to run away from that great battle. Then
+came the news that Barclay had been deposed; that Kutusoff was coming
+from the South to take command. It was true enough; and Barclay
+cheerfully served in a subordinate position to the new chief. September
+brought great hopes of a battle, for Kutusoff seemed to retreat with
+less despatch, like a man choosing his ground--Kutusoff, that master of
+the waiting game.
+
+Early in September Murat, the impetuous leader of the pursuit,
+complained to Nansouty that a cavalry charge had not been pushed home.
+
+"The horses have no patriotism," replied Nansouty. "The men will fight
+on empty stomachs, but not the horses."
+
+An ominous reply at the beginning of a campaign, while communications
+were still open.
+
+At last, within a few days' march of Moscow, Kutusoff made a stand. At
+last the great battle was imminent, after a hundred false alarms,
+after many disappointed hopes. The country had been flat hitherto. The
+Borodino, running in a wider valley than many of these rivers, which are
+merely great ditches, seemed to offer possibilities of defence. It was
+the only hope for Moscow.
+
+"At last," wrote Charles to Desiree on September 6, "we are to have a
+great battle. There has been much fighting the last few days, but I have
+seen none of it. We are only eighty miles from Moscow. If there is a
+great battle to-morrow we shall see Moscow in less than a week. For
+we shall win. I have now found out from one who is near him that
+the Emperor saw and remembered me the day he passed us in the
+Frauengasse--our wedding-day, dearest. Nobody is too insignificant for
+him to know. He thought that my marriage to you (for he knows that you
+are French) would militate against the work I had been given to do in
+Dantzig, so he gave orders for me to be sent at once to Konigsberg and
+to continue the work there. De Casimir tells me that the Emperor is
+pleased with me. De Casimir is the best friend I have; I am sure of
+that. It is said that under the walls of Moscow the Emperor will dictate
+his terms to Alexander. Every one wonders that Alexander of Russia did
+not make proposals of peace when Vilna and Smolensk fell. In a week we
+may be at Moscow. In a month I may be back at Dantzig, Desiree...."
+
+And the rest would have been for Desiree's eyes alone, had it ever been
+penned. For next in sacredness to heaven-inspired words are mere human
+love letters; and those who read the love-letters of another commit a
+sacrilege. But Charles never finished the letter, for the dawn surprised
+him where he wrote in a shed by the miserable Kalugha, a streamlet
+running to the Moskwa. And it was the dawn of September 7, 1812.
+
+"There is the sun of Austerlitz," said Napoleon to those who were near
+him when it arose. But it was not. It was the sun of Borodino. And
+before it set the great battle desired by the French had been fought,
+and eight French generals lay dead, while thirty more were wounded.
+Murat, Davoust, Ney, Junot, Prince Eugene, Napoleon himself--all were
+there; and all fought to finish a war which from the first had been
+disliked. The French claimed it as a victory; but they gained nothing by
+it, and they lost forty thousand killed and wounded.
+
+During the night the Russians evacuated the position which they had
+held, and lost, and retaken. They retreated towards Moscow, but Napoleon
+was hardly ready to pursue.
+
+These things, however, are history, and those who wish to know of them
+may read them in another volume. While to the many orderly persons who
+would wish to see everything in its place and the history-books on the
+top shelf to be taken down and read on a future day (which will never
+come), to such the explanation is due that this battle of Borodino is
+here touched upon because it changed the current of some lives with
+which we have to deal.
+
+For battles and revolutions and historical events of any sort are the
+jagged instruments with which Fate rough-hews our lives, leaving us to
+shape them as we will. In other days, no doubt, men rough-hewed, while
+Fate shaped. But as civilization advances men will wax so tender, so
+careful of the individual, that they will never cut and slash, but move
+softly, very tolerant, very easy-going, seeking the compromise that
+brings peace and breeds a small and timid race of men.
+
+Into such lives Fate comes crashing like a woodman with his axe, leaving
+us to smooth the edges of the gaping wound and smile, and say that we
+are not hurt; to pare away the knots and broken stumps; and hope that
+our neighbour, concealing such himself, will have the decency to pretend
+not to see.
+
+Thus the battle of Borodino crashed into the lives of Desiree and
+Mathilde, and their father, living quietly on the sunny side of the
+Frauengasse in Dantzig. Antoine Sebastian was the first to hear the
+news. He had, it seemed, special facilities for learning news at the
+Weissen Ross'l, whither he went again now in the evening.
+
+"There has been a great battle," he said, with so much more than his
+usual self-restraint that Desiree and Mathilde exchanged a glance of
+anxiety. "A man coming this evening from Dirschau saw and spoke with
+the Imperial couriers on their way to Berlin and Paris. It was a great
+victory, quite near to Moscow. But the loss on both sides has been
+terrible."
+
+He paused and glanced at Desiree. It was his creed that good blood
+should show an example of self-restraint and a certain steadfast,
+indifferent courage.
+
+"Not so much among the French," he said, "as among the Bavarians and
+Italians. It is an odd way of showing patriotism, to gain victories for
+the conqueror. One hoped--" he paused and made a gesture with his right
+hand, scarcely indicative of a staunch hope, "that the man's star might
+be setting, but it would appear to be still in the ascendant. Charles,"
+he added, as an afterthought, "would be on the staff. No doubt he only
+saw the fighting from a distance."
+
+Desiree, from whose face the colour had faded, nodded cheerfully enough.
+
+"Oh yes," she answered, "I have no doubt he is safe. He has good
+fortune."
+
+For she was an apt pupil, and had already learnt that the world only
+wishes to leave us in undisputed possession of our anxieties or sorrows,
+however ready it may be to come forward and take a hand in good fortune.
+
+"But there is no definite news," said Mathilde, hardly looking up from
+the needlework at which her fingers were so deft and industrious.
+
+"No."
+
+"No news of Charles, I mean," she continued, "or of any of our friends.
+Of Monsieur de Casimir, for instance?"
+
+"No. As for Colonel de Casimir," returned Sebastian thoughtfully,
+"he, like Charles, holds some staff appointment of which one does not
+understand the scope. He is without doubt uninjured."
+
+Mathilde glanced at her father not without suspicion. His grand manner
+might easily be at times a screen. One never knows how much is perceived
+by those who look down from a high place.
+
+The town was quiet enough all that night. Sebastian must have heard the
+news from some unofficial source, for none other seemed to know it. But
+at daybreak the church bells, so rarely used in Dantzig for rejoicing,
+awoke the burghers to the fact that the Emperor bade them make merry.
+Napoleon gave great heed to such matters. In the churches of Lithuania
+and farther on in Russia he had commanded the popes to pray for him at
+their altars instead of for the Czar.
+
+When Desiree came downstairs, she found a packet awaiting her. The
+courier had come in during the night. This was more than a letter.
+A number of papers had been folded in a handkerchief and bound with
+string. The address was written on a piece of white leather cut from
+the uniform of one who had fallen at Borodino, and had no more need of
+sabretasche or trapping.
+
+     "Madame Desiree Darragon--nee Sebastian,
+                 Frauengasse 36,
+                    Dantzig."
+
+Desiree's heart stood still; for the writing was unknown to her. As she
+cut the network of string, she thought that Charles was dead. When the
+enclosed papers fell upon the table, she was sure of it; for they were
+all in his writing. She did not pick and choose as one would who has
+leisure and no very strong excitement, but took up the first paper and
+read:
+
+"Dear C.--I have been fortunate, as you will see from the enclosed
+report. His Majesty cannot again say that I have been neglectful. I was
+quite right. It is Sebastian and only Sebastian that we need fear. Here,
+they are clumsy conspirators compared to him. I have been in the river
+half the night, listening at the open stern window of a Reval pink to
+every word they said. His Majesty can safely come to Konigsberg. Indeed,
+he is better out of Dantzig. For the whole country is riddled with that
+which they call patriotism, and we, treason. But I can only repeat what
+His Majesty disbelieved the day before yesterday--that the heart of the
+ill is Dantzig, and the venom of it Sebastian. Who he really is and
+what he is about, you must find out how you can. I go forward to-day to
+Gumbinnen. The enclosed letter to its address--I beg of you--if only in
+acknowledgment of all that I have sacrificed."
+
+The letter was unsigned, but the writing was the writing of Charles
+Darragon, and Desiree knew what he had sacrificed--what he could never
+recover.
+
+There were two or three more letters addressed to "Dear C.," bearing no
+signature, and yet written by Charles. Desiree read them carefully with
+a sort of numb attention which photographed them permanently on her
+memory like writing that is carved in stone upon a wall. There must be
+some explanation in one of them. Who had sent them to her? Was Charles
+dead?
+
+At last she came to a sealed envelope addressed to herself by Charles.
+Some other hand had copied the address from it in identical terms on
+the piece of white leather. She opened and read it. It was the letter
+written to her by Charles on the bank of the Kalugha river on the eve of
+Borodino, and left unfinished by him. He must be dead. She prayed that
+he might be.
+
+She was alone in the room, having come down early, as was her wont, to
+prepare breakfast. She heard Lisa talking with some one at the door--a
+messenger, no doubt, to say that Charles was dead.
+
+One letter still remained unread. It was in a different writing--the
+writing on the white leather.
+
+"Madame," it read, "The enclosed papers were found on the field by one
+of my orderlies. One of them being addressed to you, furnishes a clue
+to their owner, who must have dropped them in the hurry of the advance.
+Should Captain Charles Darragon be your husband, I have the pleasure to
+inform you that he was seen alive and well at the end of the day."
+The writer assured Desiree of his respectful consideration, and wrote
+"Surgeon" after his name.
+
+Desiree had read the explanation too late.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII. IN THE DAY OF REJOICING.
+
+
+
+     Truth, though it crush me.
+
+The door of the room stood open, and the sound of a step in the passage
+made Desiree glance up, as she hastily put together the papers found on
+the battlefield of Borodino.
+
+Louis d'Arragon was coming into the room, and for an instant, before his
+expression changed, she saw all the fatigue that he must have endured
+during the night; all that he must have risked. His face was usually
+still and quiet; a combination of that contemplative calm which
+characterises seafaring faces, and the clean-cut immobility of a racial
+type developed by hereditary duties of self-restraint and command.
+
+He knew that there had been a battle, and, seeing the papers on the
+table, his eyes asked her the inevitable question which his lips were
+slow to put into words.
+
+In reply Desiree shook her head. She looked at the papers in quick
+thought. Then she withdrew from them the letter written to her by
+Charles--and put the others together.
+
+"You told me to send for you," she said in a quiet, tired voice, "if I
+wanted you. You have saved me the trouble."
+
+His eyes were hard with anxiety as he looked at her. She held the
+letters towards him.
+
+"By coming," she added, with a glance at him which took in the dust,
+and the stains of salt-water on his clothes, the fatigue he sought
+to conceal by a rigid stillness, and the tension that was left by the
+dangers he had passed through--daring all--to come.
+
+Seeing that he looked doubtfully at the papers, she spoke again.
+
+"One," she said, "that one on the stained paper, is addressed to me. You
+can read it--since I ask you."
+
+The letter told him, at all events, that Charles was not killed, and,
+seeing his face clear as he read, she gave an odd, curt laugh.
+
+"Read the others," she said. "Oh! you need not hesitate. You need not be
+so particular. Read one, the top one. One is enough."
+
+The windows stood open, and the morning breeze fluttering the curtains
+brought in the gay sound of bells, the high clear bells of Hanseatic
+days, rejoicing at Napoleon's new success--by order of Napoleon. A bee
+sailed harmoniously into the room, made the circuit of it, and sought
+the open again with a hum that faded drowsily into silence.
+
+D'Arragon read the letter slowly from beginning to the unsigned end,
+while Desiree, sitting at the table, upon which she leant one elbow,
+resting her small square chin in the palm of her hand, watched him.
+
+"Ah?" she exclaimed at length, with a ring of contempt in her voice, as
+if at the thought of something unclean. "A spy! It is so easy for you to
+keep still, and to hide all you feel."
+
+D'Arragon folded the letter slowly. It was the fatal letter written
+in the upper room in the shoemaker's house in Konigsberg in the Neuer
+Markt, where the linden trees grow close to the window. In it Charles
+spoke lightly of the sacrifice he had made in leaving Desiree on his
+wedding-day, to do the Emperor's bidding. It was indeed the greatest
+sacrifice that man can make; for he had thrown away his honour.
+
+"It may not be so easy as you think," returned D'Arragon, looking
+towards the door.
+
+He had no time to say more; for Mathilde and her father were talking
+together on the stairs as they came down. D'Arragon thrust the letters
+into his pocket, the only indication he had time to give to Desiree of
+the policy they must pursue. He stood facing the door, alert and quiet,
+with only a moment in which to shape the course of more than one life.
+
+"There is good news, Monsieur," he said to Sebastian. "Though I did not
+come to bring it."
+
+Sebastian pointed interrogatively to the open window, where the sound
+of the bells seemed to emphasize the sunlight and the freshness of the
+morning.
+
+"No--not that," returned D'Arragon. "It is a great victory, they tell
+me; but it is hard to say whether such news would be good or bad. It was
+of Charles that I spoke. He is safe--Madame has heard."
+
+He spoke rather slowly, and turned towards Desiree with a measured
+gesture, not unlike Sebastian's habitual manner, and a quick glance to
+satisfy himself that she had understood and was ready.
+
+"Yes," said Desiree, "he was safe and well after the battle, but he
+gives no details; for the letter was actually written the day before."
+
+"With a mere word, added in postscriptum, to say that he was unhurt
+at the end of the day," suggested Sebastian, already drawing forward
+a chair with a gesture full of hospitality, inviting D'Arragon to be
+seated at the simple breakfast-table. But D'Arragon was looking at
+Mathilde, who had gone rather hurriedly to the window, as if to breathe
+the air. He had caught a glimpse of her face as she passed. It was hard
+and set, quite colourless, with bright, sleepless eyes. D'Arragon was
+a sailor. He had seen that look in rougher faces and sterner eyes, and
+knew what it meant.
+
+"No details?" asked Mathilde in a muffled voice, without looking round.
+
+"No," answered Desiree, who had noticed nothing. How much more clearly
+we should understand what is going on around us if we had no secrets of
+our own to defend!
+
+In obedience to Sebastian's gesture, D'Arragon took a chair, and even
+as he did so Mathilde came to the table, calm and mistress of herself
+again, to pour out the coffee, and do the honours of the simple meal.
+D'Arragon, besides having acquired the seamen's habit of adapting
+himself unconsciously and unobtrusively to his surroundings, was of a
+direct mind, lacking self-consciousness, and simplified by the pressure
+of a strong and steady purpose. For men's minds are like the atmosphere,
+which is always cleared by a steady breeze, while a changing wind
+generates vapours, mist, uncertainty.
+
+"And what news do you bring from the sea?" asked Sebastian. "Is your sky
+there as overcast as ours in Dantzig?"
+
+"No, Monsieur, our sky is clearing," answered D'Arragon, eating with a
+hearty appetite the fresh bread and butter set before him. "Since I
+saw you, the treaties have been signed, as you doubtless know, between
+Sweden and Russia and England."
+
+Nodding his head with silent emphasis, Sebastian gave it to be
+understood that he knew that and more.
+
+"It makes a great difference to us at sea in the Baltic," said
+D'Arragon. "We are no longer harassed night and day, like a dog,
+hounded from end to end of a hostile street, not daring to look into any
+doorway. The Russian ports and Swedish ports are open to us now."
+
+"One is glad to hear that your life is one of less hardship," said
+Sebastian gravely. "I.... who have tasted it."
+
+Desiree glanced at his lean, hard face. She rose, went out of the room,
+and returned in a few minutes carrying a new loaf which she set on the
+table before him with a short laugh, and something glistening in her
+eyes that was not mirth.
+
+But neither Desiree nor Mathilde joined in the conversation. They were
+glad for their father to have a companion so sympathetic as to produce
+a marked difference in his manner. For Sebastian was more at ease with
+Louis d'Arragon than he was with Charles, though the latter had the tie
+of a common fatherland, and spoke the same French that Sebastian spoke.
+D'Arragon's French had the roundness always imparted to that language by
+an English voice. It was perfect enough, but of an educated perfection.
+
+The talk was of such matters as concerned men more than women; of armies
+and war and treaties of peace. For all the world thought that Alexander
+of Russia would be brought to his knees by the battle of Borodino. None
+knew better how to turn a victory to account than he who claimed to be
+victor now. "It does not suffice," Napoleon wrote to his brother at this
+time, "to gain a victory. You must learn to turn it to advantage."
+
+Save for the one reference to his life in the Baltic during the past two
+months, D'Arragon said nothing of himself, of his patient, dogged work
+carried on by day and by night in all weathers. Content to have escaped
+with his life, he neither referred to, nor thought of, his part in the
+negotiations which had resulted in the treaty just signed. For he had
+been the link between Russia and England; the never-failing messenger
+passing from one to the other with question and answer which were
+destined to bear fruit at last in an understanding brought to perfection
+in Paris, culminating at Elba.
+
+Both were guarded in what they said of passing events, and both seemed
+to doubt the truth of the reports now flying through the streets of
+Dantzig. Even in the quiet Frauengasse all the citizens were out on
+their terraces calling questions to those that passed by beneath the
+trees. The itinerant tradesman, the milkman going his round, the vendors
+of fruit from Langfuhr and the distant villages of the plain, lingered
+at the doors to tell the servants the latest gossip of the market-place.
+Even in this frontier city, full of spies, strangers spoke together in
+the streets, and the sound of their voices, raised above the clang of
+carillons, came in at the open window.
+
+"At first a victory is always a great one," said D'Arragon, looking
+towards the window.
+
+"It is so easy to ring a bell," added Sebastian, with his rare smile.
+
+He was quite himself this morning, and only once did the dull look
+arrest his features into the stony stillness which his daughters knew.
+
+"You are the only one of your name in Dantzig," said D'Arragon, in the
+course of question and answer as to the safe delivery of letters in time
+of war.
+
+"So far as I know, there is no other Sebastian," replied he; and
+Desiree, who had guessed the motive of the question, which must have
+been in D'Arragon's mind from the beginning, was startled by the fulness
+of the answer. It seemed to make reply to more than D'Arragon had asked.
+It shattered the last faint hope that there might have been another
+Sebastian of whom Charles had written.
+
+"For myself," said D'Arragon, changing the subject quickly, "I can
+now make sure of receiving letters addressed to me in the care of the
+English Consul at Riga, or the Consul at Stockholm, should you wish to
+communicate with me, or should Madame find leisure to give me news of
+her husband."
+
+"Desiree will no doubt take pleasure in keeping you advised of Charles's
+progress. As for myself, I fear I am a bad correspondent. Perhaps not a
+desirable one in these days," said Sebastian, his face slowly clearing.
+He waved the point aside with a gesture that looked out of place on a
+hand lean and spare, emerging from a shabby brown sleeve without cuff or
+ruffle.
+
+"For I feel assured," he went on, "that we shall continue to hear good
+news of your cousin; not only that he is safe and well, but that he
+makes progress in his profession. He will go far, I am sure."
+
+D'Arragon bowed his acknowledgment of this kind thought, and rose rather
+hastily.
+
+"My best chance of quitting the city unseen," he said, "is to pass
+through the gates with the market-people returning to the villages. To
+do that, I must not delay."
+
+"The streets are so full," replied Sebastian, glancing out of the
+window, "that you will pass through them unnoticed. I see beneath the
+trees, a neighbour, Koch the locksmith, who is perhaps waiting to give
+me news. While you are saying farewell, I will go out and speak to him.
+What he has to tell may interest you and your comrades at sea--may help
+your escape from the city this morning."
+
+He took his hat as he spoke and went to the door. Mathilde, thirsting
+for the news that seemed to hum in the streets like the sound of bees,
+rose and followed him. Desiree and D'Arragon were left alone. She had
+gone to the window, and, turning there, she looked back at him over her
+shoulder, where he stood by the door watching her.
+
+"So, you see," she said, "there is no other Sebastian."
+
+D'Arragon made no reply. She came nearer to him, her blue eyes sombre
+with contempt for the man she had married. Suddenly she pointed to the
+chair which D'Arragon had just vacated.
+
+"That is where he sat. He has eaten my father's salt a hundred times,"
+she said, with a short laugh. For whithersoever civilization may take
+us, we must still go back to certain primaeval laws of justice between
+man and man.
+
+"You judge too hastily," said D'Arragon; but she interrupted him with a
+gesture of warning.
+
+"I have not judged hastily," she said. "You do not understand. You think
+I judge from that letter. That is only a confirmation of something that
+has been in my mind for a long time--ever since my wedding-day. I knew
+when you came into the room upstairs on that day that you did not trust
+Charles."
+
+"I--?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," she answered, standing squarely in front of him and looking
+him in the eyes. "You did not trust him. You were not glad that I had
+married him. I could see it in your face. I have never forgotten."
+
+D'Arragon turned away towards the window. Sebastian and Mathilde were
+in the street below, in the shade of the trees, talking with the eager
+neighbours.
+
+"You would have stopped it if you could," said Desiree; and he did not
+deny it.
+
+"It was some instinct," he said at length. "Some passing misgiving."
+
+"For Charles?" she asked sharply.
+
+And D'Arragon, looking out of the window, would not answer. She gave a
+sudden laugh.
+
+"One cannot compliment you on your politeness," she said. "Was it for
+Charles that you had misgivings?"
+
+At last D'Arragon turned on his heel.
+
+"Does it matter?" he asked. "Since I came too late."
+
+"That is true," she said, after a pause. "You came too late; so it
+doesn't matter. And the thing is done now, and I..., well, I suppose I
+must do what others have done before me--I must make the best of it."
+
+"I will help you," said D'Arragon slowly, almost carefully, "if I can."
+
+He was still avoiding her eyes, still looking out of the window.
+Sebastian was coming up the steps.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV. MOSCOW.
+
+
+
+     Nothing is so disappointing as failure--except success.
+
+While the Dantzigers with grave faces discussed the news of Borodino
+beneath the trees in the Frauengasse, Charles Darragon, white with dust,
+rose in his stirrups to catch the first sight of the domes and cupolas
+of Moscow.
+
+It was a sunny morning, and the gold on the churches gleamed and
+glittered in the shimmering heat like fairyland. Charles had ridden to
+the summit of a hill and sat for a moment, as others had done, in
+silent contemplation. Moscow at last! All around him men were shouting:
+"Moscow! Moscow!" Grave, white-haired generals waved their shakos in the
+air. Those at the summit of the hill called the others to come. Far down
+in the valley, where the dust raised by thousands of feet hung in the
+air like a mist, a faint sound like the roar of falling water could be
+heard. It was the word "Moscow!" sweeping back to the rearmost ranks of
+these starving men who had marched for two months beneath the glaring
+sun, parched with dust, through a country that seemed to them a Sahara.
+Every house they approached, they had found deserted. Every barn was
+empty. The very crops ripening to harvest had been gathered in and
+burnt. Near to the miserable farmhouses, a pile of ashes hardly cold
+marked where the poor furniture had been tossed upon the fire kindled
+with the year's harvest.
+
+Everywhere it was the same. There are, as God created it, few countries
+of a sadder aspect than that which spreads between the Moskwa and the
+Vistula. But it has been decreed by the dim laws of Race that the ugly
+countries shall be blessed with the greater love of their children,
+while men born in a beautiful land seem readiest to emigrate from it and
+make the best settlers in a new home. There is only one country in the
+world with a ring-fence round it. If a Russian is driven from his home,
+he will go to another part of Russia: there is always room.
+
+Before the advance of the spoilers, chartered by their leader to
+unlimited and open rapine--indeed, he had led them hither with that
+understanding--the Prussians, peasant and noble alike, fled to the East.
+A hundred times the advance guard, fully alive to the advantages of
+their position, had raced to the gates of a chateau only to find, on
+breaking open the doors, that it was empty--the furniture destroyed, the
+stores burnt, the wine poured out.
+
+So also in the peasants' huts. Some, more careful than the rest, had
+pulled the thatch from the roof to burn it. There was no corn in this
+the Egypt of their greedy hopes. And, lest they should bring the corn
+with them, the spoilers found the mills everywhere wrecked.
+
+It was something new to them. It was new to Napoleon, who had so
+frequently been met halfway, who knew that men for greed will part
+smilingly with half in order to save the residue. He knew that many,
+rather than help a neighbour who is in danger by a robber, will join the
+robber and share the spoil, crying out that force majeure was used to
+them.
+
+But, as every man must judge according to his lights, so must even the
+greatest find himself in the dark at last. No man of the Latin race will
+ever understand the Slav. And because the beginning is easy--because in
+certain superficial tricks of speech and thought Paris and Petersburg
+are not unlike--so much the more is the breach widened when necessity
+digs deeper than the surface. For, to make the acquaintance of a
+stranger who seems to be a counterpart of one's self in thought and
+taste, is like the first hearing of a kindred language such as Dutch to
+the English ear. At first it sounds like one's own tongue with a hundred
+identical words, but on closer listening it will be found that the words
+mean something else, and that the whole is incomprehensible and the more
+difficult to acquire by the very reason of its resemblance.
+
+Napoleon thought that the Russians would act as his enemies of the
+Latin race had acted. He thought that like his own people they would be
+over-confident, urging each other on to great deeds by loud words and a
+hundred boasts. But the Russians lack self-confidence, are timid rather
+than over-bold, dreamy rather than fiery. Only their women are glib of
+speech. He thought that they would begin very brilliantly and end with a
+compromise, heart-breaking at first and soon lived down.
+
+"They are savages out here in the plains," he said. "It is a barbaric
+and stupid instinct that makes them destroy their own property for the
+sake of hampering us. As we approach Moscow we shall find that the
+more civilized inhabitants of the villages, enervated by an easy
+life, rendered selfish by possession of wealth, will not abandon their
+property, but will barter and sell to us and find themselves the victims
+of our might."
+
+And the army believed him. For they always believed him. Faith can,
+indeed, move mountains. It carried four hundred thousand men, without
+provisions, through a barren land.
+
+And now, in sight of the golden city, the army was still hungry. Nay! it
+was ragged already. In three columns it converged on the doomed capital,
+driving before it like a swarm of flies the Cossacks who harassed the
+advance.
+
+Here again, on the hill looking down into the smiling valley of the
+Moskwa, the unexpected awaited the invaders. The city, shimmering in
+the sunlight like the realization of some Arab's dream, was silent.
+The Cossacks had disappeared. Except those around the Kremlin, towering
+above the river, the city had no walls.
+
+The army halted while aides-de-camp flew hither and thither on their
+weary horses. Charles Darragon, sunburnt, dusty, hoarse with cheering,
+was among the first. He looked right and left for de Casimir, but
+could not see him. He had not seen his chief since Borodino, for he was
+temporarily attached to the staff of Prince Eugene, who had lost heavily
+at the Kalugha river.
+
+It was usual for the army to halt before a beleaguered city and await
+the advent in all humility of the vanquished. Commonly it was the mayor
+of a town who came, followed by his councillors in their robes, to
+explain that the army had abandoned the city, which now begged to throw
+itself upon the mercy of the conqueror.
+
+For this the army waited on that sunny September morning.
+
+"He is putting on his robes," they said gaily. "He is new to this work."
+
+But the mayor of Moscow disappointed them. At last the troops moved on
+and camped for the night in a village under the Kremlin walls. It was
+here that Charles received a note from de Casimir.
+
+"I am slightly wounded," wrote that officer, "but am following the army.
+At Borodino my horse was killed under me, and I was thrown. While I
+was insensible, I was robbed and lost what money I had, as well as my
+despatch-case. In the latter was the letter you wrote to your wife. It
+is lost, my friend; you must write another."
+
+Charles was tired. He would put off till to-morrow, he thought, and
+write to Desiree from Moscow. As he lay, all dressed on the hard ground,
+he fell to thinking of what he should write to Desiree to-morrow from
+Moscow. The mere date and address of such a letter would make her love
+him the more, he thought; for, like his leaders, he was dazed by a
+surfeit of glory.
+
+As he fell asleep smiling at these happy reflections, Desiree, far away
+in Dantzig, was locking in her bureau the letter which had been lost
+and found again; while, on the deck of his ship, lifting gently to the
+tideway where the Vistula sweeps out into the Dantziger Bucht, Louis
+d'Arragon stood fingering reflectively in his jacket-pocket the unread
+papers which had fallen from the same despatch-case. For it is a very
+small world in which to do wrong, though if a man do a little good in
+his lifetime it is--heaven knows--soon mislaid and trodden under the
+feet of the new-comers.
+
+The next day it was definitely ascertained that the citizens of Moscow
+had no communication to make to the conquering leaders. Soon after
+daylight the army moved towards the city. The suburbs were deserted. The
+houses stood with closed shutters and locked doors. Not so much as a dog
+awaited the triumphant entry through the city gates.
+
+Long streets without a living being from end to end met the eyes of
+those daring organizers of triumphal entries who had been sent forward
+to clear a path and range the respectful citizens on either hand. But
+there were no citizens. There was not a single witness to this triumph
+of the greatest army the world had seen, led across Europe by the first
+captain in all history to conquer a virgin capital.
+
+The various corps marched to their quarters in silence, with nervous
+glances at the shuttered windows. Some, breaking rank, ventured into the
+churches which stood open. The candles were lighted on the altars, they
+reported to their comrades in a hushed voice when they returned, but
+there was no one there.
+
+Certain palaces were selected as head-quarters for the general officers
+and the chiefs of various departments. As often as not a summons would
+be answered and the door opened by an obsequious porter, who handed the
+keys to the first-comer. But he spoke no French, and only cringed in
+silence when addressed. Other doors were broken in.
+
+It was like a play acted in dumb show on an immense stage. It was
+disquieting and incomprehensible even to the oldest campaigner, while
+the young fire-eaters, fresh from St. Cyr, were strangely depressed
+by it. There was a smell of sour smoke in the air, a suggestion of
+inevitable tragedy.
+
+On the Krasnaya Ploschad--the great Red Square, which is the central
+point of the old town--the soldiers were already buying and selling the
+spoil wrested from the burning Exchange. It seemed that the citizens
+before leaving had collected their merchandise in this building to burn
+it. To the rank-and-file this meant nothing but an incomprehensible
+stupidity. To the educated and the thoughtful it was another evidence
+of that dumb and sullen capacity for infinite self-sacrifice which makes
+Russians different from any other race, and which has yet to be reckoned
+with in the history of the world. For it will tend to the greatest good
+of the greatest number, and is a power for national aggrandisement quite
+unattainable by any Latin people.
+
+Charles, with the other officers of Prince Eugene's staff, was quartered
+in a palace on the Petrovka--that wide street running from the Kremlin
+northward to the boulevards and the parks. Going towards it he passed
+through the bazaars and the merchants' quarters, where, like an army of
+rag-pickers, the eager looters were silently hurrying from heap to heap.
+Every warehouse had, it seemed, been ransacked and its contents thrown
+out into the streets. The first-comers had hurried on, seeking something
+more valuable, more portable, leaving the later arrivals to turn over
+their garbage like dogs upon a dust-heap.
+
+The Petrovka is a long street of great houses, and was now deserted.
+The pillagers were nervous and ill at ease, as men must always be in the
+presence of something they do not understand. The most experienced of
+them--and there were some famous robbers in Murat's vanguard--had never
+seen an empty city abandoned all standing, as the Russians had
+abandoned Moscow. They felt apprehensive of the unknown. Even the least
+imaginative of them looked askance at the tall houses, at the open doors
+of the empty churches, and they kept together for company's sake.
+
+Charles's rooms were in the Momonoff Palace, where even the youngest
+lieutenant had vast apartments assigned to him. It was in one of
+these--a lady's boudoir, where his dust-covered baggage had been thrown
+down carelessly by his orderly on a blue satin sofa--that he sat down to
+write to Desiree.
+
+His emotions had been stirred by all that he had passed through--by the
+first sight of Moscow, by the passage beneath the Gate of the Redeemer,
+where every man must uncover and only Napoleon dared to wear a hat; by
+the bewildering sense of triumph and the knowledge that he was taking
+part in one of the epochs of man's history on this earth. The emotions
+lie very near together, so that laughter being aroused must also touch
+on tears, and hatred being kindled warms the heart to love.
+
+And, here in this unknown woman's room, with the very pen that she had
+thrown aside, Charles, who wrote and spoke his love with such facility,
+wrote to Desiree a love-letter such as he had never written before.
+
+When it was sealed and addressed he called his orderly to take it to the
+officer to whose duty it fell to make up the courier for Germany. But
+he received no reply. The man had joined his comrades in the busier
+quarters of the city. Charles went to the head of the stairs and called
+again, with no better success. The house was comparatively modern, built
+on the familiar lines of a Parisian hotel, with a wide stair descending
+to an entrance archway where carriages passed through into a courtyard.
+
+Descending the stairs, Charles found that even the sentry had absented
+himself from his duty. His musket, leant against the post of the stone
+doorway, indicated that he was not far. Listening in the silence of that
+great house, Charles heard some one at work with hammer and chisel in
+the courtyard. He went there, and found the sentry kneeling at a low
+door, endeavouring to break it open. The man had not been idle; from a
+piece of rope slung across his back half a dozen clocks were suspended.
+They rattled together like the wares of a travelling tinsmith at every
+movement of his arms.
+
+"What are you doing there, my friend?" asked Charles.
+
+The man held up one finger over his shoulder without looking round, and
+shook it from side to side, as not desiring to be interrupted.
+
+"The cellar," he answered, "always the cellar. It is human nature. We
+get it from the animals."
+
+He glanced round as he worked, and, perceiving that he had been
+addressing an officer, he scrambled to his feet with a grumbled curse.
+He was an old man, baked by the sun. The wrinkles in his face were
+filled with dust. Since quitting the banks of the Vistula no opportunity
+for ablution seemed to have presented itself to him. He stood at
+attention, his lips working over sunken gums.
+
+"I want you to take this letter," said Charles, "to the officer on
+service at head-quarters, and ask him to include it in his courier. It
+is, as you see, a private letter--to my wife at Dantzig."
+
+The man looked at it, and grumbled something inaudible. He took it in
+his hand and turned it over with the slow manner of the illiterate.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV. THE GOAL.
+
+
+
+     God writes straight on crooked lines.
+
+Charles, having given his letter to the sentry with the order to take it
+to its immediate destination, turned towards the stairs again. In those
+days an order was given in a different tone to that which servitude
+demands in later times.
+
+He returned to his room on the first floor without even waiting to make
+sure that he would be obeyed. He had scarcely seated himself when, after
+a fumbling knock, the sentry opened the door and followed him into the
+room, still holding the letter in his hand.
+
+"Mon capitaine," he said with a certain calmness of manner as from
+an old soldier to a young one, "a word--that is all. This letter,"
+he turned it in his hand as he spoke, and looking at Charles beneath
+scowling brows, awaited an explanation. "Did you pick it up?"
+
+"No--I wrote it."
+
+"Good. I..." he paused, and tapped himself on the chest so that there
+could be no mistake; there was a rattling sound behind him suggestive of
+ironware. Indeed, he was hung about with other things than clocks, and
+seemed to be of opinion that if a soldier sets value upon any object he
+must attach it to his person. "I, Barlasch of the Guard--Marengo, the
+Danube, Egypt--picked up after Borodino a letter like it. I cannot read
+very quickly--indeed--Bah! the old Guard needs no pens and paper--but
+that letter I picked up was just like this."
+
+"Was it addressed like that to Madame Desiree Darragon?"
+
+"So a comrade told me. It is you, her husband?"
+
+"Yes," answered Charles, "since you ask; I am her husband."
+
+"Ah!" replied Barlasch darkly, and his limbs and features settled
+themselves into a patient waiting.
+
+"Well," asked Charles, "what are you waiting for?"
+
+"Whatever you may think proper, mon capitaine, for I gave the letter to
+the surgeon who promised that it should be forwarded to its address."
+
+Charles laughingly sought his purse. But there was nothing in it, so he
+looked round the room.
+
+"Here, add this to your collection," and he took a small French clock
+from the writing-table, a pretty, gilded toy from Paris.
+
+"Thank you, mon capitaine."
+
+Barlasch, with shaking fingers, unknotted the rope around his shoulders.
+As he was doing so one of the clocks on his back began to strike. He
+paused, and stood looking gravely at his superior officer. Another clock
+took up the tale and a third, while Barlasch sternly stood at attention.
+
+"Four o'clock," he said to himself, "and I, who have not yet
+breakfasted--"
+
+With a grunt and a salute he turned towards the door which stood open.
+Some one was coming up the stairs rather slowly, his spurs clinking,
+his scabbard clashing against the gilded banisters. Papa Barlasch stood
+aside at attention, and Colonel de Casimir came into the room with a gay
+word of greeting. Barlasch went out, but he did not close the door. It
+is to be presumed that he stood without, where he might have overheard
+all that they said to each other for quite a long time, until it was
+almost the half-hour when the clocks would strike again. But de Casimir,
+perceiving that the door was open, closed it quietly from within, and
+Barlasch, shut out on the wide landing, made a grimace at the massive
+woodwork before turning to descend the stairs.
+
+It was the middle of September, and the days were shortening. The dusk
+of evening had already closed over the city when de Casimir and Charles
+at length came downstairs. No one had troubled to open the shutters of
+such rooms as were not required; and these were many. For Moscow was
+even at that day a great city, though less spacious and more fantastic
+than it is to-day. There was plenty of room for the whole army in the
+houses left empty by their owners, so that many lodged as they had never
+lodged before and would never lodge again.
+
+The stairs were almost dark when Charles and his companion descended
+them. The rusted musket poised against the doorpost still indicated the
+supposed presence of a sentry.
+
+"Listen," said Charles, "I found him burrowing like a rat at a
+cellar-door in the courtyard. Perhaps he has got in."
+
+They listened, but could hear nothing. Charles led the way towards the
+courtyard. A glimmer of light guided him to the door he sought. It stood
+open. Barlasch had succeeded in effecting an entry to the cellar, where
+his experience taught him to seek the best that an abandoned house
+contains.
+
+Charles and de Casimir peered down the narrow stairs. By the light of
+a candle Barlasch was working vigorously amid a confused pile of cases,
+and furniture, and roughly tied bundles of clothing. He had laid
+aside nothing, and his movements were attended by the usual rattle of
+hollow-ware. They could see the perspiration gleaming on his face. Even
+in this cellar there lingered the faint smell of sour smoke that filled
+the air of Moscow.
+
+De Casimir caught the gleam of jewellery, and went hurriedly downstairs.
+
+"What are you doing there, my friend?" he asked, and the words were
+scarcely out of his mouth, when Barlasch extinguished his candle. There
+followed a dead silence, such as comes when a rodent is disturbed at his
+work. The two men on the cellar-stairs were conscious of the gaze of the
+bright, rat-like eyes below.
+
+De Casimir turned and followed Charles upstairs again.
+
+"Come up," he said, "and go to your post."
+
+There was no movement in response.
+
+"Name of a dog," cried de Casimir, "is all discipline relaxed? Come up,
+I tell you, and obey my orders."
+
+He emphasized his command with the cocking of a pistol, and a slight
+disturbance in the darkness of the cellar heralded the unwilling
+approach of Barlasch, who climbed the stairs step by step like a
+schoolboy coming to punishment.
+
+"It is I who found the door, mon colonel, behind that pile of firewood.
+It is I who opened it. What is down there is mine," he said, sullenly.
+But the only reply that de Casimir made was to seize him by the arm and
+jerk him away from the stairs.
+
+"To your post," he said, "take your arm, and out into the street, in
+front of the house. That is your place."
+
+But while he was still speaking, they were all startled by a sudden
+disturbance in the cellar, and in the gloom a man stumbled up the stairs
+and ran past them. Barlasch had taken the precaution of bolting the huge
+front door, which was large enough to give passage to a carriage. The
+man, who exhaled an atmosphere of dust mingled with the disquieting
+and all-pervading odour of smoke, rushed at the huge door and tugged
+furiously at its handles.
+
+Charles, who was on his heels, grasped his arm, but the man swung round
+and threw him off as if he were a child. He had a hatchet in his hand
+with which he aimed a blow at Charles, but missed him. Barlasch was
+already going towards his musket, which stood in the corner against
+the door-post, but the Russian saw his movement, and forestalled him.
+Seizing the gun, he presented the bayonet to them, and stood with his
+back to the door, facing the three men in a breathless silence. He was
+a large man, dishevelled, with long hair tumbled about his head, and
+light-coloured eyes, glaring like the eyes of a beast at bay.
+
+In the background de Casimir, quick and calm, had already covered him
+with the pistol produced as a persuasive to Barlasch. For a second there
+was silence, during which they all could hear the call to arms in the
+street outside. The patrol was hurrying down the Petrovka, calling the
+assembly.
+
+The report of the pistol rang through the house, shaking the doors and
+windows. The man threw up his arms and stood for a moment looking at de
+Casimir with an expression of blank amazement. Then his legs seemed to
+slip away from beneath him, and he collapsed to the floor. He turned
+over with movements singularly suggestive of a child seeking a
+comfortable position in bed, and lay quite still, his cheek on the
+pavement and his staring eyes turned towards the cellar-door from which
+he had emerged.
+
+"He has his affair--that parishioner," muttered Barlasch, looking at him
+with a smile that twisted his mouth to one side. And, as he spoke, the
+man's throat rattled. De Casimir was reloading his pistol. So persistent
+was the gaze of the dead man's eyes that de Casimir turned on his heel
+to look in the same direction.
+
+"Quick!" he exclaimed, pointing to the doorway, from which a lazy white
+smoke emerged in thin puffs. "Quick, he has set fire to the house!"
+
+"Quick--with what, mon colonel?" asked Barlasch.
+
+"Why, go and fetch some men with a fire-engine."
+
+"There are no fire-engines left in Moscow, mon colonel!"
+
+"Then find buckets, and tell me where the well is."
+
+"There are no buckets left in Moscow, mon colonel. We found that out
+last night, when we wanted to water the horses. The citizens have
+removed them. And there is not a well of which the rope has not been
+cut. They are droll companions, these Russians, I can tell you."
+
+"Do as I tell you," repeated de Casimir, angrily, "or I shall put you
+under arrest. Go and fetch men to help me to extinguish this fire."
+
+By way of reply, Barlasch held up one finger in a childlike gesture of
+attention to some distant sound.
+
+"No, thank you," he said, coolly, "not for me. Discipline, mon colonel,
+discipline. Listen, you can hear the 'assembly' as well as I. It is the
+Emperor that one obeys. One thinks of one's military career."
+
+With knotted and shaking fingers he drew back the bolts and opened the
+door. On the threshold he saluted.
+
+"It is the call to arms, mes officiers," he said. Then, shouldering his
+musket, he turned away, and all his clocks struck six. The bells of the
+city churches seemed to greet him as he stepped into the street, for in
+Moscow each hour is proclaimed with deafening iteration from a thousand
+towers.
+
+He looked down the Petrovka; from half the houses which bordered the
+wide roadway--a street of palaces--the smoke was pouring forth in puffs.
+He went uphill towards the Red Square and the Kremlin, where the Emperor
+had his head-quarters. It was to this centre that the patrols had
+converged. Looking back, Barlasch saw, not one house on fire, but a
+hundred. The smoke arose from every quarter of the city at once. He
+hurried on, but was stopped by a crowd of soldiers, all laden with
+booty, gesticulating, shouting, abusing one another. It was Babel
+over again. The riff-raff of sixteen nations had followed Napoleon to
+Moscow--to rob. Half a dozen different tongues were spoken in one army
+corps. There remained no national pride to act as a deterrent. No man
+cared what he did. The blame would be laid upon France.
+
+The crowd was collected in front of a high, many-windowed building in
+flames.
+
+"What is it?" Barlasch asked first one and then another. But no one
+spoke his tongue. At last he found a Frenchman.
+
+"It is the hospital."
+
+"And what is that smell? What is burning there?"
+
+"Twelve thousand wounded," answered the man, with a sickening laugh.
+And even as he spoke one or two of the wounded dragged themselves, half
+burnt, down the wide steps. No one dared to approach them, for the walls
+of the building were already bulging outwards. One man was half covered
+with a sheet which was black, and his bare limbs were black with smoke.
+All the hair was burnt from his head and face. He stood for a moment in
+the doorway--a sight never to be forgotten--and then fell headlong down
+the steps, where he lay motionless. Some one in the crowd laughed--a
+high cackle which was heard above the roar of the fire and the deafening
+chorus of burning timbers.
+
+Barlasch passed on, following some officers who were leading their
+horses towards the Kremlin. The streets were full of soldiers carrying
+burdens, and staggering beneath the weight of their spoil. Many were
+wearing priceless fur cloaks, and others walked in women's wraps of
+sable and ermine. Some wore jewellery, such as necklaces, on their rough
+uniforms, and bracelets round their sunburnt wrists. No one laughed
+at them, but only glanced enviously at the pillage. All were in
+deadly earnest, and none graver than those who had found drink and now
+regretted that they had given way to the temptation; for their sober
+comrades had outwitted them in finding treasure.
+
+One man gravely wore a gilt coronet crammed over the crown of his shako.
+He joined Barlasch, staggering along beside him.
+
+"I come from the Cathedral," he explained, confidentially. "St. Michael
+they call it. They said there was great treasure there hidden in the
+cellars, but I only found a company of old kings in their coffins. We
+stirred them up. They were quiet enough when we found them, under their
+counterpanes of red velvet. We stirred them up with the bayonet, and the
+dust got into our throats and choked us. Name of God, I am thirsty. You
+have nothing in your bottle, comrade?"
+
+"No."
+
+Barlasch trudged on, all his possessions swinging and clanking together.
+The confidential man turned towards him and lifted his water-bottle,
+weighed it, and found it wanting.
+
+"Name of a name, of a name, of a name," he muttered, walking on. "Yes,
+there was nothing there. Even the silver plates on the coffins with the
+names of those gentlemen were no thicker than a sword. But I found a
+crown in the church itself. I borrowed it from St. Michael. He had a
+sword in his hand, but he did not strike. No. And there was only tinsel
+on the hilt. No jewels."
+
+He walked on in silence for a few minutes, coughing out the smoke and
+dust from his lungs. It was almost dark, but the whole city was blazing
+now, and the sky glowed with a red light that mingled with the remnants
+of a lurid sunset. A strong wind blew the smoke and the flying sparks
+across the roofs.
+
+"Then I went into the sacristy," continued the man, stumbling over the
+dead body of a young girl and turning to curse her. Barlasch looked
+at him sideways and cursed him for doing it, with a sudden fierce
+eloquence. For Papa Barlasch was a man of unclean lips.
+
+"There was an old man in there, a sacristan. I asked him where he kept
+the dishes, and he said he could not speak French. I jerked my bayonet
+into him--name of a name! he soon spoke French."
+
+Barlasch broke off these delicate confidences by a quick word of
+command, and himself stood rigid in the roadway before the Imperial
+Palace of the Kremlin, presenting arms. A man passed close by them on
+his way towards a waiting carriage. He was stout and heavy-shouldered,
+peculiarly square, with a thick neck and head set low in the shoulders.
+On the step of the carriage he turned and surveyed the lurid sky and
+the burning city to the east with an indifferent air. Into his deep
+bloodshot eyes there flashed a sudden gleam of life and power, as he
+glanced along the row of watching faces to read what was written there.
+
+It was Napoleon, at the summit of his dream, hurriedly quitting the
+Kremlin, the boasted goal of his ambition, after having passed but one
+night under that proud roof.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI. THE FIRST OF THE EBB.
+
+
+
+                    Tho' he trip and fall
+     He shall not blind his soul with clay.
+
+The days were short, and November was drawing to its end when Barlasch
+returned to Dantzig. Already the frost, holding its own against a sun
+that seemed to linger in the North that year, exercised its sway almost
+to midday, and drew a mist from the level plains.
+
+The autumn had been one of unprecedented splendour, making the
+imaginative whisper that Napoleon, like a second Joshua, could exact
+obedience even from the sun. A month earlier, soon after the retreat
+was ordered, the nights had begun to be cold, but the days remained
+brilliant. Now the rivers were shrouded in white mist, and still water
+was frozen.
+
+Barlasch seemed to take it for understood that a billet holds good
+throughout a whole campaign. But the door of No. 36 Frauengasse was
+locked when he turned its iron handle. He knocked, and waited on the
+step.
+
+It was Desiree who opened the door at length--Desiree, grown older, with
+something new in her eyes. Barlasch, sure of his entree, had already
+removed his boots, which he carried in his hand; this added to a certain
+surreptitiousness in his attitude. A handkerchief was bound over his
+left eye. He wore his shako still, but the rest of his uniform verged
+on the fantastic. Under a light-blue Bavarian cavalry cape he wore a
+peasant's homespun shirt, and he carried no arms.
+
+He pushed past Desiree rather unceremoniously, glad to get within
+doors. He was very lame, and of his blue knitted stockings only the legs
+remained; he was barefoot.
+
+He limped towards the kitchen, glancing over his shoulder to make sure
+that Desiree shut the door. The chair he had made his own stood just
+within the open door of the kitchen. It was nine o'clock in the morning,
+and Lisa had gone to market. Barlasch sat down.
+
+"Voila," he said, and that was all. But by a gesture he described the
+end of the world. Then he scowled at her with his available eye with
+suspicion, and she turned away suddenly, as one may who has not a clear
+conscience.
+
+"What is the matter with your eye?" she asked, in order to break the
+silence. He laid aside his hat, and his ragged hair, quite white, fell
+to his shoulders. By way of answer, he unknotted the bloodstained dusky
+handkerchief, and looked up at her. The hidden eye was uninjured and as
+bright as the other.
+
+"Nothing," he answered, and he confirmed the statement by a low-born
+wink. More than once he glanced, with a glaring light in his eye,
+towards the cupboard where Lisa kept the bread, and quite suddenly
+Desiree knew that he was starving. She ran to the cupboard, and
+hurriedly set down on the table before him what was there. It was not
+much--a piece of cold meat and a whole loaf.
+
+He had taken off his haversack, and was fumbling in it with unsteady
+hands. At last he found that which he sought. It was wrapped in a silk
+scarf that must have come from Cashmere to Moscow, and from Moscow in
+his haversack with pieces of horseflesh and muddy roots to Dantzig. With
+that awkwardness in giving and taking which belongs to his class,
+he held out to Desiree a little square "ikon" no bigger than a
+playing-card. It was of gold, set with diamonds, and the faces of the
+Virgin and Child were painted with exquisite delicacy.
+
+"It is a thing to say your prayers to," he said gruffly.
+
+By an effort he kept his eyes averted from the food on the table.
+
+"I met a baker on the bridge," he said, "and offered it to him for a
+loaf, but he refused."
+
+And there was a whole history of human suffering and temptation--of the
+human fall--in his curt laugh. While Desiree was looking at the treasure
+in speechless admiration, he turned suddenly and took the bread and meat
+in his grimy hands. His crooked fingers closed over the loaf, making the
+crust crack, and for a second the expression of his face was not human.
+Then he hurried to the room that had been his, like a dog that seeks to
+hide its greed in its kennel.
+
+In a surprisingly short time he came back, the greyness all gone from
+his face, though his eyes still glittered with the dry, hard light of
+starvation. He went back to the chair near the door, and sat down.
+
+"Seven hundred miles," he said, looking down at his feet with a shake of
+the head, "seven hundred miles in six weeks."
+
+Then he glanced at her and out through the open door, to make sure none
+could overhear.
+
+"Because I was afraid," he added in a whisper. "I am easily frightened.
+I am not brave."
+
+Desiree shook her head and laughed. Women have from all time accepted
+the theory that a uniform makes a man courageous.
+
+"They had to abandon the guns," he went on, "soon after quitting Moscow.
+The horses were starving. There was a steep hill, and the guns were left
+at the bottom. Then I began to be afraid. There were some marching
+with candelabras on their backs and nothing in their carnassieres. They
+carried a million francs on their shoulders and death in their faces. I
+was afraid. I carried salt--salt--and nothing else. Then one day I saw
+the Emperor's face. That was enough. The same night I crept away while
+the others slept round the fire. They looked like a masquerade. Some of
+them wore ermine. Oh! I was afraid, I tell you. I only had the salt and
+some horse. There was plenty of that on the road. And that toy. I found
+it in Moscow. I stood in a cellar, as big as this room, full of such
+things. But one thinks of one's life. I only carried salt, and that
+picture for you... to say your prayers to. The good God will hear you,
+perhaps; He has no time to listen to us others."
+
+And he used the last words as a French peasant, which is a survival of
+serfdom that has come down through the furnace of the Revolution.
+
+"But I cannot take it," said Desiree. "It is worth a million francs."
+
+He looked at her fiercely.
+
+"You think that I look for something in return?"
+
+"Oh no!" she answered, "I have nothing to give you in return. I am as
+poor as you."
+
+"Then we can be friends," he said. He was eyeing surreptitiously a mug
+of beer which Desiree had set before him on the table. Some instinct, or
+the teaching of the last two months, made it repugnant to him to eat or
+drink beneath his neighbour's eye. He was a sorry-looking figure, not
+far removed from the animals, and in his downward journey he had picked
+up, perhaps, the instinct which none can explain, telling an animal to
+take its food in secret.
+
+Desiree went to the window, turning her back to him, and looked out into
+the yard. She heard him drink, and set the mug down again with a gulp.
+
+"You were in Moscow?" she said at length, half turning towards him so
+that he could see her profile and her short upper lip, which was parted
+as if to ask a question which she did not put into words. He looked her
+slowly up and down beneath his heavy eyebrows, his little cunning eyes
+alight with suspicion. He watched her parted lips, which were tilted at
+the corners, showing humour and a nature quick to laugh or suffer. Then
+he jerked his head upwards as if he saw the unasked question quivering
+there, and bore her some malice for her silence.
+
+"Yes! I was in Moscow," he said, watching the colour fade from her face.
+"And I saw him--your husband--there. I was on guard outside his door the
+night we entered the city. It was I who carried to the post the letter
+he wrote you. He was very anxious that it should reach you. You received
+it--that love-letter?"
+
+"Yes," answered Desiree gravely, in no wise responding to a sudden
+forced gaiety in Papa Barlasch, which was only an evidence of the
+shyness with which rough men all the world over approach the subject of
+love. The gaiety lapsed into a sudden silence. He waited for her to ask
+a question, but in vain.
+
+"I never saw him again," went on Barlasch, "for the 'general' sounded,
+and I went out into the streets to find the city on fire. In a great
+army, as in a large country, one may easily lose one's own brother. But
+he will return--have no fear. He has good fortune--the fine gentleman."
+
+He stopped and scratched his head, looked at her sideways with a grimace
+of bewilderment.
+
+"It is good news I bring you," he muttered. "He was alive and well when
+we began the retreat. He was on the staff, and the staff had horses and
+carriages. They had bread to eat, I am told."
+
+"And you--what had you?" asked Desiree, over her shoulder.
+
+"No matter," he answered gruffly, "since I am here."
+
+"And yet you believe in that man still," flashed out Desiree, turning to
+face him.
+
+Barlasch held up a warning finger, as if bidding her to be silent on a
+subject on which she was not capable of forming a judgment. He wagged
+his head from side to side and heaved a sigh.
+
+"I tell you," he said, "I saw his face after Malo-Jaroslavetz; we lost
+ten thousand that day. And I was afraid. For I saw in it that he
+was going to leave us as he did in Egypt. I am not afraid when he is
+there--not afraid of the Devil--or the bon Dieu, but when Napoleon is
+not there--" He broke off with a gesture describing abject terror.
+
+"They say in Dantzig," said Desiree, "that he will never get back across
+the Beresina, for the Russians are bringing two armies to stop him
+there. They say that the Prussians will turn against him."
+
+"Ah--they say that already?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+He looked at her with a sudden light of anger in his eyes.
+
+"Who has taught you to hate Napoleon?" he asked bluntly.
+
+And again Desiree turned away from his glance as if she could not meet
+it.
+
+"No one," she answered.
+
+"It is not the patron," said Barlasch, muttering his thoughts as
+he hobbled to the door of his little room, and began unloading his
+belongings with a view to ablution; for he was a self-contained
+traveller, carrying with him all he required. "It is not the patron.
+Because such a hatred as his cannot be spoken of. It is not your
+husband, because Napoleon is his god."
+
+He broke off with one of his violent jerks of the head, almost
+threatening to dislocate his neck, and looked at her fixedly.
+
+"It is because you have grown into a woman since I went away."
+
+And out came his accusing finger, though Desiree had her back turned
+towards him, and there was none other to see.
+
+"Ah!" he said, with deadly contempt, "I see, I see!"
+
+"Did you expect me to grow up into a man?" asked Desiree, over her
+shoulder.
+
+Barlasch stood in the doorway, his lips and jaw moving as if he were
+masticating winged words. At length, having failed to find a tremendous
+answer, he softly closed the door.
+
+This was not the only wise old veteran of the Grand Army to see which
+way the wind blew; for many another after the battle of Malo-Jaroslavetz
+packed upon his back such spoil as he could carry, and set off on foot
+for France. For the cold had come at length, and not a horse in the
+French army was roughed for the snowy roads, nor, indeed, had provision
+been made to rough them. This was a sign not lost upon those who had
+horses to care for. The Emperor, who forgot nothing, had forgotten this.
+He who foresaw everything, had omitted to foresee the winter. He had
+ordered a retreat from Moscow, in the middle of October, of an army in
+summer clothing, without provision for the road. The only hope was to
+retreat through a new line of country not despoiled by the enormous army
+in its advance of every grain of corn, every blade of grass. But this
+hope was frustrated by the Russians who, hemming them in, forced them to
+keep the road along which they had made so triumphant a march on Moscow.
+
+Already, in the ranks, it was whispered that by the light of the burning
+city some had perceived dark forms moving on the distant plains--a
+Russian army passing westward in front of them to await and cut them off
+at the passage of some river. The Russians had fought well at Borodino:
+they fought desperately at Malo-Jaroslavetz, which town was taken and
+retaken eleven times and left in cinders.
+
+The Grand Army was no longer in a position to choose its way. It was
+forced to cross again the battlefield of Borodino, where thirty thousand
+dead lay yet unburied. But Napoleon was still with them, his genius
+flashing out at times with something of the fire which had taken men's
+breath away and burnt his name indelibly into the pages of the world's
+history. Even when hard pressed, he never missed a chance of attacking.
+The enemy never made a mistake that he did not give them reason to rue
+it.
+
+To the waiting world came at length the news that the winter, so long
+retarded, had closed down over Russia. In Dantzig, so near the frontier,
+a hundred rumours chased each other through the streets; and day by day
+Antoine Sebastian grew younger and gayer. It seemed as if a weight
+long laid upon his heart had been lifted at last. He made a journey to
+Konigsberg soon after Barlasch's return, and came back with eager eyes.
+His correspondence was enormous. He had, it seemed, a hundred
+friends who gave him news and asked something in exchange--advice,
+encouragement, warning. And all the while men whispered that Prussia
+would ally herself to Russia, Sweden, and England.
+
+From Paris came news of a growing discontent. For France, among a
+multitude of virtues, has one vice unpardonable to Northern men: she
+turns from a fallen friend.
+
+Soon followed the news of Beresina--a poor little river of
+Lithuania--where the history of the world hung for a day as on a thread.
+But a flash of the dying genius surmounted superhuman difficulties, and
+the catastrophe was turned into a disaster. The divisions of Victor and
+Oudinot--the last to preserve any semblance of military discipline--were
+almost annihilated. The French lost twelve thousand killed or drowned in
+the river, sixteen thousand prisoners, twelve of the remaining guns.
+But they were across the Beresina. There was no longer a Grand Army,
+however. There was no army at all--only a starving, struggling trail of
+men stumbling through the snow, without organization or discipline or
+hope.
+
+It was a disaster on the same gigantic scale as the past victories--a
+disaster worthy of such a conqueror. Even his enemies forgot to rejoice.
+They caught their breath and waited.
+
+And suddenly came the news that Napoleon was in Paris.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII. A FORLORN HOPE.
+
+
+
+               The fire i' the flint
+     Shows not, till it be struck.
+
+"It is time to do something," said Papa Barlasch on the December morning
+when the news reached Dantzig that Napoleon was no longer with the
+army--that he had made over the parody of command of the phantom army
+to Murat, King of Naples--that he had passed like an evil spirit unknown
+through Poland, Prussia, Germany, travelling twelve hundred miles night
+and day at breakneck speed, alone, racing to Paris to save his throne.
+
+"It is time to do something," said all Europe, when it was too late.
+For Napoleon was himself again--alert, indomitable, raising a new army,
+calling on France to rise to such heights of energy and vitality as
+only France can compass; for the colder nations of the North lack the
+imagination that enables men to pit themselves against the gods at the
+bidding of some stupendous will, only second to the will of God Himself.
+
+"Go to Dantzig, and hold it till I come," Napoleon had said to Rapp.
+"Retreat to Poland, and hold on to anything you can till I come back
+with a new army," he had commanded Murat and Prince Eugene.
+
+"It is time to do something," said all the conquered nations, looking at
+each other for initiation. And lo! the Master of Surprises struck them
+dumb by his sudden apparition in his own capital, with all the strings
+of the European net gathered as if by magic into his own hands again.
+
+While everybody told his neighbour that it was time to do something, no
+one knew what to do. For it has pleased the Creator to put a great
+many talkers into this world and only a few men of action to make its
+history.
+
+Papa Barlasch knew what to do, however.
+
+"Where is that sailor?" he asked Desiree, when she had told him the news
+which Mathilde brought in from the streets. "He who took the patron's
+valise that night--the cousin of your husband."
+
+"There is a man at Zoppot who will tell you," she answered.
+
+"Then I go to Zoppot."
+
+Barlasch had lived unmolested in the Frauengasse since his return. He
+was an old man, ill-clad, with a bloody handkerchief bound over one eye.
+No one asked him any questions, except Sebastian, who heard again and
+again the tale of Moscow--how the army which had crossed into Russia
+four hundred thousand strong was reduced to a hundred thousand when the
+retreat began; how handmills were issued to the troops to grind corn
+which did not exist; how the horses died in thousands and the men in
+hundreds from starvation; how God at last had turned his face from
+Napoleon.
+
+"Something must be done. The patron will do nothing; he is in the
+clouds, he is dreaming dreams of a new France, that bourgeois. I am an
+old man. Yes, I will go to Zoppot."
+
+"You mean that we should have heard from Charles before now," said
+Desiree.
+
+"Name of thunder! he may be in Paris!" exclaimed Barlasch, with the
+sudden anger that anxiety commands. "He is on the staff, I tell you."
+
+For suspense is one of the most contagious of human emotions, and makes
+a quicker call upon our sympathy than any other. Do we not feel such a
+desire that our neighbour may know the worst without delay, that we race
+to impart it to him?
+
+Nor was Desiree alone in the trial which had drawn certain lines about
+her gay lips; for Mathilde had told her father and sister that should
+Colonel de Casimir return from the war he would ask her hand in
+marriage.
+
+"And that other--the Colonel," added Barlasch, glancing at Mathilde,
+"he is on the staff too. They are safe enough, I tell you that. They are
+doubtless together. They were together at Moscow. I saw them, and took
+an order from them. They were... at their work."
+
+Mathilde did not like Papa Barlasch. She would, it seemed, rather have
+no news at all of de Casimir than learn it from the old soldier, for
+she quitted the room without even troubling to throw him a glance of
+disdain.
+
+Barlasch waited with working lips until the sound of her footsteps
+ceased on the stairs. Then he pushed across the kitchen table a piece of
+writing-paper, rather yellow and woolly. It had been to Moscow and back.
+
+"Write a word to him," he said. "I will take it to Zoppot."
+
+"But you can send a message by the fisherman whose name I have given
+you," answered Desiree.
+
+"And will he heed the message? Will he come ashore at a word from
+me--only Barlasch? Remember it is his life that he carries in his hand.
+An English sailor with a French name! Thunder of thunder! They would
+shoot him like a rat!"
+
+Desiree shook her head; but Barlasch was not to be denied. He brought
+pen and ink from the dresser, and pushed them across the table.
+
+"I would not ask it," he said, "if it was not necessary. Do you think he
+will mind the danger? He will like it. He will say to me, 'Barlasch, I
+thank you.' Ah? I know him. Write. He will come."
+
+"Why?" asked Desiree.
+
+"Why? How should I know that? He came before when you asked him."
+
+Desiree leant over the table and wrote six words:
+
+"Come, if you can come safely."
+
+Barlasch took up the paper, and, pushing up the bandage which had
+served to bring him unharmed through Russia, he frowned at it without
+understanding.
+
+"It is not all writings that I can read," he admitted. "Have you signed
+it?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then sign something that he will know, and no other--they might shoot
+me. Your baptismal name."
+
+And she wrote "Desiree" after the six words.
+
+Barlasch folded the paper carefully and placed it in the lining of an
+old felt hat of Sebastian's which he now wore. He bound a scarf over his
+ears, after the manner of those who live on the Baltic shores in winter.
+
+"You can leave the rest to me," he said; and, with a nod and a grimace
+expressive of cunning, he left her.
+
+He did not return that night. The days were short now, for the winter
+was well set in. It was nearly dark the next afternoon and very cold
+when he came back. He sent Lisa upstairs for Desiree.
+
+"First," he said, "there is a question for the patron. Will he quit
+Dantzig?--that is the question."
+
+"No," answered Desiree.
+
+"Rapp is coming," said Barlasch, emphasizing each point with one finger
+against the side of his nose. "He will hold Dantzig. There will be a
+siege. Let the patron make no mistake. It will not be like the last one.
+Rapp was outside then; he will be inside this time. He will hold Dantzig
+till the bottom falls out of the world."
+
+"My father will not leave," said Desiree. "He has said so. He knows that
+Rapp is coming, with the Russians behind him."
+
+"But," interrupted Barlasch, "he thinks that Prussia will turn and
+declare war against Napoleon. That may be. Who knows? The question is,
+Can the patron be induced to quit Dantzig?"
+
+Desiree shook her head.
+
+"It is not I," said Barlasch, "who ask the question. You understand?"
+
+"Yes, I understand. My father will not quit Dantzig."
+
+Whereupon Barlasch made a gesture conveying a desire to think as kindly
+of Antoine Sebastian as he could.
+
+"In half an hour," he said, "when it is dark, will you come for a walk
+with me along the Langfuhr road--where the unfinished ramparts are?"
+
+Desiree looked at him and hesitated.
+
+"Oh--good--if you are afraid--" said Barlasch.
+
+"I am not afraid--I will come," she answered quickly.
+
+The snow was hard when they set out, and squeaked under their feet, as
+it does with a low thermometer.
+
+"We shall leave no tracks," said Barlasch, as he led the way off the
+Langfuhr road towards the river. There was broken ground here, where
+earthworks had been begun and never completed. The trees had been partly
+cut, and beneath the snow were square mounds showing where the timber
+had been piled up. But since the departure of Rapp, all had been left
+incomplete.
+
+Barlasch turned towards Desiree and pointed out a rising knoll of land
+with fir-trees on it--an outline against the sky where a faint aurora
+borealis lit the north. She understood that Louis was waiting there, and
+must necessarily see them approaching across the untrodden snow. For an
+instant she lingered, and Barlasch turning, glanced at her sharply over
+his shoulder. She had come against her will, and her companion knew it.
+Her feet were heavy with misgiving, like the feet of one who treads
+an uncertain road into a strange country. She had been afraid of Louis
+d'Arragon when she first caught sight of him in the Frauengasse. The
+fear of him was with her now, and would not depart until he himself
+swept it away by the first word he spoke.
+
+He came out from beneath the trees, made a few steps forward, and
+then stopped. Again Desiree lingered, and Barlasch, who was naturally
+impatient, turned and took her by the arm.
+
+"Is it the snow--that you find slippery?" he asked, not requiring an
+answer. A moment later Louis came forward.
+
+"There is nothing but bad news," he said laconically. "Barlasch will
+have told you; but there is no need to give up hope. The army has
+reached the Niemen; the rearguard has quitted Vilna. There is nothing
+for it but to go and look for him."
+
+"Who will go?" she asked quietly.
+
+"I."
+
+He was looking at her with grave eyes trained to darkness. But she
+looked past him towards the sky, which was faintly lighted by the
+aurora. Her averted eyes and rigid attitude were not without some
+suggestion of guilt.
+
+"My ship is ice-bound at Reval," said D'Arragon, in a matter-of-fact
+way. "They have no use for me until the winter is over, and they have
+given me three months' leave."
+
+"To go to England?" she asked.
+
+"To go anywhere I like," he said, with a short laugh. "So I am going to
+look for Charles, and Barlasch will come with me."
+
+"At a price," put in that soldier, in a shrewd undertone. "At a price."
+
+"A small one," corrected Louis, turning to look at him with the close
+attention of one exploring a new country.
+
+"Bah! You give what you can. One does not go back across the Niemen for
+pleasure. We bargained, and we came to terms. I got as much as I could."
+
+Louis laughed, as if this were the blunt truth.
+
+"If I had more, I would give you more. It is the money I placed in a
+Dantzig bank for my cousin. I must take it out again, that is all."
+
+The last words were addressed to Desiree, as if he had acted in
+assurance of her approval.
+
+"But I have more," she said; "a little--not very much. We must not think
+of money. We must do everything to find him--to give him help, if he
+needs it."
+
+"Yes," answered Louis, as if she had asked him a question. "We must do
+everything; but I have no more money."
+
+"And I have none with me. I have nothing that I can sell."
+
+She withdrew her fur mitten and held out her hand, as if to show that
+she had no rings, except the plain gold one on her third finger.
+
+"You have the ikon I brought you from Moscow," said Barlasch gruffly.
+"Sell that."
+
+"No," answered Desiree; "I will not sell that."
+
+Barlasch laughed cynically.
+
+"There you have a woman," he said, turning to Louis. "First she will not
+have a thing, then she will not part with it."
+
+"Well," said Desiree, with some spirit, "a woman may know her own mind."
+
+"Some do," admitted Barlasch carelessly; "the happy ones. And since you
+will not sell your ikon, I must go for what Monsieur le capitaine offers
+me.
+
+"Five hundred francs," said Louis. "A thousand francs, if we succeed in
+bringing my cousin safely back to Dantzig."
+
+"It is agreed," said Barlasch, and Desiree looked from one to the other
+with an odd smile of amusement. For women do not understand that spirit
+of adventure which makes the mercenary soldier, and urges the sailor to
+join an exploring expedition without hope of any reward beyond his daily
+pay, for which he is content to work and die loyally.
+
+"And I," she asked, "what am I to do?"
+
+"We must know where to find you," replied D'Arragon.
+
+There was so much in the simple answer that Desiree fell into a train of
+thought. It did not seem much for her to do, and yet it was all. For it
+summed up in six words a woman's life: to wait till she is found.
+
+"I shall wait in Dantzig," she said at length.
+
+Barlasch held up his finger close to her face so that she could not fail
+to see it, and shook it slowly from side to side commanding her careful
+and entire attention.
+
+"And buy salt," he said. "Fill a cupboard full of salt. It is cheap
+enough in Dantzig now. The patron will not think of it. He is a
+dreamer. But a dreamer awakes at length, and is hungry. It is I who tell
+you--Barlasch."
+
+He emphasized himself with a touch of his curved fingers on either
+shoulder.
+
+"Buy salt," he said, and walked away to a rising knoll to make sure
+that no one was approaching. The moon was just below the horizon, and a
+yellow glow was already in the sky.
+
+Desiree and Louis were left alone. He was looking at her, but she was
+watching Barlasch with a still persistency.
+
+"He said that it is the happy women who know their own minds," she said
+slowly.
+
+"I suppose he meant--Duty," she added at length, when Louis made no sign
+of answering.
+
+"Yes," he said.
+
+Barlasch was beckoning to her. She moved away, but stopped a few yards
+off, and looked at Louis again.
+
+"Do you think it is any good trying?" she asked, with a short laugh.
+
+"It is no good trying unless you mean to succeed," he answered lightly.
+She laughed a second time and lingered, though Barlasch was calling her
+to come.
+
+"Oh," she said, "I am not afraid of you when you say things like that.
+It is what you leave unsaid. I am afraid of you, I think, because you
+expect so much."
+
+She tried to see his face.
+
+"I am only an ordinary human being, you know," she said warningly.
+
+Then she followed Barlasch.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII. MISSING.
+
+
+
+     I should fear those that dance before me now
+     Would one day stamp upon me; it has been done:
+     Men shut their doors against a setting sun.
+
+During the first weeks of December the biting wind abated for a time,
+and immediately the snow came. It fell for days, until at length the
+grey sky seemed exhausted; for the flakes sailed downwards in twos and
+threes like the stragglers of an army bringing up the rear. Then the sun
+broke through again, and all the world was a dazzling white.
+
+There had been a cessation in that stream of pitiable men who staggered
+across the bridge from the Konigsberg road. Some instinct had turned
+it southwards. Now it began again, and the rumour spread throughout
+the city that Rapp was coming. At length, in the middle of December, an
+officer brought word that Rapp with his staff would arrive next day.
+
+Desiree heard the news without comment.
+
+"You do not believe it?" asked Mathilde, who had come in with shining
+eyes and a pale face.
+
+"Oh yes, I believe it."
+
+"Then you forget," persisted Mathilde, "that Charles is on the staff.
+They may arrive to-night."
+
+While they were speaking Sebastian came in. He looked quickly from one
+to the other.
+
+"You have heard the news?" he asked.
+
+"That the General is coming back?" said Mathilde.
+
+"No; not that. Though it is true. Macdonald is in full retreat on
+Dantzig. The Prussians have abandoned him--at last."
+
+He gave a queer laugh and stood looking towards the window with restless
+eyes that flitted from one object to another, as if he were endeavouring
+to follow in mind the quick course of events. Then he remembered Desiree
+and turned towards her.
+
+"Rapp returns to-morrow," he said. "We may presume that Charles is with
+him."
+
+"Yes," said Desiree, in a lifeless voice.
+
+Sebastian wrinkled his eyes and gave an apologetic laugh.
+
+"We cannot offer him a fitting welcome," he said, with a gesture of
+frustrated hospitality. "We must do what we can. You and he may, of
+course, consider this your home as long as it pleases you to remain with
+us. Mathilde, you will see that we have such delicacies in the house
+as Dantzig can now afford--and you, Desiree, will of course make such
+preparations as are necessary. It is well to remember, he may return...
+to-night."
+
+Desiree went towards the door while Mathilde laid aside the delicate
+needlework which seemed to absorb her mind and employ her fingers from
+morning till night. She made a movement as if to accompany her sister,
+but Desiree shook her head sharply and Mathilde remained where she was,
+leaving Desiree to go upstairs alone.
+
+The day was already drawing to its long twilight, and at four o'clock
+the night came. Sebastian went out as usual, though he had caught cold.
+But Mathilde stayed at home. Desiree sent Lisa to the shops in the
+Langenmarkt, which is the centre of business and gossip in Dantzig. Lisa
+always brought home the latest news. Mathilde came to the kitchen to
+seek something when the messenger returned. She heard Lisa tell Desiree
+that a few more stragglers had come in, but they brought no news of the
+General. The house seemed lonely now that Barlasch was gone.
+
+Throughout the night the sound of sleigh-bells could be faintly
+heard through the double windows, though no sleigh passed through the
+Frauengasse. A hundred times the bells seemed to come closer, and always
+Desiree was ready behind the curtains to see the light flash past into
+the Pfaffengasse. With a shiver of suspense she crept back to bed to
+await the next alarm. In the early morning, long before it was light,
+the dull thud of steps on the trodden snow called her to the window
+again. She caught her breath as she drew back the curtain; for through
+the long watches of the night she had imagined every possible form of
+return.
+
+This must be Barlasch. Louis and Barlasch must, of course, have met Rapp
+on his homeward journey. On finding Charles, they had sent Barlasch back
+in advance to announce the safety of Desiree's husband. Louis would, of
+course, not come to Dantzig. He would go north to Russia, to Reval, and
+perhaps home to England--never to return.
+
+But it was not Barlasch. It was a woman who staggered past under a
+burden of firewood which she had collected in the woods of Schottland,
+and did not dare to carry through the streets by day.
+
+At last the clocks struck six, and, soon after, Lisa's heavy footstep
+made the stairs creak and crack.
+
+Desiree went downstairs before daylight. She could hear Mathilde astir
+in her room, and the light of candles was visible under her door.
+Desiree busied herself with household affairs.
+
+"I have not slept," said Lisa bluntly, "for thinking that your husband
+might return, and fearing that we should make him wait in the street.
+But without doubt you would have heard him."
+
+"Yes, I should have heard him."
+
+"If it had been my husband, I should have been at the window all night,"
+said Lisa, with a gay laugh--and Desiree laughed too.
+
+Mathilde seemed a long time in coming, and when at length she appeared
+Desiree could scarcely repress a movement of surprise. Mathilde was
+dressed, all in her best, as for a fete.
+
+At breakfast Lisa brought the news told to her at the door that the
+Governor would re-enter the city in state with his staff at midday. The
+citizens were invited to decorate their streets, and to gather there to
+welcome the returning garrison.
+
+"And the citizens will accept the invitation," commented Sebastian,
+with a curt laugh. "All the world has sneered at Russia since the Empire
+existed--and yet it has to learn from Moscow what part a citizen may
+play in war. These good Dantzigers will accept the invitation."
+
+And he was right. For one reason or another the city did honour to Rapp.
+Even the Poles must have known by now that France had made tools of
+them. But as yet they could not realize that Napoleon had fallen. There
+were doubtless many spies in the streets that cold December day--one who
+listened for Napoleon; and another, peeping to this side and that,
+for the King of Prussia. Sweden also would need to know what Dantzig
+thought, and Russia must not be ignorant of the gossip in a great Baltic
+port.
+
+Enveloped in their stiff sheepskins, concealed by the high collars which
+reached to the brim of their hats--showing nothing but eyes where the
+rime made old faces and young all alike, it was difficult for any to
+judge of his neighbour--whether he were Pole or Prussian, Dantziger or
+Swede. The women in thick shawls, with hoods or scarves concealing their
+faces, stood silently beside their husbands. It was only the children
+who asked a thousand questions, and got never an answer from the
+cautious descendants of a Hanseatic people.
+
+"Is it the French or the Russians that are coming?" asked a child near
+to Desiree.
+
+"Both," was the answer.
+
+"But which will come first?"
+
+"Wait and see--silentium," replied the careful Dantziger, looking over
+his shoulder.
+
+Desiree had changed her clothes, and wore beneath her furs the dress
+that had been prepared for the journey to Zoppot so long ago. Mathilde
+had noticed the dress, which had not been seen for six months. Lisa,
+more loquacious, nodded to it as to a friend when helping Desiree with
+her furs.
+
+"You have changed," she said, "since you last wore it."
+
+"I have grown older--and fatter," answered Desiree cheerfully.
+
+And Lisa, who had no imagination, seemed satisfied with the explanation.
+But the change was in Desiree's eyes.
+
+With Sebastian's permission--almost at his suggestion--they had selected
+the Grune Brucke as the point from which to see the sight. This bridge
+spans the Mottlau at the entrance to the Langenmarkt, and the roadway
+widens before it narrows again to pass beneath the Grunes Thor. There is
+rising ground where the road spreads like a fan, and here they could see
+and be seen.
+
+"Let us hope," said Sebastian, "that two of these gentlemen may perceive
+you as they pass."
+
+But he did not offer to accompany them.
+
+By half-past eleven the streets were full. The citizens knew their
+governor, it seemed. He would not keep them waiting. Although Rapp
+lacked that power of appealing to the imagination which has survived
+Napoleon's death with such astounding vitality that it moves men's minds
+to-day as surely as it did a hundred years ago, he was shrewd enough
+to make use of his master's methods when such would seem to serve his
+purpose. He was not going to creep into Dantzig like a whipped dog into
+his kennel.
+
+He had procured a horse at Elbing. Between that town and the Mottlau he
+had halted to form his army into something like order, to get together a
+staff with which to surround himself.
+
+But the Dantzigers did not cheer. They stood and watched him in a sullen
+silence as he rode across the bridge now known as the "Milk-Can." His
+bridle was twisted round his arm, for all his fingers were frostbitten.
+His nose and his ears were in the same plight, and had been treated by
+a Polish barber who, indeed, effected a cure. One eye was almost closed.
+His face was astonishingly red. But he carried himself like a soldier,
+and faced the world with the audacity that Napoleon taught to all his
+disciples.
+
+Behind him rode a few staff officers, but the majority were on foot.
+Some effort had been made to revive the faded uniforms. One or two
+heroic souls had cast aside the fur cloaks to which they owed their
+life, but the majority were broken men without spirit, without
+pride--appealing only to pity. They hugged themselves closely in
+their ragged cloaks and stumbled as they walked. It was impossible
+to distinguish between the officers and the men. The biggest and the
+strongest were the best clad--the bullies were the best fed. All were
+black and smoke-grimed--with eyes reddened and inflamed by the dazzling
+snow through which they stumbled by day, as much as by the smoke into
+which they crouched at night. Every garment was riddled by the holes
+burnt by flying sparks--every face was smeared with blood that ran
+from the horseflesh they had torn asunder with their teeth while it yet
+smoked.
+
+Some laughed and waved their hands to the crowd. Others, who had known
+the tragedy of Vilna and Kowno, stumbled on in stubborn silence still
+doubting that Dantzig stood--that they were at last in sight of food and
+warmth and rest.
+
+"Is that all?" men asked each other in astonishment. For the last
+stragglers had crossed the new Mottlau before the head of the procession
+had reached the Grune Brucke.
+
+"If I had such an army as that," said a stout Dantziger, "I should bring
+it into the city quietly, after dusk."
+
+But the majority were silent, remembering the departure of these
+men--the triumph, the glory, and the hope. For a great catastrophe is
+a curtain that for a moment shuts out all history and makes the human
+family little children again who can but cower and hold each other's
+hands in the dark.
+
+"Where are the guns?" asked one.
+
+"And the baggage?" suggested another.
+
+"And the treasure of Moscow?" whispered a Jew with cunning eyes, who had
+hidden behind his neighbour when Rapp glanced in his direction.
+
+Emerging on the bridge, the General glanced at the old Mottlau. A crowd
+was collected on it. The citizens no longer used the bridges but crossed
+without fear where they pleased, and heavy sleighs passed up and down as
+on a high-road. Rapp saw it, made a grimace, and, turning in his saddle,
+spoke to his neighbour, an engineer officer, who was to make an immortal
+name and die in Dantzig.
+
+The Mottlau was one of the chief defences of the city, but instead of a
+river the Governor found a high-road!
+
+Rapp alone seemed to look about him with the air of one who knew his
+whereabouts. In the straggling trail of men behind him, not one in a
+hundred looked for a friendly face. Some stared in front of them with
+lifeless eyes, while others, with a little spirit plucked up at the
+end of a weary march, glanced up at the gabled houses with the interest
+called forth by the first sight of a new city.
+
+It was not until long afterwards that the world, piecing together
+information purposely delayed and details carefully falsified, knew that
+of the four hundred thousand men who marched triumphantly to the Niemen,
+only twenty thousand recrossed that river six months later, and of these
+two-thirds had never seen Moscow.
+
+Rapp, whose bloodshot eyes searched the crowd of faces turned towards
+him, recognized a number of people. To Mathilde he bowed gravely, and
+with a kindlier glance turned in his saddle to bow again to Desiree.
+They hardly heeded him, but with colourless faces turned towards the
+staff riding behind him.
+
+Most of the faces were strange: others were so altered that the features
+had to be sought for as in the face of a mummy. Neither Charles nor
+de Casimir was among the horsemen. One or two of them bowed, as their
+leader had done, to the two girls.
+
+"That is Captain de Villars," said Mathilde, "and the other I do not
+know. Nor that tall man who is bowing now. Who are they?"
+
+Desiree did not answer. None of these men was Charles. Unconsciously
+holding her two mittened hands at her throat, she searched each face.
+
+They were well placed to see even those who followed on foot. Many of
+them were not French. It would have been easy to distinguish Charles or
+de Casimir among the dark-visaged southerners. Desiree was not conscious
+of the crowd around her. She heard none of the muttered remarks. All her
+soul was in her eyes.
+
+"Is that all?" she said at length--as the others had said at the
+entrance to the town.
+
+She found she was standing hand-in-hand with Mathilde, whose face was
+like marble.
+
+At last, when even the crowd had passed away beneath the Grunes Thor,
+they turned and walked home in silence.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX. KOWNO.
+
+
+
+              Distinct with footprints yet
+     Of many a mighty marcher gone that way.
+
+There are many who overlook the fact that in Northern lands, more
+especially in such plains as Lithuania, Courland, and Poland, travel in
+winter is easier than at any other time of year. The rivers, which run
+sluggishly in their ditch-like beds, are frozen so completely that
+the bridges are no longer required. The roads, in summer almost
+impassable--mere ruts across the plain--are for the time ignored, and
+the traveller strikes a bee-line from place to place across a level of
+frozen snow.
+
+Louis d'Arragon had worked out a route across the plain, as he had been
+taught to shape a course across a chart.
+
+"How did you return from Kowno?" he asked Barlasch.
+
+"Name of my own nose," replied that traveller. "I followed the line of
+dead horses."
+
+"Then I will take you by another route," replied the sailor.
+
+And three days later--before General Rapp had made his entry into
+Dantzig--Barlasch sold two skeletons of horses and a sleigh at an
+enormous profit to a staff officer of Murat's at Gumbinnen.
+
+They had passed through Rapp's army. They had halted at Konigsberg to
+make inquiry, and now, almost in sight of the Niemen, where the land
+begins to heave in great waves, like those that roll round Cape Horn,
+they were asking still if any man had seen Charles Darragon.
+
+"Where are you going, comrades?" a hundred men had paused to ask them.
+
+"To seek a brother," answered Barlasch, who, like many unprincipled
+persons, had soon found that a lie is much simpler than an explanation.
+
+But the majority glanced at them stupidly without comment, or with only
+a shrug of their bowed shoulders. They were going the wrong way. They
+must be mad. Between Dantzig and Konigsberg they had indeed found a few
+travellers going eastward--despatch-bearers seeking Murat--spies going
+northwards to Tilsit, and General Yorck still in treaty with his own
+conscience--a prominent member of the Tugendbund, wondering, like many
+others, if there were any virtue left in the world. Others, again, told
+them that they were officers ordered to take up some new command in the
+retreating army.
+
+Beyond Konigsberg, however, D'Arragon and Barlasch found themselves
+alone on their eastward route. Every man's face was set towards the
+west. This was not an army at all, but an endless procession of tramps.
+Without food or shelter, with no baggage but what they could carry on
+their backs, they journeyed as each of us must journey out of this world
+into that which lies beyond--alone, with no comrade to help them over
+the rough places or lift them when they fell. For there was only one
+man of all this rabble who rose to the height of self-sacrifice, and a
+persistent devotion to duty. And he was coming last of all.
+
+Many had started off in couples--with a faithful friend--only to quarrel
+at last. For it is a peculiarity of the French that they can only have
+one friend at a time. Long ago--back beyond the Niemen--all friendships
+had been dissolved, and discipline had vanished before that. For when
+Discipline and a Republic are wedded we shall have the millennium.
+Liberty, they cry: meaning, I may do as I like. Equality: I am better
+than you. Fraternity: what is yours is mine, if I want it.
+
+So they quarrelled over everything, and fought for a place round the
+fire that another had lighted. They burnt the houses in which they had
+passed a night, though they knew that thousands trudging behind them
+must die for lack of this poor shelter.
+
+At the Beresina they had fought on the bridge like wild animals, and
+those who had horses trod their comrades underfoot, or pushed them over
+the parapet. Twelve thousand perished on the banks or in the river; and
+sixteen thousand were left behind to the mercy of the Cossacks.
+
+At Vilna the people were terrified at the sight of this inhuman rabble,
+which had commanded their admiration on the outward march. And the
+commander, with his staff, crept out of the city at night, abandoning
+sick, wounded, and fighting men.
+
+At Kowno they crowded numbly across the bridge, fighting for precedence,
+when they might have walked at leisure across the ice. They were
+no longer men at all, but dumb and driven animals, who fell by the
+roadside, and were stripped by their comrades before the warmth of life
+had left their limbs.
+
+"Excuse me, comrade? I thought you were dead," said one, on being
+remonstrated with by a dying man. And he went on his way reluctantly,
+for he knew that in a few minutes another would snatch the booty. But
+for the most part they were not so scrupulous.
+
+At first D'Arragon, to whom these horrors were new, attempted to help
+such as appealed to him, but Barlasch laughed at him.
+
+"Yes," he said. "Take the medallion, and promise to send it to his
+mother. Holy Heaven--they all have medallions, and they all have
+mothers. Every Frenchman remembers his mother--when it is too late. I
+will get a cart. By to-morrow we shall fill it with keepsakes. And here
+is another. He is hungry. So am I, comrade. I come from Moscow--bah!"
+
+And so they fought their way through the stream. They could have
+journeyed by a quicker route--D'Arragon could have steered a course
+across the frozen plain as over a sea--but Charles must necessarily be
+in this stream. He might be by the wayside. Any one of these pitiable
+objects, half blind, frost-bitten, with one limb or another swinging
+useless, like a snapped branch, wrapped to the eyes in filthy
+furs--inhuman, horrible--any one of these might be Desiree's husband.
+
+They never missed a chance of hearing news. Barlasch interrupted the
+last message of a dying man to inquire whether he had ever heard of
+Prince Eugene. It was startling to learn how little they knew. The
+majority of them were quite ignorant of French, and had scarcely heard
+the name of the commander of their division. Many spoke in a language
+which even Barlasch could not identify.
+
+"His talk is like a coffee-mill," he explained to D'Arragon, "and I do
+not know to what regiment he belonged. He asked me if I was Russki--I!
+Then he wanted to hold my hand. And he went to sleep. He will wake among
+the angels--that parishioner."
+
+Not only had no one heard of Charles Darragon, but few knew the name of
+the commander to whose staff he had been attached in Moscow. There
+was nothing for it but to go on towards Kowno, where it was understood
+temporary head-quarters had been established.
+
+Rapp himself had told D'Arragon that officers had been despatched to
+Kowno to form a base--a sort of rock in the midst of a torrent to divert
+the currents. There had then been a talk of Tilsit, and diverting the
+stream, or part of it towards Macdonald in the north. But D'Arragon knew
+that Macdonald was likely to be in no better plight than Murat; for
+it was an open secret in Dantzig that Yorck, with four-fifths of
+Macdonald's army, was about to abandon him.
+
+The road to Kowno was not to be mistaken. On either side of it, like
+fallen landmarks, the dead lay huddled on the snow. Sometimes D'Arragon
+and Barlasch found the remains of a fire, where, amid the ashes, the
+chains and rings showed that a gun-carriage had been burnt. The trees
+were cut and scored where, as a forlorn hope, some poor imbecile had
+stripped the bark with the thought that it might burn. Nearly every
+fire had its grim guardian; for the wounds of the injured nearly always
+mortified when the flesh was melted by the warmth. Once or twice, with
+their ragged feet in the ashes, a whole company had never awakened from
+their sleep.
+
+Barlasch pessimistically went the round of these bivouacs, but rarely
+found anything worth carrying away. If he recognized a veteran by
+the grizzled hair straggling out of the rags in which all faces were
+enveloped, or perceived some remnant of a Garde uniform, he searched
+more carefully.
+
+"There may be salt," he said. And sometimes he found a little. They
+had been on foot since Gumbinnen, because no horse would be allowed by
+starving men to live a day. They existed from day to day on what they
+found, which was, at the best, frozen horse. But Barlasch ate singularly
+little.
+
+"One thinks of one's digestion," he said vaguely, and persuaded
+D'Arragon to eat his portion because it would be a sin to throw it away.
+
+At length D'Arragon, who was quick enough in understanding rough men,
+said--
+
+"No, I don't want any more. I will throw it away."
+
+And an hour later, while pretending to be asleep, he saw Barlasch get
+up, and crawl cautiously into the trees where the unsavoury food had
+been thrown.
+
+"Provided," muttered Barlasch one day, "that you keep your health. I am
+an old man. I could not do this alone."
+
+Which was true, for D'Arragon was carrying all the baggage now.
+
+"We must both keep our health," answered Louis. "I have eaten worse
+things than horse."
+
+"I saw one yesterday," said Barlasch, with a gesture of disgust; "he
+had three stripes on his arm, too; he was crouching in a ditch eating
+something much worse than horse, mon capitaine. Bah! It made me sick.
+For three sous I would have put my heel on his face. And later on at the
+roadside I saw where he or another had played the butcher. But you saw
+none of these things, mon capitaine?"
+
+"It was by that winding stream where a farm had been burnt," said Louis.
+
+Barlasch glanced at him sideways.
+
+"If we should come to that, mon capitaine...."
+
+"We won't."
+
+They trudged on in silence for some time. They were off the road now,
+and D'Arragon was steering by dead-reckoning. Even amid the pine-woods,
+which seemed interminable, they frequently found remains of an
+encampment. As often as not they found the campers huddled over their
+last bivouac.
+
+"But these," said Barlasch, pointing to what looked like a few bundles
+of old clothes, continuing the conversation where he had left it after a
+long silence, as men learn to do who are together day and night in some
+hard enterprise, "even these have a woman dinning the ears of the good
+God for them, just as we have."
+
+For Barlasch's conception of a Deity could not get further than the
+picture of a great Commander who in times of stress had no leisure to
+see that non-commissioned officers did their best for the rank and file.
+Indeed, the poor in all lands rather naturally conclude that God will
+think of carriage-people first.
+
+They came within sight of Kowno one evening, after a tiring day over
+snow that glittered in a cloudless sun. Barlasch sat down wearily
+against a pine tree, when they first caught sight of a distant
+church-tower. The country is much broken up into little valleys
+here, through which streams find their way to the Niemen. Each river
+necessitated a rapid descent and an arduous climb over slippery snow.
+
+"Voila," said Barlasch. "That is Kowno. I am done. Go on, mon capitaine.
+I will lie here, and if I am not dead to-morrow morning, I will join
+you."
+
+Louis looked at him with a slow smile.
+
+"I am tired as you," he said. "We will rest here until the moon rises."
+
+Already the bare larches threw shadows three times their own length on
+the snow. Near at hand it glittered like a carpet of diamonds, while the
+distance was of a pale blue, merging to grey on the horizon. A far-off
+belt of pines against a sky absolutely cloudless suggested infinite
+space--immeasurable distance. Nothing was sharp and clearly outlined,
+but hazy, silvery, as seen through a thin veil. The sea would seem to be
+our earthly picture of infinite space, but no sea speaks of distance so
+clearly as the plain of Lithuania--absolutely flat, quite lonely. The
+far-off belt of pines only leads the eye to a shadow beyond, which is
+another pine-wood; and the traveller walking all day towards it knows
+that when at length he gets there he will see just such another on the
+far horizon.
+
+Louis sat down wearily beside Barlasch. As far as eye could see, they
+were alone in this grim white world. They had nothing to say to each
+other. They sat and watched the sun go down with drawn eyes and a queer
+stolidity which comes to men in great cold, as if their souls were numb.
+
+As the sun sank, the shadows turned bluer, and all the snow gleamed like
+a lake. The silver tints slowly turned to gold; the greys grew darker.
+The distant lines of pines were almost black now, a silhouette against
+the golden sky. Near at hand the little inequalities in the snow loomed
+blue, like deeper pools in shallow water.
+
+The sun sank very slowly, moving along the horizon almost parallel with
+it towards two bars of golden cloud awaiting it, the bars of the West
+forming a prison to this poor pale captive of the snows. The stems of a
+few silver-birch near at hand were rosy now, and suddenly the snow
+took a similar tint. At the same moment, a wave of cold seemed to sweep
+across the world.
+
+The sun went down at length, leaving a brownish-red sky. This, too,
+faded to grey in a few minutes, and a steely cold gripped the world as
+in a vice.
+
+Louis d'Arragon made a sudden effort and rose to his feet, beneath which
+the snow squeaked.
+
+"Come," he said. "If we stay, we shall fall asleep, and then--"
+
+Barlasch roused himself and looked sleepily at his companion. He had a
+patch of blue on either cheek.
+
+"Come!" shouted Louis, as if to a deaf man. "Let us go on to Kowno, and
+find out whether he is alive or dead."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX. DESIREE'S CHOICE.
+
+
+
+     Our wills and fates do so contrary run,
+     That our devices still are overthrown.
+     Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own.
+
+Rapp found himself in a stronghold which was strong in theory only. For
+the frozen river formed the easiest possible approach, instead of an
+insuperable barrier to the enemy. He had an army which was a paper army
+only.
+
+He had, according to official returns, thirty-five thousand men. In
+reality a bare eight thousand could be collected to show a face to the
+enemy. The rest were sick and wounded. There was no national spirit
+among these men; they hardly had a language in common. For they were men
+from Africa and Italy, from France, Germany, Poland, Spain, and Holland.
+The majority of them were recruits, raw and of poor physique. All
+were fugitives, flying before those dread Cossacks whose "hurrah!
+hurrah!"--the Arabic "kill! kill!"--haunted their fitful sleep at night.
+They came to Dantzig not to fight, but to lie down and rest. They were
+the last of the great army--the reinforcements dragged to the frontier
+which many of them had never crossed. For those who had been to
+Moscow were few and far between. The army of Moscow had perished at
+Malo-Jaroslavetz, at the Beresina, in Smolensk and Vilna.
+
+These fugitives had fled to Dantzig for safety; and Rapp in crossing the
+bridge had made a grimace, for he saw that there was no safety here.
+
+The fortifications had been merely sketched out. The ditches were full
+of snow, the rivers were frozen. All work was at a standstill. Dantzig
+lay at the mercy of the first-comer.
+
+In twenty-four hours every available smith was at work, forging ice-axes
+and picks. Rapp was going to cut the frozen Vistula and set the river
+free. The Dantzigers laughed aloud.
+
+"It will freeze again in a night," they said. And it did. So Rapp set
+the ice-cutters to work again next day. He kept boats moving day and
+night in the water, which ran sluggish and thick, like porridge, with
+the desire to freeze and be still.
+
+He ordered the engineers to set to work on the abandoned fortifications.
+But the ground was hard like granite, and the picks sprang back in the
+worker's grip, jarring his bones, and making not so much as a mark on
+the surface of the earth.
+
+Again the Dantzigers laughed.
+
+"It is frozen three feet down," they said.
+
+The thermometer marked between twenty and thirty degrees of frost every
+night now. And it was only December--only the beginning of the winter.
+The Russians were at the Niemen, daily coming nearer. Dantzig was full
+of sick and wounded. The available troops were worn out, frost-bitten,
+desperate. There were only a few doctors, who were without medical
+stores; no meat, no vegetables, no spirits, no forage.
+
+No wonder the Dantzigers laughed. Rapp, who had to rely on Southerners
+to obey his orders--Italians, Africans, a few Frenchmen, men little used
+to cold and the hardships of a Northern winter--Rapp let them laugh. He
+was a medium-sized man, with a bullet-head and a round chubby face, a
+small nose, round eyes, and, if you please, side-whiskers.
+
+Never for a moment did he admit that things looked black. He lit
+enormous bonfires, melted the frozen earth, and built the fortifications
+that had been planned.
+
+"I took counsel," he said, long afterwards, "with two engineer officers
+whose devotion equalled their brilliancy--Colonel Richemont and General
+Campredon."
+
+Soldiers might for all time study with advantage the acts of such
+obscure and almost forgotten men as these. For, through them, Napoleon
+was now teaching the world that a fortified place might be made stronger
+than any had hitherto suspected. That he should turn round and teach,
+on the other hand, that a city usually considered impregnable could
+be taken without great loss of life, was only characteristic of his
+splendid genius, which, like a towering tree, grew and grew until it
+fell.
+
+The days were very short now, and it was dark when the sappers--whose
+business it was to keep the ice moving in the river at that spot where
+the Government building-yard abuts the river front to-day--were roused
+from their meditations by a shout on the farther bank.
+
+They pushed their clumsy boat through the ice, and soon perceived
+against the snowy distance the outline of a man wrapped, swaddled,
+disguised in the heaped-up clothing so familiar to Eastern Europe at
+this time. The joke of seeing a grave artilleryman clad in a lady's
+ermine cloak had long since lost its savour for those who dwelt near the
+Moscow road.
+
+"Ah! comrade," said one of the boatmen, an Italian who spoke French and
+had learnt his seamanship on the Mediterranean, by whose waters he would
+never idle again. "Ah! you are from Moscow?"
+
+"And you, countryman?" replied the new-comer, with a non-committing
+readiness, as he stumbled over the gunwale.
+
+"And you--an old man?" remarked the Italian, with the easy frankness of
+Piedmont.
+
+By way of reply, the new-comer held out one hand roughly swathed in
+cloth, and shook it from side to side slowly, taking exception to such
+personal matters on a short acquaintance.
+
+"A week ago, when I quitted Dantzig on a mission to Kowno," he said,
+with a careless air, "one could cross the Vistula anywhere. I have been
+walking on the bank for half a league looking for a way across. One
+would think there is a General in Dantzig now."
+
+"There is Rapp," replied the Italian, poling his boat through the
+floating ice.
+
+"He will be glad to see me."
+
+The Italian turned and looked over his shoulder. Then he gave a curt,
+derisive laugh.
+
+"Barlasch--of the Old Guard!" explained the new-comer, with a careless
+air.
+
+"Never heard of him."
+
+Barlasch pushed up the bandage which he still wore over his left eye, in
+order to get a better sight of this phenomenal ignoramus, but he made no
+comment.
+
+On landing he nodded curtly, at which the boatman made a quick gesture
+and spat.
+
+"You have not the price of a glass in your purse, perhaps," he
+suggested.
+
+Barlasch disappeared in the darkness without deigning a reply. Half an
+hour later he was on the steps of Sebastian's house in the Frauengasse.
+On his way through the streets a hundred evidences of energy had caught
+his attention, for many of the houses were barricaded, and palisades
+were built at the end of the streets running down towards the river. The
+town was busy, and everywhere soldiers passed to and fro. Like Samuel,
+Barlasch heard the bleating of sheep and the lowing of oxen in his ears.
+
+The houses in the Frauengasse were barricaded like others--many of the
+lower windows were built up. The door of No. 36 was bolted, and through
+the shutters of the upper windows no glimmer of light penetrated to the
+outer darkness of the street. Barlasch knocked and waited. He thought he
+could hear surreptitious movements within the house. Again he knocked.
+
+"Who is that?" asked Lisa just within, on the mat. She must have been
+there all the time.
+
+"Barlasch," he replied. And the bolts which he, in his knowledge of such
+matters, himself had oiled, were quickly drawn.
+
+Inside he found Lisa, and behind her Mathilde and Desiree.
+
+"Where is the patron?" he asked, turning to bolt the door again.
+
+"He is out, in the town," answered Desiree, in a strained voice. "Where
+are you from?"
+
+"From Kowno."
+
+Barlasch looked from one face to the other. His own was burnt red,
+and the light of the lamp hanging over his head gleamed on the icicles
+suspended to his eyebrows and ragged whiskers. In the warmth of the
+house his frozen garments began to melt, and from his limbs the water
+dripped to the floor with a sound like rain. Then he caught sight of
+Desiree's face.
+
+"He is alive, I tell you that," he said abruptly. "And well, so far as
+we know. It was at Kowno that we got news of him. I have a letter."
+
+He opened his cloak, which was stiff like cardboard and creaked when
+he bent the rough cloth. Under his cloak he wore a Russian peasant's
+sheepskin coat, and beneath that the remains of his uniform.
+
+"A dog's country," he muttered, as he breathed on his fingers.
+
+At last he found the letter, and gave it to Desiree.
+
+"You will have to make your choice," he commented, with a grimace
+indicative of a serious situation, "like any other woman. No doubt you
+will choose wrong."
+
+Desiree went up two steps in order to be nearer the lamp, and they all
+watched her as she opened the letter.
+
+"Is it from Charles?" asked Mathilde, speaking for the first time.
+
+"No," answered Desiree, rather breathlessly.
+
+Barlasch nudged Lisa, indicated his own mouth, and pushed her towards
+the kitchen. He nodded cunningly to Mathilde, as if to say that they
+were now free to discuss family affairs; and added, with a gesture
+towards his inner man--
+
+"Since last night--nothing."
+
+In a few minutes Desiree, having read the letter twice, handed it to her
+sister. It was characteristically short.
+
+"We have found a man here," wrote Louis d'Arragon, "who travelled as far
+as Vilna with Charles. There they parted. Charles, who was ordered to
+Warsaw on staff work, told his friend that you were in Dantzig, and
+that, foreseeing a siege of the city, he had written to you to join him
+at Warsaw. This letter has doubtless been lost. I am following Charles
+to Warsaw, tracing him step by step, and if he has fallen ill by the
+way, as so many have done, shall certainly find him. Barlasch returns
+to bring you to Thorn, if you elect to join Charles. I will await you at
+Thorn, and if Charles has proceeded, we will follow him to Warsaw."
+
+Barlasch, who had watched Desiree, now followed Mathilde's eyes as they
+passed to and fro over the closely written lines. As she neared the
+end, and her face, upon which deep shadows had been graven by sorrow and
+suspense, grew drawn and hopeless, he gave a curt laugh.
+
+"There were two," he said, "travelling together--the Colonel de Casimir
+and the husband of--of la petite. They had facilities--name of God!--two
+carriages and an escort. In the carriages they had some of the Emperor's
+playthings--holy pictures, the imperial loot--I know not what. Besides
+that, they had some of their own--not furs and candlesticks such as we
+others carried on our backs, but gold and jewellery enough to make a man
+rich all his life."
+
+"How do you know that?" asked Mathilde, a dull light in her eyes.
+
+"I--I know where it came from," replied Barlasch, with an odd smile.
+"Allez! you may take it from me." And he muttered to himself in the
+patois of the Cotes du Nord.
+
+"And they were safe and well at Vilna?" asked Mathilde.
+
+"Yes--and they had their treasure. They had good fortune, or else they
+were more clever than other men; for they had the Imperial treasure to
+escort, and could take any man's horse for the carriages in which also
+they had placed their own treasure. It was Captain Darragon who held the
+appointment, and the other--the Colonel--had attached himself to him as
+volunteer. For it was at Vilna that the last thread of discipline was
+broken, and every man did as he wished."
+
+"They did not come to Kowno?" asked Mathilde, who had a clear mind,
+and that grasp of a situation which more often falls to the lot of the
+duller sex.
+
+"They did not come to Kowno. They would turn south at Vilna. It was as
+well. At Kowno the soldiers had broken into the magazines--the brandy
+was poured out in the streets. The men were lying there, the drunken
+and the dead all confused together on the snow. But there would be no
+confusion the next morning; for all would be dead."
+
+"Was it at Kowno that you left Monsieur d'Arragon?" asked Desiree, in a
+sharp voice.
+
+"No--no. We quitted Kowno together, and parted on the heights above the
+town. He would not trust me--monsieur le marquis--he was afraid that
+I should get at the brandy. And he was right. I only wanted the
+opportunity. He is a strong one--that!" And Barlasch held up a warning
+hand, as if to make known to all and sundry that it would be inadvisable
+to trifle with Louis d'Arragon.
+
+He drew the icicles one by one from his whiskers with a wry face
+indicative of great agony, and threw them down on the mat.
+
+"Well," he said, after a pause, to Desiree, "have you made your choice?"
+
+Desiree was reading the letter again, and before she could answer, a
+quick knock on the front door startled them all. Barlasch's face broke
+into that broad smile which was only called forth by the presence of
+danger.
+
+"Is it the patron?" he asked in a whisper, with his hand on the heavy
+bolts affixed by that pious Hanseatic merchant who held that if God be
+in the house there is no need of watchmen.
+
+"Yes," answered Mathilde. "Open quickly."
+
+Sebastian came in with a light step. He was like a man long saddled with
+a burden of which he had at length been relieved.
+
+"Ah! What news?" he asked, when he recognised Barlasch.
+
+"Nothing that you do not know already, monsieur," replied Barlasch,
+"except that the husband of Mademoiselle is well and on the road to
+Warsaw. Here--read that."
+
+And he took the letter from Desiree's hand.
+
+"I knew he would come back safely," said Desiree; and that was all.
+
+Sebastian read the letter in one quick glance--and then fell to
+thinking.
+
+"It is time to quit Dantzig," said Barlasch quietly, as if he
+had divined the old man's thoughts. "I know Rapp. There will be
+trouble--here, on the Vistula."
+
+But Sebastian dismissed the suggestion with a curt shake of the head.
+
+Barlasch's attention had been somewhat withdrawn by a smell of cooking
+meat, to which he opened his nostrils frankly and noisily after the
+manner of a dog.
+
+"Then it remains," he said, looking towards the kitchen, "for
+Mademoiselle to make her choice."
+
+"There is no choice," replied Desiree, "I shall be ready to go with
+you--when you have eaten."
+
+"Good," said Barlasch, and the word applied as well to Lisa, who was
+beckoning to him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI. ON THE WARSAW ROAD.
+
+
+
+     Oft expectation fails, and most oft there
+     Where it most promises; and oft it hits
+     Where hope is coldest and despair most sits.
+
+Love, it is said, is blind. But hatred is as bad. In Antoine Sebastian
+hatred of Napoleon had not only blinded eyes far-seeing enough in
+earlier days, but it had killed many natural affections. Love, too,
+may easily die--from a surfeit or a famine. Hatred never dies; it only
+sleeps.
+
+Sebastian's hatred was all awake now. It was aroused by the disasters
+that had befallen Napoleon; of which disasters the Russian campaign
+was only one small part. For he who stands above all his compeers must
+expect them to fall upon him should he stumble. Napoleon had fallen,
+and a hundred foes who had hitherto nursed their hatred in a hopeless
+silence were alert to strike a blow should he descend within their
+reach.
+
+When whole empires had striven in vain to strike, how could a mere
+association of obscure men hope to record its blow? The Tugendbund had
+begun humbly enough; and Napoleon, with that unerring foresight
+which raised him above all other men, had struck at its base. For an
+association in which kings and cobblers stand side by side on an equal
+footing must necessarily be dangerous to its foes.
+
+Sebastian was not carried off his feet by the great events of the
+last six months. They only rendered him steadier. For he had waited a
+lifetime. It is only a sudden success that dazzles. Long waiting nearly
+always ensures a wise possession.
+
+Sebastian, like all men absorbed in a great thought, was neglectful
+of his social and domestic obligations. Has it not been shown that he
+allowed Mathilde and Desiree to support him by giving dancing lessons?
+But he was not the ordinary domestic tyrant who is familiar to all--the
+dignified father of a family who must have the best of everything, whose
+teaching to his offspring takes the form of an unconscious and solemn
+warning. He did not ask the best; he hardly noticed what was offered to
+him; and it was not owing to his demand, but to that feminine spirit of
+self-sacrifice which has ruined so many men, that he fared better than
+his daughters.
+
+If he thought about it at all, he probably concluded that Mathilde and
+Desiree were quite content to give their time and thought to the
+support of himself--not as their father, but as the motive power of the
+Tugendbund in Prussia. Many greater men have made the same mistake,
+and quite small men with a great name make it every day, thinking
+complacently that it is a privilege to some woman to minister to their
+wants while they produce their immortal pictures or deathless
+books; whereas, the woman would tend him as carefully were he a
+crossing-sweeper, and is only following the dictates of an instinct
+which is loftier than his highest thought and more admirable than his
+most astounding work of art.
+
+Barlasch had not lived so long in the Frauengasse without learning the
+domestic economy of Sebastian's household. He knew that Desiree, like
+many persons with kind blue eyes, shaped her own course through life,
+and abided by the result with a steadfastness not usually attributed to
+the light-hearted. He concluded that he must make ready to take the
+road again before midnight. He therefore gave a careful and businesslike
+attention to the simple meal set before him by Lisa; and, looking
+up over his plate, he saw for the second time in his life Sebastian
+hurrying into his own kitchen.
+
+Barlasch half rose, and then, in obedience to a gesture from Sebastian,
+or remembering perhaps the sturdy Republicanism which he had not learnt
+until middle-age, he sat down again, fork in hand.
+
+"You are prepared to accompany Madame Darragon to Thorn?" inquired
+Sebastian, inviting his guest by a gesture to make himself at
+home--scarcely a necessary thought in the present instance.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And how do you propose to make the journey?"
+
+This was so unlike Sebastian's usual method, so far from his lax
+comprehension of a father's duty, that Barlasch paused and looked at him
+with suspicion. With the back of his hand he pushed up the unkempt
+hair which obscured his eyes. This unusual display of parental anxiety
+required looking into.
+
+"From what I could see in the streets," he answered, "the General
+will not stand in the way of women and useless mouths who wish to quit
+Dantzig."
+
+"That is possible; but he will not go so far as to provide horses."
+
+Barlasch gave his companion a quick glance, and returned to his supper,
+eating with an exaggerated nonchalance, as if he were alone.
+
+"Will you provide them?" he asked abruptly, at length, without looking
+up.
+
+"I can get them for you, and can ensure you relays by the way."
+
+Barlasch cut a piece of meat very carefully, and, opening his mouth
+wide, looked at Sebastian over the orifice.
+
+"On one condition," pursued Sebastian quietly; "that you deliver a
+letter for me in Thorn. I make no pretence; if it is found on you, you
+will be shot."
+
+Barlasch smiled pleasantly.
+
+"The risks are very great," said Sebastian, tapping his snuff-box
+reflectively.
+
+"I am not an officer to talk of my honour," answered Barlasch, with
+a laugh. "And as for risk"--he paused and put half a potato into his
+mouth--"it is Mademoiselle I serve," concluded this uncouth knight with
+a curt simplicity.
+
+So they set out at ten o'clock that night in a light sleigh on high
+runners, such as may be seen on any winter day in Poland down to the
+present time. The horses were as good as any in Dantzig at this date,
+when a horse was more costly than his master. The moon, sailing high
+overhead through fleecy clouds, found it no hard task to light a world
+all snow and ice. The streets of Dantzig were astir with life and
+the rumble of waggons. At first there were difficulties, and Barlasch
+explained airily that he was not so accomplished a whip in the streets
+as in the open country.
+
+"But never fear," he added. "We shall get there, soon enough."
+
+At the city gates there was, as Barlasch had predicted, no objection
+made to the departure of a young girl and an old man. Others were
+quitting Dantzig by the same gate, on foot, in sleighs and carts; but
+all turned westward at the cross-roads and joined the stream of refugees
+hurrying forward to Germany. Barlasch and Desiree were alone on the wide
+road that runs southward across the plain towards Dirschau. The air
+was very cold and still. On the snow, hard and dry like white dust, the
+runners of the sleigh sang a song on one note, only varied from time to
+time by a drop of several octaves as they passed over a culvert or
+some hollow in the road, after which the high note, like the sound of
+escaping steam, again held sway. The horses fell into a long steady
+trot, their feet beating the ground with a regular, sleep-inducing thud.
+They were harnessed well forward to a very long pole, and covered the
+ground with free strides, unhampered by any thought of their heels. The
+snow pattered against the cloth stretched like a wind-sail from their
+flanks to the rising front of the sleigh.
+
+Barlasch sat upright, a thick motionless figure, four-square to the
+cutting wind. He drove with one hand at a time, sitting on the other to
+restore circulation between whiles. It was impossible to distinguish the
+form of his garments, for he was wrapped round in a woollen shawl like
+a mummy, showing only his eyes beneath the ragged fur of a sheepskin
+cap upon which the rime caused by the warmth of the horses and his own
+breath had frozen like a coating of frosted silver.
+
+Desiree was huddled down beside him, with her head bent forward so as to
+protect her face from the wind, which seared like a hot iron. She wore a
+hood of white fur lined with a darker fur, and when she lifted her face
+only her eyes, bright and wakeful, were visible.
+
+"If you are warm, you may go to sleep," said Barlasch in a mumbling
+voice, for his face was drawn tight and his lips stiffened by the cold.
+"But if you shiver, you must stay awake."
+
+But Desiree seemed to have no wish for sleep. Whenever Barlasch leant
+forward to peer beneath her hood she looked round at him with wakeful
+eyes. Whenever, to see if she were still awake, he gave her an
+unceremonious nudge, she nudged back again instantly. As the night wore
+on, she grew more wakeful. When they halted at a wayside inn, which
+must have been minutely described to Barlasch by Sebastian, and Desiree
+accepted the innkeeper's offer of a cup of coffee by the fire while
+fresh horses were being put into harness, she was wide awake and
+looked at Barlasch with a reckless laugh as he shook the rime from his
+eyebrows. In response he frowningly scrutinized as much of her face as
+he could see, and shook his head disapprovingly.
+
+"You laugh when there is nothing to laugh at," he said grimly. "Foolish.
+It makes people wonder what is in your mind."
+
+"There is nothing in my mind," she answered gaily.
+
+"Then there is something in your heart, and that is worse!" said
+Barlasch, which made Desiree look at him doubtfully.
+
+They had done forty miles with the same horses, and were nearly halfway.
+For some hours the road had followed the course of the Vistula on the
+high tableland above the river, and would so continue until they reached
+Thorn.
+
+"You must sleep," said Barlasch curtly, when they were once more on the
+road. She sat silent beside him for an hour. The horses were fresh, and
+covered the ground at a great pace. Barlasch was no driver, but he was
+skilful with the horses, and husbanded their strength at every hill.
+
+"If we go on like this, when shall we arrive?" asked Desiree suddenly.
+
+"By eight o'clock, if all goes well."
+
+"And we shall find Monsieur Louis d'Arragon awaiting us at Thorn?"
+
+Barlasch shrugged his shoulders doubtfully.
+
+"He said he would be there," he muttered, and, turning in his seat, he
+looked down at her with some contempt.
+
+"That is like a woman," he said. "They think all men are fools except
+one, and that one is only to be compared with the bon Dieu."
+
+Desiree could not have heard the remark, for she made no answer and sat
+silent, leaning more and more heavily against her companion. He changed
+the reins to his other hand, and drove with it for an hour after all
+feeling had left it. Desiree was asleep. She was still sleeping when,
+in the dim light of a late dawn, Barlasch saw the distant tower of Thorn
+Cathedral.
+
+They were no longer alone on the road now, but passed a number of heavy
+market-sleighs bringing produce and wood to the town. Barlasch had been
+in Thorn before. Desiree was still sleeping when he turned the horses
+into the crowded yard of the "Drei Kronen." The sleighs and carriages
+were packed side by side as in a warehouse, but the stables were empty.
+No eager host came out to meet the travellers. The innkeepers of Thorn
+had long ceased to give themselves that trouble. For the city was on the
+direct route of the retreat, and few who got so far had any money left.
+
+Slowly and painfully Barlasch unwound himself and disentangled his legs.
+He tried first one and then the other, as if uncertain whether he could
+walk. Then he staggered numbly across the yard to the door of the inn.
+
+A few minutes later Desiree woke up. She was in a room warmed by a great
+white stove and dimly lighted by candles. Some one was pulling off
+her gloves and feeling her hands to make sure that they were not
+frost-bitten. She looked sleepily at a white coffee-pot standing on the
+table near the candles; then her eyes, still uncomprehending, rested on
+the face of the man who was loosening her hood, which was hard with
+rime and ice. He had his back to the candles, and was half-hidden by the
+collar of his fur coat, which met the cap pressed down over his ears.
+
+He turned towards the table to lay aside her gloves, and the light fell
+on his face. Desiree was wideawake in an instant, and Louis d'Arragon,
+hearing her move, turned anxiously to look at her again. Neither spoke
+for a minute. Barlasch was holding his numbed hand against the stove,
+and was grinding his teeth and muttering at the pain of the restored
+circulation.
+
+Desiree shook the icicles from her hood, and they rattled like hail on
+the bare floor. Her hair, all tumbled round her face, caught the light
+of the candles. Her eyes were bright and the colour was in her cheeks.
+D'Arragon glanced at her with a sudden look of relief, and then turned
+to Barlasch. He took the numbed hand and felt it; then he held a candle
+close to it. Two of the fingers were quite white, and Barlasch made a
+grimace when he saw them. D'Arragon began rubbing at once, taking no
+notice of his companion's moans and complaints.
+
+Without desisting, he looked over his shoulder towards Desiree, but not
+actually at her face.
+
+"I heard last night," he said, "that the two carriages are standing in
+an inn-yard three leagues beyond this on the Warsaw road. I have traced
+them step by step from Kowno. My informant tells me that the escort has
+deserted, and that the officer in charge, Colonel Darragon, was going
+on alone, with the two drivers, when he was taken ill. He is nearly well
+again, and hopes to continue his journey to-morrow or the next day."
+
+Desiree nodded her head to signify that she had heard and understood.
+Barlasch gave a cry of pain, and withdrew his hand with a jerk.
+
+"Enough, enough!" he said. "You hurt me. The life is returning now; a
+drop of brandy perhaps--"
+
+"There is no brandy in Thorn," said D'Arragon, turning towards the
+table. "There is only coffee."
+
+He busied himself with the cups, and did not look at Desiree when he
+spoke again.
+
+"I have secured two horses," he said, "to enable you to proceed at once,
+if you are able to. But if you would rather rest here to-day--"
+
+"Let us go on at once," interrupted Desiree hastily.
+
+Barlasch, crouching against the stove, glanced from one to the other
+beneath his heavy brows, wondering, perhaps, why they avoided looking at
+each other.
+
+"You will wait here," said D'Arragon, turning towards him, "until--until
+I return."
+
+"Yes," was the answer. "I will lie on the floor here and sleep. I have
+had enough. I--"
+
+Louis left the room to give the necessary orders. When he returned in a
+few minutes, Barlasch was asleep on the floor, and Desiree had tied on
+her hood again, which concealed her face. He drank a cup of coffee and
+ate some dry bread absent-mindedly, in silence.
+
+The sound of bells, feebly heard through the double windows, told them
+that the horses were being harnessed.
+
+"Are you ready?" asked D'Arragon, who had not sat down; and in response,
+Desiree, standing near the stove, went towards the door, which he held
+open for her to pass out. As she passed him, she glanced at his face,
+and winced.
+
+In the sleigh she looked up at him as if expecting him to speak. He was
+looking straight in front of him. There was, after all, nothing to be
+said. She could see his steady eyes between his high collar and the fur
+cap. They were hard and unflinching. The road was level now, and the
+snow beaten to a gleaming track like ice. D'Arragon put the horses to a
+gallop at the town gate, and kept them at it.
+
+In half an hour he turned towards her and pointed with his whip to a
+roof half hidden by some thin pines.
+
+"That is the inn," he said.
+
+In the inn yard he indicated with his whip two travelling-carriages
+standing side by side.
+
+"Colonel Darragon is here?" he said to the cringing Jew who came to meet
+them; and the innkeeper led the way upstairs. The house was a miserable
+one, evil-smelling, sordid. The Jew pointed to a door, and, cringing
+again, left them.
+
+Desiree made a gesture telling Louis to go in first, which he did at
+once. The room was littered with trunks and cases. All the treasure had
+been brought into the sick man's chamber for greater safety.
+
+On a narrow bed near the window a man lay huddled on his side. He turned
+and looked over his shoulder, showing a haggard face with a ten-days'
+beard on it. He looked from one to the other in silence.
+
+It was Colonel de Casimir.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII. THROUGH THE SHOALS.
+
+
+
+     I see my way, as birds their trackless way.
+
+De Casimir had never seen Louis d'Arragon, and yet some dim resemblance
+to his cousin must have introduced the new-comer to a conscience not
+quite easy.
+
+"You seek me, Monsieur," he asked, not having recognized Desiree, who
+stood behind her companion, in her furs.
+
+"I seek Colonel Darragon, and was told that we should find him in this
+room."
+
+"May I ask why you seek him in this rather unceremonious manner?" asked
+De Casimir, with the ready insolence of his calling and his age.
+
+"Because I am his cousin," replied Louis quietly, "and Madame is his
+wife."
+
+Desiree came forward, her face colourless. She caught her breath, but
+made no attempt to speak.
+
+De Casimir tried to lift himself on his elbows.
+
+"Ah! madame," he said. "You see me in a sorry state. I have been very
+ill." And he made a gesture with one hand, begging her to overlook his
+unkempt appearance and the disorder of his room.
+
+"Where is Charles?" asked Desiree curtly. She had suddenly realized how
+intensely she had always disliked De Casimir, and distrusted him.
+
+"Has he not returned to Dantzig?" was the ready answer. "He should have
+been there a week ago. We parted at Vilna. He was exhausted--a mere
+question of over-fatigue--and at his request I left him there to recover
+and to pursue his way to Dantzig, where he knew you would be awaiting
+him."
+
+He paused and looked from one to the other with quick and furtive eyes.
+He felt himself easily a match for them in quickness of perception, in
+rapid thought, in glib speech. Both were dumb--he could not guess why.
+But there was a steadiness in D'Arragon's eyes which rarely goes with
+dulness of wit. This was a man who could be quick at will--a man to be
+reckoned with.
+
+"You are wondering why I travel under your cousin's name, Monsieur,"
+said De Casimir, with a friendly smile.
+
+"Yes," returned Louis, without returning the smile.
+
+"It is simple enough," explained the sick man. "At Vilna we found all
+discipline relaxed. There were no longer any regiments. There was no
+longer staff. There was no longer an army. Every man did as he thought
+best. Many, as you know, elected to await the Russians at Vilna, rather
+than attempt to journey farther. Your cousin had been given the command
+of the escort which has now filtered away, like every other corps. He
+was to conduct back to Paris two carriages laden with imperial treasure
+and certain papers of value. Charles did not want to go back to Paris.
+He wished most naturally to return to Dantzig. I, on the other hand,
+desired to go to France; and there place my sword once more at the
+Emperor's service. What more simple than to change places?"
+
+"And names," suggested D'Arragon, without falling into De Casimir's easy
+and friendly manner.
+
+"For greater security in passing through Poland and across the
+frontier," explained De Casimir readily. "Once in France--and I hope
+to be there in a week--I shall report the matter to the Emperor as it
+really happened: namely, that, owing to Colonel Darragon's illness, he
+transferred his task to me at Vilna. The Emperor will be indifferent, so
+long as the order has been carried out."
+
+De Casimir turned to Desiree as likely to be more responsive than this
+dark-eyed stranger, who listened with so disconcerting a lack of comment
+or sympathy.
+
+"So you see, madame," he said, "Charles will still get the credit for
+having carried out his most difficult task, and no harm is done."
+
+"When did you leave Charles at Vilna?" asked she.
+
+De Casimir lay back on the pillow in an attitude which betrayed his
+weakness and exhaustion. He looked at the ceiling with lustreless eyes.
+
+"It must have been a fortnight ago," he said at length. "I was trying to
+count the days. We have lost all account of dates since quitting Moscow.
+One day has been like another--and all, terrible. Believe me, madame,
+it has always been in my mind that you were awaiting the return of your
+husband at Dantzig. I spared him all I could. A dozen times we saved
+each other's lives."
+
+In six words Desiree could have told him all she knew: that he was a spy
+who had betrayed to death and exile many Dantzigers whose hospitality
+had been extended to him as a Polish officer; that Charles was a
+traitor who had gained access to her father's house in order to watch
+him--though he had honestly fallen in love with her. He was in love with
+her still, and he was her husband. It was this thought that broke into
+her sleep at night, that haunted her waking hours.
+
+She glanced at Louis d'Arragon, and held her peace.
+
+"Then, Monsieur," he said, "you have every reason to suppose that if
+Madame returns to Dantzig now, she will find her husband there?"
+
+De Casimir looked at D'Arragon, and hesitated for an instant. They both
+remembered afterwards that moment of uncertainty.
+
+"I have every reason to suppose it," replied De Casimir at length,
+speaking in a low voice, as if fearful of being overheard.
+
+Louis waited a moment, and glanced at Desiree, who, however, had
+evidently nothing more to say.
+
+"Then we will not trouble you farther," he said, going towards the door,
+which he held open for Desiree to pass out. He was following her when De
+Casimir called him back.
+
+"Monsieur," cried the sick man, "Monsieur, one moment, if you can spare
+it."
+
+Louis came back. They looked at each other in silence while they heard
+Desiree descend the stairs and speak in German to the innkeeper who had
+been waiting there.
+
+"I will be quite frank with you," said De Casimir, in that voice of
+confidential friendliness which so rarely failed in its effect. "You
+know that Madame Darragon has an elder sister, Mademoiselle Mathilde
+Sebastian?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+De Casimir raised himself on his elbows again, with an effort, and gave
+a short, half shamefaced laugh which was quite genuine. It was odd that
+Mathilde and he, who had walked most circumspectly, should both have
+been tripped up, as it were, by love.
+
+"Bah!" he said, with a gesture dismissing the subject, "I cannot tell
+you more. It is a woman's secret, Monsieur, not mine. Will you deliver a
+letter for me in Dantzig, that is all I ask?"
+
+"I will give it to Madame Darragon to give to Mademoiselle Mathilde, if
+you like; I am not returning to Dantzig," replied Louis. But de Casimir
+shook his head.
+
+"I am afraid that will not do," he said doubtfully. "Between sisters,
+you understand--"
+
+And he was no doubt right; this man of quick perception. Is it not from
+our nearest relative that our dearest secret is usually withheld?
+
+"You cannot find another messenger?" asked De Casimir, and the anxiety
+in his face was genuine enough.
+
+"I can--if you wish it."
+
+"Ah, Monsieur, I shall not forget it! I shall never forget it," said
+the sick man quickly and eagerly. "The letter is there, beneath that
+sabretasche. It is sealed and addressed."
+
+Louis found the letter, and went towards the door, as he placed it in
+his pocket.
+
+"Monsieur," said De Casimir, stopping him again. "Your name, if I may
+ask it, so that I may remember a countryman who has done me so great a
+service."
+
+"I am not a countryman; I am an Englishman," replied Louis. "My name is
+Louis d'Arragon."
+
+"Ah! I know. Charles has told me, Monsieur le--"
+
+But D'Arragon heard no more, for he closed the door behind him.
+
+He found Desiree awaiting him in the entrance hall of the inn, where a
+fire of pine-logs burnt in an open chimney. The walls and low ceiling
+were black with smoke, the little windows were covered with ice an inch
+thick. It was twilight in this quiet room, and would have been dark but
+for the leaping flames of the fire.
+
+"You will go back to Dantzig," he asked, "at once?"
+
+He carefully avoided looking at her, though he need not have feared
+that she would have allowed her eyes to meet his. And thus they stood,
+looking downward to the fire--alone in a world that heeded them not, and
+would forget them in a week--and made their choice of a life.
+
+"Yes," she answered.
+
+He stood thinking for a moment. He was quite practical and
+matter-of-fact; and had the air of a man of action rather than of one
+who deals in thoughts, and twists them hither and thither so that good
+is made to look ridiculous, and bad is tricked out with a fine new name.
+He frowned as he looked at the fire with eyes that flitted from one
+object to another, as men's eyes do who think of action and not of
+thought. This was the sailor--second to none in the shallow
+northern sea, where all marks had been removed, and every light
+extinguished--accustomed to facing danger and avoiding it, to foresee
+remote contingencies and provide against them, day and night, week
+in, week out; a sailor, careful and intrepid. He had the air of being
+capable of that concentration without which no man can hope to steer a
+clear course at all.
+
+"The horses that brought you from Marienwerder will not be fit for the
+road till to-morrow morning," he said. "I will take you back to Thorn at
+once, and--leave you there with Barlasch."
+
+He glanced towards her, and she nodded, as if acknowledging the sureness
+and steadiness of the hand at the helm.
+
+"You can start early to-morrow morning, and be in Dantzig to-morrow
+night."
+
+They stood side by side in silence for some minutes. He was still
+thinking of her journey--of the dangers and the difficulties of that
+longer journey through life without landmark or light to guide her.
+
+"And you?" she asked curtly.
+
+He did not reply at once but busied himself with his ponderous fur coat,
+which he buttoned, as if bracing himself for the start. Beneath her
+lashes she looked sideways at the deliberate hands and the lean strong
+face, burnt to a red-brown by sun and snow, half hidden in the fur
+collar of his worn and weather-beaten coat.
+
+"Konigsberg," he answered, "and Riga."
+
+A light passed through her watching eyes, usually so kind and gay; like
+the gleam of jealousy.
+
+"Your ship?" she asked sharply.
+
+"Yes," he answered, as the innkeeper came to tell them that their sleigh
+awaited them.
+
+It was snowing now, and a whistling, fitful wind swept down the valley
+of the Vistula from Poland and the far Carpathians which made the
+travellers crouch low in the sleigh and rendered talk impossible, had
+there been anything to say. But there was nothing.
+
+They found Barlasch asleep where they had left him in the inn at Thorn,
+on the floor against the stove. He roused himself with the quickness and
+completeness of one accustomed to brief and broken rest, and stood up
+shaking himself in his clothes, like a dog with a heavy coat. He took no
+notice of D'Arragon, but looked at Desiree with questioning eyes.
+
+"It was not the Captain?" he asked.
+
+And Desiree shook her head. Louis was standing near the door giving
+orders to the landlady of the inn--a kindly Pomeranian, clean and
+slow--for Desiree's comfort till the next morning.
+
+Barlasch went close to Desiree, and, nudging her arm with exaggerated
+cunning, whispered--
+
+"Who was it?"
+
+"Colonel de Casimir."
+
+"With the two carriages and the treasure from Moscow?" asked Barlasch,
+watching Louis out of the corner of one eye, to make sure that he did
+not hear. It did not matter whether he heard or not, but Barlasch came
+of a peasant stock that always speaks of money in a whisper. And when
+Desiree nodded, he cut short the conversation.
+
+The hostess came forward to tell Desiree that her room was ready,
+kindly suggesting that the "gnadiges Fraulein" must need sleep and rest.
+Desiree knew that Louis would go on to Konigsberg at once. She wondered
+whether she should ever see him again--long afterwards, perhaps, when
+all this would seem like a dream. Barlasch, breathing noisily on his
+frost-bitten fingers, was watching them. Desiree shook hands with Louis
+in an odd silence, and, turning on her heel, followed the woman out of
+the room without looking back.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII. AGAINST THE STREAM.
+
+
+
+     Wo viel Licht ist, ist starker Schatten.
+
+In the mean time the last of the Great Army had reached the Niemen, that
+narrow winding river in its ditch-like bed sunk below the level of the
+tableland, to which six months earlier the greatest captain this world
+has ever seen rode alone, and, coming back to his officers, said--
+
+"Here we cross."
+
+Four hundred thousand men had crossed--a bare eighty thousand lived
+to pass the bridge again. Twelve hundred cannons had been left behind,
+nearly a thousand in the hands of the enemy, and the remainder buried or
+thrown into those dull rivers whose slow waters flow over them to this
+day. One hundred and twenty-five thousand officers and men had been
+killed in battle, another hundred thousand had perished by cold
+and disaster at the Beresina or other rivers where panic seized the
+fugitives.
+
+Forty-eight generals had been captured by the Russians, three thousand
+officers, one hundred and ninety thousand men, swallowed by the silent
+white Empire of the North and no more seen.
+
+As the retreat neared Vilna the cold had increased, killing men as the
+first cold of an English winter kills flies. And when the French quitted
+Vilna, the Russians were glad enough to seek its shelter, Kutusoff
+creeping in with forty thousand men, all that remained to him of two
+hundred thousand. He could not carry on the pursuit, but sent forward a
+handful of Cossacks to harry the hare-brained few who called themselves
+the rearguard. He was an old man, nearly worn out, with only three
+months more to live--but he had done his work.
+
+Ney--the bravest of the brave--left alone in Russia at the last with
+seven hundred foreign recruits, men picked from here and there, called
+in from the highways and hedges to share the glory of the only Marshal
+who came back from Moscow with a name untarnished--Ney and Girard,
+musket in hand, were the last to cross the bridge, shouting defiance at
+their Cossack foes, who, when they had hounded the last of the French
+across the frontier, flung themselves down on the bloodstained snow to
+rest.
+
+All along the banks of the Vistula, from Konigsberg and Dantzig up to
+Warsaw--that slow river which at the last call shall assuredly give up
+more dead than any other--the fugitives straggled homewards. For the
+Russians paused at their own frontier, and Prussia was still nominally
+the friend of France. She had still to wear the mask for three long
+months when she should at last openly side with Russia, only to be
+beaten again by Napoleon.
+
+Murat was at Konigsberg with the Imperial staff, left in supreme command
+by the Emperor, and already thinking of his own sunny kingdom of the
+Mediterranean, and the ease and the glory of it. In a few weeks he, too,
+must tarnish his name.
+
+"I make over the command to you," he said to Prince Eugene; and
+Napoleon's step-son made an answer which shows, as Eugene showed again
+and again, that contact with a great man makes for greatness.
+
+"You cannot make it over to me," he replied. "Only the Emperor can
+do that. You can run away in the night, and the supreme command will
+devolve on me the next morning."
+
+And what Murat did is no doubt known to the learned reader.
+
+Macdonald, abandoned by Yorck with the Prussian contingent, in great
+peril, alone in the north, was retreating with the remains of the Tenth
+Army Corps, wondering whether Konigsberg or Dantzig would still be
+French when he reached them. On his heels was Wittgenstein, in touch
+with St. Petersburg and the Emperor Alexander, communicating with
+Kutusoff at Vilna. And Macdonald, like the Scotchman and the Frenchman
+that he was, turned at a critical moment and rent Wittgenstein. Here was
+another bulldog in that panic-stricken pack, who turned and snarled and
+fought while his companions slunk homewards with their tails between
+their legs. There were three of such breed--Ney and Macdonald, and
+Prince Eugene de Beauharnais.
+
+Napoleon was in Paris, getting together in wild haste the new army
+with which he was yet to frighten Europe into fits. And Rapp, doggedly
+fortifying his frozen city, knew that he was to hold Dantzig at any
+cost--a remote, far-thrown outpost on the Northern sea, cut off from
+all help, hundreds of miles from the French frontier, nearly a thousand
+miles from Paris.
+
+At Marienwerder, Barlasch and Desiree found themselves in the midst of
+that bustle and confusion which attends the arrival or departure of an
+army corps. The majority of the men were young and of a dark skin. They
+seemed gay, and called out salutations to which Barlasch replied curtly
+enough.
+
+"They are Italians," said he to his companion; "I know their talk and
+their manners. To you and me, who come from the North, they are like
+children. See that one who is dancing. It is some fete. What is to-day?"
+
+"It is New Year's Day," replied Desiree.
+
+"New Year's Day," echoed Barlasch. "Good. And we have been on the road
+since six o'clock; and I, who have forgotten to wish you--" He paused
+and called cheerily to the horses, which had covered more than forty
+miles since leaving their stable at Thorn. "Bon Dieu!" he said in a
+lower tone, glancing at her beneath the ice-bound rim of his fur cap,
+"Bon Dieu--what am I to wish you, I wonder?"
+
+Desiree did not answer, but smiled a little and looked straight in front
+of her.
+
+Barlasch made a movement of the shoulders and eyebrows indicative of a
+hidden anger.
+
+"We are friends," he asked suddenly, "you and I?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"We have been friends since--that day--when you were married?"
+
+"Yes," answered Desiree.
+
+"Then between friends," said Barlasch, gruffly; "it is not necessary to
+smile--like that--when it is tears that are there."
+
+Desiree laughed.
+
+"Would you have me weep?" she asked.
+
+"It would hurt one less," said Barlasch, attending to his horses. They
+were in the town now, and the narrow streets were crowded. Many sick and
+wounded were dragging themselves wearily along. A few carts, drawn by
+starving horses, went slowly down the hill. But there was some semblance
+of order, and thus men had the air and carriage of soldiers under
+discipline. Barlasch was quick to see it.
+
+"It is the Fourth Corps. The Viceroy's army. They have done well. He is
+a soldier, who commands them. Ah! There is one I know."
+
+He threw the reins to Desiree, and in a moment he was out on the snow.
+A man, as old, it would seem, as himself, in uniform and carrying a
+musket, was marching past with a few men who seemed to be under his
+orders, though his uniform was long past recognition. He did not
+perceive, for some minutes, that Barlasch was coming towards him, and
+then the process of recognition was slow. Finally, he laid aside his
+musket, and the two old men gravely kissed each other.
+
+Quite forgetful of Desiree, they stood talking together for twenty
+minutes. Then they gravely embraced once more, and Barlasch returned to
+the sleigh. He took the reins, and urged the horses up the hill without
+commenting on his encounter, but Desiree could see that he had heard
+news.
+
+The inn was outside the town, on the road that follows the Vistula
+northwards to Dirschau and Dantzig. The horses were tired, and stumbled
+on the powdery snow which was heavy, like sand, and of a sandy colour.
+Here and there, by the side of the road, were great stains of blood and
+the remains of a horse that had been killed, and eaten raw. The faces of
+many of the men were smeared with blood, which had dried on their cheeks
+and caked there. Nearly all were smoke-grimed and had sore eyes.
+
+At last Barlasch spoke, with the decisive air of one who has finally
+drawn up a course of action in a difficult position.
+
+"He comes from my own country, that man. You heard us? We spoke together
+in our patois. I shall not see him again. He has a catarrh. When he
+coughs there is blood. Alas!"
+
+Desiree glanced at the rugged face half turned away from her. She was
+not naturally heartless; but she quite forgot to sympathize with the
+elderly soldier who had caught a cold on the retreat from Moscow; for
+his friend's grief lacked conviction. Barlasch had heard news which he
+had decided to keep to himself.
+
+"Has he come from Vilna?" asked Desiree.
+
+"From Vilna--oh yes. They are all from Vilna."
+
+"And he had no news"--persisted she, "of--Captain Darragon?"
+
+"News--oh no! He is a common soldier, and knows nothing of the officers
+on the staff. We are the same--he and I--poor animals in the ranks.
+A little gentleman rides up, all sabretasche and gold lace. It is an
+officer of the staff. 'Go down into the valley and get shot,' he says.
+And--bon jour! we go. No--no. He has no news, my poor comrade."
+
+They were at the inn now, and found the huge yard still packed with
+sleighs and disabled carriages, and the stables ostentatiously empty.
+
+"Go in," said Barlasch; "and tell them who your father is--say Antoine
+Sebastian and nothing else. I would do it myself, but when it is so cold
+as that, the lips are stiff, and I cannot speak German properly. They
+would find out that I am French, and it is no good being French now. My
+comrade told me that in Konigsberg, Murat himself was ill-received by
+the burgomaster and such city stuff as that."
+
+It was as Barlasch foretold. For at the name of Antoine Sebastian the
+innkeeper found horses--in another stable.
+
+It would take a few minutes, he said, to fetch them, and in the meantime
+there were coffee and some roast meat--his own dinner. Indeed, he could
+not do enough to testify his respect for Desiree, and his commiseration
+for her, being forced to travel in such weather through a country
+infested by starving brigands.
+
+Barlasch consented to come just within the inner door, but refused to
+sit at the table with Desiree. He took a piece of bread, and ate it
+standing.
+
+"See you," he said to her when they were left alone, "the good God has
+made very few mistakes, but there is one thing I would have altered.
+If He intended us for such a rough life, He should have made the human
+frame capable of going longer without food. To a poor soldier marching
+from Moscow to have to stop every three hours and gnaw a piece of horse
+that has died--and raw--it is not amusing."
+
+He watched Desiree with a grudging eye. For she was young, and had eaten
+nothing for six freezing hours.
+
+"And for us," he added; "what a waste of time!"
+
+Desiree rose at once with a laugh.
+
+"You want to go," she said. "Come, I am ready."
+
+"Yes," he admitted, "I want to go. I am afraid--name of a dog! I am
+afraid, I tell you. For I have heard the Cossacks cry, 'Hurrah! Hurrah!'
+And they are coming."
+
+"Ah!" said Desiree, "that is what your friend told you."
+
+"That, and other things."
+
+He was pulling on his gloves as he spoke, and turned quickly on his heel
+when the innkeeper entered the room, as if he had expected one of those
+dread Cossacks of Toula who were half savage. But the innkeeper carried
+nothing more lethal in his hand than a yellow mug of beer, which he
+offered to Barlasch. And the old soldier only shook his head.
+
+"There is poison in it," he muttered. "He knows I am a Frenchman."
+
+"Come," said Desiree, with her gay laugh, "I will show you that there is
+no poison in it."
+
+She took the mug and drank, and handed the measure to Barlasch. It was
+a poor thin beer, and Barlasch was not one to hide his opinion from the
+host, to whom he made a reproving grimace when he returned the empty
+mug. But the effect upon him was nevertheless good, for he took the
+reins again with a renewed energy, and called to the horses gaily
+enough.
+
+"Allons," he said; "we shall reach Dantzig safely by nightfall, and
+there we shall find your husband awaiting us, and laughing at us for our
+foolish journey."
+
+But being an old man, the beer could not warm his heart for long, and
+he soon lapsed again into melancholy and silence. Nevertheless,
+they reached Dantzig by nightfall, and although it was a bitter
+twilight--colder than the night itself--the streets were full. Men stood
+in groups and talked. In the brief time required to journey to Thorn
+something had happened. Something happened every day in Dantzig; for
+when history wakes from her slumber and moves, it is with a heavy and
+restless tread.
+
+"What is it?" asked Barlasch of the sentry at the town gate, while they
+waited for their passports to be returned to them.
+
+"It is a proclamation from the Emperor of Russia--no one knows how it
+has got here."
+
+"And what does he proclaim--that citizen?"
+
+"He bids the Dantzigers rise and turn us out," answered the soldier,
+with a grim laugh.
+
+"Is that all?"
+
+"No, comrade, that is not all," was the answer in a graver voice.
+
+"He proclaims that every Pole who submits now will be forgiven and set
+at liberty; the past, he says, will be committed to an eternal oblivion
+and a profound silence--those are his words."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+"Yes, and half the defenders of Dantzig are Poles--there are your
+passports--pass on."
+
+They drove through the dark streets where men like shadows hurried
+silently about their business.
+
+The Frauengasse seemed to be deserted when they reached it. It was
+Mathilde who opened the door. She must have been at the darkened window,
+behind the curtain. Lisa had gone home to her native village in Sammland
+in obedience to the Governor's orders. Sebastian had not been home all
+day. Charles had not returned, and there was no news of him.
+
+Barlasch, wiping the snow from his face, watched Desiree, and made no
+comment.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV. MATHILDE CHOOSES.
+
+
+
+     But strong is fate, O Love,
+     Who makes, who mars, who ends.
+
+Desiree was telling Mathilde the brief news of her futile journey, when
+a knock at the front door made them turn from the stairs where they were
+standing. It was Sebastian's knock. His hours had been less regular of
+late. He came and went without explanation.
+
+When he had freed his throat from his furs, and laid aside his gloves,
+he glanced hastily at Desiree, who had kissed him without speaking.
+
+"And your husband?" he asked curtly.
+
+"It was not he whom we found at Thorn," she answered. There was
+something in her father's voice--in his quick, sidelong glance at
+her--that caught her attention. He had changed lately. From a man of
+dreams he had been transformed into a man of action. It is customary
+to designate a man of action as a hard man. Custom is the brick wall
+against which feeble minds come to a standstill and hinder the progress
+of the world. Sebastian had been softened by action, through which his
+mental energy had found an outlet. But to-night he was his old self
+again--hard, scornful, incomprehensible.
+
+"I have heard nothing of him," said Desiree.
+
+Sebastian was stamping the snow from his boots.
+
+"But I have," he said, without looking up.
+
+Desiree said nothing. She knew that the secret she had guarded so
+carefully--the secret kept by herself and Louis--was hers no longer. In
+the silence of the next moments she could hear Barlasch breathing on
+his fingers, within the kitchen doorway just behind her. Mathilde made
+a little movement. She was on the stairs, and she moved nearer to the
+balustrade and held to it breathlessly. For Charles Darragon's secret
+was De Casimir's too.
+
+"These two gentlemen," said Sebastian slowly, "were in the secret
+service of Napoleon. They are hardly likely to return to Dantzig."
+
+"Why not?" asked Mathilde.
+
+"They dare not."
+
+"I think the Emperor will be able to protect his officers," said
+Mathilde.
+
+"But not his spies," replied Sebastian coldly.
+
+"Since they wore his uniform, they cannot be blamed for doing their
+duty. They are brave enough. They would hardly avoid returning to
+Dantzig because--because they have outwitted the Tugendbund."
+
+Mathilde's face was colourless with anger, and her quiet eyes flashed.
+She had been surprised into this sudden advocacy, and an advocate who
+displays temper is always a dangerous ally. Sebastian glanced at her
+sharply. She was usually so self-controlled that her flashing eyes and
+quick breath betrayed her.
+
+"What do you know of the Tugendbund?" he asked.
+
+But she would not answer, merely shrugging her shoulders and closing her
+thin lips with a snap.
+
+"It is not only in Dantzig," said Sebastian, "that they are unsafe. It
+is anywhere where the Tugendbund can reach them."
+
+He turned sharply to Desiree. His wits, cleared by action, told him that
+her silence meant that she, at all events, had not been surprised. She
+had, therefore, known already the part played by De Casimir and Charles,
+in Dantzig, before the war.
+
+"And you," he said, "you have nothing to say for your husband."
+
+"He may have been misled," she said mechanically, in the manner of one
+making a prepared speech or meeting a foreseen emergency. It had
+been foreseen by Louis d'Arragon. The speech had been, unconsciously,
+prepared by him.
+
+"You mean, by Colonel de Casimir," suggested Mathilde, who had recovered
+her usual quiet. And Desiree did not deny her meaning. Sebastian looked
+from one to the other. It was the irony of Fate that had married one
+of his daughters to Charles Darragon, and affianced the other to De
+Casimir. His own secret, so well kept, had turned in his hand like a
+concealed weapon.
+
+They were all startled by Barlasch, who spoke from the kitchen door,
+where he had been standing unobserved or forgotten. He came forward to
+the light of the lamp hanging overhead.
+
+"That reminds me..." he said a second time, and having secured their
+attention, he instituted a search in the many pockets of his nondescript
+clothing. He still wore a dirty handkerchief bound over one eye. It
+served to release him from duty in the trenches or work on the frozen
+fortifications. By this simple device, coupled with half a dozen
+bandages in various parts of his person, where a frost-bite or a wound
+gave excuse, he passed as one of the twenty-five thousand sick and
+wounded who encumbered Dantzig at this time, and were already dying at
+the rate of fifty a day.
+
+"A letter..." he said, still searching with his maimed hand. "You
+mentioned the name of the Colonel de Casimir. It was that which recalled
+to my mind..." He paused, and produced a letter carefully sealed. He
+turned it over, glancing at the seals with a reproving jerk of the head,
+which conveyed as clearly as words a shameless confession that he had
+been frustrated by them... "this letter. I was told to give it you,
+without fail, at the right moment."
+
+It could hardly be the case that he honestly thought this moment might
+be so described. But he gave the letter to Mathilde with a gesture of
+grim triumph. Perhaps he was thinking of the cellar in the Palace on the
+Petrovka at Moscow, and the treasure which he had found there.
+
+"It is from the Colonel de Casimir," he said, "a clever man," he added,
+turning confidentially to Sebastian, and holding his attention by an
+upraised hand. "Oh!... a clever man."
+
+Mathilde, her face all flushed, tore open the envelope, while Barlasch,
+breathing on his fingers, watched with twinkling eye and busy lips.
+
+The letter was a long one. Colonel de Casimir was an adept at
+explanation. There was, no doubt, much to explain. Mathilde read the
+letter carefully. It was the first she had ever had--a love-letter in
+its guise--with explanations in it. Love and explanation in the same
+breath. Assuredly De Casimir was a daring lover.
+
+"He says that Dantzig will be taken by storm," she said at length, "and
+that the Cossacks will spare no one."
+
+"Does it signify," inquired Sebastian in his smoothest voice, "what
+Colonel de Casimir may say?"
+
+His grand manner had come back to him. He made a gesture with his hand
+almost suggestive of a ruffle at the wrist, and clearly insulting to
+Colonel de Casimir.
+
+"He urges us to quit the city before it is too late," continued
+Mathilde, in her measured voice, and awaited her father's reply. He took
+snuff with a cold smile.
+
+"You will not do so?" she asked. And by way of reply, Sebastian laughed
+as he dusted the snuff from his coat with his pocket-handkerchief.
+
+"He asks me to go to Cracow with the Grafin, and marry him," said
+Mathilde finally. And Sebastian only shrugged his shoulders. The
+suggestion was beneath contempt.
+
+"And...?" he inquired with raised eyebrows.
+
+"I shall do it," replied Mathilde, defiance shining in her eyes.
+
+"At all events," commented Sebastian, who knew Mathilde's mind, and met
+her coldness with indifference, "you will do it with your eyes open,
+and not leap in the dark, as Desiree did. I was to blame there; a man
+is always to blame if he is deceived. With you... Bah! you know what the
+man is. But you do not know, unless he tells you in that letter, that he
+is even a traitor in his treachery. He has accepted the amnesty offered
+by the Czar; he has abandoned Napoleon's cause; he has petitioned the
+Czar to allow him to retire to Cracow, and there live on his estates."
+
+"He has no doubt good reasons for his action," said Mathilde.
+
+"Two carriages full," muttered Barlasch, who had withdrawn to the dark
+corner near the kitchen door. But no one heeded him.
+
+"You must make your choice," said Sebastian, with the coldness of a
+judge. "You are of age. Choose."
+
+"I have already chosen," answered Mathilde. "The Grafin leaves
+to-morrow. I will go with her."
+
+She had, at all events, the courage of her own opinions--a courage not
+rare in women, however valueless may be the judgment upon which it is
+based. And in fairness it must be admitted that women usually have the
+courage not only of the opinion, but of the consequence, and meet it
+with a better grace than men can summon in misfortune.
+
+Sebastian dined alone and hastily. Mathilde was locked in her room,
+and refused to open the door. Desiree cooked her father's dinner while
+Barlasch made ready to depart on some vague errand in the town.
+
+"There may be news," he said. "Who knows? And afterwards the patron will
+go out, and it would not be wise for you to remain alone in the house."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+Barlasch turned and looked at her thoughtfully over his shoulder.
+
+"In some of the big houses down in the Niederstadt there are forty and
+fifty soldiers quartered--diseased, wounded, without discipline. There
+are others coming. I have told them we have fever in the house. It is
+the only way. We may keep them out; for the Frauengasse is in the
+centre of the town, and the soldiers are not needed in this quarter. But
+you--you cannot lie as I can. You laugh--ah! A woman tells more lies;
+but a man tells them better. Push the bolts, when I am gone."
+
+After his dinner, Sebastian went out, as Barlasch had predicted. He said
+nothing to Desiree of Charles or of the future. There was nothing to be
+said, perhaps. He did not ask why Mathilde was absent. In the stillness
+of the house, he could probably hear her moving in her rooms upstairs.
+
+He had not been long gone when Mathilde came down, dressed to go out.
+She came into the kitchen where Desiree was doing the work of the absent
+Lisa, who had reluctantly gone to her home on the Baltic coast. Mathilde
+stood by the kitchen table and ate some bread.
+
+"The Grafin has arranged to quit Dantzig to-morrow," she said. "I am
+going to ask her to take me with her."
+
+Desiree nodded and made no comment. Mathilde went to the door, but
+paused there. Without looking round, she stood thinking deeply. They had
+grown from childhood together--motherless--with a father whom neither
+understood. Together they had faced the difficulties of life; the
+hundred petty difficulties attending a woman's life in a strange land,
+among neighbours who bear the sleepless grudge of unsatisfied curiosity.
+They had worked together for their daily bread. And now the full stream
+of life had swept them together from the safe moorings of childhood.
+
+"Will you come too?" asked Mathilde. "All that he says about Dantzig is
+true."
+
+"No, thank you," answered Desiree, gently enough. "I will wait here. I
+must wait in Dantzig."
+
+"I cannot," said Mathilde, half excusing herself. "I must go. I cannot
+help it. You understand?"
+
+"Yes," said Desiree, and nothing more.
+
+Had Mathilde asked her the question six months ago, she would have said
+"No." But she understood now, not that Mathilde could love De Casimir;
+that was beyond her individual comprehension, but that there was no
+alternative now.
+
+Soon after Mathilde had gone, Barlasch returned.
+
+"If Mademoiselle Mathilde is going, she will have to go to-morrow," he
+said. "Those that are coming in at the gates now are the rearguard of
+the Heudelet Division which was driven out of Elbing by the Cossacks
+three days ago."
+
+He sat mumbling to himself by the fire, and only turned to the supper
+which Desiree had placed in readiness for him when she quitted the
+room and went upstairs. It was he who opened the door for Mathilde,
+who returned in half an hour. She thanked him absent-mindedly and went
+upstairs. He could hear the sisters talking together in a low voice in
+the drawing-room, which he had never seen, at the top of the stairs.
+
+Then Desiree came down, and he helped her to find in a shed in the
+yard one of those travelling-trunks which he had recognized as being of
+French manufacture. He took off his boots, and carried it upstairs for
+her.
+
+It was ten o'clock before Sebastian came in. He nodded his thanks
+to Barlasch, and watched him bolt the door. He made no inquiry as to
+Mathilde, but extinguished the lamp, and went to his room. He never
+mentioned her name again.
+
+Early the next morning, the girls were astir. But Barlasch was before
+them, and when Desiree came down, she found the kitchen fire alight.
+Barlasch was cleaning a knife, and nodded a silent good morning.
+Desiree's eyes were red, and Barlasch must have noted this sign of
+grief, for he gave a contemptuous laugh, and continued his occupation.
+
+It was barely daylight when the Grafin's heavy, old-fashioned carriage
+drew up in front of the house. Mathilde came down, thickly veiled and
+in her travelling furs. She did not seem to see Barlasch, and omitted to
+thank him for carrying her travelling-trunk to the carriage.
+
+He stood on the terrace beside Desiree until the carriage had turned the
+corner into the Pfaffengasse.
+
+"Bah!" he said, "let her go. There is no stopping them, when they are
+like that. It is the curse--of the Garden of Eden."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV. A DESPATCH.
+
+
+
+     In counsel it is good to see dangers; and in execution not to
+see them unless they be very great.
+
+Mathilde had told Desiree that Colonel de Casimir made no mention of
+Charles in his letter to her. Barlasch was able to supply but little
+further information on the matter.
+
+"It was given to me by the Captain Louis d'Arragon at Thorn," he said.
+"He handled it as if it were not too clean. And he had nothing to say
+about it. You know his way, for the rest. He says little; but he knows
+the look of things. It seemed that he had promised to deliver the
+letter--for some reason, who knows what? and he kept his promise. The
+man was not dying by any chance--that De Casimir?"
+
+And his little sharp eyes, reddened by the smoke of camp-fires, inflamed
+by the glare of sun on snow, searched her face. He was thinking of the
+treasure.
+
+"Oh no!"
+
+"Was he ill at all?"
+
+"He was in bed," answered Desiree, doubtfully.
+
+Barlasch scratched his head without ceremony, and fell into a long train
+of thought.
+
+"Do you know what I think?" he said at length. "I think that De Casimir
+was not ill at all--any more than I am; I, Barlasch. Not so ill,
+perhaps, as I am, for I have an indigestion. It is always there at the
+summit of the stomach. It is horse without salt."
+
+He paused and rubbed his chest tenderly.
+
+"Never eat horse without salt," he put in parenthetically.
+
+"I hope never to eat it at all," answered Desiree. "What about Colonel
+de Casimir?"
+
+He waved her aside as a babbler who broke in upon his thoughts. These
+seemed to be lodged in his mouth, for, when reflecting, he chewed and
+mumbled with his lips.
+
+"Listen," he said at length. "This is De Casimir. He goes to bed and
+lets his beard grow--half an inch of beard will keep any man in the
+hospital. You nod your head. Yes; I thought so. He knows that the
+viceroy, with the last of the army, is at Thorn. He keeps quiet. He
+waits in his roadside inn until the last of the army has gone. He
+waits until the Russians come, and to them he hands over the Emperor's
+possessions--all the papers, the maps, the despatches. For that he will
+be rewarded by the Emperor Alexander, who has already promised pardon to
+all Poles who have taken arms against Russia and now submit. De Casimir
+will be allowed to retain his own baggage. He has no loot taken at
+Moscow--oh no! Only his own baggage. Ah--that man! See, I spit him out."
+
+And it is painful to record that he here resorted to graphic
+illustration.
+
+"Ah!" he went on triumphantly, "I know. I can see right into the mind
+of such a man. I will tell you why. It is because I am that sort of man
+myself."
+
+"You do not seem to have been so successful--since you are poor," said
+Desiree, with a laugh.
+
+He frowned at her apparently in speechless anger, seeking an answer. But
+for the moment he could think of none, so he turned to the knives again,
+which he was cleaning on a board on the kitchen-table. At length he
+paused and glanced at Desiree.
+
+"And your husband," he said slowly. "Remember that he is a partner with
+this De Casimir. They hunt together. I know it; for I was in Moscow. Ah!
+that makes you stand stiffly, and push your chin out."
+
+He went on cleaning the knives, and, without looking at her, seemed to
+be speaking his own thoughts aloud.
+
+"Yes! He is a traitor. And he is worse than the other; for he is no
+Pole, but a Frenchman. And if he returns to France, the Emperor will
+say: 'Where are my despatches, my maps, my papers, which were given into
+your care?'"
+
+He finished the thought with three gestures, which seemed to illustrate
+the placing of a man against a wall and shooting him. His meaning could
+not be mistaken.
+
+"And that is what the patron means when he says that Monsieur Charles
+Darragon will not return to Dantzig. I knew that he meant that last
+night, when he was so angry--on the mat."
+
+"And why did you not tell me?"
+
+Barlasch looked at her thoughtfully for a moment, before replying slowly
+and impressively.
+
+"Because, if I had told you, you might have decided to quit Dantzig with
+Mademoiselle Mathilde, and go hunting your husband in a country overrun
+by desperate fugitives and untamed Cossacks. And I did not want that. I
+want you here--in Dantzig; in the Frauengasse; in this kitchen; under my
+hand--so that I can take care of you till the war is over. I--who speak
+to you--Papa Barlasch, at your service. And there is not another man in
+the world who will do it so well. No; not one."
+
+And his eyes flashed as he threw the knives into a drawer.
+
+"But why should you do all this for me?" asked Desiree. "You could have
+gone home to France--quite easily--and have left us to our fate here in
+Dantzig. Why did you not go home?"
+
+Barlasch looked at her with surprise, not unmixed with a sudden dumb
+disappointment. He was preparing to go out according to his wont
+immediately after breakfast; for Lisa had unconsciously hit the mark
+when she compared him to a cat. He had the regular and self-contained
+habits of that unobtrusive friend. He buttoned his rough coat slowly,
+and looked round the kitchen with eyes dimly wistful. He was very old
+and ragged and homeless.
+
+"Is it not enough," he said, "that we are friends?"
+
+He went towards the door, but came back and warned her by the familiar
+upheld finger not to let her attention wander from his words.
+
+"You will be glad yet that I have stayed. It is because I speak a little
+plainly of your husband that you wish me gone. Bah! What does it matter?
+All men are alike. We are only men--not angels. And you can go on
+loving him all the same. You are not particular, you women. You can love
+anything--even a man like that."
+
+And he went out muttering anathemas on the hearts of all women.
+
+"It seems," he said, "that a woman can love anything."
+
+Which is true; and a very good thing for some of us. For without that
+Heaven-sent capacity the world could not go on at all.
+
+It was later in the day when Barlasch made his way into the low and
+smoke-grimed Bier Halle of the Weissen Ross'l. He must have known
+Sebastian's habits, for he went straight to that corner of the great
+room where the violin-player usually sat. The stout waitress--a country
+girl of no intelligence, smiled broadly at the sight of such a ragged
+customer as she followed him down the length of the sawdust-strewn
+floor.
+
+Sebastian's face showed no surprise when he looked up and recognized the
+new-comer. The surrounding tables were empty. It was too early in the
+evening for the regular customers, whose numbers, moreover, had been
+sadly thinned during the last few months. For the peaceful Dantzigers,
+remembering the siege of seven years ago, had mostly fled at the first
+mention of the word.
+
+Sebastian nodded in answer to Barlasch's somewhat ceremonious bow, and
+by a gesture invited him to be seated on the chair upon which he had
+already laid his hand. The atmosphere of the room was warm, and Barlasch
+laid aside his sheepskin coat, as he had seen the great and the rich
+divest themselves of their sables. He turned sharply and caught the
+waitress with an amused smile still on her face. He drew her attention
+to a little pool of beer on the table, and stood until she had made good
+this lapse in her duty. Then he pointed to Sebastian's mug of beer
+and dismissed her giggling, to get one for him of the same size and
+contents.
+
+Making sure that there was no one within earshot, he waited until
+Sebastian's dreamy eye met his, and then said--
+
+"It is time we understood each other."
+
+A light of surprise--passing and half-indifferent--flashed into
+Sebastian's eyes and vanished again at once when he saw Barlasch had
+meant nothing: made no sign or countersign with his hand.
+
+"By all means, my friend," he answered.
+
+"I delivered your letters," said Barlasch, "at Thorn and at the other
+places."
+
+"I know; I have already had answers. You would be wise to forget the
+incident."
+
+Barlasch shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"You were paid," said Sebastian, jumping to a natural conclusion.
+
+"A little," admitted Barlasch, "a small little--but it was not that. I
+always get paid in advance, when I can. Except by the Emperor. He
+owes me some--that citizen. It was another question. In the house I am
+friends with all--with Lisa who has gone--with Mademoiselle Mathilde
+who has gone--with Mademoiselle Desiree, so-called Madame Darragon, who
+remains. With all except you. Why should we not be friends?"
+
+"But we are friends--" protested Sebastian, with a bow. As if in
+confirmation of the statement, he held out his beer-mug, and Barlasch
+touched it with the rim of his own before drinking. Sebastian's
+attitude, his bow, his manner of drinking, were those of the Court;
+Barlasch was distinctly of the camp. But these were strange days, and
+all society had been turned topsy-turvy by one man.
+
+"Then," said Barlasch, licking his lips, "let us understand one another.
+You say there will be no siege. I say you are wrong. You think that the
+Dantzigers will rise in answer to the Emperor Alexander's proclamations,
+and turn the French out. I say the Dantzigers' stomachs are too big. I
+say that Rapp will hold Dantzig, and that the Russians will not take it
+by storm, because they are too weak. There will be a siege, and a
+long one. Are you and Mademoiselle and I going to sit it out in the
+Frauengasse together?"
+
+"We shall be honoured to have you as our guest," answered Sebastian,
+with that levity which went before the Revolution, and was never
+understood of the people.
+
+Barlasch did not understand it. He glanced doubtfully at his companion,
+and sipped his beer.
+
+"Then I will begin to-night."
+
+"Begin what, my friend?"
+
+Barlasch waved aside all petty detail.
+
+"My preparations. I go out about ten o'clock--after you are in. I will
+take the key of the front door, and let myself in when I come back.
+I shall make two journeys. Under the kitchen floor is a large hollow
+space. I fill that with bags of corn."
+
+"But where will you get the corn, my friend?"
+
+"I know where to get it--corn and other things. Salt I have
+already--enough for a year. Other things I can get for three months."
+
+"But we have no money to pay for them."
+
+"Bah!"
+
+"You mean you will steal them," suggested Sebastian, not without a ring
+of contempt in his mincing voice.
+
+"A soldier never steals," answered Barlasch, carelessly announcing a
+great truth.
+
+Sebastian laughed. It was obvious that his mind, absorbed in great
+thought, heeded small things not at all. His companion pushed his fur
+cap to the back of his head, and ruffled his hair forward.
+
+"That is not all," he said at length. He looked round the vast room,
+which was almost deserted. The stout waitress was polishing pewter mugs
+at the bar. "You say you have already had answers to those letters. It
+is a great organization--your secret society--whatever it is called. It
+delivers letters all over Prussia--eh? and Poland perhaps--or farther
+still."
+
+Sebastian shrugged one shoulder, and made no answer for some time.
+
+"I have already told you," he said impatiently, at length, "to forget
+the incident; you were paid."
+
+By way of reply, the old soldier laboriously emptied his pockets,
+searching the most remote of them for small copper coins. He counted
+slowly and carefully until he had made up a thaler.
+
+"But it is not my turn to be paid this time. It is I who pay."
+
+He held out his hand with a pound weight of base metal in it, but
+Sebastian refused the money with a sudden assumption of his cold and
+scornful manner, oddly out of keeping with his humble surroundings.
+
+"As between friends--" suggested Barlasch, and, on receiving a more
+decided negative, returned the coins to his pocket, not without
+satisfaction.
+
+"I want your friends to pass on a letter for me--I am willing to pay,"
+he said in a whisper. "A letter to Captain Louis d'Arragon--it concerns
+the happiness of Mademoiselle Desiree. Do not shake your head. Think
+before you refuse. The letter will be an open one--six words or
+so--telling the Captain that his cousin, Mademoiselle's husband, is not
+in Dantzig, and cannot now return here since the last of the rearguard
+entered the city this morning."
+
+Sebastian seemed to be considering the matter, and Barlasch was quick to
+combat possible objections.
+
+"The Captain went to Konigsberg. He is there now. Your friends can
+easily find him, and give him the letter. It is of great importance to
+Mademoiselle. The Captain is not looking for Monsieur Charles Darragon,
+because he thinks that he is here in Dantzig. Colonel de Casimir assured
+him that Mademoiselle would find him here. Where is he--that Monsieur
+Charles--I wonder? It is of great importance to Mademoiselle. The
+Captain would perhaps continue his search."
+
+"Where is your letter?" asked Sebastian.
+
+By way of reply, Barlasch laid on the table a sheet of paper.
+
+"You must write it," he said. "My hand is injured. I write not badly,
+you understand. But this evening I do not feel that my hand is well
+enough."
+
+So, with the sticky, thick ink of the Weissen Ross'l, Sebastian wrote
+the letter, and Barlasch, forgetting his scholarly acquirements, took
+the pen and made a mark beneath his own name written at the foot of it.
+
+Then he went out, and left Sebastian to pay for the beer.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI. ON THE BRIDGE.
+
+
+
+     They that are above
+     Have ends in everything.
+
+A lame man was standing on the bridge that crosses the Neuer Pregel from
+the Kant Strasse--which is the centre of the city of Konigsberg--to the
+island known as the Kneiphof. This bridge is called the Kramer Brucke,
+and may be described as the heart of the town. From it on either hand
+diverge the narrow streets that run along the river bank, busy with
+commerce, crowded with the narrow sleighs that carry wood from the
+Pregel up into the town.
+
+The wider streets--such as the Kant Strasse, running downhill from the
+royal castle to the river, and the Kneiphof'sche Langgasse, leading
+southward to the Brandenburg gate and the great world--must needs make
+use of the Kramer Brucke. Here, it may be said, every man in the town
+must sooner or later pass in the execution of his daily business,
+whether he go about it on foot or in a sleigh with a pair of horses.
+Here the idler and those grave professors from the University, which was
+still mourning the death of the aged Kant, nearly always passed in their
+thoughtful and conscientious promenades.
+
+Here this lame man, a cobbler by trade, plying his quiet calling in a
+house in the Neuer Markt, where the lime-trees grow close to the upper
+windows, had patiently kept watch for three days. He was, like many lame
+men, of an abnormal width and weight. He had a large, square, dogged
+face, which seemed to promise that he would wait there till the crack of
+doom rather than abandon a quest.
+
+It was very cold--mid-winter within a few miles of the frozen Baltic
+on the very verge of Russia, at that point where old Europe stretches
+a long arm out into the unknown. The cobbler was wrapped in a sheepskin
+coat, which stood out all round him with the stiffness of wood, so
+that he seemed to be living inside a box. To keep himself warm he
+occasionally limped across from end to end of the bridge, but never
+went farther. At times he leant his arms on the stone wall at the Kant
+Strasse end of the bridge, and looked down into the Lower Fish
+Market, where women from Pillau and the Baltic shores--mere bundles of
+clothes--stood over their baskets of fish frozen hard like sticks. It
+was a silent market. One cannot haggle long when a minute's exposure
+to the air will give a frost-bite to the end of the nose. The would-be
+purchaser can scarcely make an effective bargain through a fringe of
+icicles that rattle against his lips if he open them.
+
+The Pregel had been frozen for three months, with only the one temporary
+thaw in November which cost Napoleon so many thousands at his broken
+bridge across the Beresina. Though no water had flowed beneath this
+bridge, many strange feet had passed across it.
+
+It had vibrated beneath Napoleon's heavy carriage, under the lumbering
+guns that Macdonald took northward to blockade Riga. Within the last few
+weeks it had given passage to the last of the retreating army, a mere
+handful of heartsick fugitives. Macdonald with his staff had been
+ignominiously driven across it by the Cossacks who followed hard after
+them, the great marshal still wild with rage at the defection of Yorck
+and the Prussian contingent.
+
+And now the Cossacks on their spare and ill-tempered horses passed to
+and fro, wild men under an untamed leader whose heart was hardened to
+stone by bereavement. The cobbler looked at them with a countenance of
+wood. It was hard to say whether he preferred them to the French, or
+was indifferent to one as to the other. He looked at their boots with
+professional disdain. For all men must look at the world from their own
+standpoint and consider mankind in the light of their own interests.
+Thus those who live on the greed or the vanity, or batten on the charity
+of their neighbour, learn to watch the lips.
+
+The cobbler, by reason of looking at the lower end of men, attracted
+little attention from the passer-by. He who has his eyes on the ground
+passes unheeded. For the surest way of awakening interest is to appear
+interested. It would seem that this cobbler was waiting for a pair of
+boots not made in Konigsberg. And on the third day his expressionless
+black eyes lighted on feet not shod in Poland, or France, or Germany,
+nor yet in square-toed Russia.
+
+The owner of these far-travelled boots was a lightly-built dark-faced
+man, with eyes quietly ubiquitous. He caught the interested glance of
+the cobbler, and turned to look at him again with the uneasiness that is
+bred of war. The cobbler instantly hobbled towards him.
+
+"Will you help a poor man?" he said.
+
+"Why should I?" was the answer, with one hand already half out of its
+thick glove. "You are not hungry; you have never been starved in your
+life."
+
+The German was quick enough, but it was not quite the Prussian German.
+
+The cobbler looked at the speaker slowly.
+
+"An Englishman?" he asked.
+
+And the other nodded.
+
+"Come this way."
+
+The cobbler hobbled towards the Kneiphof, where the streets are quiet,
+and the Englishman followed him. At the corner of the Kohl Markt he
+turned and looked, not at the man, but at his boots.
+
+"You are a sailor?" he said.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I was told to look for an English sailor--Louis d'Arragon."
+
+"Then you have found me," was the reply.
+
+Still the cobbler hesitated.
+
+"How am I to know it?" he asked suspiciously.
+
+"Can you read?" asked D'Arragon. "I can prove who I am--if I want to.
+But I am not sure that I want to."
+
+"Oh! it is only a letter--of no importance. Some private business of
+your own. It comes from Dantzig--written by one whose name begins with
+'B.'"
+
+"Barlasch," suggested D'Arragon quietly, as he took from his pocket a
+paper which he unfolded and held beneath the eyes of the cobbler. It was
+a passport written in three languages. If the man could read, he was not
+anxious to boast of an accomplishment so far above his station; but
+he glanced at the paper, not without a practised skill, to seize the
+essential parts of it.
+
+"Yes, that is the name," he said, searching in his pockets. "The letter
+is an open one. Here it is."
+
+In passing the letter, the man made a scarcely perceptible movement of
+the hand which might have been a signal.
+
+"No," said D'Arragon, "I do not belong to the Tugendbund or to any other
+secret society. We have need of no such associations in my country."
+
+The cobbler laughed, not without embarrassment.
+
+"You have a quick eye," he said. "It is a great country, England. I have
+seen the river full of English ships before Napoleon chased you off the
+seas."
+
+D'Arragon smiled as he unfolded the letter.
+
+"He has not done it yet," he said, with that spirit which enables
+mariners of the Anglo-Saxon race to be amused when there is a talk of
+supremacy on the high seas. He read the letter carefully, and his face
+hardened.
+
+"I was instructed," said the cobbler, "to give you the letter, and at
+the same time to inform you that any assistance or facilities you may
+require will be forth-coming; besides..." he broke off and pointed with
+his thick, leather-stained finger, "that writing is not the writing of
+him who signs."
+
+"He who signs cannot write at all."
+
+"That writing," went on the cobbler, "is a passport in any German state.
+He who carries a letter written in that hand can live and travel free
+anywhere from here to the Rhine or the Danube."
+
+"Then I am lucky in possessing a powerful friend," said D'Arragon, "for
+I know who wrote this letter. I think I may say he is a friend of mine."
+
+"I am sure of it. I have already been told so," said the cobbler. "Have
+you a lodging in Konigsberg? No? Then you can lodge in my house."
+
+Without awaiting a reply, which he seemed to consider a foregone
+conclusion, he limped down the Kohl Markt towards the steps leading to
+the river, which in winter is a thoroughfare.
+
+"I live in the Neuer Markt," he said breathlessly, as he laboured
+onwards. "I have waited for you three days on that bridge. Where have
+you been all this time?"
+
+"Avoiding the French," replied D'Arragon curtly. Respecting his own
+affairs he was reticent, as commanders and other lonely men must always
+be. They walked side by side on the dusty and trodden ice without
+further speech. At the steps from the river to Neuer Markt, D'Arragon
+gave the lame man his hand, and glanced a second time at the fingers
+which clasped his own. They had not been born to toil, but had had it
+thrust upon them.
+
+They crossed the Neuer Markt together, and went into that house where
+the linden grows so close as to obscure the windows. And the lodging
+offered to Louis was the room in which Charles Darragon had slept in his
+wet clothes six months earlier. So small is the world in which we live,
+and so narrow are the circles drawn by Fate around human existence and
+endeavour.
+
+The cobbler having shown his visitor the room, and pointed out its
+advantages, was turning to go when D'Arragon, who was laying aside his
+fur coat, seemed to catch his attention, and he paused on the threshold.
+
+"There is French blood in your veins," he said abruptly.
+
+"Yes--a little."
+
+"So. I thought there must be. You reminded me--it was odd, the way you
+laid aside your coat--reminded me of a Frenchman who lodged here for
+one night. He was like you, too, in build and face. He was a spy, if you
+please--one of the French Emperor's secret police. I was new at the work
+then, but still I suspected there was something wrong about him. I took
+his boots--a pretext of mending them. I locked him in. He got out of
+that window, if you please, without his boots. He followed me, and
+learnt much that he was not meant to know. I have since heard it from
+others. He did the Emperor a great service--that man. He saved his life,
+I think, from assassination in Dantzig. And he did me an ill turn--but
+it was my own carelessness. I thought to make a thaler by lodging him,
+and he was tricking me all the while."
+
+"What was his name?" asked D'Arragon.
+
+"Oh--I forgot the name he gave. It was a false one. He was disguised as
+a common soldier--and he was in reality an officer of the staff. But I
+know the name of the officer to whom he wrote his report of his night's
+lodging here--his colleague in the secret police, it would seem."
+
+"Ah!" said D'Arragon, busying himself with his haversack.
+
+"It was De Casimir--a Polish name. And in the last two days I have
+heard of him. He has accepted the Emperor's amnesty. He has married a
+beautiful woman, and is living like a prince at Cracow. All this since
+the siege of Dantzig began. In time of war there is no moment to lose,
+eh?"
+
+"And the other? He who slept in this room. Has he passed through
+Konigsberg again?"
+
+"No, that he has not. If he had, I should have seen him. You can
+believe me, I wanted to see him. I was at my place on the bridge all
+the time--while the French occupied Konigsberg--when the last of them
+hurried away a month ago with the Cossacks close behind. No. I should
+have seen him, and known him. He is not on this side of the Niemen, that
+fine young gentleman. Now, what can I do to help you to-morrow?"
+
+"You can help me on the way to Vilna," answered D'Arragon.
+
+"You will never get there."
+
+"I will try," said the sailor.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII. A FLASH OF MEMORY.
+
+
+
+     Nothing can cover his high fame but Heaven,
+     No pyramids set off his memories,
+     But the eternal substance of his greatness
+     To which I leave him.
+
+"Why I will not let you go out into the streets?" said Barlasch one
+February morning, stamping the snow from his boots. "Why I will not let
+you go out into the streets?"
+
+He turned and followed Desiree towards the kitchen, after having
+carefully bolted the heavy oaken door which had been strengthened as if
+to resist a siege. Desiree's face had that clear pallor which marks an
+indoor life; but Barlasch, weather-beaten, scorched and wrinkled, showed
+no sign of having endured a month's siege in an overcrowded city.
+
+"I will tell you why I will not let you go into the streets. Because
+they are not fit for any woman to go into--because if you walked from
+here to the Rathhaus you would see sights that would come back to you in
+your sleep, and wake you from it, when you are an old woman. Do you know
+what they do with their dead? They throw them outside their doors--with
+nothing to cover their starved nakedness--as Lisa put her ashes in the
+street every morning. And the cart goes round, as the dustman's cart
+used to go in times of peace, and, like the dustman's cart, it drops
+part of its load, and the dust that blows round it is the infection of
+typhus. That is why you cannot go into the streets."
+
+He unbuttoned his fur coat and displayed a smart new uniform; for Rapp
+had put his miserable army into new clothes, with which many of the
+Dantzig warehouses had been filled by Napoleon's order at the beginning
+of the war.
+
+"There," he said, laying a small parcel on the table, "there is my
+daily ration. Two ounces of horse, one ounce of salt beef, the same as
+yesterday. One does not know how long we shall be treated so generously.
+Let us keep the beef--we may come to want some day."
+
+And giving a hoarse laugh, he lifted a board in the floor, beneath which
+he hoarded his stores.
+
+"Will you cook your dejeuner yourself," asked Desiree. "I have something
+else for my father."
+
+"And what have you?" asked Barlasch curtly; "you are not keeping
+anything hidden from me?"
+
+"No," answered Desiree, with a laugh at the sternness of his face, "I
+will give him a piece of the ham which was left over from last night."
+
+"Left over?" echoed Barlasch, going close to her and looking up into her
+face, for she was two inches taller than he. "Left over? Then you did
+not eat your supper last night?"
+
+"Neither did you eat yours, for it is there under the floor."
+
+Barlasch turned away with a gesture of despair. He sat down in the high
+armchair that stood on the hearth, and tapped on the floor with one foot
+in pessimistic thought.
+
+"Ah! the women, the women," he muttered, looking into the smouldering
+fire. "Lies--all lies. You said that your supper was very nice," he
+shouted at her over his shoulder.
+
+"So it was," answered she gaily, "so it is still."
+
+Barlasch did not rise to her lighter humour. He sat in reflection for
+some minutes. Then his thoughts took their usual form of a muttered
+aside.
+
+"It is a case of compromise. Always like that. The good God had to
+compromise with the first woman he created almost at once. And men have
+done it ever since--and have never had the best of it. See here," he
+said aloud, turning to Desiree, "I will make a bargain with you. I will
+eat my last night's supper here at this table, now, if you will eat
+yours."
+
+"Agreed."
+
+"Are you hungry?" asked Barlasch, when the scanty meal was set out
+before him.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"So am I."
+
+He laughed quite gaily now, and the meal was not without a certain air
+of festivity, though it consisted of nothing better than two ounces of
+horse and half an ounce of ham eaten in company of that rye-bread made
+with one-third part of straw which Rapp allowed the citizens to buy.
+
+For Rapp had first tamed his army, and was now taming the Dantzigers.
+He had effected discipline in his own camp by getting his regiments into
+shape, by establishing hospitals (which were immediately filled), and by
+protecting the citizens from the depredations of the starving fugitives
+who had been poured pell-mell into the town.
+
+Then he turned his attention to the Dantzigers, who were openly or
+secretly opposed to him. He seized their churches and turned them into
+stores; their schools he used for hospitals, their monasteries for
+barracks. He broke into their cellars, and took the wine for the sick.
+Their storehouses he placed under the strictest guard, and no man could
+claim possession of his own goods.
+
+"We are," he said in effect, with that grim Alsatian humour which the
+Prussians were slow to understand; "we are one united family in a narrow
+house, and it is I who keep the storeroom key."
+
+Barlasch had proved to be no false prophet. His secret store escaped the
+vigilance of the picket, whom he himself conducted to the cellars in
+the Frauengasse. Although he was sparing enough, he could always
+provide Desiree with anything for which she expressed a wish, and even
+forestalled those which she left unspoken. In return he looked for
+absolute obedience, and after their frugal breakfast he took her to task
+for depriving herself of such food as they could afford.
+
+"See you," he said, "a siege is a question of the stomach. It is not the
+Russians we have to fight; for they will not fight. They sit outside
+and wait for us to die of cold, of starvation, of typhus. And we are
+obliging them at the rate of two hundred a day. Yes, each day Rapp is
+relieved of the responsibility of two hundred mouths that drop open and
+require nothing more. Be greedy--eat all you have, and hope for release
+to-morrow, and you die. Be sparing--starve yourself from parsimony or
+for the love of some one who will eat your share and forget to
+thank you, and you will die of typhus. Be careful, and patient, and
+selfish--eat a little, take what exercise you can, cook your food
+carefully with salt, and you will live. I was in a siege thirty years
+before you were born, and I am alive yet, after many others. Obey me and
+we will get through the siege of Dantzig, which is only just beginning."
+
+Then suddenly he gave way to anger, and banged his hand down on the
+table.
+
+"But, sacred name of thunder, do not make me believe you have eaten when
+you have not," he shouted. "Never do that."
+
+Carried away by the importance of this question, he said many things
+which cannot be set before the eyes of a generation sensitive to
+plainness of speech, and only tolerant of it in suggestions of
+impropriety.
+
+"And the patron," he ended abruptly, "how is he?"
+
+"He is not very well," answered Desiree. Which answer did not satisfy
+Barlasch, who insisted on taking off his boots, and going upstairs to
+see Sebastian.
+
+It was a mere nothing, the invalid said. Such food did not suit him.
+
+"You have been accustomed to live well all your life," answered
+Barlasch, looking at him with the puzzled light of a baffled memory in
+his eye which always came when he looked at Desiree's father. "One must
+see what can be done."
+
+And he went out forthwith to return after an hour and more with a
+chicken freshly killed. Desiree did not ask him where he had procured
+it. She had given up such inquiries, for Barlasch always confessed quite
+bluntly to theft, and she did not know whether to believe him or not.
+
+But the change of diet had no beneficial effect, and the next day
+Desiree sent Barlasch to the house of the doctor whose practice lay in
+the Frauengasse. He came and shook his head bluntly. For even an old
+doctor may be hardened at the end of his life by an orgy, as it were, of
+death.
+
+"I could cure him," he said, "if there were no Russians outside the
+walls; if I could give him fresh milk and good brandy and strong soup."
+
+But even Barlasch could not find milk in Dantzig. The brandy was
+forthcoming, and the fresh meat; the soup Desiree made with her own
+hands. Sebastian had not been the same man since the closing of the
+roads and the gradual death of his hopes that the Dantzigers would rise
+against the soldiers that thronged their streets. At one time it would
+have been easy to carry out such a movement, and to throw themselves
+and their city upon the mercy of the Russians. But Dantzig awoke to this
+possibility too late, when Rapp's iron hand had closed in upon it.
+He knew his own strength so well that he treated with a contemptuous
+leniency such citizens as were convicted of communicating with the
+enemy.
+
+Sebastian's friends seemed to have deserted him. Perhaps it was not
+discreet to be seen in the company of one who had come under Napoleon's
+displeasure. Some had quitted the city after hurriedly concealing their
+valuables in their gardens, behind the chimneys, beneath the floors,
+where it is to be supposed they still lie hidden. Others were among the
+weekly thousand or twelve hundred who were carted out by the Oliva Gate
+to be thrown into huge trenches, while the waiting Russians watched from
+their lines on the heights of Langfuhr.
+
+It was true that news continued to filter in, and never quite ceased,
+all through the terrible twelve months that were to follow. More
+especially did news that was unfavourable to the French find its way
+into the beleaguered city. But it was not authentic news, and Sebastian
+gathered little comfort from the fact--not unknown to the whispering
+citizens--that Rapp himself had heard nothing from the outer world since
+the Elbing mail-cart had been turned back by the first of the Cossacks
+on the night of the seventh of January.
+
+Perhaps Sebastian had that most fatal of maladies--to which nearly all
+men come at last--weariness of life.
+
+"Why don't you fortify yourself, and laugh at fortune?" asked Barlasch,
+twenty years his senior, as he stood sturdily on his stocking-feet at
+the sick man's bedside.
+
+"I take what my daughter gives me," protested Sebastian, half peevishly.
+
+"But that does not suffice," answered the materialist. "It does not
+suffice to swallow evil fortune--one must digest it."
+
+Sebastian made no answer. He was a quiet patient, and lay all day with
+wide-open, dreaming eyes. He seemed to be waiting for something. This,
+indeed, was his mental attitude as presented to his neighbours, and
+perhaps to the few friends he possessed in Dantzig. He had waited
+through the years during which Desiree had grown to womanhood. He waited
+on doggedly through the first month of the siege, without enthusiasm,
+without comment--without hope, perhaps. He seemed to be waiting now to
+get better.
+
+"He has made little or no progress," said the doctor, who could only
+give a passing glance at his patients, for he was working day and night.
+He had not time to beat about the bush, as his kind heart would have
+liked, for he had known Desiree all her life.
+
+It was Shrove Tuesday, and the streets were full of revellers. The
+Neapolitans and other Southerners had made great preparations for the
+carnival, and the Governor had not denied them their annual licence.
+They had built a high car in one of the entrance yards to the
+Marienkirche; and finding that the ancient arch would not allow the
+erection to pass out into the street, they had pulled down the pious
+handiwork of a bygone generation.
+
+The shouts of these merrymakers could be dimly heard through the double
+windows, but Sebastian made no inquiry as to the meaning of the cry.
+A sort of lassitude--the result of confinement within doors, of
+insufficient food, of waning hope--had come over Desiree. She listened
+heedlessly to the sounds in the streets through which the dead were
+passing to the Oliva Gate, while the living danced by in their hideous
+travesty of rejoicing.
+
+It was dusk when Barlasch came in.
+
+"The streets," he said, "are full of fools, dressed as such."
+Receiving no answer, he crossed the room to where Desiree sat, treading
+noiselessly, and stood in front of her, trying to see her averted face.
+He stooped down and peered at her until she could no longer hide her
+tear-stained eyes.
+
+He made a wry face and a little clicking noise with his tongue, such
+as the women of his race make when they drop and break some household
+utensil. Then he went back towards the bed. Hitherto he had always
+observed a certain ceremoniousness of manner in the sick chamber. He
+laid this aside this evening, and sat down on a chair that stood near.
+
+Thus they remained in a silence which seemed to increase with the
+darkness. At length the stillness became so marked that Barlasch slowly
+turned his head towards the bed. The same instinct had come to Desiree
+at the same moment.
+
+They both rose and groped their way towards Sebastian. Desiree found the
+flint and struck it. The sulphur burnt blue for interminable moments,
+and then flared to meet the wick of the candle. Barlasch watched Desiree
+as she held the light down to her father's face. Sebastian's waiting was
+over. Barlasch had not needed a candle to recognize death.
+
+From Desiree his bright and restless eyes turned slowly towards the dead
+man's face--and he stepped back.
+
+"Ah!" he said, with a hoarse cry of surprise, "now I remember. I was
+always sure that I had seen his face before. And when I saw it it
+was like that--like the face of a dead man. It was on the Place de la
+Nation, on a tumbrel--going to the guillotine. He must have escaped, as
+many did, by some accident or mistake."
+
+He went slowly to the window, holding his shaggy head between his two
+clenched hands as if to spur his memory to an effort. Then he turned and
+pointed to the silent form on the bed.
+
+"That is a noble of France," he said; "one of the greatest. And all
+France thinks him dead this twenty years. And I cannot remember his
+name--goodness of God--I cannot remember his name!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII. VILNA.
+
+
+
+                    It is our trust
+     That there is yet another world to mend
+     All error and mischance.
+
+Louis d'Arragon knew the road well enough from Konigsberg to the Niemen.
+It runs across a plain, flat as a table, through which many small
+streams seek their rivers in winding beds. This country was not thinly
+inhabited, though the villages had been stripped, as foliage is stripped
+by a cloud of locusts. Each cottage had its ring of silver birch-trees
+to protect it from the winds which sweep from the Baltic and the steppe.
+These had been torn and broken down by the retreating army, in a vain
+hope of making fire with green wood.
+
+It was quite easy to keep in the steps of the retreating army, for the
+road was marked by recumbent forms huddled on either side. Few vehicles
+had come so far, for the broken country near to Vilna and around Kowno
+had presented slopes up which the starving horses were unable to drag
+their load.
+
+D'Arragon reached Kowno without mishap, and there found a Russian
+colonel of Cossacks who proved friendly enough, and not only appreciated
+the value of his passport and such letters of recommendation as he had
+been able to procure at Konigsberg, but gave him others, and forwarded
+him on his journey.
+
+He still nourished a lingering belief in De Casimir's word. Charles must
+have been left behind at Vilna to recover from his exhaustion. He would,
+undoubtedly, make his way westward as soon as possible. He might have
+got away to the South. Any one of these huddled human landmarks might be
+Charles Darragon.
+
+Louis was essentially a thorough man. The sea is a mistress demanding
+a whole and concentrated attention--and concentration soon becomes a
+habit. Louis did not travel at night, for fear of passing Charles on
+the road, alive or dead. He knew his cousin better than any in the
+Frauengasse had learnt to know this gay and inconsequent Frenchman. A
+certain cunning lay behind the happy laugh--a great capacity was hidden
+by the careless manner. If ready wit could bring man through the dangers
+of the retreat, Charles had as good a chance of surviving as any.
+
+Nevertheless, Louis rarely passed a dead man on the road, but drew
+up, and quitting his sleigh, turned over the body, which was almost
+invariably huddled with its back offered to the deadly, prevailing North
+wind. Against each this wind had piled a sloping bank of that fine snow
+which, even in the lightest breeze, drifts over the surface of the land
+like an ivory mist, waist high, and cakes the clothes. In a high wind it
+will rise twenty feet in the air, and blind any who try to face it.
+
+As often as not a mere glance sufficed to show that this was not
+Charles, for few of the bodies were clad. Many had been stripped, while
+still living, by their half-frozen comrades. But sometimes Louis had to
+dust the snow from strange bearded faces before he could pass on with a
+quick sigh of relief.
+
+Beyond Kowno, the country is thinly populated, and spreading
+pine-forests bound the horizon. The Cossacks--the wild men of Toula, who
+reaped the laurels of the rearguard fighting--were all along the road.
+D'Arragon frequently came upon a picket--as often as not the men were
+placidly sitting on a frozen corpse, as on a seat--and stopped to say a
+few words and gather news.
+
+"You will find your friend at Vilna," said one young officer, who had
+been attached to General Wilson's staff, and had many stories to tell of
+the energetic and indefatigable English commissioner. "At Vilna we
+took twenty thousand prisoners--poor devils who came and asked us for
+food--and I don't know how many officers. And if you see Wilson there,
+remember me to him. If Napoleon has need to hate one man more than
+another for this business, it is that firebrand, Wilson. Yes, you will
+assuredly find your cousin at Vilna among the prisoners. But you must
+not linger by the road, for they are being sent back to Moscow to
+rebuild that which they have caused to be destroyed."
+
+He laughed and waved his gloved hand as D'Arragon drove on.
+
+After the broken land and low abrupt hills of Kowno, the country was
+flat again until the valley of the Vilia opened out. And here, almost
+within sight of Vilna, D'Arragon drove down a short hill which must ever
+be historic. He drove slowly, for on either side were gun-carriages deep
+sunken in the snow where the French had left them. This hill marked
+the final degeneration of the Emperor's army into a shapeless rabble
+hopelessly flying before an exhausted enemy.
+
+Half on the road and half in the ditch were hundreds of carriages which
+had been hurriedly smashed up to provide firewood. Carts, still laden
+with the booty of Moscow, stood among the trees. Some of them contained
+small square boxes of silver coin, brought by Napoleon to pay his army
+and here abandoned. Silver coin was too heavy to carry. The rate of
+exchange had long been sixty francs in silver for a gold napoleon or a
+louis. The cloth coverings of the cushions had been torn off to shape
+into rough garments; the straw stuffing had been eaten by the horses.
+
+Inside the carriages were--crouching on the floor--the frozen bodies of
+fugitives too badly wounded or too ill to attempt to walk. They had sat
+there till death came to them. Many were women. In one carriage four
+women, in silks and fine linen, were huddled together. Their furs had
+been dragged from them either before or after death.
+
+Louis stopped at the bottom and looked back. De Casimir at all events
+had succeeded in surmounting this obstacle which had proved fatal to
+so many--the grave of so many hopes--God's rubbish-heap, where gold
+and precious stones, silks and priceless furs, all that greedy men had
+schemed and striven and fought to get, fell from their hands at last.
+
+Vilna lies all down a slope--a city built upon several hills--and the
+Vilia runs at the bottom. That Way of Sorrow, the Smolensk Road, runs
+eastward by the river bank, and here the rearguard held the Cossacks in
+check while Murat hastily decamped, after dark, westwards to Kowno. The
+King of Naples, to whom Napoleon gave the command of his broken army
+quite gaily--"a vous, Roi de Naples," he is reported to have said, as he
+hurried to his carriage--Murat abandoned his sick and wounded; did not
+even warn the stragglers.
+
+D'Arragon entered the city by the narrow gate known as the Town Gate,
+through which, as through that greater portal of Moscow, every man must
+pass bareheaded.
+
+"The Emperor is here," were the first words spoken to him by the officer
+on guard.
+
+But the streets were quiet enough, and the winner in this great game
+of chance maintained the same unostentatious silence in victory as that
+which, in the hour of humiliation, had baffled Napoleon.
+
+It was almost night, and D'Arragon had been travelling since daylight.
+He found a lodging, and, having secured the comfort of the horse
+provided by the lame shoemaker of Konigsberg, he went out into the
+streets in search of information.
+
+Few cities are, to this day, so behind the times as Vilna. The streets
+are still narrow, winding, ill-paved, ill-lighted. When D'Arragon
+quitted his lodging, he found no lights at all, for the starving
+soldiers had climbed to the lamps for the sake of the oil, which they
+had greedily drunk. It was a full moon, however, and the patrols at the
+street corners were willing to give such information as they could. They
+were strangers to Vilna like Louis himself, and not without suspicion;
+for this was a city which had bidden the French welcome. There had been
+dancing and revelry on the outward march. The citizens themselves were
+afraid of the strange, wild-eyed men who returned to them from Moscow.
+
+At last, in the Episcopal Palace, where head-quarters had been hurriedly
+established, Louis found the man he sought, the officer in charge of the
+arrangements for despatching prisoners into Russia and to Siberia.
+He was a grizzled warrior of the old school, speaking only French and
+Russian. He was tired out and hungry, but he listened to Louis' story.
+
+"There is the list," he said, "it is more or less complete. Many have
+called themselves officers who never held a commission from the Emperor
+Napoleon. But we have done what we can to sort them out."
+
+So Louis sat down in the dimly lighted room and deciphered the names of
+those officers who had been left behind, detained by illness or wounds
+or the lack of spirit to persevere.
+
+"You understand," said the Russian, returning to his work, "I cannot
+afford the time to help you. We have twenty-five thousand prisoners to
+feed and keep alive."
+
+"Yes--I understand," answered Louis, who had the seaman's way of making
+himself a part of his surroundings.
+
+The old colonel glanced at him across the table with a grim smile.
+
+"The Emperor," he said, "was sitting in that chair an hour ago. He may
+come back at any moment."
+
+"Ah!" said Louis, following the written lines with a pencil.
+
+But no interruption came, and at last the list was finished. Charles was
+not among the officers taken prisoner at Vilna.
+
+"Well?" inquired the Russian, without looking up.
+
+"Not there."
+
+The old officer took a sheet of paper and hurriedly wrote a few words on
+it.
+
+"Try the Basile Hospital to-morrow morning," he said. "That will gain
+you admittance. It is to be cleared out by the Emperor's orders. We have
+about twenty thousand dead to dispose of as well--but they are in no
+hurry."
+
+He laughed grimly, and bade Louis good night.
+
+"Come to me again," he called out after him, drawn by a sudden chord
+of sympathy to this stranger, who had the rare capacity of confining
+himself to the business in hand.
+
+By daybreak the next morning Louis was at the hospital of St. Basile.
+It had been prepared by the Duc de Bassano under Napoleon's orders when
+Vilna was selected as the base of the great army. When the Russians
+entered Vilna after the retreating remnant of Murat's rabble, they found
+the dead and the dying in the streets and the market-place. Some had
+made fires and had lain themselves down around them--to die. Others were
+without food or firing, almost without clothes. Many were barefoot. All,
+officers and men alike, were in rags. It was a piteous sight; for half
+of these men were no longer human. Some were gnawing at their own limbs.
+Many were blind, others had lost their speech or hearing. Nearly all
+were marred by some disfigurement--some terrible sore, the result of a
+frozen wound, of frostbite, of scurvy, of gangrene.
+
+The Cossacks, half civilized as they were, wild with the excitement of
+killing and the chase of a human quarry, stood aghast in the streets of
+Vilna.
+
+When the Emperor arrived, he set to work to clear the streets first, to
+get these piteous men indoors. There was no question yet of succouring
+them. It was not even possible to feed them all. The only thought was to
+find them some protection against the ruthless cold.
+
+The first thought was, of course, directed to the hospitals. They looked
+in and saw a storehouse of the dead. The dead could wait; but the living
+must be housed.
+
+So the dead waited, and it was their turn now at the St. Basile
+Hospital, where Louis presented himself at dawn.
+
+"Looking for some one?" asked a man in uniform, who must have been
+inside the hospital, for he hurried down the steps with a set mouth and
+quailing eyes.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then don't go in--wait here."
+
+Louis looked in and took the doctor's advice. The dead were stored in
+the passages, one on the top of the other, like bales of goods in a
+warehouse.
+
+Some attempt seemed to have been made to clear the wards, but those
+whose task it had been had not had time to do more than drag the dead
+out into the passage.
+
+The soldiers were now at work in the lower passage. Carts began to
+arrive. An officer told off to this dread duty came up hurriedly smoking
+a cigarette, his high fur collar about his ears. He glanced at Louis,
+and bowed to him.
+
+"Looking for some one?" he asked.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then stand here beside me. It is I who have to keep count. They say
+there are eight thousand in here. They will be carried past here to the
+carts. Have a cigarette."
+
+It is hard to talk when the thermometer registers more than twenty
+degrees of frost, for the lips stiffen and contract into wrinkles like
+the lips of a very old woman. Perhaps neither of the watchers was in the
+humour to begin an acquaintance.
+
+They stood side by side, stamping their feet to keep the blood going,
+without speaking. Once or twice Louis stepped forward, and at a signal
+from the officer the bearers stopped. But Louis shook his head, and they
+passed on. At midday the officer was relieved, his place being taken by
+another, who bowed stiffly to Louis and took no more notice of him. For
+war either hardens or softens. It never leaves a man as it found him.
+
+All day the work was carried on. Through the hours this procession of
+the bearded dead went silently by. At the invitation of a sergeant,
+Louis took some soup and bread from the soldiers' table. The men
+laughingly apologized for the quality of both.
+
+Towards evening the officer who had first come on duty returned to his
+work.
+
+"Not yet?" he asked, offering the inevitable cigarette.
+
+"Not yet," answered Louis, and even as he spoke he stepped forward and
+stopped the bearers. He brushed aside the matted hair and beard.
+
+"Is that your friend?" asked the officer.
+
+"Yes."
+
+It was Charles at last.
+
+"The doctor says these have been dead two months," volunteered the first
+bearer, over his shoulder.
+
+"I am glad you have found him," said the officer, signing to the men to
+go on with their burden. "It is better to know--is it not?"
+
+"Yes," answered Louis slowly. "It is better to know."
+
+And something in his voice made the Russian officer turn and watch him
+as he went away.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX. THE BARGAIN.
+
+
+
+     Like plants in mines which never saw the sun,
+     But dream of him and guess where he may be,
+     And do their best to climb and get to him.
+
+"Oh yes," Barlasch was saying, "it is easier to die--it is that that you
+are thinking--it is easier to die."
+
+Desiree did not answer. She was sitting in the little kitchen at the
+back of the house in the Frauengasse. For they had no firing now, and
+were burning the furniture. Her father had been buried a week. The siege
+was drawn closer than ever. There was nothing to eat, nothing to do, no
+one to talk to. For Sebastian's political friends did not dare to come
+near his house. Desiree was alone in this hopeless world with Barlasch,
+who was on duty now in one of the trenches near the river. He went out
+in the morning, and only returned at night. He had just come in, and she
+could see by the light of the single candle that his face was grey and
+haggard, with deep lines drawn downwards from eyes to chin. Desiree's
+own face had lost all its roundness and the bloom of her northern
+girlhood.
+
+Barlasch glanced at her, and bit his lip. He had brought nothing with
+him. At one time he had always managed to bring something to the house
+every day--a chicken, or a turnip, or a few carrots. But to-night there
+was nothing. And he was tired out. He did not sit down, however, but
+stood breathing on his fingers and rubbing them together to restore
+circulation. He pushed the candle farther forward on the table, so that
+it cast a better light upon her face.
+
+"Yes," he said, "it is often so. I, who speak to you, have seen it so a
+dozen times in my life. When it is easier to sit down and die. Bah! That
+is a fine thing to do--a brave thing--to sit down and die."
+
+"I am not going to do it, so do not make that mistake," said Desiree,
+with a laugh that had no mirth in it.
+
+"But you would like to. Listen. It is not what you feel that matters; it
+is what you do. Remember that."
+
+There was an unusual vigour in his voice. Of late, since the death of
+Sebastian, Barlasch seemed to have fallen victim to the settled apathy
+which lives within a prison wall and broods over a besieged city. It is
+a sort of silent mourning worn by the soul for a lost liberty. Dantzig
+had soon succumbed to it, for the citizens had not even the satisfaction
+of being quite sure that they were deserving of the world's sympathy.
+It soon spread to the soldiers who were defending a Prussian city for a
+French Emperor who seemed to have forgotten them.
+
+But to-night Barlasch seemed to be more energetic. Desiree looked round
+over her shoulder. He had not laid on the table any contribution to
+a bare larder; and yet his manner was that of one who has prepared a
+surprise and is waiting to enjoy its effect. He was restless, moving
+from one foot to another, rubbing together his crooked fingers and
+darting sidelong glances at her face.
+
+"What is it?" she asked suddenly, and Barlasch gave a start as if he had
+been detected in some deceit. He bustled forward to the smouldering fire
+and held his hands over it.
+
+"It is that it is very cold to-night," he answered, with that
+exaggerated ease of manner with which the young and the simple seek to
+conceal embarrassment. "Tell me, mademoiselle, what have we for supper
+to-night? It is I who will cook it. To-night we will keep a fete. There
+is that piece of beef for you. I know a way to make it appetizing. For
+me there is my portion of horse. It is the friend of man--the horse."
+
+He laughed and made an effort to be gay, which had a poignant pathos in
+it that made Desiree bite her lip.
+
+"What fete is it that we are to keep?" she asked, with a wan smile. Her
+kind blue eyes had that glitter in them which is caused by a constant
+and continuous hunger. Six months ago they had only been gay and kind,
+now they saw the world as it is, as it always must be so long as the
+human heart is capable of happiness and the human reason recognizes the
+rarity of its attainment.
+
+"The fete of St. Matthias--my fete, mademoiselle."
+
+"But I thought your name was Jean."
+
+"So it is. But I keep my fete at St. Matthias, because on that day we
+won a battle in Egypt. We will have wine--a bottle of wine--eh?"
+
+So Barlasch prepared a great feast which was to be celebrated by Desiree
+in the dining-room, where he lighted a fire, and by himself in the
+kitchen. For he held strongly to a code of social laws which the great
+Revolution had not succeeded in breaking. And one of these laws was that
+it would be in some way degrading to Desiree to see him eat.
+
+He was a skilled and delicate cook, only hampered by that insatiable
+passion for economy which is the dominant characteristic of the peasant
+of Northern France. To-night, however, he was reckless, and Desiree
+could hear him searching in his secret hiding-place beneath the floor
+for concealed condiments and herbs.
+
+"There," he said, when he set the dish before her, "eat it with an easy
+mind. There is nothing unclean in it. It is not rat or cat or the liver
+of a starved horse, such as we others eat and ask no better. It is all
+clean meat."
+
+He poured out wine, and stood in the darkened doorway watching her drink
+it. Then he went away to his own meal in the kitchen, leaving Desiree
+vaguely uneasy--for he was not himself to-night. She could hear him
+muttering as he ate and moved hither and thither in the kitchen. At
+short intervals he came and looked in at the door to make sure that she
+was doing full honour to St. Matthias. When she had finished, he came
+into the room.
+
+"Ah!" he said, glancing at her suspiciously and rubbing his hands
+together. "That strengthens, eh?--that strengthens. We others who lead
+a rough life--we know that a little food and a glass of wine fit one out
+for any enterprise, for--well, any catastrophe."
+
+And Desiree knew in a flash of comprehension that the food and the wine
+and the forced gaiety were nothing but preliminaries to bad news.
+
+"What is it?" she asked a second time. "Is it... bombardment?"
+
+"Bombardment," he laughed, "they cannot shoot, those Cossacks. It is
+only the French who understand artillery."
+
+"Then what is it?--for you have something to tell me, I know."
+
+He ruffled his shock-head of white hair, with a grimace of despair.
+
+"Yes," he admitted, "it is news."
+
+"From outside?" cried Desiree, with a sudden break in her voice.
+
+"From Vilna," answered Barlasch. He came into the room, and went past
+her towards the fire, where he put the logs together carefully.
+
+"It is that he is alive," said Desiree, "my husband."
+
+"No, it is not that," Barlasch corrected. He stood with his back to
+her, vaguely warming his hands. He had no learning, nor manners, nor any
+polish: nothing but those instincts of the heart that teach the head.
+And his instinct bade him turn his back on Desiree, and wait in silence
+until she had understood his meaning.
+
+"Dead?" she asked, in a whisper.
+
+And, still warming his hands, he nodded his head vigorously. He waited
+a long time for her to speak, and at last broke the silence himself
+without looking round.
+
+"Troubles," he said, "troubles for us all. There is no avoiding them.
+One can only push against them as against your cold wind of Dantzig that
+comes from the sea. One can only push on. You must push, mademoiselle."
+
+"When did he die?" asked Desiree; "where?"
+
+"At Vilna, three months ago. He has been dead three months. I knew he
+was dead when you came back to the inn at Thorn, and told me that you
+had seen De Casimir. De Casimir had left him dying--that liar. You
+remember, I met a comrade on the road--one of my own country--he told
+me that they had left ten thousand dead at Vilna, and twenty thousand
+prisoners little better than dead. And I knew then that De Casimir had
+left him there dying, or dead."
+
+He glanced back at her over his shoulder, and at the sight of her face
+made that little click in his throat which, in peasant circles, denotes
+a catastrophe. Then he shook his head slowly from side to side.
+
+"Listen," he said roughly, "the good God knows best. I knew when I saw
+you first, that day in June, in this kitchen, that you were beginning
+your troubles; for I knew the reputation of Monsieur, your husband. He
+was not what you thought him. A man is never what a woman thinks him.
+But he was worse than most. And this trouble that has come to you is
+chosen by the good God--and he has chosen the least in his sack for you.
+You will know it some day--as I know it now."
+
+"You know a great deal," said Desiree, who was quick in speech, and he
+swung round on his heel to meet her spirit.
+
+"You are right," he said, pointing his accusatory finger. "I know a
+great deal about you--and I am a very old man."
+
+"How did you learn this news from Vilna?" she asked, and his hand went
+up to his mouth as if to hide his thoughts and control his lips.
+
+"From one who comes straight from there--who buried your husband there."
+
+Desiree rose and stood with her hands resting on the table, looking at
+the persistent back again turned towards her.
+
+"Who?" she asked, in little more than a whisper.
+
+"The Captain--Louis d'Arragon."
+
+"And you have spoken to him to-day--here, in Dantzig?"
+
+Barlasch nodded his head.
+
+"Was he well?" asked Desiree, with a spontaneous anxiety that made
+Barlasch turn slowly and look at her from beneath his great brows.
+
+"Oh, he was well enough," he answered, "he is made of steel, that
+gentleman. He was well enough, and he has the courage of the devil.
+There are some fishermen who come from Zoppot to sell their fish. They
+steal through the Russian lines--on the ice of the river at night and
+come to our outposts at daylight. One of them said my name this morning.
+I looked at him. He was wrapped up only to show the eyes. He drew his
+scarf aside. It was the Captain d'Arragon."
+
+"And he was well?" asked Desiree again, as if nothing else in the world
+mattered.
+
+"Oh, mon Dieu, yes," cried Barlasch, impatiently, "he was well, I tell
+you. Do you know why he came?"
+
+Desiree had sat down at the table again, where she leant her arms and
+rested her chin in the palms of her two hands; for she was weakened by
+starvation, and confinement, and sorrow.
+
+"No," she answered.
+
+"He came because he had learnt that the patron was dead. It was known
+in Konigsberg a week ago. It is known all over Germany; that quiet old
+gentleman who scraped a fiddle here in the Frauengasse. And it is only
+I, in all the world, who know that he was a greater man in Paris than
+ever he was in Germany--with his Tugendbund--and I cannot remember his
+name."
+
+Barlasch broke off and thumped his brow with his fists, as if to awaken
+that dead memory. And all the while he was searching Desiree's face,
+with eyes made brighter and sharper than ever by starvation.
+
+"And do you know what he came for--the Captain--for he never does
+anything in idleness? He will run a great risk--but it is for a great
+purpose. Do you know what he came for?"
+
+"No."
+
+Barlasch jerked his head back and laughed.
+
+"For you."
+
+He turned and looked at her; but she had raised her clasped hands to her
+forehead, as if to shield her eyes from the light of the candle, and he
+could not see her face.
+
+"Do you remember," said Barlasch, "that night when the patron was so
+angry--on the mat--when Mademoiselle Mathilde had to make her choice. It
+is your turn to-night. You have to make your choice. Will you go?"
+
+"Yes," answered Desiree, behind her fingers.
+
+"'If Mademoiselle will come,' he said to me, 'bring her to this place!'
+'Yes, mon capitaine,' answered I. 'At any cost, Barlasch?' 'At any cost,
+mon capitaine.' And we are not men to break our words. I will take you
+there--at any cost, mademoiselle. And he will meet you there--at any
+cost."
+
+And Barlasch expectorated emphatically into the fire, after the manner
+of low-born men.
+
+"What a pity," he added reflectively, "that he is only an Englishman."
+
+"When are we to go?" asked Desiree, still behind her barrier of clasped
+fingers.
+
+"To-morrow night, after midnight. We have arranged it all--the Captain
+and I--at the outpost nearest to the river. He has influence. He has
+rendered services to the Russians, and the Russian commander will make
+a night attack on the outpost. In the confusion we get through. We
+arranged it together. He pays me well. It is a bargain, and I am to have
+my money. We shook hands on it, and those who saw us must have thought
+that I was buying fish. I, who have no money--and he, who had no fish."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX. THE FULFILMENT.
+
+
+
+     And I have laboured somewhat in my time
+     And not been paid profusely.
+
+When Desiree came down the next morning, she found Barlasch talking to
+himself and laughing as he prepared his breakfast.
+
+He met her with a gay salutation, and seemed unable to control his
+hilarity.
+
+"It is," he explained, "because to-night we shall be under fire. We
+shall be in danger. It makes me afraid, and I laugh. I cannot help it.
+When I am afraid, I laugh."
+
+He bustled about the room, and Desiree saw that he had already opened
+his secret store beneath the floor, to take from it such delicacies as
+remained.
+
+"You slept?" he asked sharply. "Yes, I can see you did. That is good,
+for to-night we shall be awake. And now you must eat."
+
+For Barlasch was a materialist. He had fought death in one form or
+another all his life, and he knew that those who eat and sleep are
+better equipped for the battle than those who cherish high ideals or
+think great thoughts.
+
+"It is a good thing," he said, looking at her, "that you are so slim. In
+a military coat--if you put on that short dress in which you skate, and
+your high boots--you will look like a soldier. It is a good thing that
+it is winter, for you can wear the hood of your military coat over
+your head, as they all do out in the trenches to keep their ears from
+falling. So you need not cut off your hair--all that golden hair. Name
+of thunder, that would be a pity, would it not?"
+
+He turned to the fire and stirred his coffee reflectively.
+
+"In my own country," he said, "a long time ago, there was a girl who had
+hair like yours. That is why we are friends, perhaps."
+
+He gave a queer, short laugh, and took up his sheepskin coat preparatory
+to going out.
+
+"I have my preparations to make," he said, with an air of importance.
+"There is much to be thought of. We had not long together, for the
+others were watching us. But we understand each other. I go now to give
+him the signal that it is for to-night. I have borrowed one of Lisa's
+dusters--a blue one that will show against the snow--with which to give
+him the signal. And he is watching from Zoppot with his telescope. That
+fat Lisa--if I had held up my finger, she would have fallen in love with
+me. It has always been so. These women--"
+
+And he went away muttering.
+
+If he had preparations to make, Desiree had no less. She could take but
+little with her, and she was quitting the house which had always been
+her home so long as she could remember. Those trunks which Barlasch
+had so unhesitatingly recognized as coming from France were, it seemed,
+destined never to be used again. Mathilde had gone, taking with her
+her few simple possessions; for they had always been poor in the
+Frauengasse. Sebastian had departed on that journey which the traveller
+must face alone, taking naught with him. And it was characteristic of
+the man that he had left nothing behind him--no papers, no testament,
+no clue to that other life so different from his life in the Frauengasse
+that it must have lapsed into a fleeting, intangible memory, such as
+the brain is sometimes allowed to retain of a dream dreamt in this
+existence, or perhaps in another. Sebastian was gone--with his secret.
+
+Desiree, alone with hers, was left in this quiet house for a few hours
+longer. Mechanically she set it in order. What would it matter to-morrow
+whether it were set in order or not? Who would come to note the last
+touches? She worked with that feverish haste which is responsible for
+much unnecessary woman's work in this world--the haste that owes its
+existence to the fear of having time to think. Many talk for the same
+reason. What a quiet world, if those who have nothing to say said
+nothing! But speech or work must fail at last, and lo! the thoughts are
+lying in wait.
+
+Desiree's thoughts found their opportunity when she went into the
+drawing-room upstairs, where her wedding-breakfast had been set before
+the guests only eight months ago. The guests--De Casimir, the Grafin,
+Sebastian, Mathilde, Charles!
+
+Desiree stood alone now in the silent room. She did not look at the
+table. The guests were all gone. The dead past had buried its dead. She
+went to the window and drew aside the curtain as she had drawn it aside
+on her wedding-day to look down into the Frauengasse and see Louis
+d'Arragon. And again her heart leapt in her breast with that throb
+of fear. She turned where she stood, and looked at the door as if she
+expected to see Charles come in at it, laughing and gay, explaining (he
+was so good at explaining) his encounter in the street, and stepping
+aside to allow Louis to come forward. Louis, who looked at no one but
+her, and came into the room and into her life.
+
+She had been afraid of him. She was afraid of him still. And her heart
+had leapt at the thought that he had been restlessly, sleeplessly
+thinking of her, working for her--had been to Vilna and back for her,
+and was now waiting for her beyond the barrier of Russian camp-fires.
+The dangers which made Barlasch laugh--and she knew they were real
+enough, for it was only a real danger that stirred something in the old
+soldier's blood to make him gay--these dangers were of no account. She
+knew, she had known instantly and for all time when she looked down into
+the Frauengasse and saw Louis, that nothing in heaven or earth could
+keep them apart.
+
+She stood now, looking at the empty doorway. What was the rest of her
+life to be?
+
+Barlasch returned in the afternoon. He was leisurely and inclined to
+contemplativeness. It would seem that his preparations having all been
+completed, he was left with nothing to do. War is a purifier; it clears
+the social atmosphere and puts womanly men and manly women into their
+right places. It is also a simplifier; it teaches us to know how little
+we really require in daily life, and how many of the environments with
+which men and women hamper themselves are superfluous and the fruit of
+idleness.
+
+"I have nothing to do," said Barlasch, "I will cook a careful dinner.
+All that I have saved in money I cannot carry away; all that was stored
+beneath the floor must be left there. It is often so in war."
+
+He had told Desiree that they would have to walk twelve miles across
+the snow-clad marshes bordering the frozen Vistula, between midnight and
+dawn. It needed no telling that they could carry little with them.
+
+"You will have to make a new beginning in life," he said curtly, "with
+the clothes upon your back. How many times have I done it--the Saints
+alone know! But take money, if you have it in gold or silver. Mine is
+all in copper groschen, and it is too heavy to carry. I have never yet
+been anywhere that money was not useful--and name of a dog! I have never
+had it."
+
+So Desiree divided what money she possessed with Barlasch, who added it
+carefully up and repeated several times for accuracy the tale of what he
+had received. For, like many who do not hesitate to steal, he was very
+particular in money matters.
+
+"As for me," he said, "I shall make a new beginning, too. The Captain
+will enable me to get back to France, when I shall go to the Emperor
+again. It is no place for one of the Old Guard, here with Rapp. I
+am getting old, but he will find something for me to do, that little
+Emperor."
+
+At midnight they set out, quitting the house in the Frauengasse
+noiselessly. The street was quiet enough, for half the houses were empty
+now. Their footsteps were inaudible on the trodden snow. It was a dark
+night and not cold; for the great frosts of this terrible winter were
+nearly over.
+
+Barlasch carried his musket and bayonet. He had instructed Desiree to
+walk in front of him, should they meet a patrol. But Rapp had no men to
+spare for patrolling the town. There was no spirit left in Dantzig; for
+typhus and starvation patrolled the narrow streets.
+
+They quitted the town to the north-west, near the Oliva Gate. There was
+no guard-house here because Langfuhr was held by the French, and Rapp's
+outposts were three miles out on the road to Zoppot.
+
+"I have played this game for fifty years," said Barlasch, with a low
+laugh, when they reached the earthworks, completed, at such enormous
+cost of life and strength, by Rapp; "follow me and do as I do. When I
+stoop, stoop; when I crawl, crawl; when I run, run."
+
+For he was a soldier now and nothing else. He stood erect, and looked
+round him with the air of a young man--ready, keen, alert. Then he moved
+forward with confidence towards the high land which terminates in the
+Johannesberg, where the peaceful Dantzigers now repair on a Sunday
+afternoon to drink thin beer and admire the view.
+
+Below them on the right hand lay the marshes, a white expanse of snow
+with a single dark line drawn across it--the Langfuhr road with its
+double border of trees.
+
+Barlasch turned once or twice to make sure that Desiree was following
+him; but he added nothing to his brief instructions. When he gained
+the summit of the tableland which runs parallel with the coast and the
+Langfuhr road, he paused for breath.
+
+"When I crawl, crawl. When I run, run," he whispered again; and led the
+way. He went up the bed of a stream, turning his back to the coast, and
+at a certain point stopped and by a gesture of the hand bade Desiree
+crouch down and wait till he returned. He came back and signed to her
+to quit the bed of the stream and follow him. When she came up to the
+tableland, she found that they were quite close to a camp-fire. Through
+the low pines she could perceive the dark outline of a house.
+
+"Now run," whispered Barlasch, leading the way across an open space
+which seemed to extend to the line of the horizon. Without looking back,
+Desiree ran--her only thought was a sudden surprise that Barlasch could
+move so quickly and silently.
+
+When he gained the shelter of some trees, he threw himself down on the
+snow, and Desiree coming up to him found him breathlessly holding his
+sides and laughing aloud.
+
+"We are through the lines," he gasped, "name of a dog, I was so
+frightened. There they go--pam! pam! Buz.. z.. z.."
+
+And he imitated the singing buzz of the bullets humming through the
+trees over their heads. For half a dozen shots were fired, while he was
+yet speaking, from behind the camp-fires. There were no more, however,
+and presently, having recovered his breath, Barlasch rose.
+
+"Come," he said, "we have a long walk. En route."
+
+They made a great circuit in the pine-woods, through which Barlasch led
+the way with an unerring skill, and descending towards the plain far
+beyond Langfuhr they came out on to a lower tableland, below which the
+great marshes of the Vistula stretched in the darkness, slowly merging
+at last into the sea.
+
+"Those," said Barlasch, pausing at the edge of the slope, "those are the
+lights of Oliva, where the Russians are. That line of lights straight in
+front is the Russian fleet lying off Zoppot, and with them are English
+ships. One of them is the little ship of Captain d'Arragon. And he
+will take you home with him; for the ship is ordered to England, to
+Plymouth--which is across the Channel from my own country. Ah--cristi!
+I sometimes want to see my own country again--and my own
+people--mademoiselle."
+
+He went on a few paces and then stopped again, and in the darkness held
+up one hand, commanding silence. It was the churches of Dantzig striking
+the hour.
+
+"Six o'clock," he whispered, "it will soon be dawn. Yes--we are half an
+hour too early."
+
+He sat down, and, by a gesture, bade Desiree sit beside him.
+
+"Yes," he said, "the Captain told me that he is bound for England to
+convoy larger ships, and you will sail in one of them. He has a home in
+the west of England, and he will take you there--a sister or a mother,
+I forget which--some woman. You cannot get on without women--you others.
+It is there that you will be happy, as the bon Dieu meant you to be. It
+is only in England that no one fears Napoleon. One may have a husband
+there and not fear that he will be killed. One may have children and not
+tremble for them--and it is that that makes you happy--you women."
+
+Presently he rose and led the way down the slope. At the foot of it, he
+paused, and pointing out a long line of trees, said in a whisper--
+
+"He is there--where there are three taller trees. Between us and those
+trees are the French outposts. At dawn the Russians attack the outposts,
+and during the attack we have simply to go through it to those trees.
+There is no other way--that is the rendezvous. Those three tall trees.
+When I give the word, you get up and run to those trees--run without
+pausing, without looking round. I will follow. It is you he has come
+for--not Barlasch. You think I know nothing. Bah! I know everything. I
+have always known it--your poor little secret."
+
+They lay on the snow crouching in a ditch until a grey line appeared low
+down in the Eastern sky and the horizon slowly distinguished itself from
+the thin thread of cloud that nearly always awaits the rising of the sun
+in Northern latitudes.
+
+A minute later the dark group of trees broke into intermittent flame
+and the sharp, short "Hurrah!" of the Cossacks, like an angry bark, came
+sweeping across the plain on the morning breeze.
+
+"Not yet," whispered Barlasch, with a gay chuckle of enjoyment. "Not
+yet--not yet. Listen, the bullets are not coming here, but are going
+past to the right of us. When you go, keep to the left. Slowly at
+first--keep a little breath till the end. Now, up! Mademoiselle, run;
+name of thunder, let us run!"
+
+Desiree did not understand which were the French lines and which the
+line of Russian attack. But there was a clear way to the three trees
+which stood above the rest, and she went towards them. She knew she
+could not run so far, so she walked. Then the bullets, instead of
+passing to the right, seemed to play round her--like bees in a garden on
+a summer day--and she ran until she was tired.
+
+The trees were quite close now, and the sky was light behind them. Then
+she saw Louis coming towards her, and she ran into his arms. The sound
+of the humming bullets was still in her dazed brain, and she touched him
+all over with her gloved hand as she clung to him, as a mother touches
+her child when it has fallen, to see whether it be hurt.
+
+"How was I to know?" she whispered breathlessly. "How was I to know that
+you were to come into my life?"
+
+The bullets did not matter, it seemed, nor the roar of the firing to the
+right of them. Nothing mattered--except that Louis must know that she
+had never loved Charles.
+
+He held her and said nothing. And she wanted him to say nothing. Then
+she remembered Barlasch, and looked back over her shoulder.
+
+"Where is Barlasch?" she asked, with a sudden sinking at her heart.
+
+"He is coming slowly," replied Louis. "He came slowly behind you all the
+time, so as to draw the fire away from you."
+
+They turned and waited for Barlasch, who seemed to be going in the wrong
+direction with an odd vagueness in his movements. Louis ran towards him
+with Desiree at his heels.
+
+"Ca-y-est," said Barlasch; which cannot be translated, and yet has many
+meanings. "Ca-y-est."
+
+And he sat down slowly on the snow. He sat quite upright and rigid, and
+in the cold light of the Baltic dawn they saw the meaning of his words.
+One hand was within his fur coat. He drew it out, and concealed it from
+Desiree behind his back. He did not seem to see them, but presently he
+put out his hand and lightly touched Desiree. Then he turned to
+Louis with that confidential drop of the voice with which he always
+distinguished his friends from those who were not his friends.
+
+"What is she doing?" he asked. "I cannot see in the dark. Is it
+not dark? I thought it was. What is she doing? Saying a prayer?
+What--because I have my affair? Hey, mademoiselle. You may leave it to
+me. I will get in, I tell you that."
+
+He put his finger to his nose, and then shook it from side to side with
+an air of deep cunning.
+
+"Leave it to me. I shall slip in. Who will stop an old man, who has many
+wounds? Not St. Peter, assuredly. Let him try. And if the good God hears
+a commotion at the gate, He will only shrug His shoulders. He will say
+to St. Peter, 'Let pass; it is only Papa Barlasch!'"
+
+And then there was silence. For Barlasch had gone to his own people.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Barlasch of the Guard, by H. S. Merriman
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