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The Project Gutenberg EBook of Barlasch of the Guard, by H. S. Merriman

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Title: Barlasch of the Guard

Author: H. S. Merriman

Release Date: May, 2005  [EBook #8158]
[This file was first posted on June 22, 2003]

Edition: 10

Language: English

Character set encoding: US-ASCII

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, BARLASCH OF THE GUARD ***




This etext was produced by Les Bowler, St. Ives, Dorset.




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.





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