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.