“And, bon Dieu! what a friendship it is,”
he exclaimed, “that is based on the fear of
being taken for an enemy.”
“It is a friendship that waits its time, monsieur,”
said D’Arragon taking up his hat.
“Then you have a ship, monsieur, here in the
Baltic?” asked Mathilde with more haste than
was characteristic of her usual utterance.
“A very small one, mademoiselle,” he answered.
“So small that I could turn her round here
in the Frauengasse.”
“But she is fast?”
“The fastest in the Baltic, mademoiselle,”
he answered. “And that is why I must take
my leave—with the news you have told me.”
He shook hands as he spoke, and bowed to Sebastian,
whose generation was content with the more formal
salutation. Desiree went to the door, and led
the way downstairs.
“We have but one servant,” she said, “who
is busy.”
On the doorstep he paused for a moment. And
Desiree seemed to expect him to do so.
“Charles and I have always been like brothers—you
will remember that always, will you not?”
“Yes,” she answered with her gay nod.
“I will remember.”
“Then good-bye, mademoiselle.”
“Madame,” she corrected lightly.
“Madame, my cousin,” he said, and departed
smiling.
Desiree went slowly upstairs again.
Quand on se mefie on se trompe, quand on ne se mefie
pas, on est trompe.
Charles Darragon had come to Dantzig a year earlier.
He was a lieutenant in an infantry regiment, and
he was twenty-five. Many of his contemporaries
were colonels in these days of quick promotion, when
men lived at such a rate that few of them lived long.
But Charles was too easy-going to envy any man.
When he arrived he knew no one in Dantzig, had few
friends in the army of occupation. In six months
he possessed acquaintances in every street, and was
on terms of easy familiarity with all his fellow-officers.
“If the army of occupation had more officers
like young Darragon,” a town councillor had
grimly said to Rapp, “the Dantzigers would soon
be resigned to your presence.”
It seemed that Charles had the gift of popularity.
He was open and hearty, hail-fellow-well-met with
the new-comers, who were numerous enough at this time,
quick to understand the quiet men, ready to make merry
with the gay. Regarding himself, he was quite
open and frank.
“I am a poor devil of a lieutenant,” he
said, “that is all.”
Reserve is fatal to popularity, yet friendship cannot
exist without it. Charles had, it seemed, nothing
to hide, and was indifferent to the secrets of others.
It is such people who receive many confidences.
“But it must go no farther . . .” a hundred
men had said to him.
“My friend, by to-morrow I shall have forgotten
all about it,” he invariably replied, which
men remembered afterwards and were glad.
