“I am hampered by poverty,” de Casimir
said, changing his ground. “In the old
days it did not matter. But now, in the Empire,
one must be rich. I shall be rich—at
the end of this campaign.”
Again his voice was sincere, and again her eyes responded.
He made a step forward, and gently taking her hand,
he raised it to his lips.
“You will help me!” he said, and, turning
abruptly on his heel, he left her.
De Casimir’s quarters were in the Langenmarkt.
On returning to them, he took from his despatch-case
a letter which he turned over thoughtfully in his
hand. It was addressed to Desiree, and sealed
carefully with a wafer.
“She may as well have it,” he said.
“It will be as well that she should be occupied
with her own affairs.”
Be wiser than other
people if you can, but do not tell them so.
Whenever Papa Barlasch caught sight of his unwilling
host’s face, he turned his own aside with a
despairing upward nod. Once or twice, during
the early days of his occupation of the room behind
the kitchen in the Frauengasse, he smote himself sharply
on the brow, as if calling upon his brain to make
an effort. But afterwards he seemed to resign
himself to this lapse of memory, and the upward despairing
nod gradually lost intensity until at last he brought
himself to pass Antoine Sebastian in the narrow passage
with no more emphatic notice than a scowl.
“You and I,” he said to Desiree, “are
the friends. The others—”
And his gesture seemed to permit the others to go
hang if they so desired. The army had gone forward,
leaving Dantzig in that idle restlessness which holds
those who, finding themselves in a house of sickness,
are not permitted entry to the darkened chamber, but
must await the crisis elsewhere.
There were some busy enough in the commerce that must
exist between a huge army and its base, in the forwarding
of war material and stores, in accommodating the sick
and sending out in return those who were to fill the
gaps. But the Dantzigers themselves had nothing
to do. Their prosperous trade was paralyzed.
Those who had aught to sell had sold it. The
high-seas and the high-roads were alike blocked by
the French. And rumour, ever busy among those
that wait, ran to and fro in the town.
The Emperor of Russia had been taken prisoner.
Napoleon had been checked at the passage of the Niemen.
There had been a great battle at Gumbinnen, and the
French were in full retreat. Vilna had capitulated
to Murat, and the war was at an end. A hundred
authentic despatches of the morning were the subject
of contemptuous laughter at the supper-table.
Lisa heard these tales in the market-place, and told
Desiree, who, as often as not, translated them to
Barlasch. But he only held up his wrinkled forefinger
and shook it slowly from side to side.
