“The courier leaves this evening,” she
said, with a queer ring of anxiety in her voice, as
if she feared that for some reason or another she
ran the risk of failing to despatch her letter.
She glanced at the clock, and stood, pen in hand,
thinking of what she should write.
“May I enclose a line?” asked Louis.
“It is not wise, perhaps, for me to address
to him a letter—since I am on the other
side. It is a small matter of a heritage which
he and I divide. I have placed some money in
a Dantzig bank for him. He may require it when
he returns.”
“Then you do not correspond with Charles?”
said Mathilde, clearing a space for him on the larger
table, and setting before him ink and pens and paper.
“Thank you, Mademoiselle,” he said, glancing
at her with that light of interest in his dark eyes
which she had ignited once before by a question on
the only occasion that they had met. He seemed
to detect that she was more interested in him than
her indifferent manner would appear to indicate.
“No, I am a bad correspondent. If Charles
and I, in our present circumstances, were to write
to each other it could only lead to intrigue, for
which I have no taste and Charles no capacity.”
“You seem to hint that Charles might have such
a taste then,” she said, with her quiet smile,
as she moved away leaving him to write.
“Charles has probably found out by this time,”
he answered with the bluntness which he claimed as
a prerogative of his calling and nation, “that
a soldier of Napoleon’s who intrigues will make
a better career than one who merely fights.”
He took up his pen and wrote with the absorption of
one who has but little time and knows exactly what
to say. By chance he glanced towards Desiree,
who sat at her own table near the window. She
was stroking her cheek with the feather of her pen,
looking with puzzled eyes at the blank paper before
her. Each time D’Arragon dipped his pen
he glanced at her, watching her. And Mathilde,
with her needlework, watched them both.
However we brave it
out, we men are a little breed.
War is the gambling of kings. Napoleon, the
arch-gambler, from that Southern sea where men, lacking
cards or dice and the money to buy either, will yet
play a game of chance with the ten fingers that God
gave them for another purpose—Napoleon had
dealt a hand with every monarch in Europe before he
met for the second time that Northern adversary of
cool blood who knew the waiting game.
It is only where the stakes are small that the leisurely
players, idly fingering the fallen cards, return in
fancy to certain points— to this trick
trumped or that chance missed, playing the game over
again. But when the result is great it overshadows
the game, and all men’s thoughts fly to speculation
on the future. How will the loser meet his loss?
What use will the winner make of his gain?
