The moth will singe her wings, and singed return,
Her love of light quenching her fear of pain.
There are quite a number of people who get through life without
realizing their own insignificance. Ninety-nine out of a hundred persons
signify nothing, and the hundredth is usually so absorbed in the message
which he has been sent into the world to deliver that he loses sight of
the messenger altogether.
By a merciful dispensation of Providence we are permitted to bustle
about in our immediate little circle like the ant, running hither and
thither with all the sublime conceit of that insect. We pick up, as he
does, a burden which on close inspection will be found to be absolutely
valueless, something that somebody else has thrown away. We hoist it
over obstructions while there is usually a short way round; we fret and
sweat and fume. Then we drop the burden and rush off at a tangent to
pick up another. We write letters to our friends explaining to them what
we are about. We even indite diaries to be read by goodness knows whom,
explaining to ourselves what we have been doing. Sometimes we find
something that really looks valuable, and rush to our particular
ant-heap with it while our neighbours pause and watch us. But they
really do not care; and if the rumour of our discovery reach so far as
the next ant-heap, the bustlers there are almost indifferent, though a
few may feel a passing pang of jealousy. They may perhaps remember our
name, and will soon forget what we discovered--which is Fame. While we
are falling over each other to attain this, and dying to tell each other
what it feels like when we have it, or think we have it, let us pause
for a moment and think of an ant--who kept a diary.
Desiree did not keep a diary. Her life was too busy for ink. She had had
to work for her daily bread, which is better than riches. Her life had
been full of occupation from morning till night, and God had given her
sleep from night till morning. It is better to work for others than to
think for them. Some day the world will learn to have a greater respect
for the workers than for the thinkers, who are idle, wordy persons,
frequently thinking wrong.
Desiree remembered the siege and the occupation of Dantzig by French
troops. She was at school in the Jopengasse when the Treaty of
Tilsit--that peace which was nothing but a pause--was concluded. She
had seen Luisa of Prussia, the good Queen who baffled Napoleon. Her
childhood had passed away in the roar of siege-guns. Her girlhood, in
the Frauengasse, had been marked by the various woes of Prussia, by each
successive step in the development of Napoleon's ambition. There were
no bogey-men in the night-nursery at the beginning of the century. One
Aaron's rod of a bogey had swallowed all the rest, and children buried
their sobs in the pillow for fear of Napoleon. There were no ghosts in
the dark corners of the stairs when Desiree, candle in hand, went to bed
at eight o'clock, half an hour before Mathilde. The shadows on the wall
were the shadows of soldiers--the wind roaring in the chimney was
like the sound of distant cannon. When the timid glanced over their
shoulders, the apparition they looked for was that of a little man in a
cocked hat and a long grey coat.
This was not an age in which the individual life was highly valued. Men
were great to-day and gone to-morrow. Women were of small account. It
was the day of deeds and not of words.
Desiree had never been oppressed by a sense of her own importance, which
oppression leaves its mark on many a woman's face in these times. She
had not, it would seem, expected much from life; and when much was
given to her she received it without misgivings. She was young and
light-hearted, and she lived in a reckless age.
She was not surprised when Charles failed to return. The chaise that was
to carry them to Zoppot stood in the Frauengasse on the shady side of
the street in the heat of the afternoon for more than an hour. Then she
ran out and told the driver to go back to his stables.
“One cannot go for a honeymoon alone,” she explained airily to her
father, who was peevish and restless, standing by the window with the
air of one who expects without knowing what to expect. “It is, at all
events, quite clear that there is nothing for me to do but wait.”
She made light of it, and laughed at her father's grave face. Mathilde
said nothing, but her silence seemed to suggest that this was no more
than she had foretold, or at all events foreseen. She was too proud or
too generous to put her thoughts into words. For pride and generosity
are often confounded. There are many who give because they are too proud
to withhold.
Desiree got her needlework and sat by the open window awaiting Charles.
She could hear the continuous clatter of carts on the quay, and the
voices of the men working in the great granaries across the river.
The whole city seemed to be astir, and men hurried to and fro in even
the quiet Frauengasse, while the clatter of cavalry and the heavy rumble
of gun carriages could be heard over the roofs from the direction of the
Langenmarkt. There was a sense of hurry in the dusty air. The Emperor
had arrived, and the magic of his name lifted men out of themselves. It
seemed nothing extraordinary to Desiree that her life should be taken up
by this whirlwind, and carried on she knew not whither.
At dinner-time Charles had not returned. Antoine Sebastian dined at
half-past four, in the manner of Northern Europe; but his daughters
provided his table with the lighter meats of France, which he preferred
to the German cuisine. Sebastian's dinner was an event in the day,
though he ate sparingly enough, and found a mental rather than a
physical pleasure in the ceremonious sequence of courses.
It was now too late to think of going to Zoppot. After dinner Mathilde
and Desiree prepared the rooms which had been destined for the
occupation of the married pair after the honeymoon.
“We shall have to omit Zoppot, that is all,” said Desiree cheerfully,
and fell to unpacking the bridal clothes which had been so merrily laid
in the trunks.
At half-past six a soldier brought a hurried note from Charles.
“I cannot return to-night, as I am about to start for Konigsberg,” he
wrote. “It is a commission which I could not refuse if I wished to. You,
I know, would have me go and do my duty.”
There was more which Desiree did not read aloud. Charles had always
found it easy enough to tell Desiree how much he loved her, and was
gaily indifferent to the ears of others. But she seemed to be restrained
by some feeling which had found birth in her heart during her wedding
day. She said nothing of Charles's protestations of love.
“Decidedly,” she said, folding the letter, and placing it in her
work-basket, “Fate is interfering in our affairs to-day.”
She turned to her work again without further complaint, almost with
a sense of relief. Mathilde, whose steady grey eyes saw everything,
penetrating every thought, glanced at her with a suddenly aroused
interest. Desiree herself was half surprised at the philosophy with
which she met this fresh misfortune.
Antoine Sebastian had never acquired the habit of drinking tea in the
evening, which had found favour in these northern countries bordering
on Russia. Instead, he usually went out at this time to one of the many
wine-rooms or Bier Halles in the town to drink a slow and meditative
glass of beer with such friends as he had made in Dantzig. For he was a
lonely man, whose face was quite familiar to many who looked for a bow
or a friendly salutation in vain.
If he went to the Rathskeller it was on the invitation of a friend; for
he could not afford to pay the vintage of that cellar, though he drank
the wine with the slow mouthing of a connoisseur when he had it.
More often than not he took a walk first, passing out of the Frauenthor
on to the quay, where he turned to left or right and made his way back
through one or other of the town gates, by devious narrow streets
to that which is still called the Portchaisengasse though chairs and
carriers have long ceased to pass along it. Here, on the northern
side of the street is an old inn, “Zum weissen Ross'l,” with a broken,
ill-carved head of a white horse above the door. Across the face of the
house is written, in old German letters, an invitation:
Gruss Gott. Tritt ein!
Bring Gluck herein.
But few seemed to accept it. Even a hundred years ago the White Horse
was behind the times, and fashion sought the wider streets.
Antoine Sebastian was perhaps ashamed of frequenting so humble a house
of entertainment, where for a groschen he could have a glass of beer.
He seemed to make his way through the narrower streets for some purpose,
changing his route from day to day, and hurrying across the wider
thoroughfares with the air of one desirous to attract but little
attention. He was not alone in the quiet streets, for there were many
in Dantzig at this time who from wealth had fallen to want. Many
counting-houses once noisy with prosperity were now closed and silent.
For five years the prosperous Dantzig had lain crushed beneath the iron
heel of the conqueror.
It would seem that Sebastian had only waited for the explanation of
Charles's most ill-timed absence to carry out his usual programme. The
clock in the tower of the Rathhaus had barely struck seven when he took
his hat and cloak from the peg near the dining-room door. He was so
absorbed that he did not perceive Papa Barlasch seated just within the
open door of the kitchen. But Barlasch saw him, and scratched his head
at the sight.
The northern evenings are chill even in June, and Sebastian fumbled with
his cloak. It would appear that he was little used to helping himself in
such matters. Barlasch came out of the kitchen when Sebastian's back
was turned and helped him to put the flowing cloak straight upon his
shoulders.
“Thank you, Lisa, thank you,” said Sebastian in German, without looking
round. By accident Barlasch had performed one of Lisa's duties, and
the master of the house was too deeply engaged in thought to notice
any difference in the handling or to perceive the smell of snuff that
heralded the approach of Papa Barlasch. Sebastian took his hat and went
out closing the door behind him, and leaving Barlasch, who had followed
him to the door, standing rather stupidly on the mat.
“Absent-minded--the citizen,” muttered Barlasch, returning to the
kitchen, where he resumed his seat on a chair by the open door. He
scratched his head and appeared to lapse into thought. But his brain was
slow as were his movements. He had been drinking to the health of the
bride. He thumped himself on the brow with his closed fist.
“Sacred-name-of-a-thunderstorm,” he said. “Where have I seen that face
before?”
Sebastian went out by the Frauenthor to the quay. Although it was dusk,
the granaries were still at work. The river was full of craft and the
roadway choked by rows and rows of carts, all of one pattern, too big
and too heavy for roads that are laid across a marsh.
He turned to the right, but found his way blocked at the corner of the
Langenmarkt, where the road narrows to pass under the Grunes Thor. Here
the idlers of the evening hour were collected in a crowd, peering over
each other's shoulders towards the roadway and the bridge. Sebastian
was a tall man, and had no need to stand on tip-toe in order to see the
straight rows of bayonets swinging past, and the line of shakos rising
and falling in unison with the beat of a thousand feet on the hollow
woodwork of the drawbridge.
The troops had been passing out of the city all the afternoon on the
road to Elbing and Konigsberg.
“It is the same,” said a man standing near to Sebastian, “at the Hohes
Thor, where they are marching out by the road leading to Konigsberg by
way of Dessau.”
“It is farther than Konigsberg that they are going,” was the significant
answer of a white-haired veteran who had probably been at Eylau, for he
had a crushed look.
“But war is not declared,” said the first speaker.
“Does that matter?”
And both turned towards Sebastian with the challenging air that invites
opinion or calls for admiration of uncommon shrewdness. He was better
clad than they. He must know more than they did. But Sebastian looked
over their heads and did not seem to have heard their conversation.
He turned back and went another way, by side streets and the little
narrow alleys that nearly always encircle a cathedral, and are still
to be found on all sides of the Marienkirche. At last he came to the
Portchaisengasse, which was quiet enough in the twilight, though he
could hear the tramp of soldiers along the Langgasse and the rumble of
the guns.
There were only two lamps in the Portchaisengasse, swinging on
wrought-iron gibbets at each end of the street. These were not yet
alight, though the day was fading fast, and the western light could
scarcely find its way between the high gables which hung over the road
and seemed to lean confidentially towards each other.
Sebastian was going towards the door of the Weissen Ross'l when some
one came out of the hostelry, as if he had been awaiting him within the
porch.
The new-comer, who was a fat man with baggy cheeks and odd, light blue
eyes--the eyes of an enthusiast, one would say--passed Sebastian, making
a little gesture which at once recommended silence, and bade him turn
and follow. At the entrance to a little alley leading down towards
the Marienkirche the fat man awaited Sebastian, whose pace had not
quickened, nor had his walk lost any of its dignity.
“Not there to-night,” said the man, holding up a thick forefinger and
shaking it sideways.
“Then where?”
“Nowhere to-night,” was the answer. “He has come--you know that?”
“Yes,” answered Sebastian slowly, “for I saw him.”
“He is at supper now with Rapp and the others. The town is full of his
people. His spies are everywhere. There are two in the Weissen Ross'l
who pretend to be Bavarians. See! There is another--just there.”
He pointed the thick forefinger down the Portchaisengasse where it
widens to meet the Langgasse, where the last remains of daylight,
reflected to and fro between the houses, found freer play than in the
narrow alley where they stood.
Sebastian looked in the direction indicated. An officer was walking away
from them. A quick observer would have noticed that his spurs made no
noise, and that he carried his sword instead of allowing it to clatter
after him. It was not clear whence he had come. It must have been from a
doorway nearly opposite to the Weissen Ross'l.
“I know that man,” said Sebastian.
“So do I,” was the reply. “It is Colonel de Casimir.”
With a little nod the fat man went out again into the Portchaisengasse
in the direction of the inn, as if he were keeping watch there.