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.