Again, the Poles who looked on Danzig as the seaport of that great kingdom of Eastern Europe which was and is no more, had been assured that France would set up again the throne of the Jagellons and the Sobieskis. There was a Poniatowski high in the Emperor’s service and esteem. The Poles were for France.
The Jew, hurrying along close by the wall—always in the shadow—traded with all and trusted none. Who could tell what thoughts were hidden beneath the ragged fur cap—what revenge awaited its consummation in the heart crushed by oppression and contempt?
Besides these civilians there were many who had a military air within their civil garb. For the pendulum of war had swung right across from Cadiz to Danzig, and swept northwards in its wake the merchants of death, the men who live by feeding soldiers and rifling the dead.
All these were in the streets, rubbing shoulders with the gay epaulettes of the Saxons, the Badeners, the Würtembergers, the Westphalians, and the Hessians, who had been poured into Danzig by Napoleon during the months when he had continued to exchange courteous and affectionate letters with Alexander of Russia. For more than a year the broad-faced Bavarians (who have borne the brunt of every war in Central Europe) had been peaceably quartered in the town. Half a dozen different tongues were daily heard in this city of the plain, and no man knew who might be his friend and who his enemy. For some who were allies today were commanded by their kings to slay each other tomorrow.
In the wine-cellars and the humbler beer-shops, in the great houses of the councillors, and behind the snowy lace curtains of the Frauengasse and the Portchaisengasse a thousand slow Northerners spoke of these things and kept them in their hearts. A hundred secret societies passed from mouth to mouth instruction, warning, encouragement. Germany has always been the home of the secret society. Northern Europe gave birth to those countless associations which have proved stronger than kings and surer than a throne. The Hanseatic League, the first of the commercial unions which were destined to build up the greatest empire of the world, lived longest in Danzig.
The Tugendbund, men whispered, was not dead but sleeping. Napoleon, who had crushed it once, was watching for its revival; had a whole army of his matchless secret police ready for it. And the Tugendbund had had its centre in Danzig.
Perhaps, in the Rathskeller itself—one of the largest wine stores in the world, where tables and chairs are set beneath the arches of the Exchange, a vast cave under the streets—perhaps here the Tugendbund still encouraged men to be virtuous and self-denying, for no other or higher purpose than the overthrow of the Scourge of Europe. Here the richer citizens have met from time immemorial to drink with solemnity and a decent leisure the wines sent hither in their own ships from the Rhine, from Greece and the Crimea, from Bordeaux and Burgundy, from the Champagne and Tokay. This is not only the Rathskeller, but the real Rathhaus, where the Danzigers have taken counsel over their afternoon wine from generation to generation, whence have been issued to all the world those decrees of probity and a commercial uprightness between buyer and seller, debtor and creditor, master and man, which reached to every corner of the commercial world. And now it was whispered that the latter-day Danzigers—the sons of those who formed the Hanseatic League: mostly fat men with large faces and shrewd, calculating eyes; high foreheads; good solid men, who knew the world, and how to make their way in it; withal, good judges of a wine and great drinkers, like that William the Silent, who braved and met and conquered the European scourge of medieval times—it was whispered that these were reviving the Tugendbund.
Amid such contending interests, and in a free city so near to several frontiers, men came and went without attracting undesired attention. Each party suspected a newcomer of belonging to the other.
“He scrapes a fiddle,” Koch had explained to the inquiring fishwife. And perhaps he knew no more than this of Antoine Sebastian. Sebastian was poor. All the Frauengasse knew that. But the Frauengasse itself was poor, and no man in Danzig was so foolish at this time as to admit that he had possessions.
This was, moreover, not the day of display or snobbery. The king of snobs, Louis XVI, had died to some purpose, for a wave of manliness had swept across human thought at the beginning of the century. The world has rarely been the poorer for the demise of a Bourbon.
The Frauengasse knew that Antoine Sebastian played the fiddle to gain his daily bread, while his two daughters taught dancing for that same safest and most satisfactory of all motives.
“But he holds his head so high!” once observed the stout and matter-of-fact daughter of a Councillor. “Why has he that grand manner?”
“Because he is a dancing-master,” replied Désirée with a grave assurance. “He does it so that you may copy him. Chin up. Oh! how fat you are.”
Désirée herself was slim enough and as yet only half grown. She did not dance so well as Mathilde, who moved through a quadrille with the air of a duchess, and threw into a polonaise or mazurka a quiet grace which was the envy and despair of her pupils. Mathilde was patient with the slow and heavy of foot, while Désirée told them bluntly that they were fat. Nevertheless, they were afraid of Mathilde,
