“Then you would admit, Mademoiselle,” he said gravely, “that there may be good in a love that fights continually against ambition, and—does not prevail.”
Mathilde did not answer at once. There was an odd suggestion of antagonism in their attitude towards each other—not irreconcilable, the poets tell us, with love—but this is assuredly not the Love that comes from Heaven and will go back there to live through eternity.
“Yes,” said she at length.
“Such is my love for you,” he said, his quick instinct telling him that with Mathilde few words were best.
He only spoke the thoughts of his age; for ambition was the ruling passion in men’s hearts at this time. All who served the Great Adventurer gave it the first place in their consideration, and de Casimir only aped his betters. Though oddly enough the only two of all the great leaders who were to emerge still greater from the coming war—Ney and Eugene—thought otherwise on these matters.
“I mean to be great and rich, Mademoiselle,” he added after a pause. “I have risked my life for that purpose half a dozen times.”
Mathilde stood looking across the room towards the window. He could only see her profile and the straight line of her lips. She too was the product of a generation in which men rose to dazzling heights without the aid of women.
“I should not have troubled you with these details, Mademoiselle,” he said, watching her. His instinct was very keen, for not one woman in a thousand, even in those days, would have admitted that love was a detail. “I should not have mentioned it—had you not given me your views—so strangely in harmony with my own.”
Whatever his nationality, his voice was that of a Pole—rich, musical, and expressive. He could have made, one would have thought, a very different sort of love had he wished, or had he been sincere. But he was an opportunist. This was the sort of love that Mathilde wanted.
He came a step nearer to her and stood resting on his sword—a lean hard man who had seen much war.
“Until you opened my eyes,” he said, “I did not know, or did not care to know, that love, far from being a drag on ambition, may be a help.”
Mathilde made a little movement towards him which she instantly repressed. The heart is quicker, but the head nearly always has the last word.
“Mademoiselle,” he said—and no doubt he saw the movement and the restraint—“will you help me now at the beginning of the war, and listen to me again at the end of it—if I succeed?”
After all, he was modest in his demands.
“Will you help me? Together, Mademoiselle—to what height may we not rise in these days?”
There was a ring of sincerity in his voice, and her eyes answered it.
“How can I help you?” she asked in a doubting voice.
“Oh, it is a small matter,” was the reply. “But it is one in which the Emperor is personally interested. Such things have a special attraction for him. The human interest never fails to hold his attention. If I do well, he will know it and remember me. It is a question, Mademoiselle, of secret societies. You know that Prussia is riddled with them.”
Mathilde did not answer. He studied her face, which was clean cut and hard like a marble bust—a good face to hide a secret.
“It is my duty to watch here in Danzig and to report to the Emperor. In serving myself I could also perhaps serve a friend, one who might otherwise run into danger—who may be in danger while you and I stand here. For the Emperor strikes hard and quickly. I speak of your father, Mademoiselle—and of the Tugendbund.”
Still he could not see from the pale profile whether Mathilde knew anything at all.
“And if I procure information for you?” asked she at length, in a quiet and collected voice.
“You will help me to attain a position such as I could ask—even you—to share with me. And you would do your father no harm. You would even render him a service. For all the secret societies in Germany will not stop Napoleon. It is only God who can stop him now, Mademoiselle. All men who attempt it will only be crushed beneath the wheels. I might save your father.”
But Mathilde did not seem to be thinking of her father.
“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 Désirée, 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.”
VIII
A Visitation
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 Désirée, “are the
