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 Désirée who opened the door at length—Désirée, grown older, with something new in her eyes. Barlasch, sure of his entrée, 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 Désirée 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 Désirée 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.
“Voilà,” 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 lowborn wink. More than once he glanced, with a glaring light in his eye, towards the cupboard where Lisa kept the bread, and quite suddenly Désirée 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 Danzig. With that awkwardness in giving and taking which belongs to his class, he held out to Désirée a little square “icon” 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 Désirée 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.”
Désirée 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 carnassières. 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
