Never for a moment did he admit that things looked black. He lit enormous bonfires, melted the frozen earth, and built the fortifications that had been planned.
“I took counsel,” he said, long afterwards, “with two engineer officers whose devotion equalled their brilliancy—Colonel Richemont and General Campredon.”
Soldiers might for all time study with advantage the acts of such obscure and almost forgotten men as these. For, through them, Napoleon was now teaching the world that a fortified place might be made stronger than any had hitherto suspected. That he should turn round and teach, on the other hand, that a city usually considered impregnable could be taken without great loss of life, was only characteristic of his splendid genius, which, like a towering tree, grew and grew until it fell.
The days were very short now, and it was dark when the sappers—whose business it was to keep the ice moving in the river at that spot where the Government building-yard abuts the river front today—were roused from their meditations by a shout on the farther bank.
They pushed their clumsy boat through the ice, and soon perceived against the snowy distance the outline of a man wrapped, swaddled, disguised in the heaped-up clothing so familiar to Eastern Europe at this time. The joke of seeing a grave artilleryman clad in a lady’s ermine cloak had long since lost its savour for those who dwelt near the Moscow road.
“Ah! comrade,” said one of the boatmen, an Italian who spoke French and had learnt his seamanship on the Mediterranean, by whose waters he would never idle again. “Ah! you are from Moscow?”
“And you, countryman?” replied the newcomer, with a non-committing readiness, as he stumbled over the gunwale.
“And you—an old man?” remarked the Italian, with the easy frankness of Piedmont.
By way of reply, the newcomer held out one hand roughly swathed in cloth, and shook it from side to side slowly, taking exception to such personal matters on a short acquaintance.
“A week ago, when I quitted Danzig on a mission to Kowno,” he said, with a careless air, “one could cross the Vistula anywhere. I have been walking on the bank for half a league looking for a way across. One would think there is a General in Danzig now.”
“There is Rapp,” replied the Italian, poling his boat through the floating ice.
“He will be glad to see me.”
The Italian turned and looked over his shoulder. Then he gave a curt, derisive laugh.
“Barlasch—of the Old Guard!” explained the newcomer, with a careless air.
“Never heard of him.”
Barlasch pushed up the bandage which he still wore over his left eye, in order to get a better sight of this phenomenal ignoramus, but he made no comment.
On landing he nodded curtly, at which the boatman made a quick gesture and spat.
“You have not the price of a glass in your purse, perhaps,” he suggested.
Barlasch disappeared in the darkness without deigning a reply. Half an hour later he was on the steps of Sebastian’s house in the Frauengasse. On his way through the streets a hundred evidences of energy had caught his attention, for many of the houses were barricaded, and palisades were built at the end of the streets running down towards the river. The town was busy, and everywhere soldiers passed to and fro. Like Samuel, Barlasch heard the bleating of sheep and the lowing of oxen in his ears.
The houses in the Frauengasse were barricaded like others—many of the lower windows were built up. The door of No. 36 was bolted, and through the shutters of the upper windows no glimmer of light penetrated to the outer darkness of the street. Barlasch knocked and waited. He thought he could hear surreptitious movements within the house. Again he knocked.
“Who is that?” asked Lisa just within, on the mat. She must have been there all the time.
“Barlasch,” he replied. And the bolts which he, in his knowledge of such matters, himself had oiled, were quickly drawn.
Inside he found Lisa, and behind her Mathilde and Désirée.
“Where is the patron?” he asked, turning to bolt the door again.
“He is out, in the town,” answered Désirée, in a strained voice. “Where are you from?”
“From Kowno.”
Barlasch looked from one face to the other. His own was burnt red, and the light of the lamp hanging over his head gleamed on the icicles suspended to his eyebrows and ragged whiskers. In the warmth of the house his frozen garments began to melt, and from his limbs the water dripped to the floor with a sound like rain. Then he caught sight of Désirée’s face.
“He is alive, I tell you that,” he said abruptly. “And well, so far as we know. It was at Kowno that we got news of him. I have a letter.”
He opened his cloak, which was stiff like cardboard and creaked when he bent the rough cloth. Under his cloak he wore a Russian peasant’s sheepskin coat, and beneath that the remains of his uniform.
“A dog’s country,” he muttered, as he breathed on his fingers.
At last he found the letter, and gave it to Désirée.
“You will have to make your choice,” he commented, with a grimace indicative of a serious situation, “like any other woman. No doubt you will choose wrong.”
Désirée went up two steps in order to be nearer the lamp, and they all watched her as she opened the letter.
“Is it from Charles?” asked Mathilde, speaking for the first time.
“No,” answered Désirée, rather breathlessly.
Barlasch nudged Lisa, indicated his own mouth, and pushed her towards the kitchen. He nodded cunningly to Mathilde, as if to say that they were now free to discuss family affairs; and added, with a gesture towards his inner man—
“Since last
