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Updated: June 22, 2025
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.
"Ai, ai, ai," he said, imitating with his two hands the galloping of a horse. "The Russians," he explained confidentially. "Has there been a battle?" asked Desiree. And Barlasch answered "Pooh!" not without contempt for the female understanding. "Then what is it?" she inquired. "You must remember we are not soldiers we do not understand those manoeuvres ai, ai, like that."
"How do you know that?" asked Mathilde, a dull light in her eyes. "I I know where it came from," replied Barlasch, with an odd smile. "Allez! you may take it from me." And he muttered to himself in the patois of the Cotes du Nord. "And they were safe and well at Vilna?" asked Mathilde. "Yes and they had their treasure.
But de Casimir, perceiving that the door was open, closed it quietly from within, and Barlasch, shut out on the wide landing, made a grimace at the massive woodwork before turning to descend the stairs. It was the middle of September, and the days were shortening. The dusk of evening had already closed over the city when de Casimir and Charles at length came downstairs.
A sort of lassitude the result of confinement within doors, of insufficient food, of waning hope had come over Desiree. She listened heedlessly to the sounds in the streets through which the dead were passing to the Oliva Gate, while the living danced by in their hideous travesty of rejoicing. It was dusk when Barlasch came in. "The streets," he said, "are full of fools, dressed as such."
Do you think he will mind the danger? He will like it. He will say to me, 'Barlasch, I thank you. Ah? I know him. Write. He will come." "Why?" asked Desiree. "Why? How should I know that? He came before when you asked him." Desiree leant over the table and wrote six words: "Come, if you can come safely."
"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.
"Papa Barlasch," he added for her edification, and he drew down his left eyebrow with a jerk, so that it almost touched his cheek. His right eye, grey and piercing, returned her astonished gaze with a fierce steadfastness. "Does this mean that you are quartered upon us?" asked Desiree without seeking to hide her disgust. She spoke in her own tongue. "French?" said the soldier, looking at her.
One would think there is a General in Dantzig 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 new-comer, with a careless air. "Never heard of him."
Perhaps Sebastian had that most fatal of maladies to which nearly all men come at last weariness of life. "Why don't you fortify yourself, and laugh at fortune?" asked Barlasch, twenty years his senior, as he stood sturdily on his stocking-feet at the sick man's bedside. "I take what my daughter gives me," protested Sebastian, half peevishly. "But that does not suffice," answered the materialist.
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