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Updated: June 24, 2025
"That writing," went on the cobbler, "is a passport in any German state. He who carries a letter written in that hand can live and travel free anywhere from here to the Rhine or the Danube." "Then I am lucky in possessing a powerful friend," said D'Arragon, "for I know who wrote this letter. I think I may say he is a friend of mine." "I am sure of it.
D'Arragon thrust the letters into his pocket, the only indication he had time to give to Desiree of the policy they must pursue. He stood facing the door, alert and quiet, with only a moment in which to shape the course of more than one life. "There is good news, Monsieur," he said to Sebastian. "Though I did not come to bring it."
At the steps from the river to Neuer Markt, D'Arragon gave the lame man his hand, and glanced a second time at the fingers which clasped his own. They had not been born to toil, but had had it thrust upon them. They crossed the Neuer Markt together, and went into that house where the linden grows so close as to obscure the windows.
They existed from day to day on what they found, which was, at the best, frozen horse. But Barlasch ate singularly little. "One thinks of one's digestion," he said vaguely, and persuaded D'Arragon to eat his portion because it would be a sin to throw it away. At length D'Arragon, who was quick enough in understanding rough men, said "No, I don't want any more. I will throw it away."
"The Emperor is here," were the first words spoken to him by the officer on guard. But the streets were quiet enough, and the winner in this great game of chance maintained the same unostentatious silence in victory as that which, in the hour of humiliation, had baffled Napoleon. It was almost night, and D'Arragon had been travelling since daylight.
And here, almost within sight of Vilna, D'Arragon drove down a short hill which must ever be historic. He drove slowly, for on either side were gun-carriages deep sunken in the snow where the French had left them. This hill marked the final degeneration of the Emperor's army into a shapeless rabble hopelessly flying before an exhausted enemy.
It was startling to learn how little they knew. The majority of them were quite ignorant of French, and had scarcely heard the name of the commander of their division. Many spoke in a language which even Barlasch could not identify. "His talk is like a coffee-mill," he explained to D'Arragon, "and I do not know to what regiment he belonged.
In counsel it is good to see dangers; and in execution not to see them unless they be very great. Mathilde had told Desiree that Colonel de Casimir made no mention of Charles in his letter to her. Barlasch was able to supply but little further information on the matter. "It was given to me by the Captain Louis d'Arragon at Thorn," he said. "He handled it as if it were not too clean.
And the thing is done now, and I..., well, I suppose I must do what others have done before me I must make the best of it." "I will help you," said D'Arragon slowly, almost carefully, "if I can." He was still avoiding her eyes, still looking out of the window. Sebastian was coming up the steps. Nothing is so disappointing as failure except success.
She had gone to the window, and, turning there, she looked back at him over her shoulder, where he stood by the door watching her. "So, you see," she said, "there is no other Sebastian." D'Arragon made no reply. She came nearer to him, her blue eyes sombre with contempt for the man she had married. Suddenly she pointed to the chair which D'Arragon had just vacated. "That is where he sat.
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