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D'Arragon folded the letter slowly. It was the fatal letter written in the upper room in the shoemaker's house in Konigsberg in the Neuer Markt, where the linden trees grow close to the window. In it Charles spoke lightly of the sacrifice he had made in leaving Desiree on his wedding-day, to do the Emperor's bidding.
The guests De Casimir, the Grafin, Sebastian, Mathilde, Charles! Desiree stood alone now in the silent room. She did not look at the table. The guests were all gone. The dead past had buried its dead. She went to the window and drew aside the curtain as she had drawn it aside on her wedding-day to look down into the Frauengasse and see Louis d'Arragon.
He has eaten my father's salt a hundred times," she said, with a short laugh. For whithersoever civilization may take us, we must still go back to certain primaeval laws of justice between man and man. "You judge too hastily," said D'Arragon; but she interrupted him with a gesture of warning. "I have not judged hastily," she said. "You do not understand. You think I judge from that letter.
How much more clearly we should understand what is going on around us if we had no secrets of our own to defend! In obedience to Sebastian's gesture, D'Arragon took a chair, and even as he did so Mathilde came to the table, calm and mistress of herself again, to pour out the coffee, and do the honours of the simple meal.
"Who else was there to ask?" returned Desiree, which was indeed unanswerable. Perhaps the question had been suggested to her by de Casimir, who, on learning that Louis d'Arragon had helped her father to slip through the Emperor's fingers, had asked the same in his own characteristic way.
Sebastian pointed interrogatively to the open window, where the sound of the bells seemed to emphasize the sunlight and the freshness of the morning. "No not that," returned D'Arragon. "It is a great victory, they tell me; but it is hard to say whether such news would be good or bad. It was of Charles that I spoke. He is safe Madame has heard."
The horses were fresh, and covered the ground at a great pace. Barlasch was no driver, but he was skilful with the horses, and husbanded their strength at every hill. "If we go on like this, when shall we arrive?" asked Desiree suddenly. "By eight o'clock, if all goes well." "And we shall find Monsieur Louis d'Arragon awaiting us at Thorn?" Barlasch shrugged his shoulders doubtfully.
"Those," said Barlasch, pausing at the edge of the slope, "those are the lights of Oliva, where the Russians are. That line of lights straight in front is the Russian fleet lying off Zoppot, and with them are English ships. One of them is the little ship of Captain d'Arragon.
Sebastian laughed, and made a gesture with his white and elegant hand, of contempt and ridicule. "And, bon Dieu! what a friendship it is," he exclaimed, "that is based on the fear of being taken for an enemy." "It is a friendship that waits its time, monsieur," said D'Arragon taking up his hat.
When D'Arragon quitted his lodging, he found no lights at all, for the starving soldiers had climbed to the lamps for the sake of the oil, which they had greedily drunk. It was a full moon, however, and the patrols at the street corners were willing to give such information as they could.
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