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Updated: May 7, 2025
As early as 1811, a great Russian army stood ready for the invasion of Poland, and might, as there were at that time but few French troops in Germany, easily have advanced as far as the Elbe. It remained, nevertheless, in a state of inactivity. Napoleon instantly prepared for war and fortified Dantzig.
The inn was outside the town, on the road that follows the Vistula northwards to Dirschau and Dantzig. The horses were tired, and stumbled on the powdery snow which was heavy, like sand, and of a sandy colour. Here and there, by the side of the road, were great stains of blood and the remains of a horse that had been killed, and eaten raw.
It was this thought that broke into her sleep at night, that haunted her waking hours. She glanced at Louis d'Arragon, and held her peace. "Then, Monsieur," he said, "you have every reason to suppose that if Madame returns to Dantzig now, she will find her husband there?" De Casimir looked at D'Arragon, and hesitated for an instant. They both remembered afterwards that moment of uncertainty.
A few years later an astronomer of Dantzig, Hevelius by operations which were only exact twice a month, at the first and second quadrature reduced Galileo's heights to one-twenty-sixth only of the lunar diameter. This was an exaggeration the other way. But it is to this savant that the first map of the moon is due.
De Casimir was not entrusted with the execution of the Emperor's orders. As a member of General Rapp's staff, resident in Dantzig since the city's occupation by the French, he had been called upon to make exhaustive reports upon the feeling of the burghers. There were many doubtful cases. De Casimir did not pretend to be better than his fellows. To some he had sold the benefit of the doubt.
Dantzig capitulated at last, on the 26th of May, without having undergone the assault which the French soldiers loudly demanded.
So I cursed their drink, and asked if they had no Lyons Water-of-Life, stark and mordant, or social Hollands, or indeed anything that was not mere compound of whey and dirty water. Whereat they wondered, and held me thereafter in great respect as a good companion and approven worthy drinker. Then they brought me of the strong spirit of Dantzig, with curious little flakes of gold dancing in it.
There was so much in the simple answer that Desiree fell into a train of thought. It did not seem much for her to do, and yet it was all. For it summed up in six words a woman's life: to wait till she is found. "I shall wait in Dantzig," she said at length.
"Yes, and half the defenders of Dantzig are Poles there are your passports pass on." They drove through the dark streets where men like shadows hurried silently about their business. The Frauengasse seemed to be deserted when they reached it. It was Mathilde who opened the door. She must have been at the darkened window, behind the curtain.
And now, in 1812, four years later, the memory of Luisa still lingered in those narrow streets that run by the banks of the Pregel beneath the great castle of Konigsberg, while the Tugendbund, like a seed that has been crushed beneath an iron heel, had spread its roots underground. From Dantzig, the commercial, to Konigsberg, the kingly and the learned, the tide of war rolled steadily onwards.
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