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When one dies young, even by one's own act, it is never without a rebellious feeling, and poor Desiree bids adieu to life, indignant with destiny. Now she is in the street. Where is she going? Everything seems deserted already. Desiree walks rapidly, wrapped in her little shawl, head erect, dry-eyed. Not knowing the way, she walks straight ahead.
He had instructed Desiree to walk in front of him, should they meet a patrol. But Rapp had no men to spare for patrolling the town. There was no spirit left in Dantzig; for typhus and starvation patrolled the narrow streets. They quitted the town to the north-west, near the Oliva Gate.
The trees had been partly cut, and beneath the snow were square mounds showing where the timber had been piled up. But since the departure of Rapp, all had been left incomplete. Barlasch turned towards Desiree and pointed out a rising knoll of land with fir-trees on it an outline against the sky where a faint aurora borealis lit the north.
Then I returned to the edge of the water and ate my portion alone. That meal was one scarcely calculated for the pleasures of companionship or conviviality. It was several hours after that before Harry awoke, the greater part of which Desiree and I were silent. I would have given something to have known her thoughts; my own were not very pleasant.
At last she takes up the last bird of the dozen, a marvellously lovely little bird whose wings seem to have been dipped in sea-water, all green as they are with a tinge of sapphire. Carefully, daintily, Desiree suspends it on a piece of brass wire, in the charming attitude of a frightened creature about to fly away. Ah! how true it is that the little blue bird is about to fly away!
Time and again she swayed far out of her saddle until her body was literally suspended in the air above some frightful chasm, while she turned her head to laugh gaily at Harry and myself, who brought up the rear. "But Desiree! If the girth should break!" "Oh, but it won't." "But if it should?" "Tra-la-la! Come, catch me!"
The light was very dim, but there appeared to be a great many of them. I turned, with a swift gesture to Harry and Desiree to follow, and dashed forward to the light and through the doorway into the room. Discovery was inevitable, I thought, in any event, but it was better to meet them at the door to the room than in the open passage. And we had our spears.
It was about eleven in the morning; Harry had gone for a walk, saying that he would return in half an hour to join us at breakfast. "Well?" said Desiree when she had finished. "But it is not well," I retorted, turning to face her. "I do not reproach you; you are being amused, and so, I confess, am I. But your name that is, Le Mire has been mentioned, and discovery is sure to follow.
He, too, was ensnared, and a moment later we had both been lifted bodily from the ground and swung through the air to the side of Desiree. She was still unconscious. I writhed and twisted desperately, but that muscular coil held me firmly as a band of steel, tight against the huge and hideous head. Harry was on the other side of Desiree, not three feet from me.
"One must see what can be done." And he went out forthwith to return after an hour and more with a chicken freshly killed. Desiree did not ask him where he had procured it. She had given up such inquiries, for Barlasch always confessed quite bluntly to theft, and she did not know whether to believe him or not.
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