Barlasch of the Guard

Desiree's heart stood still; for the writing was unknown to her. As she cut the network of string, she thought that Charles was dead. When the enclosed papers fell upon the table, she was sure of it; for they were all in his writing. She did not pick and choose as one would who has leisure and no very strong excitement, but took up the first paper and read:

“Dear C.—I have been fortunate, as you will see from the enclosed report. His Majesty cannot again say that I have been neglectful. I was quite right. It is Sebastian and only Sebastian that we need fear. Here, they are clumsy conspirators compared to him. I have been in the river half the night, listening at the open stern window of a Reval pink to every word they said. His Majesty can safely come to Konigsberg. Indeed, he is better out of Dantzig. For the whole country is riddled with that which they call patriotism, and we, treason. But I can only repeat what His Majesty disbelieved the day before yesterday—that the heart of the ill is Dantzig, and the venom of it Sebastian. Who he really is and what he is about, you must find out how you can. I go forward to-day to Gumbinnen. The enclosed letter to its address—I beg of you—if only in acknowledgment of all that I have sacrificed.”

The letter was unsigned, but the writing was the writing of Charles Darragon, and Desiree knew what he had sacrificed—what he could never recover.

There were two or three more letters addressed to “Dear C.,” bearing no signature, and yet written by Charles. Desiree read them carefully with a sort of numb attention which photographed them permanently on her memory like writing that is carved in stone upon a wall. There must be some explanation in one of them. Who had sent them to her? Was Charles dead?

At last she came to a sealed envelope addressed to herself by Charles. Some other hand had copied the address from it in identical terms on the piece of white leather. She opened and read it. It was the letter written to her by Charles on the bank of the Kalugha river on the eve of Borodino, and left unfinished by him. He must be dead. She prayed that he might be.

She was alone in the room, having come down early, as was her wont, to prepare breakfast. She heard Lisa talking with some one at the door—a messenger, no doubt, to say that Charles was dead.

One letter still remained unread. It was in a different writing—the writing on the white leather.

“Madame,” it read, “The enclosed papers were found on the field by one of my orderlies. One of them being addressed to you, furnishes a clue to their owner, who must have dropped them in the hurry of the advance. Should Captain Charles Darragon be your husband, I have the pleasure to inform you that he was seen alive and well at the end of the day.” The writer assured Desiree of his respectful consideration, and wrote “Surgeon” after his name.

Desiree had read the explanation too late.

CHAPTER XIII. IN THE DAY OF REJOICING.

The door of the room stood open, and the sound of a step in the passage made Desiree glance up, as she hastily put together the papers found on the battlefield of Borodino.

Louis d'Arragon was coming into the room, and for an instant, before his expression changed, she saw all the fatigue that he must have endured during the night; all that he must have risked. His face was usually still and quiet; a combination of that contemplative calm which characterises seafaring faces, and the clean-cut immobility of a racial type developed by hereditary duties of self-restraint and command.

He knew that there had been a battle, and, seeing the papers on the table, his eyes asked her the inevitable question which his lips were slow to put into words.

In reply Desiree shook her head. She looked at the papers in quick thought. Then she withdrew from them the letter written to her by Charles—and put the others together.

“You told me to send for you,” she said in a quiet, tired voice, “if I wanted you. You have saved me the trouble.”

His eyes were hard with anxiety as he looked at her. She held the letters towards him.

“By coming,” she added, with a glance at him which took in the dust, and the stains of salt-water on his clothes, the fatigue he sought to conceal by a rigid stillness, and the tension that was left by the dangers he had passed through—daring all—to come.

Seeing that he looked doubtfully at the papers, she spoke again.

“One,” she said, “that one on the stained paper, is addressed to me. You can read it—since I ask you.”

The letter told him, at all events, that Charles was not killed, and, seeing his face clear as he read, she gave an odd, curt laugh.

“Read the others,” she said. “Oh! you need not hesitate. You need not be so particular. Read one, the top one. One is enough.”

The windows stood open, and the morning breeze fluttering the curtains brought in the gay sound of bells, the high clear bells of Hanseatic days, rejoicing at Napoleon's new success—by order of Napoleon. A bee sailed harmoniously into the room, made the circuit of it, and sought the open again with a hum that faded drowsily into silence.

D'Arragon read the letter slowly from beginning to the unsigned end, while Desiree, sitting at the table, upon which she leant one elbow, resting her small square chin in the palm of her hand, watched him.

“Ah?” she exclaimed at length, with a ring of contempt in her voice, as if at the thought of something unclean. “A spy! It is so easy for you to keep still, and to hide all you feel.”

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. It was indeed the greatest sacrifice that man can make; for he had thrown away his honour.

“It may not be so easy as you think,” returned D'Arragon, looking towards the door.

He had no time to say more; for Mathilde and her father were talking together on the stairs as they came down. 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.”

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.”

He spoke rather slowly, and turned towards Desiree with a measured gesture, not unlike Sebastian's habitual manner, and a quick glance to satisfy himself that she had understood and was ready.

“Yes,” said Desiree, “he was safe and well after the battle, but he gives no details; for the letter was actually written the day before.”

“With a mere word, added in postscriptum, to say that he was unhurt at the end of the day,” suggested Sebastian, already drawing forward a chair with a gesture full of hospitality, inviting D'Arragon to be seated at the simple breakfast-table. But D'Arragon was looking at Mathilde, who had gone rather hurriedly to the window, as if to breathe the air. He had caught a glimpse of her face as she passed. It was hard and set, quite colourless, with bright, sleepless eyes. D'Arragon was a sailor. He had seen that look in rougher faces and sterner eyes, and knew what it meant.

“No details?” asked Mathilde in a muffled voice, without looking round.

“No,” answered Desiree, who had noticed nothing. 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. D'Arragon, besides having acquired the seamen's habit of adapting himself unconsciously and unobtrusively to his surroundings, was of a direct mind, lacking self-consciousness, and simplified by the pressure of a strong and steady purpose. For men's minds are like the atmosphere, which is always cleared by a steady breeze, while a changing wind generates vapours, mist, uncertainty.

“And what news do you bring from the sea?” asked Sebastian. “Is your sky there as overcast as ours in Dantzig?”

“No, Monsieur, our sky is clearing,” answered D'Arragon, eating with a hearty appetite the fresh bread and butter set before him. “Since I saw you, the treaties have been signed, as you doubtless know, between Sweden and Russia and England.”

Nodding his head with silent emphasis, Sebastian gave it to be understood that he knew that and more.

“It makes a great difference to us at sea in the Baltic,” said D'Arragon. “We are no longer harassed night and day, like a dog, hounded from end to end of a hostile street, not daring to look into any doorway. The Russian ports and Swedish ports are open to us now.”

“One is glad to hear that your life is one of less hardship,” said Sebastian gravely. “I.... who have tasted it.”

Desiree glanced at his lean, hard face. She rose, went out of the room, and returned in a few minutes carrying a new loaf which she set on the table before him with a short laugh, and something glistening in her eyes that was not mirth.

But neither Desiree nor Mathilde joined in the conversation. They were glad for their father to have a companion so sympathetic as to produce a marked difference in his manner. For Sebastian was more at ease with Louis d'Arragon than he was with Charles, though the latter had the tie of a common fatherland, and spoke the same French that Sebastian spoke. D'Arragon's French had the roundness always imparted to that language by an English voice. It was perfect enough, but of an educated perfection.

The talk was of such matters as concerned men more than women; of armies and war and treaties of peace. For all the world thought that Alexander of Russia would be brought to his knees by the battle of Borodino. None knew better how to turn a victory to account than he who claimed to be victor now. “It does not suffice,” Napoleon wrote to his brother at this time, “to gain a victory. You must learn to turn it to advantage.”

Save for the one reference to his life in the Baltic during the past two months, D'Arragon said nothing of himself, of his patient, dogged work carried on by day and by night in all weathers. Content to have escaped with his life, he neither referred to, nor thought of, his part in the negotiations which had resulted in the treaty just signed. For he had been the link between Russia and England; the never-failing messenger passing from one to the other with question and answer which were destined to bear fruit at last in an understanding brought to perfection in Paris, culminating at Elba.

Both were guarded in what they said of passing events, and both seemed to doubt the truth of the reports now flying through the streets of Dantzig. Even in the quiet Frauengasse all the citizens were out on their terraces calling questions to those that passed by beneath the trees. The itinerant tradesman, the milkman going his round, the vendors of fruit from Langfuhr and the distant villages of the plain, lingered at the doors to tell the servants the latest gossip of the market-place. Even in this frontier city, full of spies, strangers spoke together in the streets, and the sound of their voices, raised above the clang of carillons, came in at the open window.

“At first a victory is always a great one,” said D'Arragon, looking towards the window.

“It is so easy to ring a bell,” added Sebastian, with his rare smile.

He was quite himself this morning, and only once did the dull look arrest his features into the stony stillness which his daughters knew.

“You are the only one of your name in Dantzig,” said D'Arragon, in the course of question and answer as to the safe delivery of letters in time of war.

“So far as I know, there is no other Sebastian,” replied he; and Desiree, who had guessed the motive of the question, which must have been in D'Arragon's mind from the beginning, was startled by the fulness of the answer. It seemed to make reply to more than D'Arragon had asked. It shattered the last faint hope that there might have been another Sebastian of whom Charles had written.

“For myself,” said D'Arragon, changing the subject quickly, “I can now make sure of receiving letters addressed to me in the care of the English Consul at Riga, or the Consul at Stockholm, should you wish to communicate with me, or should Madame find leisure to give me news of her husband.”

“Desiree will no doubt take pleasure in keeping you advised of Charles's progress. As for myself, I fear I am a bad correspondent. Perhaps not a desirable one in these days,” said Sebastian, his face slowly clearing. He waved the point aside with a gesture that looked out of place on a hand lean and spare, emerging from a shabby brown sleeve without cuff or ruffle.

“For I feel assured,” he went on, “that we shall continue to hear good news of your cousin; not only that he is safe and well, but that he makes progress in his profession. He will go far, I am sure.”

D'Arragon bowed his acknowledgment of this kind thought, and rose rather hastily.

“My best chance of quitting the city unseen,” he said, “is to pass through the gates with the market-people returning to the villages. To do that, I must not delay.”

“The streets are so full,” replied Sebastian, glancing out of the window, “that you will pass through them unnoticed. I see beneath the trees, a neighbour, Koch the locksmith, who is perhaps waiting to give me news. While you are saying farewell, I will go out and speak to him. What he has to tell may interest you and your comrades at sea—may help your escape from the city this morning.”

He took his hat as he spoke and went to the door. Mathilde, thirsting for the news that seemed to hum in the streets like the sound of bees, rose and followed him. Desiree and D'Arragon were left alone. 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. 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. That is only a confirmation of something that has been in my mind for a long time—ever since my wedding-day. I knew when you came into the room upstairs on that day that you did not trust Charles.”

“I—?” he asked.

“Yes,” she answered, standing squarely in front of him and looking him in the eyes. “You did not trust him. You were not glad that I had married him. I could see it in your face. I have never forgotten.”

D'Arragon turned away towards the window. Sebastian and Mathilde were in the street below, in the shade of the trees, talking with the eager neighbours.

“You would have stopped it if you could,” said Desiree; and he did not deny it.

“It was some instinct,” he said at length. “Some passing misgiving.”

“For Charles?” she asked sharply.

And D'Arragon, looking out of the window, would not answer. She gave a sudden laugh.

“One cannot compliment you on your politeness,” she said. “Was it for Charles that you had misgivings?”

At last D'Arragon turned on his heel.

“Does it matter?” he asked. “Since I came too late.”

“That is true,” she said, after a pause. “You came too late; so it doesn't matter. 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.

CHAPTER XIV. MOSCOW.

While the Dantzigers with grave faces discussed the news of Borodino beneath the trees in the Frauengasse, Charles Darragon, white with dust, rose in his stirrups to catch the first sight of the domes and cupolas of Moscow.

It was a sunny morning, and the gold on the churches gleamed and glittered in the shimmering heat like fairyland. Charles had ridden to the summit of a hill and sat for a moment, as others had done, in silent contemplation. Moscow at last! All around him men were shouting: “Moscow! Moscow!” Grave, white-haired generals waved their shakos in the air. Those at the summit of the hill called the others to come. Far down in the valley, where the dust raised by thousands of feet hung in the air like a mist, a faint sound like the roar of falling water could be heard. It was the word “Moscow!” sweeping back to the rearmost ranks of these starving men who had marched for two months beneath the glaring sun, parched with dust, through a country that seemed to them a Sahara. Every house they approached, they had found deserted. Every barn was empty. The very crops ripening to harvest had been gathered in and burnt. Near to the miserable farmhouses, a pile of ashes hardly cold marked where the poor furniture had been tossed upon the fire kindled with the year's harvest.

Everywhere it was the same. There are, as God created it, few countries of a sadder aspect than that which spreads between the Moskwa and the Vistula. But it has been decreed by the dim laws of Race that the ugly countries shall be blessed with the greater love of their children, while men born in a beautiful land seem readiest to emigrate from it and make the best settlers in a new home. There is only one country in the world with a ring-fence round it. If a Russian is driven from his home, he will go to another part of Russia: there is always room.

Before the advance of the spoilers, chartered by their leader to unlimited and open rapine—indeed, he had led them hither with that understanding—the Prussians, peasant and noble alike, fled to the East. A hundred times the advance guard, fully alive to the advantages of their position, had raced to the gates of a chateau only to find, on breaking open the doors, that it was empty—the furniture destroyed, the stores burnt, the wine poured out.

So also in the peasants' huts. Some, more careful than the rest, had pulled the thatch from the roof to burn it. There was no corn in this the Egypt of their greedy hopes. And, lest they should bring the corn with them, the spoilers found the mills everywhere wrecked.

It was something new to them. It was new to Napoleon, who had so frequently been met halfway, who knew that men for greed will part smilingly with half in order to save the residue. He knew that many, rather than help a neighbour who is in danger by a robber, will join the robber and share the spoil, crying out that force majeure was used to them.

But, as every man must judge according to his lights, so must even the greatest find himself in the dark at last. No man of the Latin race will ever understand the Slav. And because the beginning is easy—because in certain superficial tricks of speech and thought Paris and Petersburg are not unlike—so much the more is the breach widened when necessity digs deeper than the surface. For, to make the acquaintance of a stranger who seems to be a counterpart of one's self in thought and taste, is like the first hearing of a kindred language such as Dutch to the English ear. At first it sounds like one's own tongue with a hundred identical words, but on closer listening it will be found that the words mean something else, and that the whole is incomprehensible and the more difficult to acquire by the very reason of its resemblance.

Napoleon thought that the Russians would act as his enemies of the Latin race had acted. He thought that like his own people they would be over-confident, urging each other on to great deeds by loud words and a hundred boasts. But the Russians lack self-confidence, are timid rather than over-bold, dreamy rather than fiery. Only their women are glib of speech. He thought that they would begin very brilliantly and end with a compromise, heart-breaking at first and soon lived down.

“They are savages out here in the plains,” he said. “It is a barbaric and stupid instinct that makes them destroy their own property for the sake of hampering us. As we approach Moscow we shall find that the more civilized inhabitants of the villages, enervated by an easy life, rendered selfish by possession of wealth, will not abandon their property, but will barter and sell to us and find themselves the victims of our might.”

And the army believed him. For they always believed him. Faith can, indeed, move mountains. It carried four hundred thousand men, without provisions, through a barren land.

And now, in sight of the golden city, the army was still hungry. Nay! it was ragged already. In three columns it converged on the doomed capital, driving before it like a swarm of flies the Cossacks who harassed the advance.

Here again, on the hill looking down into the smiling valley of the Moskwa, the unexpected awaited the invaders. The city, shimmering in the sunlight like the realization of some Arab's dream, was silent. The Cossacks had disappeared. Except those around the Kremlin, towering above the river, the city had no walls.

The army halted while aides-de-camp flew hither and thither on their weary horses. Charles Darragon, sunburnt, dusty, hoarse with cheering, was among the first. He looked right and left for de Casimir, but could not see him. He had not seen his chief since Borodino, for he was temporarily attached to the staff of Prince Eugene, who had lost heavily at the Kalugha river.

It was usual for the army to halt before a beleaguered city and await the advent in all humility of the vanquished. Commonly it was the mayor of a town who came, followed by his councillors in their robes, to explain that the army had abandoned the city, which now begged to throw itself upon the mercy of the conqueror.

For this the army waited on that sunny September morning.

“He is putting on his robes,” they said gaily. “He is new to this work.”

But the mayor of Moscow disappointed them. At last the troops moved on and camped for the night in a village under the Kremlin walls. It was here that Charles received a note from de Casimir.

“I am slightly wounded,” wrote that officer, “but am following the army. At Borodino my horse was killed under me, and I was thrown. While I was insensible, I was robbed and lost what money I had, as well as my despatch-case. In the latter was the letter you wrote to your wife. It is lost, my friend; you must write another.”

Charles was tired. He would put off till to-morrow, he thought, and write to Desiree from Moscow. As he lay, all dressed on the hard ground, he fell to thinking of what he should write to Desiree to-morrow from Moscow. The mere date and address of such a letter would make her love him the more, he thought; for, like his leaders, he was dazed by a surfeit of glory.

As he fell asleep smiling at these happy reflections, Desiree, far away in Dantzig, was locking in her bureau the letter which had been lost and found again; while, on the deck of his ship, lifting gently to the tideway where the Vistula sweeps out into the Dantziger Bucht, Louis d'Arragon stood fingering reflectively in his jacket-pocket the unread papers which had fallen from the same despatch-case. For it is a very small world in which to do wrong, though if a man do a little good in his lifetime it is—heaven knows—soon mislaid and trodden under the feet of the new-comers.

The next day it was definitely ascertained that the citizens of Moscow had no communication to make to the conquering leaders. Soon after daylight the army moved towards the city. The suburbs were deserted. The houses stood with closed shutters and locked doors. Not so much as a dog awaited the triumphant entry through the city gates.

Long streets without a living being from end to end met the eyes of those daring organizers of triumphal entries who had been sent forward to clear a path and range the respectful citizens on either hand. But there were no citizens. There was not a single witness to this triumph of the greatest army the world had seen, led across Europe by the first captain in all history to conquer a virgin capital.

The various corps marched to their quarters in silence, with nervous glances at the shuttered windows. Some, breaking rank, ventured into the churches which stood open. The candles were lighted on the altars, they reported to their comrades in a hushed voice when they returned, but there was no one there.

Certain palaces were selected as head-quarters for the general officers and the chiefs of various departments. As often as not a summons would be answered and the door opened by an obsequious porter, who handed the keys to the first-comer. But he spoke no French, and only cringed in silence when addressed. Other doors were broken in.

It was like a play acted in dumb show on an immense stage. It was disquieting and incomprehensible even to the oldest campaigner, while the young fire-eaters, fresh from St. Cyr, were strangely depressed by it. There was a smell of sour smoke in the air, a suggestion of inevitable tragedy.

On the Krasnaya Ploschad—the great Red Square, which is the central point of the old town—the soldiers were already buying and selling the spoil wrested from the burning Exchange. It seemed that the citizens before leaving had collected their merchandise in this building to burn it. To the rank-and-file this meant nothing but an incomprehensible stupidity. To the educated and the thoughtful it was another evidence of that dumb and sullen capacity for infinite self-sacrifice which makes Russians different from any other race, and which has yet to be reckoned with in the history of the world. For it will tend to the greatest good of the greatest number, and is a power for national aggrandisement quite unattainable by any Latin people.

Charles, with the other officers of Prince Eugene's staff, was quartered in a palace on the Petrovka—that wide street running from the Kremlin northward to the boulevards and the parks. Going towards it he passed through the bazaars and the merchants' quarters, where, like an army of rag-pickers, the eager looters were silently hurrying from heap to heap. Every warehouse had, it seemed, been ransacked and its contents thrown out into the streets. The first-comers had hurried on, seeking something more valuable, more portable, leaving the later arrivals to turn over their garbage like dogs upon a dust-heap.

The Petrovka is a long street of great houses, and was now deserted. The pillagers were nervous and ill at ease, as men must always be in the presence of something they do not understand. The most experienced of them—and there were some famous robbers in Murat's vanguard—had never seen an empty city abandoned all standing, as the Russians had abandoned Moscow. They felt apprehensive of the unknown. Even the least imaginative of them looked askance at the tall houses, at the open doors of the empty churches, and they kept together for company's sake.

Charles's rooms were in the Momonoff Palace, where even the youngest lieutenant had vast apartments assigned to him. It was in one of these—a lady's boudoir, where his dust-covered baggage had been thrown down carelessly by his orderly on a blue satin sofa—that he sat down to write to Desiree.

His emotions had been stirred by all that he had passed through—by the first sight of Moscow, by the passage beneath the Gate of the Redeemer, where every man must uncover and only Napoleon dared to wear a hat; by the bewildering sense of triumph and the knowledge that he was taking part in one of the epochs of man's history on this earth. The emotions lie very near together, so that laughter being aroused must also touch on tears, and hatred being kindled warms the heart to love.

And, here in this unknown woman's room, with the very pen that she had thrown aside, Charles, who wrote and spoke his love with such facility, wrote to Desiree a love-letter such as he had never written before.

When it was sealed and addressed he called his orderly to take it to the officer to whose duty it fell to make up the courier for Germany. But he received no reply. The man had joined his comrades in the busier quarters of the city. Charles went to the head of the stairs and called again, with no better success. The house was comparatively modern, built on the familiar lines of a Parisian hotel, with a wide stair descending to an entrance archway where carriages passed through into a courtyard.

Descending the stairs, Charles found that even the sentry had absented himself from his duty. His musket, leant against the post of the stone doorway, indicated that he was not far. Listening in the silence of that great house, Charles heard some one at work with hammer and chisel in the courtyard. He went there, and found the sentry kneeling at a low door, endeavouring to break it open. The man had not been idle; from a piece of rope slung across his back half a dozen clocks were suspended. They rattled together like the wares of a travelling tinsmith at every movement of his arms.

“What are you doing there, my friend?” asked Charles.

The man held up one finger over his shoulder without looking round, and shook it from side to side, as not desiring to be interrupted.

“The cellar,” he answered, “always the cellar. It is human nature. We get it from the animals.”

He glanced round as he worked, and, perceiving that he had been addressing an officer, he scrambled to his feet with a grumbled curse. He was an old man, baked by the sun. The wrinkles in his face were filled with dust. Since quitting the banks of the Vistula no opportunity for ablution seemed to have presented itself to him. He stood at attention, his lips working over sunken gums.

“I want you to take this letter,” said Charles, “to the officer on service at head-quarters, and ask him to include it in his courier. It is, as you see, a private letter—to my wife at Dantzig.”

The man looked at it, and grumbled something inaudible. He took it in his hand and turned it over with the slow manner of the illiterate.

CHAPTER XV. THE GOAL.

Charles, having given his letter to the sentry with the order to take it to its immediate destination, turned towards the stairs again. In those days an order was given in a different tone to that which servitude demands in later times.

He returned to his room on the first floor without even waiting to make sure that he would be obeyed. He had scarcely seated himself when, after a fumbling knock, the sentry opened the door and followed him into the room, still holding the letter in his hand.

“Mon capitaine,” he said with a certain calmness of manner as from an old soldier to a young one, “a word—that is all. This letter,” he turned it in his hand as he spoke, and looking at Charles beneath scowling brows, awaited an explanation. “Did you pick it up?”

“No—I wrote it.”

“Good. I...” he paused, and tapped himself on the chest so that there could be no mistake; there was a rattling sound behind him suggestive of ironware. Indeed, he was hung about with other things than clocks, and seemed to be of opinion that if a soldier sets value upon any object he must attach it to his person. “I, Barlasch of the Guard—Marengo, the Danube, Egypt—picked up after Borodino a letter like it. I cannot read very quickly—indeed—Bah! the old Guard needs no pens and paper—but that letter I picked up was just like this.”

“Was it addressed like that to Madame Desiree Darragon?”

“So a comrade told me. It is you, her husband?”

“Yes,” answered Charles, “since you ask; I am her husband.”

“Ah!” replied Barlasch darkly, and his limbs and features settled themselves into a patient waiting.

“Well,” asked Charles, “what are you waiting for?”

“Whatever you may think proper, mon capitaine, for I gave the letter to the surgeon who promised that it should be forwarded to its address.”

Charles laughingly sought his purse. But there was nothing in it, so he looked round the room.

“Here, add this to your collection,” and he took a small French clock from the writing-table, a pretty, gilded toy from Paris.

“Thank you, mon capitaine.”

Barlasch, with shaking fingers, unknotted the rope around his shoulders. As he was doing so one of the clocks on his back began to strike. He paused, and stood looking gravely at his superior officer. Another clock took up the tale and a third, while Barlasch sternly stood at attention.

“Four o'clock,” he said to himself, “and I, who have not yet breakfasted—”

With a grunt and a salute he turned towards the door which stood open. Some one was coming up the stairs rather slowly, his spurs clinking, his scabbard clashing against the gilded banisters. Papa Barlasch stood aside at attention, and Colonel de Casimir came into the room with a gay word of greeting. Barlasch went out, but he did not close the door. It is to be presumed that he stood without, where he might have overheard all that they said to each other for quite a long time, until it was almost the half-hour when the clocks would strike again. 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. No one had troubled to open the shutters of such rooms as were not required; and these were many. For Moscow was even at that day a great city, though less spacious and more fantastic than it is to-day. There was plenty of room for the whole army in the houses left empty by their owners, so that many lodged as they had never lodged before and would never lodge again.

The stairs were almost dark when Charles and his companion descended them. The rusted musket poised against the doorpost still indicated the supposed presence of a sentry.

“Listen,” said Charles, “I found him burrowing like a rat at a cellar-door in the courtyard. Perhaps he has got in.”

They listened, but could hear nothing. Charles led the way towards the courtyard. A glimmer of light guided him to the door he sought. It stood open. Barlasch had succeeded in effecting an entry to the cellar, where his experience taught him to seek the best that an abandoned house contains.

Charles and de Casimir peered down the narrow stairs. By the light of a candle Barlasch was working vigorously amid a confused pile of cases, and furniture, and roughly tied bundles of clothing. He had laid aside nothing, and his movements were attended by the usual rattle of hollow-ware. They could see the perspiration gleaming on his face. Even in this cellar there lingered the faint smell of sour smoke that filled the air of Moscow.

De Casimir caught the gleam of jewellery, and went hurriedly downstairs.

“What are you doing there, my friend?” he asked, and the words were scarcely out of his mouth, when Barlasch extinguished his candle. There followed a dead silence, such as comes when a rodent is disturbed at his work. The two men on the cellar-stairs were conscious of the gaze of the bright, rat-like eyes below.

De Casimir turned and followed Charles upstairs again.

“Come up,” he said, “and go to your post.”

There was no movement in response.

“Name of a dog,” cried de Casimir, “is all discipline relaxed? Come up, I tell you, and obey my orders.”

He emphasized his command with the cocking of a pistol, and a slight disturbance in the darkness of the cellar heralded the unwilling approach of Barlasch, who climbed the stairs step by step like a schoolboy coming to punishment.

“It is I who found the door, mon colonel, behind that pile of firewood. It is I who opened it. What is down there is mine,” he said, sullenly. But the only reply that de Casimir made was to seize him by the arm and jerk him away from the stairs.

“To your post,” he said, “take your arm, and out into the street, in front of the house. That is your place.”

But while he was still speaking, they were all startled by a sudden disturbance in the cellar, and in the gloom a man stumbled up the stairs and ran past them. Barlasch had taken the precaution of bolting the huge front door, which was large enough to give passage to a carriage. The man, who exhaled an atmosphere of dust mingled with the disquieting and all-pervading odour of smoke, rushed at the huge door and tugged furiously at its handles.

Charles, who was on his heels, grasped his arm, but the man swung round and threw him off as if he were a child. He had a hatchet in his hand with which he aimed a blow at Charles, but missed him. Barlasch was already going towards his musket, which stood in the corner against the door-post, but the Russian saw his movement, and forestalled him. Seizing the gun, he presented the bayonet to them, and stood with his back to the door, facing the three men in a breathless silence. He was a large man, dishevelled, with long hair tumbled about his head, and light-coloured eyes, glaring like the eyes of a beast at bay.

In the background de Casimir, quick and calm, had already covered him with the pistol produced as a persuasive to Barlasch. For a second there was silence, during which they all could hear the call to arms in the street outside. The patrol was hurrying down the Petrovka, calling the assembly.

The report of the pistol rang through the house, shaking the doors and windows. The man threw up his arms and stood for a moment looking at de Casimir with an expression of blank amazement. Then his legs seemed to slip away from beneath him, and he collapsed to the floor. He turned over with movements singularly suggestive of a child seeking a comfortable position in bed, and lay quite still, his cheek on the pavement and his staring eyes turned towards the cellar-door from which he had emerged.

“He has his affair—that parishioner,” muttered Barlasch, looking at him with a smile that twisted his mouth to one side. And, as he spoke, the man's throat rattled. De Casimir was reloading his pistol. So persistent was the gaze of the dead man's eyes that de Casimir turned on his heel to look in the same direction.

“Quick!” he exclaimed, pointing to the doorway, from which a lazy white smoke emerged in thin puffs. “Quick, he has set fire to the house!”

“Quick—with what, mon colonel?” asked Barlasch.

“Why, go and fetch some men with a fire-engine.”

“There are no fire-engines left in Moscow, mon colonel!”

“Then find buckets, and tell me where the well is.”

“There are no buckets left in Moscow, mon colonel. We found that out last night, when we wanted to water the horses. The citizens have removed them. And there is not a well of which the rope has not been cut. They are droll companions, these Russians, I can tell you.”

“Do as I tell you,” repeated de Casimir, angrily, “or I shall put you under arrest. Go and fetch men to help me to extinguish this fire.”

By way of reply, Barlasch held up one finger in a childlike gesture of attention to some distant sound.

“No, thank you,” he said, coolly, “not for me. Discipline, mon colonel, discipline. Listen, you can hear the 'assembly' as well as I. It is the Emperor that one obeys. One thinks of one's military career.”

With knotted and shaking fingers he drew back the bolts and opened the door. On the threshold he saluted.

“It is the call to arms, mes officiers,” he said. Then, shouldering his musket, he turned away, and all his clocks struck six. The bells of the city churches seemed to greet him as he stepped into the street, for in Moscow each hour is proclaimed with deafening iteration from a thousand towers.

He looked down the Petrovka; from half the houses which bordered the wide roadway—a street of palaces—the smoke was pouring forth in puffs. He went uphill towards the Red Square and the Kremlin, where the Emperor had his head-quarters. It was to this centre that the patrols had converged. Looking back, Barlasch saw, not one house on fire, but a hundred. The smoke arose from every quarter of the city at once. He hurried on, but was stopped by a crowd of soldiers, all laden with booty, gesticulating, shouting, abusing one another. It was Babel over again. The riff-raff of sixteen nations had followed Napoleon to Moscow—to rob. Half a dozen different tongues were spoken in one army corps. There remained no national pride to act as a deterrent. No man cared what he did. The blame would be laid upon France.

The crowd was collected in front of a high, many-windowed building in flames.

“What is it?” Barlasch asked first one and then another. But no one spoke his tongue. At last he found a Frenchman.

“It is the hospital.”

“And what is that smell? What is burning there?”

“Twelve thousand wounded,” answered the man, with a sickening laugh. And even as he spoke one or two of the wounded dragged themselves, half burnt, down the wide steps. No one dared to approach them, for the walls of the building were already bulging outwards. One man was half covered with a sheet which was black, and his bare limbs were black with smoke. All the hair was burnt from his head and face. He stood for a moment in the doorway—a sight never to be forgotten—and then fell headlong down the steps, where he lay motionless. Some one in the crowd laughed—a high cackle which was heard above the roar of the fire and the deafening chorus of burning timbers.

Barlasch passed on, following some officers who were leading their horses towards the Kremlin. The streets were full of soldiers carrying burdens, and staggering beneath the weight of their spoil. Many were wearing priceless fur cloaks, and others walked in women's wraps of sable and ermine. Some wore jewellery, such as necklaces, on their rough uniforms, and bracelets round their sunburnt wrists. No one laughed at them, but only glanced enviously at the pillage. All were in deadly earnest, and none graver than those who had found drink and now regretted that they had given way to the temptation; for their sober comrades had outwitted them in finding treasure.

One man gravely wore a gilt coronet crammed over the crown of his shako. He joined Barlasch, staggering along beside him.

“I come from the Cathedral,” he explained, confidentially. “St. Michael they call it. They said there was great treasure there hidden in the cellars, but I only found a company of old kings in their coffins. We stirred them up. They were quiet enough when we found them, under their counterpanes of red velvet. We stirred them up with the bayonet, and the dust got into our throats and choked us. Name of God, I am thirsty. You have nothing in your bottle, comrade?”

“No.”

Barlasch trudged on, all his possessions swinging and clanking together. The confidential man turned towards him and lifted his water-bottle, weighed it, and found it wanting.

“Name of a name, of a name, of a name,” he muttered, walking on. “Yes, there was nothing there. Even the silver plates on the coffins with the names of those gentlemen were no thicker than a sword. But I found a crown in the church itself. I borrowed it from St. Michael. He had a sword in his hand, but he did not strike. No. And there was only tinsel on the hilt. No jewels.”

He walked on in silence for a few minutes, coughing out the smoke and dust from his lungs. It was almost dark, but the whole city was blazing now, and the sky glowed with a red light that mingled with the remnants of a lurid sunset. A strong wind blew the smoke and the flying sparks across the roofs.

“Then I went into the sacristy,” continued the man, stumbling over the dead body of a young girl and turning to curse her. Barlasch looked at him sideways and cursed him for doing it, with a sudden fierce eloquence. For Papa Barlasch was a man of unclean lips.

“There was an old man in there, a sacristan. I asked him where he kept the dishes, and he said he could not speak French. I jerked my bayonet into him—name of a name! he soon spoke French.”

Barlasch broke off these delicate confidences by a quick word of command, and himself stood rigid in the roadway before the Imperial Palace of the Kremlin, presenting arms. A man passed close by them on his way towards a waiting carriage. He was stout and heavy-shouldered, peculiarly square, with a thick neck and head set low in the shoulders. On the step of the carriage he turned and surveyed the lurid sky and the burning city to the east with an indifferent air. Into his deep bloodshot eyes there flashed a sudden gleam of life and power, as he glanced along the row of watching faces to read what was written there.

It was Napoleon, at the summit of his dream, hurriedly quitting the Kremlin, the boasted goal of his ambition, after having passed but one night under that proud roof.