Papa Barlasch knew what to do, however.
“Where is that sailor?” he asked Desiree, when she had told him the news which Mathilde brought in from the streets. “He who took the patron's valise that night—the cousin of your husband.”
“There is a man at Zoppot who will tell you,” she answered.
“Then I go to Zoppot.”
Barlasch had lived unmolested in the Frauengasse since his return. He was an old man, ill-clad, with a bloody handkerchief bound over one eye. No one asked him any questions, except Sebastian, who heard again and again the tale of Moscow—how the army which had crossed into Russia four hundred thousand strong was reduced to a hundred thousand when the retreat began; how handmills were issued to the troops to grind corn which did not exist; how the horses died in thousands and the men in hundreds from starvation; how God at last had turned his face from Napoleon.
“Something must be done. The patron will do nothing; he is in the clouds, he is dreaming dreams of a new France, that bourgeois. I am an old man. Yes, I will go to Zoppot.”
“You mean that we should have heard from Charles before now,” said Desiree.
“Name of thunder! he may be in Paris!” exclaimed Barlasch, with the sudden anger that anxiety commands. “He is on the staff, I tell you.”
For suspense is one of the most contagious of human emotions, and makes a quicker call upon our sympathy than any other. Do we not feel such a desire that our neighbour may know the worst without delay, that we race to impart it to him?
Nor was Desiree alone in the trial which had drawn certain lines about her gay lips; for Mathilde had told her father and sister that should Colonel de Casimir return from the war he would ask her hand in marriage.