Some laughed and waved their hands to the crowd. Others, who had known the tragedy of Vilna and Kowno, stumbled on in stubborn silence still doubting that Dantzig stood—that they were at last in sight of food and warmth and rest.
“Is that all?” men asked each other in astonishment. For the last stragglers had crossed the new Mottlau before the head of the procession had reached the Grune Brucke.
“If I had such an army as that,” said a stout Dantziger, “I should bring it into the city quietly, after dusk.”
But the majority were silent, remembering the departure of these men—the triumph, the glory, and the hope. For a great catastrophe is a curtain that for a moment shuts out all history and makes the human family little children again who can but cower and hold each other's hands in the dark.
“Where are the guns?” asked one.
“And the baggage?” suggested another.
“And the treasure of Moscow?” whispered a Jew with cunning eyes, who had hidden behind his neighbour when Rapp glanced in his direction.
Emerging on the bridge, the General glanced at the old Mottlau. A crowd was collected on it. The citizens no longer used the bridges but crossed without fear where they pleased, and heavy sleighs passed up and down as on a high-road. Rapp saw it, made a grimace, and, turning in his saddle, spoke to his neighbour, an engineer officer, who was to make an immortal name and die in Dantzig.
The Mottlau was one of the chief defences of the city, but instead of a river the Governor found a high-road!
Rapp alone seemed to look about him with the air of one who knew his whereabouts. In the straggling trail of men behind him, not one in a hundred looked for a friendly face. Some stared in front of them with lifeless eyes, while others, with a little spirit plucked up at the end of a weary march, glanced up at the gabled houses with the interest called forth by the first sight of a new city.