So Barlasch prepared a great feast which was to be celebrated by Desiree in the dining-room, where he lighted a fire, and by himself in the kitchen. For he held strongly to a code of social laws which the great Revolution had not succeeded in breaking. And one of these laws was that it would be in some way degrading to Desiree to see him eat.
He was a skilled and delicate cook, only hampered by that insatiable passion for economy which is the dominant characteristic of the peasant of Northern France. To-night, however, he was reckless, and Desiree could hear him searching in his secret hiding-place beneath the floor for concealed condiments and herbs.
“There,” he said, when he set the dish before her, “eat it with an easy mind. There is nothing unclean in it. It is not rat or cat or the liver of a starved horse, such as we others eat and ask no better. It is all clean meat.”
He poured out wine, and stood in the darkened doorway watching her drink it. Then he went away to his own meal in the kitchen, leaving Desiree vaguely uneasy—for he was not himself to-night. She could hear him muttering as he ate and moved hither and thither in the kitchen. At short intervals he came and looked in at the door to make sure that she was doing full honour to St. Matthias. When she had finished, he came into the room.
“Ah!” he said, glancing at her suspiciously and rubbing his hands together. “That strengthens, eh?—that strengthens. We others who lead a rough life—we know that a little food and a glass of wine fit one out for any enterprise, for—well, any catastrophe.”
And Desiree knew in a flash of comprehension that the food and the wine and the forced gaiety were nothing but preliminaries to bad news.
“What is it?” she asked a second time. “Is it... bombardment?”
“Bombardment,” he laughed, “they cannot shoot, those Cossacks. It is only the French who understand artillery.”
“Then what is it?—for you have something to tell me, I know.”
He ruffled his shock-head of white hair, with a grimace of despair.