e of that
fallen barrier. She had done nothing, had permitted nothing from
weakness. There was no weakness at all perhaps in Mathilde Sebastian.
She had the quiet manner of a skilled card-player with folded cards laid
face down upon the table, who knows what is in her hand and is waiting
for the foe to lead.

De Casimir did not see her again. In such a throng it would have been
difficult to find her had he so desired. But, as he had told her, he was
on duty to-night. There were to be a hundred arrests before dawn. Many
who were laughing and talking with the French officers to-night were
already in the grasp of Napoleon's secret police, and would drive
straight from the door of the Rathhaus to the town prison or to the old
Watch-house in the Portchaisengasse. Others, moving through the great
rooms with a high head, were already condemned out of their own bureaux
and escritoires now being rifled by the Emperor's spies.

The Emperor himself had given the order, before quitting Dantzig to take
command of the maddest and greatest enterprise conceived by the mind
of man. There was nothing above the reach of his mind, it seemed, and
nothing too low for him to bend down and touch. Every detail had been
considered by himself. He was like a man who, having an open wound on
his back, attends to it hurriedly before showing an undaunted face to
the enemy.

His inexorable finger had come down on the name of Antoine Sebastian,
figuring on all the secret reports--first in many.

"Who is this man?" he asked, and none could answer.

He had gone to the frontier without awaiting the solution to the
question. Such was his method now. He had so much to do that he could
but skim the surface of his task. For the human mind, though it be
colossal, can only work within certain limits. The greatest orator in
the world can only move his immediate hearers. Those beyond the inner
circle catch a word here and there, and imagination supplies the rest or
improves upon it. But those in the farthest gallery hear nothing and see
a little man gesticulating.

De Casimir was not entrusted with the execution of the Emperor's orders.
As a member of General Rapp's staff, resident in Dantzig since the
city's occupation by the French, he had been called upon to make
exhaustive reports upon the feeling of the burghers. There were many
doubtful cases. De Casimir did not pretend to be better than his
fellows. To some he had sold the benefit of the doubt. Some