st take you home," he said tenderly, "without delay. And as we go
through the streets you must tell me how it happened, and how you were
able to come to me."

"Desiree was not asleep," she answered; "she was waiting for me to
return, and told me at once. Then she went to bed, and I waited until
she was asleep. It was she who managed the escape."

De Casimir, who was locking the drawers of his writing-table, glanced up
sharply.

"Ah! but not alone?"

"No--not alone. I will tell you as we go through the streets."

CHAPTER XI. THE WAVE MOVES ON.

La meme fermete qui sert a resister a l'amour sert aussi a le
rendre violent et durable.

It is only in war that the unexpected admittedly happens. In love and
other domestic calamities there is always a relative who knew it all the
time.

The news that Napoleon was in Vilna, hastily evacuated by the Russians
in full retreat, came as a surprise and not to all as a pleasant one, in
Dantzig.

It was Papa Barlasch who brought the tidings to the Frauengasse, one
hot afternoon in July. He returned before his usual hour, and sent Lisa
upstairs, with a message given in dumb show and interpreted by her into
matter-of-fact German, that he must see the young ladies without delay.
Far back in the great days of the monarchy, Papa Barlasch must have
been a little child in a peasant's hut on those Cotes du Nord where
they breed a race of Frenchmen startlingly similar to the hereditary foe
across the Channel, where to this day the men kick off their sabots at
the door and hold that an honest labourer has no business under a roof
except in stocking-feet and shirt-sleeves.

Barlasch had never yet been upstairs in the Sebastians' house, and
deemed it only respectful to the ladies to take off his boots on
the mat, and prowl to the kitchen in coarse blue woollen stockings,
carefully darned by himself, under the scornful immediate eye of Lisa.

He was in the kitchen when Mathilde and Desiree, in obedience to his
command, came downstairs. The floor in one corner of the room was
littered with his belongings; for he never used the table. "He takes
up no more room than a cat," Lisa once said of him. "I never fall over
him."

"She leaves her greasy plates here and there," explained Barlasch in
return. "One must think of one's self and one's uniform."

He was in his stocking-feet with unbuttoned tunic when the two girls
came to him.

"Ai, ai, ai," he said, imitating with his