great
many talkers into this world and only a few men of action to make its
history.

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.

"And that other--the Colonel," added Barlasch, glancing at Mathilde,
"he is on the staff too. They are safe enough, I tell you that. They are
doubtless together. They were together at Moscow. I saw them, and took
an order from them. They were... at their work."

Mathilde did not like Papa Barlasch. She would, it seemed, rather have
no news at all of de Casimir than learn it from the old soldier, for
she quitted the room without even troubling to throw him a glance of
disdain.

Barlasch waited with working lips until the sound of her footsteps
ceased on the stairs. Then he pushed across the kitchen table a piece of
writ