Barlasch of the Guard

“It is,” he explained, “because to-night we shall be under fire. We shall be in danger. It makes me afraid, and I laugh. I cannot help it. When I am afraid, I laugh.”

Charles Darragon had come to Dantzig a year earlier. He was a lieutenant in an infantry regiment, and he was twenty-five. Many of his contemporaries were colonels in these days...

Love, it is said, is blind. But hatred is as bad. In Antoine Sebastian hatred of Napoleon had not only blinded eyes far-seeing enough in earlier days, but it had killed many nat...

There are quite a number of people who get through life without realizing their own insignificance. Ninety-nine out of a hundred persons signify nothing, and the hundredth is us...

Charles, having given his letter to the sentry with the order to take it to its immediate destination, turned towards the stairs again. In those days an order was given in a dif...

Whenever Papa Barlasch caught sight of his unwilling host's face, he turned his own aside with a despairing upward nod. Once or twice, during the early days of his occupation of...

War is the gambling of kings. Napoleon, the arch-gambler, from that Southern sea where men, lacking cards or dice and the money to buy either, will yet play a game of chance wit...

Nearly two years had passed since the death of Queen Luisa of Prussia. And she from her grave yet spake to her people--as sixty years later she was destined to speak to another...

It was said that Colonel de Casimir--that guest whose presence and uniform lent an air of distinction to the quiet wedding in the Frauengasse--was a Pole from Cracow. Men also w...

It is to be presumed that Colonel de Casimir met friends at the reception given by Governor Rapp in the great rooms of the Rathhaus. For there were many Poles present, and not a...

The days were short, and November was drawing to its end when Barlasch returned to Dantzig. Already the frost, holding its own against a sun that seemed to linger in the North t...

While the Dantzigers with grave faces discussed the news of Borodino beneath the trees in the Frauengasse, Charles Darragon, white with dust, rose in his stirrups to catch the f...

Mathilde listened coldly to the conventional excuses. So few people recognize the simple fact that they need never apologize for going away. Sebastian stood at the head of the s...

Barlasch was never more sober in his life than when he emerged a minute later from his room, while Lisa was still feverishly bolting the door. He had not wasted much time at his...

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 du...

“It is time to do something,” said Papa Barlasch on the December morning when the news reached Dantzig that Napoleon was no longer with the army--that he had made over the parod...

The door of the room stood open, and the sound of a step in the passage made Desiree glance up, as she hastily put together the papers found on the battlefield of Borodino.

“Why I will not let you go out into the streets?” said Barlasch one February morning, stamping the snow from his boots. “Why I will not let you go out into the streets?”

Louis d'Arragon knew the road well enough from Konigsberg to the Niemen. It runs across a plain, flat as a table, through which many small streams seek their rivers in winding b...

Rapp found himself in a stronghold which was strong in theory only. For the frozen river formed the easiest possible approach, instead of an insuperable barrier to the enemy. He...

During the first weeks of December the biting wind abated for a time, and immediately the snow came. It fell for days, until at length the grey sky seemed exhausted; for the fla...

A few children had congregated on the steps of the Marienkirche at Dantzig, because the door stood open. The verger, old Peter Koch--on week days a locksmith--had told them that...

In the mean time the last of the Great Army had reached the Niemen, that narrow winding river in its ditch-like bed sunk below the level of the tableland, to which six months ea...

Mathilde had told Desiree that Colonel de Casimir made no mention of Charles in his letter to her. Barlasch was able to supply but little further information on the matter.

There are many who overlook the fact that in Northern lands, more especially in such plains as Lithuania, Courland, and Poland, travel in winter is easier than at any other time...

Desiree did not answer. She was sitting in the little kitchen at the back of the house in the Frauengasse. For they had no firing now, and were burning the furniture. Her father...

Desiree was telling Mathilde the brief news of her futile journey, when a knock at the front door made them turn from the stairs where they were standing. It was Sebastian's kno...

Desiree had made all her own wedding-clothes. “Her poor little marriage-basket,” she called it. She had even made the cake which was now cut with some ceremony by her father.

“Ah! madame,” he said. “You see me in a sorry state. I have been very ill.” And he made a gesture with one hand, begging her to overlook his unkempt appearance and the disorder...

A lame man was standing on the bridge that crosses the Neuer Pregel from the Kant Strasse--which is the centre of the city of Konigsberg--to the island known as the Kneiphof. Th...