It was addressed to Desiree, and sealed
carefully with a wafer.
"She may as well have it," he said. "It will be as well that she
should be occupied with her own affairs."
CHAPTER VIII. A VISITATION.
Be wiser than other people if you can, but do not tell them so.
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 the room behind the
kitchen in the Frauengasse, he smote himself sharply on the brow, as
if calling upon his brain to make an effort. But afterwards he
seemed to resign himself to this lapse of memory, and the upward
despairing nod gradually lost intensity until at last he brought
himself to pass Antoine Sebastian in the narrow passage with no more
emphatic notice than a scowl.
"You and I," he said to Desiree, "are the friends. The others--"
And his gesture seemed to permit the others to go hang if they so
desired. The army had gone forward, leaving Dantzig in that idle
restlessness which holds those who, finding themselves in a house of
sickness, are not permitted entry to the darkened chamber, but must
await the crisis elsewhere.
There were some busy enough in the commerce that must exist between
a huge army and its base, in the forwarding of war material and
stores, in accommodating the sick and sending out in return those
who were to fill the gaps.
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