"No details?" asked Mathilde in a muffled voice, without looking
round.
"No," answered Desiree, who had noticed nothing. How much more
clearly we should understand what is going on around us if we had no
secrets of our own to defend!
In obedience to Sebastian's gesture, D'Arragon took a chair, and
even as he did so Mathilde came to the table, calm and mistress of
herself again, to pour out the coffee, and do the honours of the
simple meal. D'Arragon, besides having acquired the seamen's habit
of adapting himself unconsciously and unobtrusively to his
surroundings, was of a direct mind, lacking self-consciousness, and
simplified by the pressure of a strong and steady purpose. For
men's minds are like the atmosphere, which is always cleared by a
steady breeze, while a changing wind generates vapours, mist,
uncertainty.
"And what news do you bring from the sea?" asked Sebastian. "Is
your sky there as overcast as ours in Dantzig?"
"No, Monsieur, our sky is clearing," answered D'Arragon, eating with
a hearty appetite the fresh bread and butter set before him. "Since
I saw you, the treaties have been signed, as you doubtless know,
between Sweden and Russia and England."
Nodding his head with silent emphasis, Sebastian gave it to be
understood that he knew that and more.
"It makes a great difference to us at sea in the Baltic," said
D'Arragon. "We are no longer harassed night and day, like a dog,
hounded from end to end of a hostile street, not daring to look into
any doorway.
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