Here this lame man, a cobbler by trade, plying his quiet calling in
a house in the Neuer Markt, where the lime-trees grow close to the
upper windows, had patiently kept watch for three days. He was,
like many lame men, of an abnormal width and weight. He had a
large, square, dogged face, which seemed to promise that he would
wait there till the crack of doom rather than abandon a quest.
It was very cold--mid-winter within a few miles of the frozen Baltic
on the very verge of Russia, at that point where old Europe
stretches a long arm out into the unknown. The cobbler was wrapped
in a sheepskin coat, which stood out all round him with the
stiffness of wood, so that he seemed to be living inside a box. To
keep himself warm he occasionally limped across from end to end of
the bridge, but never went farther. At times he leant his arms on
the stone wall at the Kant Strasse end of the bridge, and looked
down into the Lower Fish Market, where women from Pillau and the
Baltic shores--mere bundles of clothes--stood over their baskets of
fish frozen hard like sticks. It was a silent market. One cannot
haggle long when a minute's exposure to the air will give a frost-
bite to the end of the nose. The would-be purchaser can scarcely
make an effective bargain through a fringe of icicles that rattle
against his lips if he open them.
The Pregel had been frozen for three months, with only the one
temporary thaw in November which cost Napoleon so many thousands at
his broken bridge across the Beresina.
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