hands to the crowd. Others, who had known
the tragedy of Vilna and Kowno, stumbled on in stubborn silence still
doubting that Dantzig stood--that they were at last in sight of food and
warmth and rest.

"Is that all?" men asked each other in astonishment. For the last
stragglers had crossed the new Mottlau before the head of the procession
had reached the Grune Brucke.

"If I had such an army as that," said a stout Dantziger, "I should bring
it into the city quietly, after dusk."

But the majority were silent, remembering the departure of these
men--the triumph, the glory, and the hope. For a great catastrophe is
a curtain that for a moment shuts out all history and makes the human
family little children again who can but cower and hold each other's
hands in the dark.

"Where are the guns?" asked one.

"And the baggage?" suggested another.

"And the treasure of Moscow?" whispered a Jew with cunning eyes, who had
hidden behind his neighbour when Rapp glanced in his direction.

Emerging on the bridge, the General glanced at the old Mottlau. A crowd
was collected on it. The citizens no longer used the bridges but crossed
without fear where they pleased, and heavy sleighs passed up and down as
on a high-road. Rapp saw it, made a grimace, and, turning in his saddle,
spoke to his neighbour, an engineer officer, who was to make an immortal
name and die in Dantzig.

The Mottlau was one of the chief defences of the city, but instead of a
river the Governor found a high-road!

Rapp alone seemed to look about him with the air of one who knew his
whereabouts. In the straggling trail of men behind him, not one in a
hundred looked for a friendly face. Some stared in front of them with
lifeless eyes, while others, with a little spirit plucked up at the
end of a weary march, glanced up at the gabled houses with the interest
called forth by the first sight of a new city.

It was not until long afterwards that the world, piecing together
information purposely delayed and details carefully falsified, knew that
of the four hundred thousand men who marched triumphantly to the Niemen,
only twenty thousand recrossed that river six months later, and of these
two-thirds had never seen Moscow.

Rapp, whose bloodshot eyes searched the crowd of faces turned towards
him, recognized a number of people. To Mathilde he bowed gravely, and
with a kindlier glance turned in his saddle to bow again to Desiree.
They hardly heeded him, but wit