Barlasch of the Guard quotes

It was Désirée who at length made a movement to continue their way towards her father’s house.

“Well,” she said with a slight laugh, “he was not bidden to my wedding, but he has come all the same.”

Others laughed as they followed her. For a bride at the church-door, or a judge on the bench, or a criminal on the scaffold-steps, need make but a very small joke to cause merriment. Laughter is often nothing but the froth of tears.

Others laughed as they followed her. For a bride at the church-door, or a judge on the bench, or a criminal on the scaffold-steps, need make but a very small joke to cause merriment.

Laughter is often nothing but the froth of tears.

There were faces suddenly bleached in the little group of wedding-guests, and none were whiter than the handsome features of Mathilde Sebastian, Désirée’s elder sister, who looked angry, had frowned at the children, and seemed to find this simple wedding too bourgeois for her taste.

He shrugged his shoulders and spread out his arms as far as his many burdens allowed. For he was hung round with a hundred parcels and packages.

“The Old Guard,” he said, “can always make itself understood.”

He rubbed his hands together with the air of a brisk man ready for any sort of work.

Barlasch held up a reproving hand. The question, he seemed to think, was not quite delicate.

“I pay my own,” he said. “Give and take⁠—that is my motto. When you have nothing to give⁠ ⁠… offer a smile.”

With a gesture he indicated the bundle of firewood which Désirée still absentmindedly carried against her white dress. He turned and opened a cupboard low down on the floor at the left-hand side of the fireplace.

“I am a poor devil of a lieutenant,” he said, “that is all.”

Reserve is fatal to popularity, yet friendship cannot exist without it.

Charles had, it seemed, nothing to hide, and was indifferent to the secrets of others. It is such people who receive many confidences.

Charles, of course, fell in love with Mathilde, and out again after half-an-hour’s conversation. There was something cold and calculating about Mathilde which held him at arm’s length with as much efficacy as the strictest duenna.

Indeed, there are some maidens who require no better chaperon for their hearts than their own heads.

A few days after this introduction Charles met Mathilde and Désirée in the Langgasse, and he fell in love with Désirée. He went about for a whole week seeking opportunity to tell her without delay what had happened to him.

Désirée laughed and said that he was progressing rather rapidly. She had only her instinct to guide her through these troubled waters; which was much better than experience.

Experience in a woman is tantamount to a previous conviction against a prisoner.

Charles was grave, however; a rare tribute. He was in love for the first time, which often makes men quite honest for a brief period—even unselfish. Of course, some men are honest and unselfish all their lives;

This was, moreover, not the day of display or snobbery. The king of snobs, Louis XVI, had died to some purpose, for a wave of manliness had swept across human thought at the beginning of the century.

The world has rarely been the poorer for the demise of a Bourbon.

The Frauengasse knew that Antoine Sebastian played the fiddle to gain his daily bread, while his two daughters taught dancing for that same safest and most satisfactory of all motives.

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 usually so absorbed in the message which he has been sent into the world to deliver that he loses sight of the messenger altogether.

Her life was too busy for ink. She had had to work for her daily bread, which is better than riches. Her life had been full of occupation from morning till night, and God had given her sleep from night till morning.

It is better to work for others than to think for them.

Some day the world will learn to have a greater respect for the workers than for the thinkers, who are idle, wordy persons, frequently thinking wrong.

He was, it seemed, a man who as yet touched life lightly; for he was quite young. But, nevertheless, his pen, urged by only half a mind that had all the energy of spring, flew over the paper.

Sowing is so much easier than reaping.

Suddenly he threw his pen aside and moved quickly to the window which stood open. The shoemaker had gone out, closing the door softly behind him.

For de Casimir held a high position in Danzig. She was quite ready to like him since Charles liked him; but she intended to do so at her own range.

It is always the woman who measures the distance.

Désirée made a little movement as if to continue on her way; and de Casimir instantly stood aside, with a bow.

Mathilde made a little movement towards him which she instantly repressed.

The heart is quicker, but the head nearly always has the last word.

“Mademoiselle,” he said—and no doubt he saw the movement and the restraint—“will you help me now at the beginning of the war, and listen to me again at the end of it—if I succeed?”

He looked at her fiercely beneath his shaggy eyebrows.

“It is no use to be afraid,” he said; “you are afraid⁠—I see it in your face. And it is never any use. Before they hammered on that door there, my legs shook. For I am easily afraid⁠—I. But it is never any use. And when one opens the door, it goes.”

He looked at her with a puzzled frown, seeking in vain, it may have been, the ordinary symptoms of fear. She was hesitating but not afraid.

It was an odd way of wooing, but this man rarely made a mistake.

There are many women who, like Mathilde Sebastian, are readier to love success than console failure.

“See,” he said, after a moment’s hesitation, opening another drawer in his writing-table, “before I went away I had intended to ask you to remember me.”

He clasped the diamonds round her throat, and they glittered on the poor, cheap dress, which was the best she had. She looked down at them with a catching breath, and for an instant the glitter was reflected in her eyes.

She had come asking for reassurance, and he gave her diamonds; which is an old tale told over and over again.

For in human love we have to accept not what we want, but what is given to us.

She had come asking for reassurance, and he gave her diamonds; which is an old tale told over and over again.

For in human love we have to accept not what we want, but what is given to us.

“No one in Danzig,” he said, “is so glad to hear that your father has escaped as I am.”

It is only in war that the unexpected admittedly happens. In love and other domestic calamities there is always a relative who knew it all the time.

The news that Napoleon was in Vilna, hastily evacuated by the Russians in full retreat, came as a surprise and not to all as a pleasant one, in Danzig.

Lisa was in heart and person that which is comprehensively called motherly. She saw perhaps some pathos in the sight of this rugged man—worn by travel, bent with hardship and many wounds, past his work—shouldering his haversack and trudging off to the war.

“The wave moves on,” he said, making a gesture, and a sound illustrating that watery progress.

“And Danzig will soon be forgotten. You will be left in peace—but we go on to—” He paused and shrugged his shoulders while attending to a strap. “India or the devil,” he concluded.

… top shelf to be taken down and read on a future day (which will never come), to such the explanation is due that this battle of Borodino is here touched upon because it changed the current of some lives with which we have to deal.

For battles and revolutions and historical events of any sort are the jagged instruments with which Fate rough-hews our lives, leaving us to shape them as we will.

In other days, no doubt, men rough-hewed, while Fate shaped.

“No,” answered Désirée, 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 Danzig?”

“At first a victory is always a great one,” said D’Arragon, looking towards the window.

“It is so easy to ring a bell,” added Sebastian, with his rare smile.

He was quite himself this morning, and only once did the dull look arrest his features into the stony stillness which his daughters knew.

The man held up one finger over his shoulder without looking round, and shook it from side to side, as not desiring to be interrupted.

“The cellar,” he answered, “always the cellar. It is human nature. We get it from the animals.”

He glanced round as he worked, and, perceiving that he had been addressing an officer, he scrambled to his feet with a grumbled curse. He was an old man, baked by the sun. The wrinkles in his face were filled with dust.

In a surprisingly short time he came back, the greyness all gone from his face, though his eyes still glittered with the dry, hard light of starvation. He went back to the chair near the door, and sat down.

“Seven hundred miles,” he said, looking down at his feet with a shake of the head, “seven hundred miles in six weeks.”

Then he glanced at her and out through the open door, to make sure none could overhear.

Then he glanced at her and out through the open door, to make sure none could overhear.

“Because I was afraid,” he added in a whisper. “I am easily frightened. I am not brave.”

Désirée shook her head and laughed. Women have from all time accepted the theory that a uniform makes a man courageous.

Désirée shook her head and laughed.

Women have from all time accepted the theory that a uniform makes a man courageous.

“They had to abandon the guns,” he went on, “soon after quitting Moscow. The horses were starving. There was a steep hill, and the guns were left at the bottom. Then I began to be afraid.

From Paris came news of a growing discontent.

For France, among a multitude of virtues, has one vice unpardonable to Northern men: she turns from a fallen friend.

Soon followed the news of Bérésina—a poor little river of Lithuania—where the history of the world hung for a day as on a thread. But a flash of the dying genius surmounted superhuman difficulties, and the catastrophe was turned into a disaster.

There was so much in the simple answer that Désirée fell into a train of thought. It did not seem much for her to do, and yet it was all.

For it summed up in six words a woman’s life: to wait till she is found.

“I shall wait in Danzig,” she said at length.

“Do you think it is any good trying?” she asked, with a short laugh.

“It is no good trying unless you mean to succeed,” he answered lightly.

She laughed a second time and lingered, though Barlasch was calling her to come.

Love, it is said, is blind. But hatred is as bad. In Antoine Sebastian hatred of Napoleon had not only blinded eyes farseeing enough in earlier days, but it had killed many natural affections. Love, too, may easily die—from a surfeit or a famine.

Hatred never dies; it only sleeps.

Sebastian’s hatred was all awake now. It was aroused by the disasters that had befallen Napoleon; of which disasters the Russian campaign was only one small part. For he who stands above all his compeers must expect them to fall upon him should he stumble.

Sebastian was not carried off his feet by the great events of the last six months. They only rendered him steadier. For he had waited a lifetime. It is only a sudden success that dazzles.

Long waiting nearly always ensures a wise possession.

Sebastian, like all men absorbed in a great thought, was neglectful of his social and domestic obligations. Has it not been shown that he allowed Mathilde and Désirée to support him by giving dancing lessons?

“There is nothing in my mind,” she answered gaily.

“Then there is something in your heart, and that is worse!” said Barlasch, which made Désirée look at him doubtfully.

They had done forty miles with the same horses, and were nearly halfway. For some hours the road had followed the course of the Vistula on the high tableland above the river, and would so continue until they reached Thorn.

And he was no doubt right; this man of quick perception.

Is it not from our nearest relative that our dearest secret is usually withheld?

“You cannot find another messenger?” asked De Casimir, and the anxiety in his face was genuine enough.

“Would you have me weep?” she asked.

“It would hurt one less,” said Barlasch, attending to his horses.

They were in the town now, and the narrow streets were crowded. Many sick and wounded were dragging themselves wearily along. A few carts, drawn by starving horses, went slowly down the hill.

He had changed lately. From a man of dreams he had been transformed into a man of action. It is customary to designate a man of action as a hard man.

Custom is the brick wall against which feeble minds come to a standstill and hinder the progress of the world.

Sebastian had been softened by action, through which his mental energy had found an outlet. But tonight he was his old self again—hard, scornful, incomprehensible.

He paused and rubbed his chest tenderly.

“Never eat horse without salt,” he put in parenthetically.

“I hope never to eat it at all,” answered Désirée. “What about Colonel de Casimir?”

And he went out muttering anathemas on the hearts of all women.

“It seems,” he said, “that a woman can love anything.”

Which is true; and a very good thing for some of us. For without that Heaven-sent capacity the world could not go on at all.

“It seems,” he said, “that a woman can love anything.”

Which is true; and a very good thing for some of us. For without that Heaven-sent capacity the world could not go on at all.

It was later in the day when Barlasch made his way into the low and smoke-grimed Bier Halle of the Weissen Röss’l. He must have known Sebastian’s habits, for he went straight to that corner of the great room where the violin-player usually sat.

“You mean you will steal them,” suggested Sebastian, not without a ring of contempt in his mincing voice.

“A soldier never steals,” answered Barlasch, carelessly announcing a great truth.

Sebastian laughed. It was obvious that his mind, absorbed in great thought, heeded small things not at all. His companion pushed his fur cap to the back of his head, and ruffled his hair forward.

The cobbler, by reason of looking at the lower end of men, attracted little attention from the passerby.

He who has his eyes on the ground passes unheeded.

For the surest way of awakening interest is to appear interested. It would seem that this cobbler was waiting for a pair of boots not made in Königsberg.

“But that does not suffice,” answered the materialist.

“It does not suffice to swallow evil fortune⁠—one must digest it.”

Sebastian made no answer. He was a quiet patient, and lay all day with wide-open, dreaming eyes. He seemed to be waiting for something. This, indeed, was his mental attitude as presented to his neighbours, and perhaps to the few friends he possessed in Danzig.

But Louis shook his head, and they passed on. At midday the officer was relieved, his place being taken by another, who bowed stiffly to Louis and took no more notice of him.

For war either hardens or softens. It never leaves a man as it found him.

All day the work was carried on. Through the hours this procession of the bearded dead went silently by. At the invitation of a sergeant, Louis took some soup and bread from the soldiers’ table. The men laughingly apologized for the quality of both.