the bustlers there are almost indifferent, though a few may feel a
passing pang of jealousy. They may perhaps remember our name, and
will soon forget what we discovered--which is Fame. While we are
falling over each other to attain this, and dying to tell each other
what it feels like when we have it, or think we have it, let us
pause for a moment and think of an ant--who kept a diary.

Desiree did not keep a diary. 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.

Desiree remembered the siege and the occupation of Dantzig by French
troops. She was at school in the Jopengasse when the Treaty of
Tilsit--that peace which was nothing but a pause--was concluded.
She had seen Luisa of Prussia, the good Queen who baffled Napoleon.
Her childhood had passed away in the roar of siege-guns. Her
girlhood, in the Frauengasse, had been marked by the various woes of
Prussia, by each successive step in the development of Napoleon's
ambition. There were no bogey-men in the night-nursery at the
beginning of the century. One Aaron's rod of a bogey had swallowed
all the rest, and children buried their sobs in the pillow for fear
of Napoleon. There were no ghosts in the dark corners of the stairs
when Desiree, candle in hand, went to bed at eight o'clock, half an
hour before Mathilde. The shadows on the wall were the shadows of
soldiers--the wind roaring in the chimney was like the sound of
distant cannon. When the timid glanced over their shoulders, the