<p>The prudent magistrate, recognizing the gravity of the crisis through
which his friend was passing, refrained from asking questions or
exciting him further, and grew impatient of the length of the way to the
chateau, for the change wrought in the Colonel's face alarmed him. He
feared lest the Countess' terrible disease had communicated itself to
Philip's brain. When they reached the avenue at l'Isle-Adam, d'Albon
sent the servant for the local doctor, so that the Colonel had scarcely
been laid in bed before the surgeon was beside him.</p>
<p>"If Monsieur le Colonel had not been fasting, the shock must have killed
him," pronounced the leech. "He was over-tired, and that saved him," and
with a few directions as to the patient's treatment, he went to prepare
a composing draught himself. M. de Sucy was better the next morning, but
the doctor had insisted on sitting up all night with him.</p>
<p>"I confess, Monsieur le Marquis," the surgeon said, "that I feared for
the brain. M. de Sucy has had some very violent shock; he is a man of
strong passions, but, with his temperament, the first shock decides
everything. He will very likely be out of danger to-morrow."</p>
<p>The doctor was perfectly right. The next day the patient was allowed to
see his friend.</p>
<p>"I want you to do something for me, dear d'Albon," Philip said, grasping
his friend's hand. "Hasten at once to the Minorite convent, find out
everything about the lady whom we saw there, and come back as soon as
you can; I shall count the minutes till I see you again."</p>
<p>M. d'Albon called for his horse, and galloped over to the old monastery.
When he reached the gateway he found some one standing there, a tall,
spare man with a kindly face, who answered in the affirmative when he
was asked if he lived in the ruined house. M. d'Albon explained his
errand.</p>
<p>"Why, then, it must have been you, sir, who fired that unlucky shot! You
all but killed my poor invalid."</p>
<p>"Eh! I fired into the air!"</p>
<p>"If you had actually hit Madame la Comtesse, you would have done less
harm to her."</p>
<p>"Well, well, then, we can neither of us complain, for the sight of the
Countess all but killed my friend, M. de Sucy."</p>
<p>"The Baron de Sucy, is it possible?" cried the doctor, clasping his
hands. "Has he been in Russia? was he in the Beresina?"</p>
<p>"Yes," answered d'Albon. "He was taken prisoner by the Cossacks and sent
to Siberia. He has not been back in this country a twelvemonth."</p>
<p>"Come in, monsieur," said the other, and he led the way to a
drawing-room on the ground-floor. Everything in the room showed signs of
capricious destruction.</p>
<p>Valuable china jars lay in fragments on either side of a clock beneath a
glass shade, which had escaped. The silk hangings about the windows were
torn to rags, while the muslin curtains were untouched.</p>
<p>"You see about you the havoc wrought by a charming being to whom I
have dedicated my life. She is my niece; and though medical science
is powerless in her case, I hope to restore her to reason, though the
method which I am trying is, unluckily, only possible to the wealthy."</p>
<p>Then, like all who live much alone and daily bear the burden of a heavy
trouble, he fell to talk with the magistrate. This is the story that he
told, set in order, and with the many digressions made by both teller
and hearer omitted.</p>
<p>When, at nine o'clock at night, on the 28th of November 1812, Marshal
Victor abandoned the heights of Studzianka, which he had held through
the day, he left a thousand men behind with instructions to protect,
till the last possible moment, the two pontoon bridges over the Beresina
that still held good. This rear guard was to save if possible an
appalling number of stragglers, so numbed with the cold, that they
obstinately refused to leave the baggage-wagons. The heroism of the
generous band was doomed to fail; for, unluckily, the men who poured
down to the eastern bank of the Beresina found carriages, caissons, and
all kinds of property which the Army had been forced to abandon during
its passage on the 27th and 28th days of November. The poor, half-frozen
wretches, sunk almost to the level of brutes, finding such unhoped-for
riches, bivouacked in the deserted space, laid hands on the military
stores, improvised huts out of the material, lighted fires with anything
that would burn, cut up the carcasses of the horses for food, tore out
the linings of the carriages, wrapped themselves in them, and lay
down to sleep instead of crossing the Beresina in peace under cover of
night—the Beresina that even then had proved, by incredible fatality,
so disastrous to the Army. Such apathy on the part of the poor fellows
can only be understood by those who remember tramping across those vast
deserts of snow, with nothing to quench their thirst but snow, snow for
their bed, snow as far as the horizon on every side, and no food but
snow, a little frozen beetroot, horseflesh, or a handful of meal.</p>
<p>The miserable creatures were dropping down, overcome by hunger, thirst,
weariness, and sleep, when they reached the shores of the Beresina and
found fuel and fire and victuals, countless wagons and tents, a whole
improvised town, in short. The whole village of Studzianka had been
removed piecemeal from the heights of the plain, and the very perils and
miseries of this dangerous and doleful habitation smiled invitingly to
the wayfarers, who beheld no prospect beyond it but the awful Russian
deserts. A huge hospice, in short, was erected for twenty hours of
existence. Only one thought—the thought of rest—appealed to men weary
of life or rejoicing in unlooked-for comfort.</p>
<p>They lay right in the line of fire from the cannon of the Russian
left; but to that vast mass of human creatures, a patch upon the
snow, sometimes dark, sometimes breaking into flame, the indefatigable
grapeshot was but one discomfort the more. For them it was only a storm,
and they paid the less attention to the bolts that fell among them
because there were none to strike down there save dying men, the
wounded, or perhaps the dead. Stragglers came up in little bands at
every moment. These walking corpses instantly separated, and wandered
begging from fire to fire; and meeting, for the most part, with
refusals, banded themselves together again, and took by force what
they could not otherwise obtain. They were deaf to the voices of their
officers prophesying death on the morrow, and spent the energy required
to cross the swamp in building shelters for the night and preparing a
meal that often proved fatal. The coming death no longer seemed an evil,
for it gave them an hour of slumber before it came. Hunger and thirst
and cold—these were evils, but not death.</p>
<p>At last wood and fuel and canvas and shelters failed, and hideous brawls
began between destitute late comers and the rich already in possession
of a lodging. The weaker were driven away, until a few last fugitives
before the Russian advance were obliged to make their bed in the snow,
and lay down to rise no more.</p>
<p>Little by little the mass of half-dead humanity became so dense, so
deaf, so torpid,—or perhaps it should be said so happy—that Marshal
Victor, their heroic defender against twenty thousand Russians under
Wittgenstein, was actually compelled to cut his way by force through
this forest of men, so as to cross the Beresina with the five thousand
heroes whom he was leading to the Emperor. The miserable creatures
preferred to be trampled and crushed to death rather than stir from
their places, and died without a sound, smiling at the dead ashes of
their fires, forgetful of France.</p>
<p>Not before ten o'clock that night did the Duc de Belluno reach the other
side of the river. Before committing his men to the pontoon bridges that
led to Zembin, he left the fate of the rearguard at Studzianka in Eble's
hands, and to Eble the survivors of the calamities of the Beresina owed
their lives.</p>
<p>About midnight, the great General, followed by a courageous officer,
came out of his little hut by the bridge, and gazed at the spectacle
of this camp between the bank of the Beresina and the Borizof road to
Studzianka. The thunder of the Russian cannonade had ceased. Here
and there faces that had nothing human about them were lighted up by
countless fires that seemed to grow pale in the glare of the snowfields,
and to give no light. Nearly thirty thousand wretches, belonging to
every nation that Napoleon had hurled upon Russia, lay there hazarding
their lives with the indifference of brute beasts.</p>
<p>"We have all these to save," the General said to his subordinate.
"To-morrow morning the Russians will be in Studzianka. The moment they
come up we shall have to set fire to the bridge; so pluck up heart,
my boy! Make your way out and up yonder through them, and tell General
Fournier that he has barely time to evacuate his post and cut his way
through to the bridge. As soon as you have seen him set out, follow
him down, take some able-bodied men, and set fire to the tents, wagons,
caissons, carriages, anything and everything, without pity, and drive
these fellows on to the bridge. Compel everything that walks on two legs
to take refuge on the other bank. We must set fire to the camp; it
is our last resource. If Berthier had let me burn those d——d wagons
sooner, no lives need have been lost in the river except my poor
pontooners, my fifty heroes, who saved the Army, and will be forgotten."</p>
<p>The General passed his hand over his forehead and said no more. He felt
that Poland would be his tomb, and foresaw that afterwards no voice
would be raised to speak for the noble fellows who had plunged into the
stream—into the waters of the Beresina!—to drive in the piles for the
bridges. And, indeed, only one of them is living now, or, to be more
accurate, starving, utterly forgotten in a country village![*] The
brave officer had scarcely gone a hundred paces towards Studzianka, when
General Eble roused some of his patient pontooners, and began his work
of mercy by setting fire to the camp on the side nearest the bridge, so
compelling the sleepers to rise and cross the Beresina. Meanwhile the
young aide-de-camp, not without difficulty, reached the one wooden house
yet left standing in Studzianka.</p>
<p>[*] This story can be found in <i>The Country Parson</i>.—eBook<br/>
preparers.<br/></p>
<p>"So the box is pretty full, is it, messmate?" he said to a man whom he
found outside.</p>
<p>"You will be a knowing fellow if you manage to get inside," the officer
returned, without turning round or stopping his occupation of hacking at
the woodwork of the house with his sabre.</p>
<p>"Philip, is that you?" cried the aide-de-camp, recognizing the voice of
one of his friends.</p>
<p>"Yes. Aha! is it you, old fellow?" returned M. de Sucy, looking round at
the aide-de-camp, who like himself was not more than twenty-three years
old. "I fancied you were on the other side of this confounded river.
Do you come to bring us sweetmeats for dessert? You will get a warm
welcome," he added, as he tore away a strip of bark from the wood and
gave it to his horse by way of fodder.</p>
<p>"I am looking for your commandant. General Eble has sent me to tell him
to file off to Zembin. You have only just time to cut your way through
that mass of dead men; as soon as you get through, I am going to set
fire to the place to make them move—"</p>
<p>"You almost make me feel warm! Your news has put me in a fever; I have
two friends to bring through. Ah! but for those marmots, I should have
been dead before now, old fellow. On their account I am taking care
of my horse instead of eating him. But have you a crust about you, for
pity's sake? It is thirty hours since I have stowed any victuals. I have
been fighting like a madman to keep up a little warmth in my body and
what courage I have left."</p>
<p>"Poor Philip! I have nothing—not a scrap!—But is your General in
there?"</p>
<p>"Don't attempt to go in. The barn is full of our wounded. Go up a bit
higher, and you will see a sort of pig-sty to the right—that is where
the General is. Good-bye, my dear fellow. If ever we meet again in a
quadrille in a ballroom in Paris—"</p>
<p>He did not finish the sentence, for the treachery of the northeast wind
that whistled about them froze Major Philip's lips, and the aide-de-camp
kept moving for fear of being frost-bitten. Silence soon prevailed,
scarcely broken by the groans of the wounded in the barn, or the stifled
sounds made by M. de Sucy's horse crunching on the frozen bark with
famished eagerness. Philip thrust his sabre into the sheath, caught at
the bridle of the precious animal that he had managed to keep for so
long, and drew her away from the miserable fodder that she was bolting
with apparent relish.</p>
<p>"Come along, Bichette! come along! It lies with you now, my beauty, to
save Stephanie's life. There, wait a little longer, and they will let us
lie down and die, no doubt;" and Philip, wrapped in a pelisse, to which
doubtless he owed his life and energies, began to run, stamping his feet
on the frozen snow to keep them warm. He was scarce five hundred paces
away before he saw a great fire blazing on the spot where he had left
his carriage that morning with an old soldier to guard it. A dreadful
misgiving seized upon him. Many a man under the influence of a powerful
feeling during the Retreat summoned up energy for his friend's sake when
he would not have exerted himself to save his own life; so it was with
Philip. He soon neared a hollow, where he had left a carriage sheltered
from the cannonade, a carriage that held a young woman, his playmate in
childhood, dearer to him than any one else on earth.</p>
<div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />