"Pistols, yes," replied the grenadier. "But as for that horse-cloth,
no! here's a poor fellow afoot, with nothing in his stomach for two

days, and shivering in his rags. It is our general."
Philippe kept silence as he looked at the man, whose boots were worn

out, his trousers torn in a dozen places, while nothing but a ragged
fatigue-cap covered with ice was on his head. He hastened, however, to

take his pistols. Five men dragged the mare to the fire, and cut her
up with the dexterity of a Parisian butcher. The pieces were instantly

seized and flung upon the embers.
The major went up to the young woman, who had uttered a cry on

recognizing him. He found her motionless, seated on a cushion beside
the fire. She looked at him silently, without smiling. Philippe then

saw the soldier to whom he had confided the carriage; the man was
wounded. Overcome by numbers, he had been forced to yield to the

malingerers who attacked him; and, like the dog who defended to the
last possible moment his master's dinner, he had taken his share of

the booty, and was now sitting beside the fire, wrapped in a white
sheet by way of cloak, and turning carefully on the embers a slice of

the mare. Philippe saw upon his face the joy these preparations gave
him. The Comte de Vandieres, who, for the last few days, had fallen

into a state of second childhood, was seated on a cushion beside his
wife, looking fixedly at the fire, which was beginning to thaw his

torpid limbs. He had shown no emotion of any kind, either at
Philippe's danger, or at the fight which ended in the pillage of the

carriage and their expulsion from it.
At first de Sucy took the hand of the young countess, as if to show

her his affection, and the grief he felt at seeing her reduced to such
utter misery; then he grew silent; seated beside her on a heap of snow

which was turning into a rivulet as it melted, he yielded himself up
to the happiness of being warm, forgetting their peril, forgetting all

things. His face assumed, in spite of himself, an expression of almost
stupid joy, and he waited with impatience until the fragment of the

mare given to his orderly was cooked. The smell of the roasting flesh
increased his hunger, and his hunger silenced his heart, his courage,

and his love. He looked, without anger, at the results of the pillage
of his carriage. All the men seated around the fire had shared his

blankets, cushions, pelisses, robes, also the clothing of the Comte
and Comtesse de Vandieres and his own. Philippe looked about him to

see if there was anything left in or near the vehicle that was worth
saving. By the light of the flames he saw gold and diamonds and plate

scattered everywhere, no one having thought it worth his while to take
any.

Each of the individuals collected by chance around this fire
maintained a silence that was almost horrible, and did nothing but

what he judged necessary for his own welfare. Their misery was even
grotesque. Faces, discolored by cold, were covered with a layer of

mud, on which tears had made a furrow from the eyes to the beard,
showing the thickness of that miry mask. The filth of their long

beards made these men still more repulsive. Some were wrapped in the
countess's shawls, others wore the trappings of horses and muddy

saddlecloths, or masses of rags from which the hoar-frost hung; some
had a boot on one leg and a shoe on the other; in fact, there were

none whose costume did not present some laughable singularity. But in
presence of such amusing sights the men themselves were grave and

gloomy. The silence was broken only by the snapping of the wood, the
crackling of the flames, the distant murmur of the camps, and the

blows of the sabre given to what remained of Bichette in search of her
tenderest morsels. A few miserable creatures, perhaps more weary than

the rest, were sleeping; when one of their number rolled into the fire
no one attempted to help him out. These stern logicians argued that if

he were not dead his burns would warn him to find a safer place. If
the poor wretch waked in the flames and perished, no one cared. Two or

three soldiers looked at each other to justify their own indifference
by that of others. Twice this scene had taken place before the eyes of

the countess, who said nothing. When the various pieces of Bichette,
placed here and there upon the embers, were sufficiently broiled, each

man satisfied his hunger with the gluttony that disgusts us when we
see it in animals.

"This is the first time I ever saw thirty infantrymen on one horse,"
cried the grenadier who had shot the mare.

It was the only jest made that night which proved the national
character.

Soon the great number of these poor soldiers wrapped themselves in
what they could find and lay down on planks, or whatever would keep

them from contact with the snow, and slept, heedless of the morrow.
When the major was warm, and his hunger appeased, an invincible desire

to sleep weighed down his eyelids. During the short moment of his
struggle against that desire he looked at the young woman, who had

turned her face to the fire and was now asleep, leaving her closed
eyes and a portion of her forehead exposed to sight. She was wrapped

in a furred pelisse and a heavy dragoon's cloak; her head rested on a
pillow stained with blood; an astrakhan hood, kept in place by a

handkerchief knotted round her neck, preserved her face from the cold
as much as possible. Her feet were wrapped in the cloak. Thus rolled

into a bundle, as it were, she looked like nothing at all. Was she the
last of the "vivandieres"? Was she a charming woman, the glory of a

lover, the queen of Parisian salons? Alas! even the eye of her most
devoted friend could trace no sign of anything feminine in that mass

of rags and tatters. Love had succumbed to cold in the heart of a
woman!

Through the thick veils of irresistible sleep, the major soon saw the
husband and wife as mere points or formless objects. The flames of the

fire, those outstretched figures, the relentless cold, waiting, not
three feet distant from that fugitive heat, became all a dream. One

importunate thought terrified Philippe:
"If I sleep, we shall all die; I will not sleep," he said to himself.

And yet he slept.
A terrible clamor and an explosion awoke him an hour later. The sense

of his duty, the peril of his friend, fell suddenly on his heart. He
uttered a cry that was like a roar. He and his orderly were alone

afoot. A sea of fire lay before them in the darkness of the night,
licking up the cabins and the bivouacs; cries of despair, howls, and

imprecations reached their ears; they saw against the flames thousands
of human beings with agonized or furious faces. In the midst of that

hell, a column of soldiers was forcing its way to the bridge, between
two hedges of dead bodies.

"It is the retreat of the rear-guard!" cried the major. "All hope is
gone!"

"I have saved your carriage, Philippe," said a friendly voice.
Turning round, de Sucy recognized the young aide-de-camp in the

flaring of the flames.
"Ah! all is lost!" replied the major, "they have eaten my horse; and

how can I make this stupid general and his wife walk?"
"Take a brand from the fire and threaten them."

"Threaten the countess!"
"Good-bye," said the aide-de-camp, "I have scarcely time to get across

that fatal river--and I MUST; I have a mother in France. What a night!
These poor wretches prefer to lie here in the snow; half will allow

themselves to perish in those flames rather than rise and move on. It
is four o'clock, Philippe! In two hours the Russians will begin to

move. I assure you you will again see the Beresina choked with
corpses. Philippe! think of yourself! You have no horses, you cannot

carry the countess in your arms. Come--come with me!" he said
urgently, pulling de Sucy by the arm.

"My friend! abandon Stephanie!"
De Sucy seized the countess, made her stand upright, shook her with

the roughness of a despairing man, and compelled her to wake up. She
looked at him with fixed, dead eyes.