"My God! to lose the woman I have saved a dozen times!"

The major shook the countess.
"Stephanie! Stephanie!"

The young woman opened her eyes.
"Madame! we are saved."

"Saved!" she repeated, sinking down again.
The horses were harnessed as best they could. The major, holding his

sabre in his well hand, with his pistols in his belt, gathered up the
reins with the other hand and mounted one horse while the grenadier

mounted the other. The orderly, whose feet were frozen, was thrown
inside the carriage, across the general and the countess. Excited by

pricks from a sabre, the horses drew the carriage rapidly, with a sort
of fury, to the plain, where innumerable obstacles awaited it. It was

impossible to force a way without danger of crushing the sleeping men,
women, and even children, who refused to move when the grenadier awoke

them. In vain did Monsieur de Sucy endeavor to find the swathe cut by
the rear-guard through the mass of human beings; it was already

obliterated, like the wake of a vessel through the sea. They could
only creep along, being often stopped by soldiers who threatened to

kill their horses.
"Do you want to reach the bridge?" said the grenadier.

"At the cost of my life--at the cost of the whole world!"
"Then forward, march! you can't make omelets without breaking eggs."

And the grenadier of the guard urged the horses over men and bivouacs
with bloody wheels and a double line of corpses on either side of

them. We must do him the justice to say that he never spared his
breath in shouting in stentorian tones,--

"Look out there, carrion!"
"Poor wretches!" cried the major.

"Pooh! that or the cold, that or the cannon," said the grenadier,
prodding the horses, and urging them on.

A catastrophe, which might well have happened to them much sooner, put
a stop to their advance. The carriage was overturned.

"I expected it," cried the imperturbable grenadier. "Ho! ho! your man
is dead."

"Poor Laurent!" said the major.
"Laurent? Was he in the 5th chasseurs?"

"Yes."
"Then he was my cousin. Oh, well, this dog's life isn't happy enough

to waste any joy in grieving for him."
The carriage could not be raised; the horses were taken out with

serious and, as it proved, irreparable loss of time. The shock of the
overturn was so violent that the young countess, roused from her

lethargy, threw off her coverings and rose.
"Philippe, where are we?" she cried in a gentle voice, looking about

her.
"Only five hundred feet from the bridge. We are now going to cross the

Beresina, Stephanie, and once across I will not torment you any more;
you shall sleep; we shall be in safety, and can reach Wilna easily.--

God grant that she may never know what her life has cost!" he thought.
"Philippe! you are wounded!"

"That is nothing."
Too late! the fatal hour had come. The Russian cannon sounded the

reveille. Masters of Studzianka, they could sweep the plain, and by
daylight the major could see two of their columns moving and forming

on the heights. A cry of alarm arose from the multitude, who started
to their feet in an instant. Every man now understood his danger

instinctively, and the whole mass rushed to gain the bridge with the
motion of a wave.

The Russians came down with the rapidity of a conflagration. Men,
women, children, horses,--all rushed tumultuously to the bridge.

Fortunately the major, who was carrying the countess, was still some
distance from it. General Eble had just set fire to the supports on

the other bank. In spite of the warnings shouted to those who were
rushing upon the bridge, not a soul went back. Not only did the bridge

go down crowded with human beings, but the impetuosity of that flood
of men toward the fatal bank was so furious that a mass of humanity

poured itself violently into the river like an avalanche. Not a cry
was heard; the only sound was like the dropping of monstrous stones

into the water. Then the Beresina was a mass of floating corpses.
The retrograde movement of those who now fell back into the plain to

escape the death before them was so violent, and their concussion
against those who were advancing from the rear so terrible, that

numbers were smothered or trampled to death. The Comte and Comtesse de
Vandieres owed their lives to their carriage, behind which Philippe

forced them, using it as a breastwork. As for the major and the
grenadier, they found their safety in their strength. They killed to

escape being killed.
This hurricane of human beings, the flux and reflux of living bodies,

had the effect of leaving for a few short moments the whole bank of
the Beresina deserted. The multitude were surging to the plain. If a

few men rushed to the river, it was less in the hope of reaching the
other bank, which to them was France, than to rush from the horrors of

Siberia. Despair proved an aegis to some bold hearts. One officer
sprang from ice-cake to ice-cake, and reached the opposite shore. A

soldier clambered miraculously over mounds of dead bodies and heaps of
ice. The multitude finally comprehended that the Russians would not

put to death a body of twenty thousand men, without arms, torpid,
stupid, unable to defend themselves; and each man awaited his fate

with horribleresignation. Then the major and the grenadier, the
general and his wife, remained almost alone on the river bank, a few

steps from the spot where the bridge had been. They stood there, with
dry eyes, silent, surrounded by heaps of dead. A few sound soldiers, a

few officers to whom the emergency had restored their natural energy,
were near them. This group consisted of some fifty men in all. The

major noticed at a distance of some two hundred yards the remains of
another bridge intended for carriages and destroyed the day before.

"Let us make a raft!" he cried.
He had hardly uttered the words before the whole group rushed to the

ruins, and began to pick up iron bolts, and screws, and pieces of wood
and ropes, whatever materials they could find that were suitable for

the construction of a raft. A score of soldiers and officers, who were
armed, formed a guard, commanded by the major, to protect the workers

against the desperate attacks which might be expected from the crowd,
if their scheme was discovered. The instinct of freedom, strong in all

prisoners, inspiring them to miraculous acts, can only be compared
with that which now drove to action these unfortunate Frenchmen.

"The Russians! the Russians are coming!" cried the defenders to the
workers; and the work went on, the raft increased in length and

breadth and depth. Generals, soldiers, colonel, all put their
shoulders to the wheel; it was a true image of the building of Noah's

ark. The young countess, seated beside her husband, watched the
progress of the work with regret that she could not help it; and yet

she did assist in making knots to secure the cordage.
At last the raft was finished. Forty men launched it on the river, a

dozen others holding the cords which moored it to the shore. But no
sooner had the builders seen their handiwork afloat, than they sprang

from the bank with odiousselfishness. The major, fearing the fury of
this first rush, held back the countess and the general, but too late

he saw the whole raft covered, men pressing together like crowds at a
theatre.

"Savages!" he cried, "it was I who gave you the idea of that raft. I
have saved you, and you deny me a place."

A confused murmur answered him. The men at the edge of the raft, armed
with long sticks, pressed with violence against the shore to send off