Colonel Chabert | Page 9

at
once closed up and formed again, so that we had to repeat the
movement back again. At the moment when we were nearing the
Emperor, after having scattered the Russians, I came against a squadron

of the enemy's cavalry. I rushed at the obstinate brutes. Two Russian
officers, perfect giants, attacked me both at once. One of them gave me
a cut across the head that crashed through everything, even a black silk
cap I wore next my head, and cut deep into the skull. I fell from my
horse. Murat came up to support me. He rode over my body, he and all
his men, fifteen hundred of them--there might have been more! My
death was announced to the Emperor, who as a precaution --for he was
fond of me, was the master--wished to know if there were no hope of
saving the man he had to thank for such a vigorous attack. He sent two
surgeons to identify me and bring me into Hospital, saying, perhaps too
carelessly, for he was very busy, 'Go and see whether by any chance
poor Chabert is still alive.' These rascally saw-bones, who had just seen
me lying under the hoofs of the horses of two regiments, no doubt did
not trouble themselves to feel my pulse, and reported that I was quite
dead. The certificate of death was probably made out in accordance
with the rules of military jurisprudence."
As he heard his visitor express himself with complete lucidity, and
relate a story so probable though so strange, the young lawyer ceased
fingering the papers, rested his left elbow on the table, and with his
head on his hand looked steadily at the Colonel.
"Do you know, monsieur, that I am lawyer to the Countess Ferraud," he
said, interrupting the speaker, "Colonel Chabert's widow?"
"My wife--yes monsieur. Therefore, after a hundred fruitless attempts
to interest lawyers, who have all thought me mad, I made up my mind
to come to you. I will tell you of my misfortunes afterwards; for the
present, allow me to prove the facts, explaining rather how things must
have fallen out rather than how they did occur. Certain circumstances,
known, I suppose to no one but the Almighty, compel me to speak of
some things as hypothetical. The wounds I had received must
presumably have produced tetanus, or have thrown me into a state
analogous to that of a disease called, I believe, catalepsy. Otherwise
how is it conceivable that I should have been stripped, as is the custom
in time of the war, and thrown into the common grave by the men
ordered to bury the dead?
"Allow me here to refer to a detail of which I could know nothing till
after the event, which, after all, I must speak of as my death. At
Stuttgart, in 1814, I met an old quartermaster of my regiment. This dear

fellow, the only man who chose to recognize me, and of whom I will
tell you more later, explained the marvel of my preservation, by telling
me that my horse was shot in the flank at the moment when I was
wounded. Man and beast went down together, like a monk cut out of
card-paper. As I fell, to the right or to the left, I was no doubt covered
by the body of my horse, which protected me from being trampled to
death or hit by a ball.
"When I came to myself, monsieur, I was in a position and an
atmosphere of which I could give you no idea if I talked till to-morrow.
the little air there was to breathe was foul. I wanted to move, and found
no room. I opened my eyes, and saw nothing. The most alarming
circumstance was the lack of air, and this enlightened me as to my
situation. I understood that no fresh air could penetrate to me, and that I
must die. This thought took off the sense of intolerable pain which had
aroused me. There was a violent singing in my ears. I heard--or I
thought I heard, I will assert nothing--groans from the world of dead
among whom I was lying. Some nights I still think I hear those stifled
moans; though the remembrance of that time is very obscure, and my
memory very indistinct, in spite of my impressions of far more acute
suffering I was fated to go through, and which have confused my ideas.
"But there was something more awful than cries; there was a silence
such as I have never known elsewhere--literally, the silence of the
grave. At last, by raising my hands and feeling the dead, I discerned a
vacant space between my head and the human carrion above. I could
thus measure the space, granted by a chance of