Farewell | Page 7

he
was asked if he lived in the ruined house. M. d'Albon explained his
errand.
"Why, then, it must have been you, sir, who fired that unlucky shot!
You all but killed my poor invalid."
"Eh! I fired into the air!"
"If you had actually hit Madame la Comtesse, you would have done
less harm to her."
"Well, well, then, we can neither of us complain, for the sight of the
Countess all but killed my friend, M. de Sucy."
"The Baron de Sucy, is it possible?" cried the doctor, clasping his
hands. "Has he been in Russia? was he in the Beresina?"
"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."
"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.
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.
"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."
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.

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.
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.
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