Farewell | Page 9

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.
"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 --"
"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."
"Poor Philip! I have nothing--not a scrap!-- But is your General in
there?"
"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--"
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.
"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.
Some thirty stragglers were sitting round a tremendous blaze, which
they kept up with logs of wood, planks wrenched from the floors of the
caissons, and wheels, and panels from carriage bodies. These had been,
doubtless, among the last to join the sea of fires, huts, and human faces
that filled the great furrow in the land between Studzianka and the fatal
river, a restless living sea of almost imperceptibly moving figures, that
sent up a smothered hum of sound blended with frightful shrieks. It
seemed that hunger and despair had driven these forlorn creatures to
take forcible possession of the carriage, for the old General and his
young wife, whom they had found warmly wrapped in pelisses and
traveling cloaks, were now crouching on the earth beside the fire, and
one of the carriage doors was broken.
As soon as the group of stragglers round the fire heard the footfall of
the Major's horse, a frenzied yell of hunger went up from them. "A
horse!" they cried. "A horse!"
All the voices went up as one voice.
"Back! back! Look out!" shouted two or three of them, leveling their

muskets at the animal.
"I will pitch you neck and crop into your fire, you blackguards!" cried
Philip, springing in front of the mare. "There are dead horses lying up
yonder; go and look for them!"
"What a rum customer the officer is!-- Once, twice, will you get out of
the way?" returned a giant grenadier. "You won't? All right then, just as
you please."
A woman's shriek rang out above the report. Luckily, none of the
bullets hit Philip; but poor Bichette lay in the agony of death. Three of
the men came up and put