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+***The Project Gutenberg Etext of Adieu, by Honore de Balzac***
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+Adieu
+
+by Honore de Balzac
+
+Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley
+
+December, 1998  [Etext #1554]
+
+
+***The Project Gutenberg Etext of Adieu, by Honore de Balzac***
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+
+
+
+
+
+ADIEU
+
+by HONORE DE BALZAC
+
+
+
+Translated By
+Katharine Prescott Wormeley
+
+
+
+DEDICATION
+
+To Prince Frederic Schwartzenburg.
+
+
+
+
+
+ADIEU
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+AN OLD MONASTERY
+
+"Come, deputy of the Centre, forward! Quick step! march! if we want to
+be in time to dine with the others. Jump, marquis! there, that's
+right! why, you can skip across a stubble-field like a deer!"
+
+These words were said by a huntsman peacefully seated at the edge of
+the forest of Ile-Adam, who was finishing an Havana cigar while
+waiting for his companion, who had lost his way in the tangled
+underbrush of the wood. At his side four panting dogs were watching,
+as he did, the personage he addressed. To understand how sarcastic
+were these exhortations, repeated at intervals, we should state that
+the approaching huntsman was a stout little man whose protuberant
+stomach was the evidence of a truly ministerial "embonpoint." He was
+struggling painfully across the furrows of a vast wheat-field recently
+harvested, the stubble of which considerably impeded him; while to add
+to his other miseries the sun's rays, striking obliquely on his face,
+collected an abundance of drops of perspiration. Absorbed in the
+effort to maintain his equilibrium, he leaned, now forward, now back,
+in close imitation of the pitching of a carriage when violently
+jolted. The weather looked threatening. Though several spaces of blue
+sky still parted the thick black clouds toward the horizon, a flock of
+fleecy vapors were advancing with great rapidity and drawing a light
+gray curtain from east to west. As the wind was acting only on the
+upper region of the air, the atmosphere below it pressed down the hot
+vapors of the earth. Surrounded by masses of tall trees, the valley
+through which the hunter struggled felt like a furnace. Parched and
+silent, the forest seemed thirsty. The birds, even the insects, were
+voiceless; the tree-tops scarcely waved. Those persons who may still
+remember the summer of 1819 can imagine the woes of the poor deputy,
+who was struggling along, drenched in sweat, to regain his mocking
+friend. The latter, while smoking his cigar, had calculated from the
+position of the sun that it must be about five in the afternoon.
+
+"Where the devil are we?" said the stout huntsman, mopping his
+forehead and leaning against the trunk of a tree nearly opposite to
+his companion, for he felt unequal to the effort of leaping the ditch
+between them.
+
+"That's for me to ask you," said the other, laughing, as he lay among
+the tall brown brake which crowned the bank. Then, throwing the end of
+his cigar into the ditch, he cried out vehemently: "I swear by Saint
+Hubert that never again will I trust myself in unknown territory with
+a statesman, though he be, like you, my dear d'Albon, a college mate."
+
+"But, Philippe, have you forgotten your French? Or have you left your
+wits in Siberia?" replied the stout man, casting a sorrowfully comic
+look at a sign-post about a hundred feet away.
+
+"True, true," cried Philippe, seizing his gun and springing with a
+bound into the field and thence to the post. "This way, d'Albon, this
+way," he called back to his friend, pointing to a broad paved path and
+reading aloud the sign: "'From Baillet to Ile-Adam.' We shall
+certainly find the path to Cassan, which must branch from this one
+between here and Ile-Adam."
+
+"You are right, colonel," said Monsieur d'Albon, replacing upon his
+head the cap with which he had been fanning himself.
+
+"Forward then, my respectable privy councillor," replied Colonel
+Philippe, whistling to the dogs, who seemed more willing to obey him
+than the public functionary to whom they belonged.
+
+"Are you aware, marquis," said the jeering soldier, "that we still
+have six miles to go? That village over there must be Baillet."
+
+"Good heavens!" cried the marquis, "go to Cassan if you must, but
+you'll go alone. I prefer to stay here, in spite of the coming storm,
+and wait for the horse you can send me from the chateau. You've played
+me a trick, Sucy. We were to have had a nice little hunt not far from
+Cassan, and beaten the coverts I know. Instead of that, you have kept
+me running like a hare since four o'clock this morning, and all I've
+had for breakfast is a cup of milk. Now, if you ever have a petition
+before the Court, I'll make you lose it, however just your claim."
+
+The poor discouraged huntsman sat down on a stone that supported the
+signpost, relieved himself of his gun and his gamebag, and heaved a
+long sigh.
+
+"France! such are thy deputies!" exclaimed Colonel de Sucy, laughing.
+"Ah! my poor d'Albon, if you had been like me six years in the wilds
+of Siberia--"
+
+He said no more, but he raised his eyes to heaven as if that anguish
+were between himself and God.
+
+"Come, march on!" he added. "If you sit still you are lost."
+
+"How can I, Philippe? It is an old magisterial habit to sit still. On
+my honor! I'm tired out-- If I had only killed a hare!"
+
+The two men presented a rather rare contrast: the public functionary
+was forty-two years of age and seemed no more than thirty, whereas the
+soldier was thirty, and seemed forty at the least. Both wore the red
+rosette of the officers of the Legion of honor. A few spare locks of
+black hair mixed with white, like the wing of a magpie, escaped from
+the colonel's cap, while handsome brown curls adorned the brow of the
+statesman. One was tall, gallant, high-strung, and the lines of his
+pallid face showed terrible passions or frightful griefs. The other
+had a face that was brilliant with health, and jovially worth of an
+epicurean. Both were deeply sun-burned, and their high gaiters of
+tanned leather showed signs of the bogs and the thickets they had just
+come through.
+
+"Come," said Monsieur de Sucy, "let us get on. A short hour's march,
+and we shall reach Cassan in time for a good dinner."
+
+"It is easy to see you have never loved," replied the councillor, with
+a look that was pitifully comic; "you are as relentless as article 304
+of the penal code."
+
+Philippe de Sucy quivered; his broad brow contracted; his face became
+as sombre as the skies above them. Some memory of awful bitterness
+distorted for a moment his features, but he said nothing. Like all
+strong men, he drove down his emotions to the depths of his heart;
+thinking perhaps, as simple characters are apt to think, that there
+was something immodest in unveiling griefs when human language cannot
+render their depths and may only rouse the mockery of those who do not
+comprehend them. Monsieur d'Albon had one of those delicate natures
+which divine sorrows, and are instantly sympathetic to the emotion
+they have involuntarily aroused. He respected his friend's silence,
+rose, forgot his fatigue, and followed him silently, grieved to have
+touched a wound that was evidently not healed.
+
+"Some day, my friend," said Philippe, pressing his hand, and thanking
+him for his mute repentance by a heart-rending look, "I will relate to
+you my life. To-day I cannot."
+
+They continued their way in silence. When the colonel's pain seemed
+soothed, the marquis resumed his fatigue; and with the instinct, or
+rather the will, of a wearied man his eye took in the very depths of
+the forest; he questioned the tree-tops and examined the branching
+paths, hoping to discover some dwelling where he could ask
+hospitality. Arriving at a cross-ways, he thought he noticed a slight
+smoke rising among the trees; he stopped, looked more attentively, and
+saw, in the midst of a vast copse, the dark-green branches of several
+pine-trees.
+
+"A house! a house!" he cried, with the joy the sailor feels in crying
+"Land!"
+
+Then he sprang quickly into the copse, and the colonel, who had fallen
+into a deep reverie, followed him mechanically.
+
+"I'd rather get an omelet, some cottage bread, and a chair here," he
+said, "than go to Cassan for sofas, truffles, and Bordeaux."
+
+These words were an exclamation of enthusiasm, elicited from the
+councillor on catching sight of a wall, the white towers of which
+glimmered in the distance through the brown masses of the tree trunks.
+
+"Ha! ha! this looks to me as if it had once been a priory," cried the
+marquis, as they reached a very old and blackened gate, through which
+they could see, in the midst of a large park, a building constructed
+in the style of the monasteries of old. "How those rascals the monks
+knew how to choose their sites!"
+
+This last exclamation was an expression of surprise and pleasure at
+the poetical hermitage which met his eyes. The house stood on the
+slope of the mountain, at the summit of which is the village of
+Nerville. The great centennial oaks of the forest which encircled the
+dwelling made the place an absolute solitude. The main building,
+formerly occupied by the monks, faced south. The park seemed to have
+about forty acres. Near the house lay a succession of green meadows,
+charmingly crossed by several clear rivulets, with here and there a
+piece of water naturally placed without the least apparent artifice.
+Trees of elegant shape and varied foliage were distributed about.
+Grottos, cleverly managed, and massive terraces with dilapidated steps
+and rusty railings, gave a peculiar character to this lone retreat.
+Art had harmonized her constructions with the picturesque effects of
+nature. Human passions seemed to die at the feet of those great trees,
+which guarded this asylum from the tumult of the world as they shaded
+it from the fires of the sun.
+
+"How desolate!" thought Monsieur d'Albon, observing the sombre
+expression which the ancient building gave to the landscape, gloomy as
+though a curse were on it. It seemed a fatal spot deserted by man. Ivy
+had stretched its tortuous muscles, covered by its rich green mantle,
+everywhere. Brown or green, red or yellow mosses and lichen spread
+their romantic tints on trees and seats and roofs and stones. The
+crumbling window-casings were hollowed by rain, defaced by time; the
+balconies were broken, the terraces demolished. Some of the outside
+shutters hung from a single hinge. The rotten doors seemed quite
+unable to resist an assailant. Covered with shining tufts of
+mistletoe, the branches of the neglected fruit-trees gave no sign of
+fruit. Grass grew in the paths. Such ruin and desolation cast a weird
+poesy on the scene, filling the souls of the spectators with dreamy
+thoughts. A poet would have stood there long, plunged in a melancholy
+reverie, admiring this disorder so full of harmony, this destruction
+which was not without its grace. Suddenly, the brown tiles shone, the
+mosses glittered, fantastic shadows danced upon the meadows and
+beneath the trees; fading colors revived; striking contrasts
+developed, the foliage of the trees and shrubs defined itself more
+clearly in the light. Then--the light went out. The landscape seemed
+to have spoken, and now was silent, returning to its gloom, or rather
+to the soft sad tones of an autumnal twilight.
+
+"It is the palace of the Sleeping Beauty," said the marquis, beginning
+to view the house with the eyes of a land owner. "I wonder to whom it
+belongs! He must be a stupid fellow not to live in such an exquisite
+spot."
+
+At that instant a woman sprang from beneath a chestnut-tree standing
+to the right of the gate, and, without making any noise, passed before
+the marquis as rapidly as the shadow of a cloud. This vision made him
+mute with surprise.
+
+"Why, Albon, what's the matter?" asked the colonel.
+
+"I am rubbing my eyes to know if I am asleep or awake," replied the
+marquis, with his face close to the iron rails as he tried to get
+another sight of the phantom.
+
+"She must be beneath that fig-tree," he said, pointing to the foliage
+of a tree which rose above the wall to the left of the gate.
+
+"She! who?"
+
+"How can I tell?" replied Monsieur d'Albon. "A strange woman rose up
+there, just before me," he said in a low voice; "she seemed to come
+from the world of shades rather than from the land of the living. She
+is so slender, so light, so filmy, she must be diaphanous. Her face
+was as white as milk; her eyes, her clothes, her hair jet black. She
+looked at me as she flitted by, and though I may say I'm no coward,
+that cold immovable look froze the blood in my veins."
+
+"Is she pretty?" asked Philippe.
+
+"I don't know. I could see nothing but the eyes in that face."
+
+"Well, let the dinner at Cassan go to the devil!" cried the colonel.
+"Suppose we stay here. I have a sudden childish desire to enter that
+singular house. Do you see those window-frames painted red, and the
+red lines on the doors and shutters? Doesn't the place look to you as
+if it belonged to the devil?--perhaps he inherited it from the monks.
+Come, let us pursue the black and white lady--forward, march!" cried
+Philippe, with forced gaiety.
+
+At that instant the two huntsmen heard a cry that was something like
+that of a mouse caught in a trap. They listened. The rustle of a few
+shrubs sounded in the silence like the murmur of a breaking wave. In
+vain they listened for other sounds; the earth was dumb, and kept the
+secret of those light steps, if, indeed, the unknown woman moved at
+all.
+
+"It is very singular!" said Philippe, as they skirted the park wall.
+
+The two friends presently reached a path in the forest which led to
+the village of Chauvry. After following this path some way toward the
+main road to Paris, they came to another iron gate which led to the
+principal facade of the mysterious dwelling. On this side the
+dilapidation and disorder of the premises had reached their height.
+Immense cracks furrowed the walls of the house, which was built on
+three sides of a square. Fragments of tiles and slates lying on the
+ground, and the dilapidated condition of the roofs, were evidence of a
+total want of care on the part of the owners. The fruit had fallen
+from the trees and lay rotting on the ground; a cow was feeding on the
+lawn and treading down the flowers in the borders, while a goat
+browsed on the shoots of the vines and munched the unripe grapes.
+
+"Here all is harmony; the devastation seems organized," said the
+colonel, pulling the chain of a bell; but the bell was without a
+clapper.
+
+The huntsmen heard nothing but the curiously sharp noise of a rusty
+spring. Though very dilapidated, a little door made in the wall beside
+the iron gates resisted all their efforts to open it.
+
+"Well, well, this is getting to be exciting," said de Sucy to his
+companion.
+
+"If I were not a magistrate," replied Monsieur d'Albon, "I should
+think that woman was a witch."
+
+As he said the words, the cow came to the iron gate and pushed her
+warm muzzle towards them, as if she felt the need of seeing human
+beings. Then a woman, if that name could be applied to the indefinable
+being who suddenly issued from a clump of bushes, pulled away the cow
+by its rope. This woman wore on her head a red handkerchief, beneath
+which trailed long locks of hair in color and shape like the flax on a
+distaff. She wore no fichu. A coarse woollen petticoat in black and
+gray stripes, too short by several inches, exposed her legs. She might
+have belonged to some tribe of Red-Skins described by Cooper, for her
+legs, neck, and arms were the color of brick. No ray of intelligence
+enlivened her vacant face. A few whitish hairs served her for
+eyebrows; the eyes themselves, of a dull blue, were cold and wan; and
+her mouth was so formed as to show the teeth, which were crooked, but
+as white as those of a dog.
+
+"Here, my good woman!" called Monsieur de Sucy.
+
+She came very slowly to the gate, looking with a silly expression at
+the two huntsmen, the sight of whom brought a forced and painful smile
+to her face.
+
+"Where are we? Whose house is this? Who are you? Do you belong here?"
+
+To these questions and several others which the two friends
+alternately addressed to her, she answered only with guttural sounds
+that seemed more like the growl of an animal than the voice of a human
+being.
+
+"She must be deaf and dumb," said the marquis.
+
+"Bons-Hommes!" cried the peasant woman.
+
+"Ah! I see. This is, no doubt, the old monastery of the Bons-Hommes,"
+said the marquis.
+
+He renewed his questions. But, like a capricious child, the peasant
+woman colored, played with her wooden shoe, twisted the rope of the
+cow, which was now feeding peaceably, and looked at the two hunters,
+examining every part of their clothing; then she yelped, growled, and
+clucked, but did not speak.
+
+"What is your name?" said Philippe, looking at her fixedly, as if he
+meant to mesmerize her.
+
+"Genevieve," she said, laughing with a silly air.
+
+"The cow is the most intelligent being we have seen so far," said the
+marquis. "I shall fire my gun and see if that will being some one."
+
+Just as d'Albon raised his gun, the colonel stopped him with a
+gesture, and pointed to the form of a woman, probably the one who had
+so keenly piqued his curiosity. At this moment she seemed lost in the
+deepest meditation, and was coming with slow steps along a distant
+pathway, so that the two friends had ample time to examine her.
+
+She was dressed in a ragged gown of black satin. Her long hair fell in
+masses of curls over her forehead, around her shoulders, and below her
+waist, serving her for a shawl. Accustomed no doubt to this disorder,
+she seldom pushed her hair from her forehead; and when she did so, it
+was with a sudden toss of her head which only for a moment cleared her
+forehead and eyes from the thick veil. Her gesture, like that of an
+animal, had a remarkable mechanical precision, the quickness of which
+seemed wonderful in a woman. The huntsmen were amazed to see her
+suddenly leap up on the branch of an apple-tree, and sit there with
+the ease of a bird. She gathered an apple and ate it; then she dropped
+to the ground with the graceful ease we admire in a squirrel. Her
+limbs possessed an elasticity which took from every movement the
+slightest appearance of effort or constraint. She played upon the
+turf, rolling herself about like a child; then, suddenly, she flung
+her feet and hands forward, and lay at full length on the grass, with
+the grace and natural ease of a young cat asleep in the sun. Thunder
+sounded in the distance, and she turned suddenly, rising on her hands
+and knees with the rapidity of a dog which hears a coming footstep.
+
+The effects of this singular attitude was to separate into two heavy
+masses the volume of her black hair, which now fell on either side of
+her head, and allowed the two spectators to admire the white shoulders
+glistening like daisies in a field, and the throat, the perfection of
+which allowed them to judge of the other beauties of her figure.
+
+Suddenly she uttered a distressful cry and rose to her feet. Her
+movements succeeded each other with such airiness and grace that she
+seemed not a creature of this world but a daughter of the atmosphere,
+as sung in the poems of Ossian. She ran toward a piece of water, shook
+one of her legs lightly to cast off her shoe, and began to dabble her
+foot, white as alabaster, in the current, admiring, perhaps, the
+undulations she thus produced upon the surface of the water. Then she
+knelt down at the edge of the stream and amused herself, like a child,
+in casting in her long tresses and pulling them abruptly out, to watch
+the shower of drops that glittered down, looking, as the sunlight
+struck athwart them, like a chaplet of pearls.
+
+"That woman is mad!" cried the marquis.
+
+A hoarse cry, uttered by Genevieve, seemed uttered as a warning to the
+unknown woman, who turned suddenly, throwing back her hair from either
+side of her face. At this instant the colonel and Monsieur d'Albon
+could distinctly see her features; she, herself, perceiving the two
+friends, sprang to the iron railing with the lightness and rapidity of
+a deer.
+
+"Adieu!" she said, in a soft, harmonious voice, the melody of which
+did not convey the slightest feeling or the slightest thought.
+
+Monsieur d'Albon admired the long lashes of her eyelids, the blackness
+of her eyebrows, and the dazzling whiteness of a skin devoid of even
+the faintest tinge of color. Tiny blue veins alone broke the
+uniformity of its pure white tones. When the marquis turned to his
+friend as if to share with him his amazement at the sight of this
+singular creature, he found him stretched on the ground as if dead.
+D'Albon fired his gun in the air to summon assistance, crying out
+"Help! help!" and then endeavored to revive the colonel. At the sound
+of the shot, the unknown woman, who had hitherto stood motionless,
+fled away with the rapidity of an arrow, uttering cries of fear like a
+wounded animal, and running hither and thither about the meadow with
+every sign of the greatest terror.
+
+Monsieur d'Albon, hearing the rumbling of a carriage on the high-road
+to Ile-Adam, waved his handkerchief and shouted to its occupants for
+assistance. The carriage was immediately driven up to the old
+monastery, and the marquis recognized his neighbors, Monsieur and
+Madame de Granville, who at once gave up their carriage to the service
+of the two gentlemen. Madame de Granville had with her, by chance, a
+bottle of salts, which revived the colonel for a moment. When he
+opened his eyes he turned them to the meadow, where the unknown woman
+was still running and uttering her distressing cries. A smothered
+exclamation escaped him, which seemed to express a sense of horror;
+then he closed his eyes again, and made a gesture as if to implore his
+friend to remove him from that sight.
+
+Monsieur and Madame de Granville placed their carriage entirely at the
+disposal of the marquis, assuring him courteously that they would like
+to continue their way on foot.
+
+"Who is that lady?" asked the marquis, signing toward the unknown
+woman.
+
+"I believe she comes from Moulins," replied Monsieur de Granville.
+"She is the Comtesse de Vandieres, and they say she is mad; but as she
+has only been here two months I will not vouch for the truth of these
+hearsays."
+
+Monsieur d'Albon thanked his friends, and placing the colonel in the
+carriage, started with him for Cassan.
+
+"It is she!" cried Philippe, recovering his senses.
+
+"Who is she?" asked d'Albon.
+
+"Stephanie. Ah, dead and living, living and mad! I fancied I was
+dying."
+
+The prudent marquis, appreciating the gravity of the crisis through
+which his friend was passing, was careful not to question or excite
+him; he was only anxious to reach the chateau, for the change which
+had taken place in the colonel's features, in fact in his whole
+person, made him fear for his friend's reason. As soon, therefore, as
+the carriage had reached the main street of Ile-Adam, he dispatched
+the footman to the village doctor, so that the colonel was no sooner
+fairly in his bed at the chateau than the physician was beside him.
+
+"If monsieur had not been many hours without food the shock would have
+killed him," said the doctor.
+
+After naming the first precautions, the doctor left the room, to
+prepare, himself, a calming potion. The next day, Monsieur de Sucy was
+better, but the doctor still watched him carefully.
+
+"I will admit to you, monsieur le marquis," he said, "that I have
+feared some affection of the brain. Monsieur de Sucy has received a
+violent shock; his passions are strong; but, in him, the first blow
+decides all. To-morrow he may be entirely out of danger."
+
+The doctor was not mistaken; and the following day he allowed the
+marquis to see his friend.
+
+"My dear d'Albon," said Philippe, pressing his hand, "I am going to
+ask a kindness of you. Go to the Bons-Hommes, and find out all you can
+of the lady we saw there; and return to me as quickly as you can; I
+shall count the minutes."
+
+Monsieur d'Albon mounted his horse at once, and galloped to the old
+abbey. When he arrived there, he saw before the iron gate a tall,
+spare man with a very kindly face, who answered in the affirmative
+when asked if he lived there. Monsieur d'Albon then informed him of
+the reasons for his visit.
+
+"What! monsieur," said the other, "was it you who fired that fatal
+shot? You very nearly killed my poor patient."
+
+"But, monsieur, I fired in the air."
+
+"You would have done the countess less harm had you fired at her."
+
+"Then we must not reproach each other, monsieur, for the sight of the
+countess has almost killed my friend, Monsieur de Sucy."
+
+"Heavens! can you mean Baron Philippe de Sucy?" cried the doctor,
+clasping his hands. "Did he go to Russia; was he at the passage of the
+Beresina?"
+
+"Yes," replied d'Albon, "he was captured by the Cossacks and kept for
+five years in Siberia; he recovered his liberty a few months ago."
+
+"Come in, monsieur," said the master of the house, leading the marquis
+into a room on the lower floor where everything bore the marks of
+capricious destruction. The silken curtains beside the windows were
+torn, while those of muslin remained intact.
+
+"You see," said the tall old man, as they entered, "the ravages
+committed by that dear creature, to whom I devote myself. She is my
+niece; in spite of the impotence of my art, I hope some day to restore
+her reason by attempting a method which can only be employed,
+unfortunately, by very rich people."
+
+Then, like all persons living in solitude who are afflicted with an
+ever present and ever renewed grief, he related to the marquis at
+length the following narrative, which is here condensed, and relieved
+of the many digressions made by both the narrator and the listener.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE PASSAGE OF THE BERESINA
+
+Marechal Victor, when he started, about nine at night, from the
+heights of Studzianka, which he had defended, as the rear-guard of the
+retreating army, during the whole day of November 28th, 1812, left a
+thousand men behind him, with orders to protect to the last possible
+moment whichever of the two bridges across the Beresina might still
+exist. This rear-guard had devoted itself to the task of saving a
+frightful multitude of stragglers overcome by the cold, who
+obstinately refused to leave the bivouacs of the army. The heroism of
+this generous troop proved useless. The stragglers who flocked in
+masses to the banks of the Beresina found there, unhappily, an immense
+number of carriages, caissons, and articles of all kinds which the
+army had been forced to abandon when effecting its passage of the
+river on the 27th and 28th of November. Heirs to such unlooked-for
+riches, the unfortunate men, stupid with cold, took up their abode in
+the deserted bivouacs, broke up the material which they found there to
+build themselves cabins, made fuel of everything that came to hand,
+cut up the frozen carcasses of the horses for food, tore the cloth and
+the curtains from the carriages for coverlets, and went to sleep,
+instead of continuing their way and crossing quietly during the night
+that cruel Beresina, which an incredible fatality had already made so
+destructive to the army.
+
+The apathy of these poor soldiers can only be conceived by those who
+remember to have crossed vast deserts of snow without other
+perspective than a snow horizon, without other drink than snow,
+without other bed than snow, without other food than snow or a few
+frozen beet-roots, a few handfuls of flour, or a little horseflesh.
+Dying of hunger, thirst, fatigue, and want of sleep, these
+unfortunates reached a shore where they saw before them wood,
+provisions, innumerable camp equipages, and carriages,--in short a
+whole town at their service. The village of Studzianka had been wholly
+taken to pieces and conveyed from the heights on which it stood to the
+plain. However forlorn and dangerous that refuge might be, its
+miseries and its perils only courted men who had lately seen nothing
+before them but the awful deserts of Russia. It was, in fact, a vast
+asylum which had an existence of twenty-four hours only.
+
+Utter lassitude, and the sense of unexpected comfort, made that mass
+of men inaccessible to every thought but that of rest. Though the
+artillery of the left wing of the Russians kept up a steady fire on
+this mass,--visible like a stain now black, now flaming, in the midst
+of the trackless snow,--this shot and shell seemed to the torpid
+creatures only one inconvenience the more. It was like a thunderstorm,
+despised by all because the lightning strikes so few; the balls struck
+only here and there, the dying, the sick, the dead sometimes!
+Stragglers arrived in groups continually; but once here those
+perambulating corpses separated; each begged for himself a place near
+a fire; repulsed repeatedly, they met again, to obtain by force the
+hospitality already refused to them. Deaf to the voice of some of
+their officers, who warned them of probable destruction on the morrow,
+they spent the amount of courage necessary to cross the river in
+building that asylum of a night, in making one meal that they
+themselves doomed to be their last. The death that awaited them they
+considered no evil, provided they could have that one night's sleep.
+They thought nothing evil but hunger, thirst, and cold. When there was
+no more wood or food or fire, horrible struggles took place between
+fresh-comers and the rich who possessed a shelter. The weakest
+succumbed.
+
+At last there came a moment when a number, pursued by the Russians,
+found only snow on which to bivouac, and these lay down to rise no
+more. Insensibly this mass of almost annihilated beings became so
+compact, so deaf, so torpid, so happy perhaps, that Marechal Victor,
+who had been their heroic defender by holding twenty thousand Russians
+under Wittgenstein at bay, was forced to open a passage by main force
+through this forest of men in order to cross the Beresina with five
+thousand gallant fellows whom he was taking to the emperor. The
+unfortunate malingerers allowed themselves to be crushed rather than
+stir; they perished in silence, smiling at their extinguished fires,
+without a thought of France.
+
+It was not until ten o'clock that night that Marechal Victor reached
+the bank of the river. Before crossing the bridge which led to Zembin,
+he confided the fate of his own rear-guard now left in Studzianka to
+Eble, the savior of all those who survived the calamities of the
+Beresina. It was towards midnight when this great general, followed by
+one brave officer, left the cabin he occupied near the bridge, and
+studied the spectacle of that improvised camp placed between the bank
+of the river and Studzianka. The Russian cannon had ceased to thunder.
+Innumerable fires, which, amid that trackless waste of snow, burned
+pale and scarcely sent out any gleams, illumined here and there by
+sudden flashes forms and faces that were barely human. Thirty thousand
+poor wretches, belonging to all nations, from whom Napoleon had
+recruited his Russian army, were trifling away their lives with
+brutish indifference.
+
+"Let us save them!" said General Eble to the officer who accompanied
+him. "To-morrow morning the Russians will be masters of Studzianka. We
+must burn the bridge the moment they appear. Therefore, my friend,
+take your courage in your hand! Go to the heights. Tell General
+Fournier he has barely time to evacuate his position, force a way
+through this crowd, and cross the bridge. When you have seen him in
+motion follow him. Find men you can trust, and the moment Fournier had
+crossed the bridge, burn, without pity, huts, equipages, caissons,
+carriages,--EVERYTHING! Drive that mass of men to the bridge. Compel
+all that has two legs to get to the other side of the river. The
+burning of everything--EVERYTHING--is now our last resource. If
+Berthier had let me destroy those damned camp equipages, this river
+would swallow only my poor pontoniers, those fifty heroes who will
+save the army, but who themselves will be forgotten."
+
+The general laid his hand on his forehead and was silent. He felt that
+Poland would be his grave, and that no voice would rise to do justice
+to those noble men who stood in the water, the icy water of Beresina,
+to destroy the buttresses of the bridges. One alone of those heroes
+still lives--or, to speak more correctly, suffers--in a village,
+totally ignored.
+
+The aide-de-camp started. Hardly had this generous officer gone a
+hundred yards towards Studzianka than General Eble wakened a number of
+his weary pontoniers, and began the work,--the charitable work of
+burning the bivouacs set up about the bridge, and forcing the
+sleepers, thus dislodged, to cross the river.
+
+Meanwhile the young aide-de-camp reached, not without difficulty, the
+only wooden house still left standing in Studzianka.
+
+"This barrack seems pretty full, comrade," he said to a man whom he
+saw by the doorway.
+
+"If you can get in you'll be a clever trooper," replied the officer,
+without turning his head or ceasing to slice off with his sabre the
+bark of the logs of which the house was built.
+
+"Is that you, Philippe?" said the aide-de-camp, recognizing a friend
+by the tones of his voice.
+
+"Yes. Ha, ha! is it you, old fellow?" replied Monsieur de Sucy,
+looking at the aide-de-camp, who, like himself, was only twenty-three
+years of age. "I thought you were the other side of that cursed river.
+What are you here for? Have you brought cakes and wine for our
+dessert? You'll be welcome," and he went on slicing off the bark,
+which he gave as a sort of provender to his horse.
+
+"I am looking for your commander to tell him, from General Eble, to
+make for Zembin. You'll have barely enough time to get through that
+crowd of men below. I am going presently to set fire to their camp and
+force them to march."
+
+"You warm me up--almost! That news makes me perspire. I have two
+friends I MUST save. Ah! without those two to cling to me, I should be
+dead already. It is for them that I feed my horse and don't eat
+myself. Have you any food,--a mere crust? It is thirty hours since
+anything has gone into my stomach, and yet I have fought like a madman
+--just to keep a little warmth and courage in me."
+
+"Poor Philippe, I have nothing--nothing! But where's your general,--in
+this house?"
+
+"No, don't go there; the place is full of wounded. Go up the street;
+you'll find on your left a sort of pig-pen; the general is there.
+Good-bye, old fellow. If we ever dance a trenis on a Paris floor--"
+
+He did not end his sentence; the north wind blew at that moment with
+such ferocity that the aide-de-camp hurried on to escape being frozen,
+and the lips of Major de Sucy stiffened. Silence reigned, broken only
+by the moans which came from the house, and the dull sound made by the
+major's horse as it chewed in a fury of hunger the icy bark of the
+trees with which the house was built. Monsieur de Sucy replaced his
+sabre in its scabbard, took the bridle of the precious horse he had
+hitherto been able to preserve, and led it, in spite of the animal's
+resistance, from the wretched fodder it appeared to think excellent.
+
+"We'll start, Bichette, we'll start! There's none but you, my beauty,
+who can save Stephanie. Ha! by and bye you and I may be able to rest--
+and die," he added.
+
+Philippe, wrapped in a fur pelisse, to which he owed his preservation
+and his energy, began to run, striking his feet hard upon the frozen
+snow to keep them warm. Scarcely had he gone a few hundred yards from
+the village than he saw a blaze in the direction of the place where,
+since morning, he had left his carriage in charge of his former
+orderly, an old soldier. Horrible anxiety laid hold of him. Like all
+others who were controlled during this fatal retreat by some powerful
+sentiment, he found a strength to save his friends which he could not
+have put forth to save himself.
+
+Presently he reached a slight declivity at the foot of which, in a
+spot sheltered from the enemy's balls, he had stationed the carriage,
+containing a young woman, the companion of his childhood, the being
+most dear to him on earth. At a few steps distant from the vehicle he
+now found a company of some thirty stragglers collected around an
+immense fire, which they were feeding with planks, caisson covers,
+wheels, and broken carriages. These soldiers were, no doubt, the last
+comers of that crowd who, from the base of the hill of Studzianka to
+the fatal river, formed an ocean of heads intermingled with fires and
+huts,--a living sea, swayed by motions that were almost imperceptible,
+and giving forth a murmuring sound that rose at times to frightful
+outbursts. Driven by famine and despair, these poor wretches must have
+rifled the carriage before de Sucy reached it. The old general and his
+young wife, whom he had left lying in piles of clothes and wrapped in
+mantles and pelisses, were now on the snow, crouching before the fire.
+One door of the carriage was already torn off.
+
+No sooner did the men about the fire hear the tread of the major's
+horse than a hoarse cry, the cry of famine, arose,--
+
+"A horse! a horse!"
+
+Those voices formed but one voice.
+
+"Back! back! look out for yourself!" cried two or three soldiers,
+aiming at the mare. Philippe threw himself before his animal, crying
+out,--
+
+"You villains! I'll throw you into your own fire. There are plenty of
+dead horses up there. Go and fetch them."
+
+"Isn't he a joker, that officer! One, two--get out of the way," cried
+a colossal grenadier. "No, you won't, hey! Well, as you please, then."
+
+A woman's cry rose higher than the report of the musket. Philippe
+fortunately was not touched, but Bichette, mortally wounded, was
+struggling in the throes of death. Three men darted forward and
+dispatched her with their bayonets.
+
+"Cannibals!" cried Philippe, "let me at any rate take the horse-cloth
+and my pistols."
+
+"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.
+
+"You must walk, Stephanie, or we shall all die here."
+
+For all answer the countess tried to drop again upon the snow and
+sleep. The aide-de-camp seized a brand from the fire and waved it in
+her face.
+
+"We will save her in spite of herself!" cried Philippe, lifting the
+countess and placing her in the carriage.
+
+He returned to implore the help of his friend. Together they lifted
+the old general, without knowing whether he were dead or alive, and
+put him beside his wife. The major then rolled over the men who were
+sleeping on his blankets, which he tossed into the carriage, together
+with some roasted fragments of his mare.
+
+"What do you mean to do?" asked the aide-de-camp.
+
+"Drag them."
+
+"You are crazy."
+
+"True," said Philippe, crossing his arms in despair.
+
+Suddenly, he was seized by a last despairing thought.
+
+"To you," he said, grasping the sound arm of his orderly, "I confide
+her for one hour. Remember that you must die sooner than let any one
+approach her."
+
+The major then snatched up the countess's diamonds, held them in one
+hand, drew his sabre with the other, and began to strike with the flat
+of its blade such of the sleepers as he thought the most intrepid. He
+succeeded in awaking the colossal grenadier, and two other men whose
+rank it was impossible to tell.
+
+"We are done for!" he said.
+
+"I know it," said the grenadier, "but I don't care."
+
+"Well, death for death, wouldn't you rather sell your life for a
+pretty woman, and take your chances of seeing France?"
+
+"I'd rather sleep," said a man, rolling over on the snow, "and if you
+trouble me again, I'll stick my bayonet into your stomach."
+
+"What is the business, my colonel?" said the grenadier. "That man is
+drunk; he's a Parisian; he likes his ease."
+
+"That is yours, my brave grenadier," cried the major, offering him a
+string of diamonds, "if you will follow me and fight like a madman.
+The Russians are ten minutes' march from here; they have horses; we
+are going up to their first battery for a pair."
+
+"But the sentinels?"
+
+"One of us three--" he interrupted himself, and turned to the aide-de-
+camp. "You will come, Hippolyte, won't you?"
+
+Hippolyte nodded.
+
+"One of us," continued the major, "will take care of the sentinel.
+Besides, perhaps they are asleep too, those cursed Russians."
+
+"Forward! major, you're a brave one! But you'll give me a lift on your
+carriage?" said the grenadier.
+
+"Yes, if you don't leave your skin up there-- If I fall, Hippolyte,
+and you, grenadier, promise me to do your utmost to save the
+countess."
+
+"Agreed!" cried the grenadier.
+
+They started for the Russian lines, toward one of the batteries which
+had so decimated the hapless wretches lying on the banks of the river.
+A few moments later, the gallop of two horses echoed over the snow,
+and the wakened artillery men poured out a volley which ranged above
+the heads of the sleeping men. The pace of the horses was so fleet
+that their steps resounded like the blows of a blacksmith on his
+anvil. The generous aide-de-camp was killed. The athletic grenadier
+was safe and sound. Philippe in defending Hippolyte had received a
+bayonet in his shoulder; but he clung to his horse's mane, and clasped
+him so tightly with his knees that the animal was held as in a vice.
+
+"God be praised!" cried the major, finding his orderly untouched, and
+the carriage in its place.
+
+"If you are just, my officer, you will get me the cross for this,"
+said the man. "We've played a fine game of guns and sabres here, I can
+tell you."
+
+"We have done nothing yet-- Harness the horses. Take these ropes."
+
+"They are not long enough."
+
+"Grenadier, turn over those sleepers, and take their shawls and linen,
+to eke out."
+
+"Tiens! that's one dead," said the grenadier, stripping the first man
+he came to. "Bless me! what a joke, they are all dead!"
+
+"All?"
+
+"Yes, all; seems as if horse-meat must be indigestible if eaten with
+snow."
+
+The words made Philippe tremble. The cold was increasing.
+
+"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 horrible resignation. 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 odious selfishness. 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
+the frail construction with sufficient impetus to force its way
+through corpses and ice-floes to the other shore.
+
+"Thunder of heaven! I'll sweep you into the water if you don't take
+the major and his two companions," cried the stalwart grenadier, who
+swung his sabre, stopped the departure, and forced the men to stand
+closer in spite of furious outcries.
+
+"I shall fall,"--"I am falling,"--"Push off! push off!--Forward!"
+resounded on all sides.
+
+The major looked with haggard eyes at Stephanie, who lifted hers to
+heaven with a feeling of sublime resignation.
+
+"To die with thee!" she said.
+
+There was something even comical in the position of the men in
+possession of the raft. Though they were uttering awful groans and
+imprecations, they dared not resist the grenadier, for in truth they
+were so closely packed together, that a push to one man might send
+half of them overboard. This danger was so pressing that a cavalry
+captain endeavored to get rid of the grenadier; but the latter, seeing
+the hostile movement of the officer, seized him round the waist and
+flung him into the water, crying out,--
+
+"Ha! ha! my duck, do you want to drink? Well, then, drink!-- Here are
+two places," he cried. "Come, major, toss me the little woman and
+follow yourself. Leave that old fossil, who'll be dead by to-morrow."
+
+"Make haste!" cried the voice of all, as one man.
+
+"Come, major, they are grumbling, and they have a right to do so."
+
+The Comte de Vandieres threw off his wrappings and showed himself in
+his general's uniform.
+
+"Let us save the count," said Philippe.
+
+Stephanie pressed his hand, and throwing herself on his breast, she
+clasped him tightly.
+
+"Adieu!" she said.
+
+They had understood each other.
+
+The Comte de Vandieres recovered sufficient strength and presence of
+mind to spring upon the raft, whither Stephanie followed him, after
+turning a last look to Philippe.
+
+"Major! will you take my place? I don't care a fig for life," cried
+the grenadier. "I've neither wife nor child nor mother."
+
+"I confide them to your care," said the major, pointing to the count
+and his wife.
+
+"Then be easy; I'll care for them, as though they were my very eyes."
+
+The raft was now sent off with so much violence toward the opposite
+side of the river, that as it touched ground, the shock was felt by
+all. The count, who was at the edge of it, lost his balance and fell
+into the river; as he fell, a cake of sharp ice caught him, and cut
+off his head, flinging it to a great distance.
+
+"See there! major!" cried the grenadier.
+
+"Adieu!" said a woman's voice.
+
+Philippe de Sucy fell to the ground, overcome with horror and fatigue.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE CURE
+
+"My poor niece became insane," continued the physician, after a few
+moment's silence. "Ah! monsieur," he said, seizing the marquis's hand,
+"life has been awful indeed for that poor little woman, so young, so
+delicate! After being, by dreadful fatality, separated from the
+grenadier, whose name was Fleuriot, she was dragged about for two
+years at the heels of the army, the plaything of a crowd of wretches.
+She was often, they tell me, barefooted, and scarcely clothed; for
+months together, she had no care, no food but what she could pick up;
+sometimes kept in hospitals, sometimes driven away like an animal, God
+alone knows the horrors that poor unfortunate creature has survived.
+She was locked up in a madhouse, in a little town in Germany, at the
+time her relatives, thinking her dead, divided her property. In 1816,
+the grenadier Fleuriot was at an inn in Strasburg, where she went
+after making her escape from the madhouse. Several peasants told the
+grenadier that she had lived for a whole month in the forest, where
+they had tracked her in vain, trying to catch her, but she had always
+escaped them. I was then staying a few miles from Strasburg. Hearing
+much talk of a wild woman caught in the woods, I felt a desire to
+ascertain the truth of the ridiculous stories which were current about
+her. What were my feelings on beholding my own niece! Fleuriot told me
+all he knew of her dreadful history. I took the poor man with my niece
+back to my home in Auvergne, where, unfortunately, I lost him some
+months later. He had some slight control over Madame de Vandieres; he
+alone could induce her to wear clothing. 'Adieu,' that word, which is
+her only language, she seldom uttered at that time. Fleuriot had
+endeavored to awaken in her a few ideas, a few memories of the past;
+but he failed; all that he gained was to make her say that melancholy
+word a little oftener. Still, the grenadier knew how to amuse her and
+play with her; my hope was in him, but--"
+
+He was silent for a moment.
+
+"Here," he continued, "she has found another creature, with whom she
+seems to have some strange understanding. It is a poor idiotic
+peasant-girl, who, in spite of her ugliness and stupidity, loved a
+man, a mason. The mason was willing to marry her, as she had some
+property. Poor Genevieve was happy for a year; she dressed in her best
+to dance with her lover on Sunday; she comprehended love; in her heart
+and soul there was room for that one sentiment. But the mason, Dallot,
+reflected. He found a girl with all her senses, and more land than
+Genevieve, and he deserted the poor creature. Since then she has lost
+the little intellect that love developed in her; she can do nothing
+but watch the cows, or help at harvesting. My niece and this poor girl
+are friends, apparently by some invisible chain of their common
+destiny, by the sentiment in each which has caused their madness.
+See!" added Stephanie's uncle, leading the marquis to a window.
+
+The latter then saw the countess seated on the ground between
+Genevieve's legs. The peasant-girl, armed with a huge horn comb, was
+giving her whole attention to the work of disentangling the long black
+hair of the poor countess, who was uttering little stifled cries,
+expressive of some instinctive sense of pleasure. Monsieur d'Albon
+shuddered as he saw the utter abandonment of the body, the careless
+animal ease which revealed in the hapless woman a total absence of
+soul.
+
+"Philippe, Philippe!" he muttered, "the past horrors are nothing!--Is
+there no hope?" he asked.
+
+The old physician raised his eyes to heaven.
+
+"Adieu, monsieur," said the marquis, pressing his hand. "My friend is
+expecting me. He will soon come to you."
+
+"Then it was really she!" cried de Sucy at d'Albon's first words. "Ah!
+I still doubted it," he added, a few tears falling from his eyes,
+which were habitually stern.
+
+"Yes, it is the Comtesse de Vandieres," replied the marquis.
+
+The colonel rose abruptly from his bed and began to dress.
+
+"Philippe!" cried his friend, "are you mad?"
+
+"I am no longer ill," replied the colonel, simply. "This news has
+quieted my suffering. What pain can I feel when I think of Stephanie?
+I am going to the Bons-Hommes, to see her, speak to her, cure her. She
+is free. Well, happiness will smile upon us--or Providence is not in
+this world. Think you that that poor woman could hear my voice and not
+recover reason?"
+
+"She has already seen you and not recognized you," said his friend,
+gently, for he felt the danger of Philippe's excited hopes, and tried
+to cast a salutary doubt upon them.
+
+The colonel quivered; then he smiled, and made a motion of
+incredulity. No one dared to oppose his wish, and within a very short
+time he reached the old priory.
+
+"Where is she?" he cried, on arriving.
+
+"Hush!" said her uncle, "she is sleeping. See, here she is."
+
+Philippe then saw the poor insane creature lying on a bench in the
+sun. Her head was protected from the heat by a forest of hair which
+fell in tangled locks over her face. Her arms hung gracefully to the
+ground; her body lay easily posed like that of a doe; her feet were
+folded under her without effort; her bosom rose and fell at regular
+intervals; her skin, her complexion, had that porcelain whiteness,
+which we admire so much in the clear transparent faces of children.
+Standing motionless beside her, Genevieve held in her hand a branch
+which Stephanie had doubtless climbed a tall poplar to obtain, and the
+poor idiot was gently waving it above her sleeping companion, to chase
+away the flies and cool the atmosphere.
+
+The peasant-woman gazed at Monsieur Fanjat and the colonel; then, like
+an animal which recognizes its master, she turned her head slowly to
+the countess, and continued to watch her, without giving any sign of
+surprise or intelligence. The air was stifling; the stone bench
+glittered in the sunlight; the meadow exhaled to heaven those impish
+vapors which dance and dart above the herbage like silvery dust; but
+Genevieve seemed not to feel this all-consuming heat.
+
+The colonel pressed the hand of the doctor violently in his own. Tears
+rolled from his eyes along his manly cheeks, and fell to the earth at
+the feet of his Stephanie.
+
+"Monsieur," said the uncle, "for two years past, my heart is broken
+day by day. Soon you will be like me. You may not always weep, but you
+will always feel your sorrow."
+
+The two men understood each other; and again, pressing each other's
+hands, they remained motionless, contemplating the exquisite calmness
+which sleep had cast upon that graceful creature. From time to time
+she gave a sigh, and that sigh, which had all the semblance of
+sensibilities, made the unhappy colonel tremble with hope.
+
+"Alas!" said Monsieur Fanjat, "do not deceive yourself, monsieur;
+there is no meaning in her sigh."
+
+Those who have ever watched for hours with delight the sleep of one
+who is tenderly beloved, whose eyes will smile to them at waking, can
+understand the sweet yet terrible emotion that shook the colonel's
+soul. To him, this sleep was an illusion; the waking might be death,
+death in its most awful form. Suddenly, a little goat jumped in three
+bounds to the bench, and smelt at Stephanie, who waked at the sound.
+She sprang to her feet, but so lightly that the movement did not
+frighten the freakish animal; then she caught sight of Philippe, and
+darted away, followed by her four-footed friend, to a hedge of elders;
+there she uttered the same little cry like a frightened bird, which
+the two men had heard near the other gate. Then she climbed an acacia,
+and nestling into its tufted top, she watched the stranger with the
+inquisitive attention of the forest birds.
+
+"Adieu, adieu, adieu," she said, without the soul communicating one
+single intelligent inflexion to the word.
+
+It was uttered impassively, as the bird sings his note.
+
+"She does not recognize me!" cried the colonel, in despair.
+"Stephanie! it is Philippe, thy Philippe, PHILIPPE!"
+
+And the poor soldier went to the acacia; but when he was a few steps
+from it, the countess looked at him, as if defying him, although a
+slight expression of fear seemed to flicker in her eye; then, with a
+single bound she sprang from the acacia to a laburnum, and thence to a
+Norway fir, where she darted from branch to branch with extraordinary
+agility.
+
+"Do not pursue her," said Monsieur Fanjat to the colonel, "or you will
+arouse an aversion which might become insurmountable. I will help you
+to tame her and make her come to you. Let us sit on this bench. If you
+pay no attention to her, she will come of her own accord to examine
+you."
+
+"SHE! not to know me! to flee me!" repeated the colonel, seating
+himself on a bench with his back to a tree that shaded it, and letting
+his head fall upon his breast.
+
+The doctor said nothing. Presently, the countess came gently down the
+fir-tree, letting herself swing easily on the branches, as the wind
+swayed them. At each branch she stopped to examine the stranger; but
+seeing him motionless, she at last sprang to the ground and came
+slowly towards him across the grass. When she reached a tree about ten
+feet distant, against which she leaned, Monsieur Fanjat said to the
+colonel in a low voice,--
+
+"Take out, adroitly, from my right hand pocket some lumps of sugar you
+will feel there. Show them to her, and she will come to us. I will
+renounce in your favor my sole means of giving her pleasure. With
+sugar, which she passionately loves, you will accustom her to approach
+you, and to know you again."
+
+"When she was a woman," said Philippe, sadly, "she had no taste for
+sweet things."
+
+When the colonel showed her the lump of sugar, holding it between the
+thumb and forefinger of his right hand, she again uttered her little
+wild cry, and sprang toward him; then she stopped, struggling against
+the instinctive fear he caused her; she looked at the sugar and turned
+away her head alternately, precisely like a dog whose master forbids
+him to touch his food until he has said a letter of the alphabet which
+he slowly repeats. At last the animal desire triumphed over fear.
+Stephanie darted to Philippe, cautiously putting out her little brown
+hand to seize the prize, touched the fingers of her poor lover as she
+snatched the sugar, and fled away among the trees. This dreadful scene
+overcame the colonel; he burst into tears and rushed into the house.
+
+"Has love less courage than friendship?" Monsieur Fanjat said to him.
+"I have some hope, Monsieur le baron. My poor niece was in a far worse
+state than that in which you now find her."
+
+"How was that possible?" cried Philippe.
+
+"She went naked," replied the doctor.
+
+The colonel made a gesture of horror and turned pale. The doctor saw
+in that sudden pallor alarming symptoms; he felt the colonel's pulse,
+found him in a violent fever, and half persuaded, half compelled him
+to go to bed. Then he gave him a dose of opium to ensure a calm sleep.
+
+Eight days elapsed, during which Colonel de Sucy struggled against
+mortal agony; tears no longer came to his eyes. His soul, often
+lacerated, could not harden itself to the sight of Stephanie's
+insanity; but he covenanted, so to speak, with his cruel situation,
+and found some assuaging of his sorrow. He had the courage to slowly
+tame the countess by bringing her sweetmeats; he took such pains in
+choosing them, and he learned so well how to keep the little conquests
+he sought to make upon her instincts--that last shred of her intellect
+--that he ended by making her much TAMER than she had ever been.
+
+Every morning he went into the park, and if, after searching for her
+long, he could not discover on what tree she was swaying, nor the
+covert in which she crouched to play with a bird, nor the roof on
+which she might have clambered, he would whistle the well-known air of
+"Partant pour la Syrie," to which some tender memory of their love
+attached. Instantly, Stephanie would run to him with the lightness of
+a fawn. She was now so accustomed to see him, that he frightened her
+no longer. Soon she was willing to sit upon his knee, and clasp him
+closely with her thin and agile arm. In that attitude--so dear to
+lovers!--Philippe would feed her with sugarplums. Then, having eaten
+those that he gave her, she would often search his pockets with
+gestures that had all the mechanical velocity of a monkey's motions.
+When she was very sure there was nothing more, she looked at Philippe
+with clear eyes, without ideas, with recognition. Then she would play
+with him, trying at times to take off his boots to see his feet,
+tearing his gloves, putting on his hat; she would even let him pass
+his hands through her hair, and take her in his arms; she accepted,
+but without pleasure, his ardent kisses. She would look at him
+silently, without emotion, when his tears flowed; but she always
+understood his "Partant pour la Syrie," when he whistled it, though he
+never succeeded in teaching her to say her own name Stephanie.
+
+Philippe was sustained in his agonizing enterprise by hope, which
+never abandoned him. When, on fine autumn mornings, he found the
+countess sitting peacefully on a bench, beneath a poplar now
+yellowing, the poor lover would sit at her feet, looking into her eyes
+as long as she would let him, hoping ever that the light that was in
+them would become intelligent. Sometimes the thought deluded him that
+he saw those hard immovable rays softening, vibrating, living, and he
+cried out,--
+
+"Stephanie! Stephanie! thou hearest me, thou seest me!"
+
+But she listened to that cry as to a noise, the soughing of the wind
+in the tree-tops, or the lowing of the cow on the back of which she
+climbed. Then the colonel would wring his hands in despair,--despair
+that was new each day.
+
+One evening, under a calm sky, amid the silence and peace of that
+rural haven, the doctor saw, from a distance, that the colonel was
+loading his pistols. The old man felt then that the young man had
+ceased to hope; he felt the blood rushing to his heart, and if he
+conquered the vertigo that threatened him, it was because he would
+rather see his niece living and mad than dead. He hastened up.
+
+"What are you doing?" he said.
+
+"That is for me," replied the colonel, pointing to a pistol already
+loaded, which was lying on the bench; "and this is for her," he added,
+as he forced the wad into the weapon he held.
+
+The countess was lying on the ground beside him, playing with the
+balls.
+
+"Then you do not know," said the doctor, coldly, concealing his
+terror, "that in her sleep last night she called you: Philippe!"
+
+"She called me!" cried the baron, dropping his pistol, which Stephanie
+picked up. He took it from her hastily, caught up the one that was on
+the bench, and rushed away.
+
+"Poor darling!" said the doctor, happy in the success of his lie. He
+pressed the poor creature to his breast, and continued speaking to
+himself: "He would have killed thee, selfish man! because he suffers.
+He does not love thee for thyself, my child! But we forgive, do we
+not? He is mad, out of his senses, but thou art only senseless. No,
+God alone should call thee to Him. We think thee unhappy, we pity thee
+because thou canst not share our sorrows, fools that we are!--But," he
+said, sitting down and taking her on his knee, "nothing troubles thee;
+thy life is like that of a bird, of a fawn--"
+
+As he spoke she darted upon a young blackbird which was hopping near
+them, caught it with a little note of satisfaction, strangled it,
+looked at it, dead in her hand, and flung it down at the foot of a
+tree without a thought.
+
+The next day, as soon as it was light, the colonel came down into the
+gardens, and looked about for Stephanie,--he believed in the coming
+happiness. Not finding her he whistled. When his darling came to him,
+he took her on his arm; they walked together thus for the first time,
+and he led her within a group of trees, the autumn foliage of which
+was dropping to the breeze. The colonel sat down. Of her own accord
+Stephanie placed herself on his knee. Philippe trembled with joy.
+
+"Love," he said, kissing her hands passionately, "I am Philippe."
+
+She looked at him with curiosity.
+
+"Come," he said, pressing her to him, "dost thou feel my heart? It has
+beaten for thee alone. I love thee ever. Philippe is not dead; he is
+not dead, thou art on him, in his arms. Thou art MY Stephanie; I am
+thy Philippe."
+
+"Adieu," she said, "adieu."
+
+The colonel quivered, for he fancied he saw his own excitement
+communicated to his mistress. His heart-rending cry, drawn from him by
+despair, that last effort of an eternal love, of a delirious passion,
+was successful, the mind of his darling was awaking.
+
+"Ah! Stephanie! Stephanie! we shall yet be happy."
+
+She gave a cry of satisfaction, and her eyes brightened with a flash
+of vague intelligence.
+
+"She knows me!--Stephanie!"
+
+His heart swelled; his eyelids were wet with tears. Then, suddenly,
+the countess showed him a bit of sugar she had found in his pocket
+while he was speaking to her. He had mistaken for human thought the
+amount of reason required for a monkey's trick. Philippe dropped to
+the ground unconscious. Monsieur Fanjat found the countess sitting on
+the colonel's body. She was biting her sugar, and testifying her
+pleasure by pretty gestures and affectations with which, had she her
+reason, she might have imitated her parrot or her cat.
+
+"Ah! my friend," said Philippe, when he came to his senses, "I die
+every day, every moment! I love too well! I could still bear all, if,
+in her madness, she had kept her woman's nature. But to see her always
+a savage, devoid even of modesty, to see her--"
+
+"You want opera madness, do you? something picturesque and pleasing,"
+said the doctor, bitterly. "Your love and your devotion yield before a
+prejudice. Monsieur, I have deprived myself for your sake of the sad
+happiness of watching over my niece; I have left to you the pleasure
+of playing with her; I have kept for myself the heaviest cares. While
+you have slept, I have watched, I have-- Go, monsieur, go! abandon
+her! leave this sad refuge. I know how to live with that dear darling
+creature; I comprehend her madness, I watch her gestures, I know her
+secrets. Some day you will thank me for thus sending you away."
+
+The colonel left the old monastery, never to return but once. The
+doctor was horrified when he saw the effect he had produced upon his
+guest, whom he now began to love when he saw him thus. Surely, if
+either of the two lovers were worthy of pity, it was Philippe; did he
+not bear alone the burden of their dreadful sorrow?
+
+After the colonel's departure the doctor kept himself informed about
+him; he learned that the miserable man was living on an estate near
+Saint-Germain. In truth, the baron, on the faith of a dream, had
+formed a project which he believed would yet restore the mind of his
+darling. Unknown to the doctor, he spent the rest of the autumn in
+preparing for his enterprise. A little river flowed through his park
+and inundated during the winter the marshes on either side of it,
+giving it some resemblance to the Beresina. The village of Satout, on
+the heights above, closed in, like Studzianka, the scene of horror.
+The colonel collected workmen to deepen the banks, and by the help of
+his memory, he copied in his park the shore where General Eble
+destroyed the bridge. He planted piles, and made buttresses and burned
+them, leaving their charred and blackened ruins, standing in the water
+from shore to shore. Then he gathered fragments of all kinds, like
+those of which the raft was built. He ordered dilapidated uniforms and
+clothing of every grade, and hired hundreds of peasants to wear them;
+he erected huts and cabins for the purpose of burning them. In short,
+he forgot nothing that might recall that most awful of all scenes, and
+he succeeded.
+
+Toward the last of December, when the snow had covered with its thick,
+white mantle all his imitative preparations, he recognized the
+Beresina. This false Russia was so terribly truthful, that several of
+his army comrades recognized the scene of their past misery at once.
+Monsieur de Sucy took care to keep secret the motive for this tragic
+imitation, which was talked of in several Parisian circles as a proof
+of insanity.
+
+Early in January, 1820, the colonel drove in a carriage, the very
+counterpart of the one in which he had driven the Comte and Comtesse
+de Vandieres from Moscow to Studzianka. The horses, too, were like
+those he had gone, at the peril of his life, to fetch from the Russian
+outposts. He himself wore the soiled fantastic clothing, the same
+weapons, as on the 29th of November, 1812. He had let his beard grow,
+also his hair, which was tangled and matted, and his face was
+neglected, so that nothing might be wanting to represent the awful
+truth.
+
+"I can guess your purpose," cried Monsieur Fanjat, when he saw the
+colonel getting out of the carriage. "If you want to succeed, do not
+let my niece see you in that equipage. To-night I will give her opium.
+During her sleep, we will dress her as she was at Studzianka, and
+place her in the carriage. I will follow you in another vehicle."
+
+About two in the morning, the sleeping countess was placed in the
+carriage and wrapped in heavy coverings. A few peasants with torches
+lighted up this strange abduction. Suddenly, a piercing cry broke the
+silence of the night. Philippe and the doctor turned, and saw
+Genevieve coming half-naked from the ground-floor room in which she
+slept.
+
+"Adieu, adieu! all is over, adieu!" she cried, weeping hot tears.
+
+"Genevieve, what troubles you?" asked the doctor.
+
+Genevieve shook her head with a motion of despair, raised her arm to
+heaven, looked at the carriage, uttering a long-drawn moan with every
+sign of the utmost terror; then she returned to her room silently.
+
+"That is a good omen!" cried the colonel. "She feels she is to lose
+her companion. Perhaps she SEES that Stephanie will recover her
+reason."
+
+"God grant it!" said Monsieur Fanjat, who himself was affected by the
+incident.
+
+Ever since he had made a close study of insanity, the good man had met
+with many examples of the prophetic faculty and the gift of second
+sight, proofs of which are frequently given by alienated minds, and
+which may also be found, so travellers say, among certain tribes of
+savages.
+
+As the colonel had calculated, Stephanie crossed the fictitious plain
+of the Beresina at nine o'clock in the morning, when she was awakened
+by a cannon shot not a hundred yards from the spot where the
+experiment was to be tried. This was a signal. Hundreds of peasants
+made a frightful clamor like that on the shore of the river that
+memorable night, when twenty thousand stragglers were doomed to death
+or slavery by their own folly.
+
+At the cry, at the shot, the countess sprang from the carriage, and
+ran, with delirious emotion, over the snow to the banks of the river;
+she saw the burned bivouacs and the charred remains of the bridge, and
+the fatal raft, which the men were launching into the icy waters of
+the Beresina. The major, Philippe, was there, striking back the crowd
+with his sabre. Madame de Vandieres gave a cry, which went to all
+hearts, and threw herself before the colonel, whose heart beat wildly.
+She seemed to gather herself together, and, at first, looked vaguely
+at the singular scene. For an instant, as rapid as the lightning's
+flash, her eyes had that lucidity, devoid of mind, which we admire in
+the eye of birds; then passing her hand across her brow with the keen
+expression of one who meditates, she contemplated the living memory of
+a past scene spread before her, and, turning quickly to Philippe, she
+SAW HIM. An awful silence reigned in the crowd. The colonel gasped,
+but dared not speak; the doctor wept. Stephanie's sweet face colored
+faintly; then, from tint to tint, it returned to the brightness of
+youth, till it glowed with a beautiful crimson. Life and happiness,
+lighted by intelligence, came nearer and nearer like a conflagration.
+Convulsive trembling rose from her feet to her heart. Then these
+phenomena seemed to blend in one as Stephanie's eyes cast forth a
+celestial ray, the flame of a living soul. She lived, she thought! She
+shuddered, with fear perhaps, for God himself unloosed that silent
+tongue, and cast anew His fires into that long-extinguished soul.
+Human will came with its full electric torrent, and vivified the body
+from which it had been driven.
+
+"Stephanie!" cried the colonel.
+
+"Oh! it is Philippe," said the poor countess.
+
+She threw herself into the trembling arms that the colonel held out to
+her, and the clasp of the lovers frightened the spectators. Stephanie
+burst into tears. Suddenly her tears stopped, she stiffened as though
+the lightning had touched her, and said in a feeble voice,--
+
+"Adieu, Philippe; I love thee, adieu!"
+
+"Oh! she is dead," cried the colonel, opening his arms.
+
+The old doctor received the inanimate body of his niece, kissed it as
+though he were a young man, and carrying it aside, sat down with it
+still in his arms on a pile of wood. He looked at the countess and
+placed his feeble trembling hand upon her heart. That heart no longer
+beat.
+
+"It is true," he said, looking up at the colonel, who stood
+motionless, and then at Stephanie, on whom death was placing that
+resplendent beauty, that fugitive halo, which is, perhaps, a pledge of
+the glorious future--"Yes, she is dead."
+
+"Ah! that smile," cried Philippe, "do you see that smile? Can it be
+true?"
+
+"She is turning cold," replied Monsieur Fanjat.
+
+Monsieur de Sucy made a few steps to tear himself away from the sight;
+but he stopped, whistled the air that Stephanie had known, and when
+she did not come to him, went on with staggering steps like a drunken
+man, still whistling, but never turning back.
+
+General Philippe de Sucy was thought in the social world to be a very
+agreeable man, and above all a very gay one. A few days ago, a lady
+complimented him on his good humor, and the charming equability of his
+nature.
+
+"Ah! madame," he said, "I pay dear for my liveliness in my lonely
+evenings."
+
+"Are you ever alone?" she said.
+
+"No," he replied smiling.
+
+If a judicious observer of human nature could have seen at that moment
+the expression on the Comte de Sucy's face, he would perhaps have
+shuddered.
+
+"Why don't you marry?" said the lady, who had several daughters at
+school. "You are rich, titled, and of ancient lineage; you have
+talents, and a great future before you; all things smile upon you."
+
+"Yes," he said, "but a smile kills me."
+
+The next day the lady heard with great astonishment that Monsieur de
+Sucy had blown his brains out during the night. The upper ranks of
+society talked in various ways over this extraordinary event, and each
+person looked for the cause of it. According to the proclivities of
+each reasoner, play, love, ambition, hidden disorders, and vices,
+explained the catastrophe, the last scene of a drama begun in 1812.
+Two men alone, a marquis and former deputy, and an aged physician,
+knew that Philippe de Sucy was one of those strong men to whom God has
+given the unhappy power of issuing daily in triumph from awful combats
+which they fight with an unseen monster. If, for a moment, God
+withdraws from such men His all-powerful hand, they succumb.
+
+
+
+
+ADDENDUM
+
+The following personage appears in other stories of the Human Comedy.
+
+Note: Adieu is also entitled Farewell.
+
+Granville, Vicomte de
+  The Gondreville Mystery
+  A Second Home
+  Farewell (Adieu)
+  Cesar Birotteau
+  Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
+  A Daughter of Eve
+  Cousin Pons
+
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Adieu by Honore de Balzac
+