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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Adieu, by Honore de Balzac
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
+
+
+Title: Adieu
+
+Author: Honore de Balzac
+
+Release Date: June 2, 2004 [EBook #1554]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ADIEU ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny
+
+
+
+
+                                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 EBook of Adieu, by Honore de Balzac
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diff --git a/old/20040602-1554.zip b/old/20040602-1554.zip
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+***The Project Gutenberg Etext of Adieu, by Honore de Balzac***
+#47 in our series by 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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+
+
+Etext prepared by John Bickers, jbickers@templar.actrix.gen.nz
+and Dagny, dagnyj@hotmail.com
+
+
+
+
+
+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
+
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+Title: Adieu
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+Author: Honore de Balzac
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+</pre>
+
+Etext prepared by John Bickers,
+jbickers@templar.actrix.gen.nz<br>
+and Dagny, dagnyj@hotmail.com
+
+<p>ADIEU</p>
+
+<p>by HONORE DE BALZAC</p>
+
+<p>Translated By<br>
+ Katharine Prescott Wormeley</p>
+
+<p>DEDICATION</p>
+
+<p>To Prince Frederic Schwartzenburg.</p>
+
+<h1>ADIEU</h1>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+<h3>AN OLD MONASTERY</h3>
+
+<p>"Come, deputy of the Centre, forward! Quick step! march! if we
+want to<br>
+ be in time to dine with the others. Jump, marquis! there,
+that's<br>
+ right! why, you can skip across a stubble-field like a
+deer!"</p>
+
+<p>These words were said by a huntsman peacefully seated at the
+edge of<br>
+ the forest of Ile-Adam, who was finishing an Havana cigar
+while<br>
+ waiting for his companion, who had lost his way in the
+tangled<br>
+ underbrush of the wood. At his side four panting dogs were
+watching,<br>
+ as he did, the personage he addressed. To understand how
+sarcastic<br>
+ were these exhortations, repeated at intervals, we should state
+that<br>
+ the approaching huntsman was a stout little man whose
+protuberant<br>
+ stomach was the evidence of a truly ministerial "embonpoint." He
+was<br>
+ struggling painfully across the furrows of a vast wheat-field
+recently<br>
+ harvested, the stubble of which considerably impeded him; while
+to add<br>
+ to his other miseries the sun's rays, striking obliquely on his
+face,<br>
+ collected an abundance of drops of perspiration. Absorbed in
+the<br>
+ effort to maintain his equilibrium, he leaned, now forward, now
+back,<br>
+ in close imitation of the pitching of a carriage when
+violently<br>
+ jolted. The weather looked threatening. Though several spaces of
+blue<br>
+ sky still parted the thick black clouds toward the horizon, a
+flock of<br>
+ fleecy vapors were advancing with great rapidity and drawing a
+light<br>
+ gray curtain from east to west. As the wind was acting only on
+the<br>
+ upper region of the air, the atmosphere below it pressed down
+the hot<br>
+ vapors of the earth. Surrounded by masses of tall trees, the
+valley<br>
+ through which the hunter struggled felt like a furnace. Parched
+and<br>
+ silent, the forest seemed thirsty. The birds, even the insects,
+were<br>
+ voiceless; the tree-tops scarcely waved. Those persons who may
+still<br>
+ remember the summer of 1819 can imagine the woes of the poor
+deputy,<br>
+ who was struggling along, drenched in sweat, to regain his
+mocking<br>
+ friend. The latter, while smoking his cigar, had calculated from
+the<br>
+ position of the sun that it must be about five in the
+afternoon.</p>
+
+<p><br>
+ "Where the devil are we?" said the stout huntsman, mopping
+his<br>
+ forehead and leaning against the trunk of a tree nearly opposite
+to<br>
+ his companion, for he felt unequal to the effort of leaping the
+ditch<br>
+ between them.</p>
+
+<p>"That's for me to ask you," said the other, laughing, as he
+lay among<br>
+ the tall brown brake which crowned the bank. Then, throwing the
+end of<br>
+ his cigar into the ditch, he cried out vehemently: "I swear by
+Saint<br>
+ Hubert that never again will I trust myself in unknown territory
+with<br>
+ a statesman, though he be, like you, my dear d'Albon, a college
+mate."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Philippe, have you forgotten your French? Or have you
+left your<br>
+ wits in Siberia?" replied the stout man, casting a sorrowfully
+comic<br>
+ look at a sign-post about a hundred feet away.</p>
+
+<p>"True, true," cried Philippe, seizing his gun and springing
+with a<br>
+ bound into the field and thence to the post. "This way, d'Albon,
+this<br>
+ way," he called back to his friend, pointing to a broad paved
+path and<br>
+ reading aloud the sign: "'From Baillet to Ile-Adam.' We
+shall<br>
+ certainly find the path to Cassan, which must branch from this
+one<br>
+ between here and Ile-Adam."</p>
+
+<p>"You are right, colonel," said Monsieur d'Albon, replacing
+upon his<br>
+ head the cap with which he had been fanning himself.</p>
+
+<p>"Forward then, my respectable privy councillor," replied
+Colonel<br>
+ Philippe, whistling to the dogs, who seemed more willing to obey
+him<br>
+ than the public functionary to whom they belonged.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you aware, marquis," said the jeering soldier, "that we
+still<br>
+ have six miles to go? That village over there must be
+Baillet."</p>
+
+<p>"Good heavens!" cried the marquis, "go to Cassan if you must,
+but<br>
+ you'll go alone. I prefer to stay here, in spite of the coming
+storm,<br>
+ and wait for the horse you can send me from the chateau. You've
+played<br>
+ me a trick, Sucy. We were to have had a nice little hunt not far
+from<br>
+ Cassan, and beaten the coverts I know. Instead of that, you have
+kept<br>
+ me running like a hare since four o'clock this morning, and all
+I've<br>
+ had for breakfast is a cup of milk. Now, if you ever have a
+petition<br>
+ before the Court, I'll make you lose it, however just your
+claim."</p>
+
+<p>The poor discouraged huntsman sat down on a stone that
+supported the<br>
+ signpost, relieved himself of his gun and his gamebag, and
+heaved a<br>
+ long sigh.</p>
+
+<p>"France! such are thy deputies!" exclaimed Colonel de Sucy,
+laughing.<br>
+ "Ah! my poor d'Albon, if you had been like me six years in the
+wilds<br>
+ of Siberia--"</p>
+
+<p>He said no more, but he raised his eyes to heaven as if that
+anguish<br>
+ were between himself and God.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, march on!" he added. "If you sit still you are
+lost."</p>
+
+<p>"How can I, Philippe? It is an old magisterial habit to sit
+still. On<br>
+ my honor! I'm tired out-- If I had only killed a hare!"</p>
+
+<p>The two men presented a rather rare contrast: the public
+functionary<br>
+ was forty-two years of age and seemed no more than thirty,
+whereas the<br>
+ soldier was thirty, and seemed forty at the least. Both wore the
+red<br>
+ rosette of the officers of the Legion of honor. A few spare
+locks of<br>
+ black hair mixed with white, like the wing of a magpie, escaped
+from<br>
+ the colonel's cap, while handsome brown curls adorned the brow
+of the<br>
+ statesman. One was tall, gallant, high-strung, and the lines of
+his<br>
+ pallid face showed terrible passions or frightful griefs. The
+other<br>
+ had a face that was brilliant with health, and jovially worth of
+an<br>
+ epicurean. Both were deeply sun-burned, and their high gaiters
+of<br>
+ tanned leather showed signs of the bogs and the thickets they
+had just<br>
+ come through.</p>
+
+<p>"Come," said Monsieur de Sucy, "let us get on. A short hour's
+march,<br>
+ and we shall reach Cassan in time for a good dinner."</p>
+
+<p>"It is easy to see you have never loved," replied the
+councillor, with<br>
+ a look that was pitifully comic; "you are as relentless as
+article 304<br>
+ of the penal code."</p>
+
+<p>Philippe de Sucy quivered; his broad brow contracted; his face
+became<br>
+ as sombre as the skies above them. Some memory of awful
+bitterness<br>
+ distorted for a moment his features, but he said nothing. Like
+all<br>
+ strong men, he drove down his emotions to the depths of his
+heart;<br>
+ thinking perhaps, as simple characters are apt to think, that
+there<br>
+ was something immodest in unveiling griefs when human language
+cannot<br>
+ render their depths and may only rouse the mockery of those who
+do not<br>
+ comprehend them. Monsieur d'Albon had one of those delicate
+natures<br>
+ which divine sorrows, and are instantly sympathetic to the
+emotion<br>
+ they have involuntarily aroused. He respected his friend's
+silence,<br>
+ rose, forgot his fatigue, and followed him silently, grieved to
+have<br>
+ touched a wound that was evidently not healed.</p>
+
+<p>"Some day, my friend," said Philippe, pressing his hand, and
+thanking<br>
+ him for his mute repentance by a heart-rending look, "I will
+relate to<br>
+ you my life. To-day I cannot."</p>
+
+<p>They continued their way in silence. When the colonel's pain
+seemed<br>
+ soothed, the marquis resumed his fatigue; and with the instinct,
+or<br>
+ rather the will, of a wearied man his eye took in the very
+depths of<br>
+ the forest; he questioned the tree-tops and examined the
+branching<br>
+ paths, hoping to discover some dwelling where he could ask<br>
+ hospitality. Arriving at a cross-ways, he thought he noticed a
+slight<br>
+ smoke rising among the trees; he stopped, looked more
+attentively, and<br>
+ saw, in the midst of a vast copse, the dark-green branches of
+several<br>
+ pine-trees.</p>
+
+<p>"A house! a house!" he cried, with the joy the sailor feels in
+crying<br>
+ "Land!"</p>
+
+<p>Then he sprang quickly into the copse, and the colonel, who
+had fallen<br>
+ into a deep reverie, followed him mechanically.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd rather get an omelet, some cottage bread, and a chair
+here," he<br>
+ said, "than go to Cassan for sofas, truffles, and Bordeaux."</p>
+
+<p>These words were an exclamation of enthusiasm, elicited from
+the<br>
+ councillor on catching sight of a wall, the white towers of
+which<br>
+ glimmered in the distance through the brown masses of the tree
+trunks.</p>
+
+<p>"Ha! ha! this looks to me as if it had once been a priory,"
+cried the<br>
+ marquis, as they reached a very old and blackened gate, through
+which<br>
+ they could see, in the midst of a large park, a building
+constructed<br>
+ in the style of the monasteries of old. "How those rascals the
+monks<br>
+ knew how to choose their sites!"</p>
+
+<p>This last exclamation was an expression of surprise and
+pleasure at<br>
+ the poetical hermitage which met his eyes. The house stood on
+the<br>
+ slope of the mountain, at the summit of which is the village
+of<br>
+ Nerville. The great centennial oaks of the forest which
+encircled the<br>
+ dwelling made the place an absolute solitude. The main
+building,<br>
+ formerly occupied by the monks, faced south. The park seemed to
+have<br>
+ about forty acres. Near the house lay a succession of green
+meadows,<br>
+ charmingly crossed by several clear rivulets, with here and
+there a<br>
+ piece of water naturally placed without the least apparent
+artifice.<br>
+ Trees of elegant shape and varied foliage were distributed
+about.<br>
+ Grottos, cleverly managed, and massive terraces with dilapidated
+steps<br>
+ and rusty railings, gave a peculiar character to this lone
+retreat.<br>
+ Art had harmonized her constructions with the picturesque
+effects of<br>
+ nature. Human passions seemed to die at the feet of those great
+trees,<br>
+ which guarded this asylum from the tumult of the world as they
+shaded<br>
+ it from the fires of the sun.</p>
+
+<p><br>
+ "How desolate!" thought Monsieur d'Albon, observing the
+sombre<br>
+ expression which the ancient building gave to the landscape,
+gloomy as<br>
+ though a curse were on it. It seemed a fatal spot deserted by
+man. Ivy<br>
+ had stretched its tortuous muscles, covered by its rich green
+mantle,<br>
+ everywhere. Brown or green, red or yellow mosses and lichen
+spread<br>
+ their romantic tints on trees and seats and roofs and stones.
+The<br>
+ crumbling window-casings were hollowed by rain, defaced by time;
+the<br>
+ balconies were broken, the terraces demolished. Some of the
+outside<br>
+ shutters hung from a single hinge. The rotten doors seemed
+quite<br>
+ unable to resist an assailant. Covered with shining tufts of<br>
+ mistletoe, the branches of the neglected fruit-trees gave no
+sign of<br>
+ fruit. Grass grew in the paths. Such ruin and desolation cast a
+weird<br>
+ poesy on the scene, filling the souls of the spectators with
+dreamy<br>
+ thoughts. A poet would have stood there long, plunged in a
+melancholy<br>
+ reverie, admiring this disorder so full of harmony, this
+destruction<br>
+ which was not without its grace. Suddenly, the brown tiles
+shone, the<br>
+ mosses glittered, fantastic shadows danced upon the meadows
+and<br>
+ beneath the trees; fading colors revived; striking contrasts<br>
+ developed, the foliage of the trees and shrubs defined itself
+more<br>
+ clearly in the light. Then--the light went out. The landscape
+seemed<br>
+ to have spoken, and now was silent, returning to its gloom, or
+rather<br>
+ to the soft sad tones of an autumnal twilight.</p>
+
+<p>"It is the palace of the Sleeping Beauty," said the marquis,
+beginning<br>
+ to view the house with the eyes of a land owner. "I wonder to
+whom it<br>
+ belongs! He must be a stupid fellow not to live in such an
+exquisite<br>
+ spot."</p>
+
+<p>At that instant a woman sprang from beneath a chestnut-tree
+standing<br>
+ to the right of the gate, and, without making any noise, passed
+before<br>
+ the marquis as rapidly as the shadow of a cloud. This vision
+made him<br>
+ mute with surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Albon, what's the matter?" asked the colonel.</p>
+
+<p>"I am rubbing my eyes to know if I am asleep or awake,"
+replied the<br>
+ marquis, with his face close to the iron rails as he tried to
+get<br>
+ another sight of the phantom.</p>
+
+<p>"She must be beneath that fig-tree," he said, pointing to the
+foliage<br>
+ of a tree which rose above the wall to the left of the gate.</p>
+
+<p>"She! who?"</p>
+
+<p>"How can I tell?" replied Monsieur d'Albon. "A strange woman
+rose up<br>
+ there, just before me," he said in a low voice; "she seemed to
+come<br>
+ from the world of shades rather than from the land of the
+living. She<br>
+ is so slender, so light, so filmy, she must be diaphanous. Her
+face<br>
+ was as white as milk; her eyes, her clothes, her hair jet black.
+She<br>
+ looked at me as she flitted by, and though I may say I'm no
+coward,<br>
+ that cold immovable look froze the blood in my veins."</p>
+
+<p>"Is she pretty?" asked Philippe.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know. I could see nothing but the eyes in that
+face."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, let the dinner at Cassan go to the devil!" cried the
+colonel.<br>
+ "Suppose we stay here. I have a sudden childish desire to enter
+that<br>
+ singular house. Do you see those window-frames painted red, and
+the<br>
+ red lines on the doors and shutters? Doesn't the place look to
+you as<br>
+ if it belonged to the devil?--perhaps he inherited it from the
+monks.<br>
+ Come, let us pursue the black and white lady--forward, march!"
+cried<br>
+ Philippe, with forced gaiety.</p>
+
+<p>At that instant the two huntsmen heard a cry that was
+something like<br>
+ that of a mouse caught in a trap. They listened. The rustle of a
+few<br>
+ shrubs sounded in the silence like the murmur of a breaking
+wave. In<br>
+ vain they listened for other sounds; the earth was dumb, and
+kept the<br>
+ secret of those light steps, if, indeed, the unknown woman moved
+at<br>
+ all.</p>
+
+<p>"It is very singular!" said Philippe, as they skirted the park
+wall.</p>
+
+<p>The two friends presently reached a path in the forest which
+led to<br>
+ the village of Chauvry. After following this path some way
+toward the<br>
+ main road to Paris, they came to another iron gate which led to
+the<br>
+ principal facade of the mysterious dwelling. On this side
+the<br>
+ dilapidation and disorder of the premises had reached their
+height.<br>
+ Immense cracks furrowed the walls of the house, which was built
+on<br>
+ three sides of a square. Fragments of tiles and slates lying on
+the<br>
+ ground, and the dilapidated condition of the roofs, were
+evidence of a<br>
+ total want of care on the part of the owners. The fruit had
+fallen<br>
+ from the trees and lay rotting on the ground; a cow was feeding
+on the<br>
+ lawn and treading down the flowers in the borders, while a
+goat<br>
+ browsed on the shoots of the vines and munched the unripe
+grapes.</p>
+
+<p>"Here all is harmony; the devastation seems organized," said
+the<br>
+ colonel, pulling the chain of a bell; but the bell was without
+a<br>
+ clapper.</p>
+
+<p>The huntsmen heard nothing but the curiously sharp noise of a
+rusty<br>
+ spring. Though very dilapidated, a little door made in the wall
+beside<br>
+ the iron gates resisted all their efforts to open it.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well, this is getting to be exciting," said de Sucy to
+his<br>
+ companion.</p>
+
+<p>"If I were not a magistrate," replied Monsieur d'Albon, "I
+should<br>
+ think that woman was a witch."</p>
+
+<p>As he said the words, the cow came to the iron gate and pushed
+her<br>
+ warm muzzle towards them, as if she felt the need of seeing
+human<br>
+ beings. Then a woman, if that name could be applied to the
+indefinable<br>
+ being who suddenly issued from a clump of bushes, pulled away
+the cow<br>
+ by its rope. This woman wore on her head a red handkerchief,
+beneath<br>
+ which trailed long locks of hair in color and shape like the
+flax on a<br>
+ distaff. She wore no fichu. A coarse woollen petticoat in black
+and<br>
+ gray stripes, too short by several inches, exposed her legs. She
+might<br>
+ have belonged to some tribe of Red-Skins described by Cooper,
+for her<br>
+ legs, neck, and arms were the color of brick. No ray of
+intelligence<br>
+ enlivened her vacant face. A few whitish hairs served her
+for<br>
+ eyebrows; the eyes themselves, of a dull blue, were cold and
+wan; and<br>
+ her mouth was so formed as to show the teeth, which were
+crooked, but<br>
+ as white as those of a dog.</p>
+
+<p>"Here, my good woman!" called Monsieur de Sucy.</p>
+
+<p>She came very slowly to the gate, looking with a silly
+expression at<br>
+ the two huntsmen, the sight of whom brought a forced and painful
+smile<br>
+ to her face.</p>
+
+<p>"Where are we? Whose house is this? Who are you? Do you belong
+here?"</p>
+
+<p>To these questions and several others which the two
+friends<br>
+ alternately addressed to her, she answered only with guttural
+sounds<br>
+ that seemed more like the growl of an animal than the voice of a
+human<br>
+ being.</p>
+
+<p>"She must be deaf and dumb," said the marquis.</p>
+
+<p>"Bons-Hommes!" cried the peasant woman.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! I see. This is, no doubt, the old monastery of the
+Bons-Hommes,"<br>
+ said the marquis.</p>
+
+<p>He renewed his questions. But, like a capricious child, the
+peasant<br>
+ woman colored, played with her wooden shoe, twisted the rope of
+the<br>
+ cow, which was now feeding peaceably, and looked at the two
+hunters,<br>
+ examining every part of their clothing; then she yelped,
+growled, and<br>
+ clucked, but did not speak.</p>
+
+<p>"What is your name?" said Philippe, looking at her fixedly, as
+if he<br>
+ meant to mesmerize her.</p>
+
+<p>"Genevieve," she said, laughing with a silly air.</p>
+
+<p>"The cow is the most intelligent being we have seen so far,"
+said the<br>
+ marquis. "I shall fire my gun and see if that will being some
+one."</p>
+
+<p>Just as d'Albon raised his gun, the colonel stopped him with
+a<br>
+ gesture, and pointed to the form of a woman, probably the one
+who had<br>
+ so keenly piqued his curiosity. At this moment she seemed lost
+in the<br>
+ deepest meditation, and was coming with slow steps along a
+distant<br>
+ pathway, so that the two friends had ample time to examine
+her.</p>
+
+<p>She was dressed in a ragged gown of black satin. Her long hair
+fell in<br>
+ masses of curls over her forehead, around her shoulders, and
+below her<br>
+ waist, serving her for a shawl. Accustomed no doubt to this
+disorder,<br>
+ she seldom pushed her hair from her forehead; and when she did
+so, it<br>
+ was with a sudden toss of her head which only for a moment
+cleared her<br>
+ forehead and eyes from the thick veil. Her gesture, like that of
+an<br>
+ animal, had a remarkable mechanical precision, the quickness of
+which<br>
+ seemed wonderful in a woman. The huntsmen were amazed to see
+her<br>
+ suddenly leap up on the branch of an apple-tree, and sit there
+with<br>
+ the ease of a bird. She gathered an apple and ate it; then she
+dropped<br>
+ to the ground with the graceful ease we admire in a squirrel.
+Her<br>
+ limbs possessed an elasticity which took from every movement
+the<br>
+ slightest appearance of effort or constraint. She played upon
+the<br>
+ turf, rolling herself about like a child; then, suddenly, she
+flung<br>
+ her feet and hands forward, and lay at full length on the grass,
+with<br>
+ the grace and natural ease of a young cat asleep in the sun.
+Thunder<br>
+ sounded in the distance, and she turned suddenly, rising on her
+hands<br>
+ and knees with the rapidity of a dog which hears a coming
+footstep.</p>
+
+<p>The effects of this singular attitude was to separate into two
+heavy<br>
+ masses the volume of her black hair, which now fell on either
+side of<br>
+ her head, and allowed the two spectators to admire the white
+shoulders<br>
+ glistening like daisies in a field, and the throat, the
+perfection of<br>
+ which allowed them to judge of the other beauties of her
+figure.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly she uttered a distressful cry and rose to her feet.
+Her<br>
+ movements succeeded each other with such airiness and grace that
+she<br>
+ seemed not a creature of this world but a daughter of the
+atmosphere,<br>
+ as sung in the poems of Ossian. She ran toward a piece of water,
+shook<br>
+ one of her legs lightly to cast off her shoe, and began to
+dabble her<br>
+ foot, white as alabaster, in the current, admiring, perhaps,
+the<br>
+ undulations she thus produced upon the surface of the water.
+Then she<br>
+ knelt down at the edge of the stream and amused herself, like a
+child,<br>
+ in casting in her long tresses and pulling them abruptly out, to
+watch<br>
+ the shower of drops that glittered down, looking, as the
+sunlight<br>
+ struck athwart them, like a chaplet of pearls.</p>
+
+<p>"That woman is mad!" cried the marquis.</p>
+
+<p>A hoarse cry, uttered by Genevieve, seemed uttered as a
+warning to the<br>
+ unknown woman, who turned suddenly, throwing back her hair from
+either<br>
+ side of her face. At this instant the colonel and Monsieur
+d'Albon<br>
+ could distinctly see her features; she, herself, perceiving the
+two<br>
+ friends, sprang to the iron railing with the lightness and
+rapidity of<br>
+ a deer.</p>
+
+<p>"Adieu!" she said, in a soft, harmonious voice, the melody of
+which<br>
+ did not convey the slightest feeling or the slightest
+thought.</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur d'Albon admired the long lashes of her eyelids, the
+blackness<br>
+ of her eyebrows, and the dazzling whiteness of a skin devoid of
+even<br>
+ the faintest tinge of color. Tiny blue veins alone broke the<br>
+ uniformity of its pure white tones. When the marquis turned to
+his<br>
+ friend as if to share with him his amazement at the sight of
+this<br>
+ singular creature, he found him stretched on the ground as if
+dead.<br>
+ D'Albon fired his gun in the air to summon assistance, crying
+out<br>
+ "Help! help!" and then endeavored to revive the colonel. At the
+sound<br>
+ of the shot, the unknown woman, who had hitherto stood
+motionless,<br>
+ fled away with the rapidity of an arrow, uttering cries of fear
+like a<br>
+ wounded animal, and running hither and thither about the meadow
+with<br>
+ every sign of the greatest terror.</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur d'Albon, hearing the rumbling of a carriage on the
+high-road<br>
+ to Ile-Adam, waved his handkerchief and shouted to its occupants
+for<br>
+ assistance. The carriage was immediately driven up to the
+old<br>
+ monastery, and the marquis recognized his neighbors, Monsieur
+and<br>
+ Madame de Granville, who at once gave up their carriage to the
+service<br>
+ of the two gentlemen. Madame de Granville had with her, by
+chance, a<br>
+ bottle of salts, which revived the colonel for a moment. When
+he<br>
+ opened his eyes he turned them to the meadow, where the unknown
+woman<br>
+ was still running and uttering her distressing cries. A
+smothered<br>
+ exclamation escaped him, which seemed to express a sense of
+horror;<br>
+ then he closed his eyes again, and made a gesture as if to
+implore his<br>
+ friend to remove him from that sight.</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur and Madame de Granville placed their carriage
+entirely at the<br>
+ disposal of the marquis, assuring him courteously that they
+would like<br>
+ to continue their way on foot.</p>
+
+<p>"Who is that lady?" asked the marquis, signing toward the
+unknown<br>
+ woman.</p>
+
+<p>"I believe she comes from Moulins," replied Monsieur de
+Granville.<br>
+ "She is the Comtesse de Vandieres, and they say she is mad; but
+as she<br>
+ has only been here two months I will not vouch for the truth of
+these<br>
+ hearsays."</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur d'Albon thanked his friends, and placing the colonel
+in the<br>
+ carriage, started with him for Cassan.</p>
+
+<p>"It is she!" cried Philippe, recovering his senses.</p>
+
+<p>"Who is she?" asked d'Albon.</p>
+
+<p>"Stephanie. Ah, dead and living, living and mad! I fancied I
+was<br>
+ dying."</p>
+
+<p>The prudent marquis, appreciating the gravity of the crisis
+through<br>
+ which his friend was passing, was careful not to question or
+excite<br>
+ him; he was only anxious to reach the chateau, for the change
+which<br>
+ had taken place in the colonel's features, in fact in his
+whole<br>
+ person, made him fear for his friend's reason. As soon,
+therefore, as<br>
+ the carriage had reached the main street of Ile-Adam, he
+dispatched<br>
+ the footman to the village doctor, so that the colonel was no
+sooner<br>
+ fairly in his bed at the chateau than the physician was beside
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"If monsieur had not been many hours without food the shock
+would have<br>
+ killed him," said the doctor.</p>
+
+<p>After naming the first precautions, the doctor left the room,
+to<br>
+ prepare, himself, a calming potion. The next day, Monsieur de
+Sucy was<br>
+ better, but the doctor still watched him carefully.</p>
+
+<p>"I will admit to you, monsieur le marquis," he said, "that I
+have<br>
+ feared some affection of the brain. Monsieur de Sucy has
+received a<br>
+ violent shock; his passions are strong; but, in him, the first
+blow<br>
+ decides all. To-morrow he may be entirely out of danger."</p>
+
+<p>The doctor was not mistaken; and the following day he allowed
+the<br>
+ marquis to see his friend.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear d'Albon," said Philippe, pressing his hand, "I am
+going to<br>
+ ask a kindness of you. Go to the Bons-Hommes, and find out all
+you can<br>
+ of the lady we saw there; and return to me as quickly as you
+can; I<br>
+ shall count the minutes."</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur d'Albon mounted his horse at once, and galloped to
+the old<br>
+ abbey. When he arrived there, he saw before the iron gate a
+tall,<br>
+ spare man with a very kindly face, who answered in the
+affirmative<br>
+ when asked if he lived there. Monsieur d'Albon then informed him
+of<br>
+ the reasons for his visit.</p>
+
+<p>"What! monsieur," said the other, "was it you who fired that
+fatal<br>
+ shot? You very nearly killed my poor patient."</p>
+
+<p>"But, monsieur, I fired in the air."</p>
+
+<p>"You would have done the countess less harm had you fired at
+her."</p>
+
+<p>"Then we must not reproach each other, monsieur, for the sight
+of the<br>
+ countess has almost killed my friend, Monsieur de Sucy."</p>
+
+<p>"Heavens! can you mean Baron Philippe de Sucy?" cried the
+doctor,<br>
+ clasping his hands. "Did he go to Russia; was he at the passage
+of the<br>
+ Beresina?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," replied d'Albon, "he was captured by the Cossacks and
+kept for<br>
+ five years in Siberia; he recovered his liberty a few months
+ago."</p>
+
+<p>"Come in, monsieur," said the master of the house, leading the
+marquis<br>
+ into a room on the lower floor where everything bore the marks
+of<br>
+ capricious destruction. The silken curtains beside the windows
+were<br>
+ torn, while those of muslin remained intact.</p>
+
+<p>"You see," said the tall old man, as they entered, "the
+ravages<br>
+ committed by that dear creature, to whom I devote myself. She is
+my<br>
+ niece; in spite of the impotence of my art, I hope some day to
+restore<br>
+ her reason by attempting a method which can only be
+employed,<br>
+ unfortunately, by very rich people."</p>
+
+<p>Then, like all persons living in solitude who are afflicted
+with an<br>
+ ever present and ever renewed grief, he related to the marquis
+at<br>
+ length the following narrative, which is here condensed, and
+relieved<br>
+ of the many digressions made by both the narrator and the
+listener.</p>
+
+<p> </p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+<h3>THE PASSAGE OF THE BERESINA</h3>
+
+<p>Marechal Victor, when he started, about nine at night, from
+the<br>
+ heights of Studzianka, which he had defended, as the rear-guard
+of the<br>
+ retreating army, during the whole day of November 28th, 1812,
+left a<br>
+ thousand men behind him, with orders to protect to the last
+possible<br>
+ moment whichever of the two bridges across the Beresina might
+still<br>
+ exist. This rear-guard had devoted itself to the task of saving
+a<br>
+ frightful multitude of stragglers overcome by the cold, who<br>
+ obstinately refused to leave the bivouacs of the army. The
+heroism of<br>
+ this generous troop proved useless. The stragglers who flocked
+in<br>
+ masses to the banks of the Beresina found there, unhappily, an
+immense<br>
+ number of carriages, caissons, and articles of all kinds which
+the<br>
+ army had been forced to abandon when effecting its passage of
+the<br>
+ river on the 27th and 28th of November. Heirs to such
+unlooked-for<br>
+ riches, the unfortunate men, stupid with cold, took up their
+abode in<br>
+ the deserted bivouacs, broke up the material which they found
+there to<br>
+ build themselves cabins, made fuel of everything that came to
+hand,<br>
+ cut up the frozen carcasses of the horses for food, tore the
+cloth and<br>
+ the curtains from the carriages for coverlets, and went to
+sleep,<br>
+ instead of continuing their way and crossing quietly during the
+night<br>
+ that cruel Beresina, which an incredible fatality had already
+made so<br>
+ destructive to the army.</p>
+
+<p><br>
+ The apathy of these poor soldiers can only be conceived by those
+who<br>
+ remember to have crossed vast deserts of snow without other<br>
+ perspective than a snow horizon, without other drink than
+snow,<br>
+ without other bed than snow, without other food than snow or a
+few<br>
+ frozen beet-roots, a few handfuls of flour, or a little
+horseflesh.<br>
+ Dying of hunger, thirst, fatigue, and want of sleep, these<br>
+ unfortunates reached a shore where they saw before them
+wood,<br>
+ provisions, innumerable camp equipages, and carriages,--in short
+a<br>
+ whole town at their service. The village of Studzianka had been
+wholly<br>
+ taken to pieces and conveyed from the heights on which it stood
+to the<br>
+ plain. However forlorn and dangerous that refuge might be,
+its<br>
+ miseries and its perils only courted men who had lately seen
+nothing<br>
+ before them but the awful deserts of Russia. It was, in fact, a
+vast<br>
+ asylum which had an existence of twenty-four hours only.</p>
+
+<p>Utter lassitude, and the sense of unexpected comfort, made
+that mass<br>
+ of men inaccessible to every thought but that of rest. Though
+the<br>
+ artillery of the left wing of the Russians kept up a steady fire
+on<br>
+ this mass,--visible like a stain now black, now flaming, in the
+midst<br>
+ of the trackless snow,--this shot and shell seemed to the
+torpid<br>
+ creatures only one inconvenience the more. It was like a
+thunderstorm,<br>
+ despised by all because the lightning strikes so few; the balls
+struck<br>
+ only here and there, the dying, the sick, the dead
+sometimes!<br>
+ Stragglers arrived in groups continually; but once here
+those<br>
+ perambulating corpses separated; each begged for himself a place
+near<br>
+ a fire; repulsed repeatedly, they met again, to obtain by force
+the<br>
+ hospitality already refused to them. Deaf to the voice of some
+of<br>
+ their officers, who warned them of probable destruction on the
+morrow,<br>
+ they spent the amount of courage necessary to cross the river
+in<br>
+ building that asylum of a night, in making one meal that
+they<br>
+ themselves doomed to be their last. The death that awaited them
+they<br>
+ considered no evil, provided they could have that one night's
+sleep.<br>
+ They thought nothing evil but hunger, thirst, and cold. When
+there was<br>
+ no more wood or food or fire, horrible struggles took place
+between<br>
+ fresh-comers and the rich who possessed a shelter. The
+weakest<br>
+ succumbed.</p>
+
+<p>At last there came a moment when a number, pursued by the
+Russians,<br>
+ found only snow on which to bivouac, and these lay down to rise
+no<br>
+ more. Insensibly this mass of almost annihilated beings became
+so<br>
+ compact, so deaf, so torpid, so happy perhaps, that Marechal
+Victor,<br>
+ who had been their heroic defender by holding twenty thousand
+Russians<br>
+ under Wittgenstein at bay, was forced to open a passage by main
+force<br>
+ through this forest of men in order to cross the Beresina with
+five<br>
+ thousand gallant fellows whom he was taking to the emperor.
+The<br>
+ unfortunate malingerers allowed themselves to be crushed rather
+than<br>
+ stir; they perished in silence, smiling at their extinguished
+fires,<br>
+ without a thought of France.</p>
+
+<p>It was not until ten o'clock that night that Marechal Victor
+reached<br>
+ the bank of the river. Before crossing the bridge which led to
+Zembin,<br>
+ he confided the fate of his own rear-guard now left in
+Studzianka to<br>
+ Eble, the savior of all those who survived the calamities of
+the<br>
+ Beresina. It was towards midnight when this great general,
+followed by<br>
+ one brave officer, left the cabin he occupied near the bridge,
+and<br>
+ studied the spectacle of that improvised camp placed between the
+bank<br>
+ of the river and Studzianka. The Russian cannon had ceased to
+thunder.<br>
+ Innumerable fires, which, amid that trackless waste of snow,
+burned<br>
+ pale and scarcely sent out any gleams, illumined here and there
+by<br>
+ sudden flashes forms and faces that were barely human. Thirty
+thousand<br>
+ poor wretches, belonging to all nations, from whom Napoleon
+had<br>
+ recruited his Russian army, were trifling away their lives
+with<br>
+ brutish indifference.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us save them!" said General Eble to the officer who
+accompanied<br>
+ him. "To-morrow morning the Russians will be masters of
+Studzianka. We<br>
+ must burn the bridge the moment they appear. Therefore, my
+friend,<br>
+ take your courage in your hand! Go to the heights. Tell
+General<br>
+ Fournier he has barely time to evacuate his position, force a
+way<br>
+ through this crowd, and cross the bridge. When you have seen him
+in<br>
+ motion follow him. Find men you can trust, and the moment
+Fournier had<br>
+ crossed the bridge, burn, without pity, huts, equipages,
+caissons,<br>
+ carriages,--EVERYTHING! Drive that mass of men to the bridge.
+Compel<br>
+ all that has two legs to get to the other side of the river.
+The<br>
+ burning of everything--EVERYTHING--is now our last resource.
+If<br>
+ Berthier had let me destroy those damned camp equipages, this
+river<br>
+ would swallow only my poor pontoniers, those fifty heroes who
+will<br>
+ save the army, but who themselves will be forgotten."</p>
+
+<p>The general laid his hand on his forehead and was silent. He
+felt that<br>
+ Poland would be his grave, and that no voice would rise to do
+justice<br>
+ to those noble men who stood in the water, the icy water of
+Beresina,<br>
+ to destroy the buttresses of the bridges. One alone of those
+heroes<br>
+ still lives--or, to speak more correctly, suffers--in a
+village,<br>
+ totally ignored.</p>
+
+<p>The aide-de-camp started. Hardly had this generous officer
+gone a<br>
+ hundred yards towards Studzianka than General Eble wakened a
+number of<br>
+ his weary pontoniers, and began the work,--the charitable work
+of<br>
+ burning the bivouacs set up about the bridge, and forcing
+the<br>
+ sleepers, thus dislodged, to cross the river.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the young aide-de-camp reached, not without
+difficulty, the<br>
+ only wooden house still left standing in Studzianka.</p>
+
+<p>"This barrack seems pretty full, comrade," he said to a man
+whom he<br>
+ saw by the doorway.</p>
+
+<p>"If you can get in you'll be a clever trooper," replied the
+officer,<br>
+ without turning his head or ceasing to slice off with his sabre
+the<br>
+ bark of the logs of which the house was built.</p>
+
+<p>"Is that you, Philippe?" said the aide-de-camp, recognizing a
+friend<br>
+ by the tones of his voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Ha, ha! is it you, old fellow?" replied Monsieur de
+Sucy,<br>
+ looking at the aide-de-camp, who, like himself, was only
+twenty-three<br>
+ years of age. "I thought you were the other side of that cursed
+river.<br>
+ What are you here for? Have you brought cakes and wine for
+our<br>
+ dessert? You'll be welcome," and he went on slicing off the
+bark,<br>
+ which he gave as a sort of provender to his horse.</p>
+
+<p>"I am looking for your commander to tell him, from General
+Eble, to<br>
+ make for Zembin. You'll have barely enough time to get through
+that<br>
+ crowd of men below. I am going presently to set fire to their
+camp and<br>
+ force them to march."</p>
+
+<p>"You warm me up--almost! That news makes me perspire. I have
+two<br>
+ friends I MUST save. Ah! without those two to cling to me, I
+should be<br>
+ dead already. It is for them that I feed my horse and don't
+eat<br>
+ myself. Have you any food,--a mere crust? It is thirty hours
+since<br>
+ anything has gone into my stomach, and yet I have fought like a
+madman<br>
+ --just to keep a little warmth and courage in me."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor Philippe, I have nothing--nothing! But where's your
+general,--in<br>
+ this house?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, don't go there; the place is full of wounded. Go up the
+street;<br>
+ you'll find on your left a sort of pig-pen; the general is
+there.<br>
+ Good-bye, old fellow. If we ever dance a trenis on a Paris
+floor--"</p>
+
+<p>He did not end his sentence; the north wind blew at that
+moment with<br>
+ such ferocity that the aide-de-camp hurried on to escape being
+frozen,<br>
+ and the lips of Major de Sucy stiffened. Silence reigned, broken
+only<br>
+ by the moans which came from the house, and the dull sound made
+by the<br>
+ major's horse as it chewed in a fury of hunger the icy bark of
+the<br>
+ trees with which the house was built. Monsieur de Sucy replaced
+his<br>
+ sabre in its scabbard, took the bridle of the precious horse he
+had<br>
+ hitherto been able to preserve, and led it, in spite of the
+animal's<br>
+ resistance, from the wretched fodder it appeared to think
+excellent.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll start, Bichette, we'll start! There's none but you, my
+beauty,<br>
+ who can save Stephanie. Ha! by and bye you and I may be able to
+rest--<br>
+ and die," he added.</p>
+
+<p>Philippe, wrapped in a fur pelisse, to which he owed his
+preservation<br>
+ and his energy, began to run, striking his feet hard upon the
+frozen<br>
+ snow to keep them warm. Scarcely had he gone a few hundred yards
+from<br>
+ the village than he saw a blaze in the direction of the place
+where,<br>
+ since morning, he had left his carriage in charge of his
+former<br>
+ orderly, an old soldier. Horrible anxiety laid hold of him. Like
+all<br>
+ others who were controlled during this fatal retreat by some
+powerful<br>
+ sentiment, he found a strength to save his friends which he
+could not<br>
+ have put forth to save himself.</p>
+
+<p>Presently he reached a slight declivity at the foot of which,
+in a<br>
+ spot sheltered from the enemy's balls, he had stationed the
+carriage,<br>
+ containing a young woman, the companion of his childhood, the
+being<br>
+ most dear to him on earth. At a few steps distant from the
+vehicle he<br>
+ now found a company of some thirty stragglers collected around
+an<br>
+ immense fire, which they were feeding with planks, caisson
+covers,<br>
+ wheels, and broken carriages. These soldiers were, no doubt, the
+last<br>
+ comers of that crowd who, from the base of the hill of
+Studzianka to<br>
+ the fatal river, formed an ocean of heads intermingled with
+fires and<br>
+ huts,--a living sea, swayed by motions that were almost
+imperceptible,<br>
+ and giving forth a murmuring sound that rose at times to
+frightful<br>
+ outbursts. Driven by famine and despair, these poor wretches
+must have<br>
+ rifled the carriage before de Sucy reached it. The old general
+and his<br>
+ young wife, whom he had left lying in piles of clothes and
+wrapped in<br>
+ mantles and pelisses, were now on the snow, crouching before the
+fire.<br>
+ One door of the carriage was already torn off.</p>
+
+<p>No sooner did the men about the fire hear the tread of the
+major's<br>
+ horse than a hoarse cry, the cry of famine, arose,--</p>
+
+<p>"A horse! a horse!"</p>
+
+<p>Those voices formed but one voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Back! back! look out for yourself!" cried two or three
+soldiers,<br>
+ aiming at the mare. Philippe threw himself before his animal,
+crying<br>
+ out,--</p>
+
+<p>"You villains! I'll throw you into your own fire. There are
+plenty of<br>
+ dead horses up there. Go and fetch them."</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't he a joker, that officer! One, two--get out of the
+way," cried<br>
+ a colossal grenadier. "No, you won't, hey! Well, as you please,
+then."</p>
+
+<p>A woman's cry rose higher than the report of the musket.
+Philippe<br>
+ fortunately was not touched, but Bichette, mortally wounded,
+was<br>
+ struggling in the throes of death. Three men darted forward
+and<br>
+ dispatched her with their bayonets.</p>
+
+<p>"Cannibals!" cried Philippe, "let me at any rate take the
+horse-cloth<br>
+ and my pistols."</p>
+
+<p>"Pistols, yes," replied the grenadier. "But as for that
+horse-cloth,<br>
+ no! here's a poor fellow afoot, with nothing in his stomach for
+two<br>
+ days, and shivering in his rags. It is our general."</p>
+
+<p>Philippe kept silence as he looked at the man, whose boots
+were worn<br>
+ out, his trousers torn in a dozen places, while nothing but a
+ragged<br>
+ fatigue-cap covered with ice was on his head. He hastened,
+however, to<br>
+ take his pistols. Five men dragged the mare to the fire, and cut
+her<br>
+ up with the dexterity of a Parisian butcher. The pieces were
+instantly<br>
+ seized and flung upon the embers.</p>
+
+<p>The major went up to the young woman, who had uttered a cry
+on<br>
+ recognizing him. He found her motionless, seated on a cushion
+beside<br>
+ the fire. She looked at him silently, without smiling. Philippe
+then<br>
+ saw the soldier to whom he had confided the carriage; the man
+was<br>
+ wounded. Overcome by numbers, he had been forced to yield to
+the<br>
+ malingerers who attacked him; and, like the dog who defended to
+the<br>
+ last possible moment his master's dinner, he had taken his share
+of<br>
+ the booty, and was now sitting beside the fire, wrapped in a
+white<br>
+ sheet by way of cloak, and turning carefully on the embers a
+slice of<br>
+ the mare. Philippe saw upon his face the joy these preparations
+gave<br>
+ him. The Comte de Vandieres, who, for the last few days, had
+fallen<br>
+ into a state of second childhood, was seated on a cushion beside
+his<br>
+ wife, looking fixedly at the fire, which was beginning to thaw
+his<br>
+ torpid limbs. He had shown no emotion of any kind, either at<br>
+ Philippe's danger, or at the fight which ended in the pillage of
+the<br>
+ carriage and their expulsion from it.</p>
+
+<p>At first de Sucy took the hand of the young countess, as if to
+show<br>
+ her his affection, and the grief he felt at seeing her reduced
+to such<br>
+ utter misery; then he grew silent; seated beside her on a heap
+of snow<br>
+ which was turning into a rivulet as it melted, he yielded
+himself up<br>
+ to the happiness of being warm, forgetting their peril,
+forgetting all<br>
+ things. His face assumed, in spite of himself, an expression of
+almost<br>
+ stupid joy, and he waited with impatience until the fragment of
+the<br>
+ mare given to his orderly was cooked. The smell of the roasting
+flesh<br>
+ increased his hunger, and his hunger silenced his heart, his
+courage,<br>
+ and his love. He looked, without anger, at the results of the
+pillage<br>
+ of his carriage. All the men seated around the fire had shared
+his<br>
+ blankets, cushions, pelisses, robes, also the clothing of the
+Comte<br>
+ and Comtesse de Vandieres and his own. Philippe looked about him
+to<br>
+ see if there was anything left in or near the vehicle that was
+worth<br>
+ saving. By the light of the flames he saw gold and diamonds and
+plate<br>
+ scattered everywhere, no one having thought it worth his while
+to take<br>
+ any.</p>
+
+<p>Each of the individuals collected by chance around this
+fire<br>
+ maintained a silence that was almost horrible, and did nothing
+but<br>
+ what he judged necessary for his own welfare. Their misery was
+even<br>
+ grotesque. Faces, discolored by cold, were covered with a layer
+of<br>
+ mud, on which tears had made a furrow from the eyes to the
+beard,<br>
+ showing the thickness of that miry mask. The filth of their
+long<br>
+ beards made these men still more repulsive. Some were wrapped in
+the<br>
+ countess's shawls, others wore the trappings of horses and
+muddy<br>
+ saddlecloths, or masses of rags from which the hoar-frost hung;
+some<br>
+ had a boot on one leg and a shoe on the other; in fact, there
+were<br>
+ none whose costume did not present some laughable singularity.
+But in<br>
+ presence of such amusing sights the men themselves were grave
+and<br>
+ gloomy. The silence was broken only by the snapping of the wood,
+the<br>
+ crackling of the flames, the distant murmur of the camps, and
+the<br>
+ blows of the sabre given to what remained of Bichette in search
+of her<br>
+ tenderest morsels. A few miserable creatures, perhaps more weary
+than<br>
+ the rest, were sleeping; when one of their number rolled into
+the fire<br>
+ no one attempted to help him out. These stern logicians argued
+that if<br>
+ he were not dead his burns would warn him to find a safer place.
+If<br>
+ the poor wretch waked in the flames and perished, no one cared.
+Two or<br>
+ three soldiers looked at each other to justify their own
+indifference<br>
+ by that of others. Twice this scene had taken place before the
+eyes of<br>
+ the countess, who said nothing. When the various pieces of
+Bichette,<br>
+ placed here and there upon the embers, were sufficiently
+broiled, each<br>
+ man satisfied his hunger with the gluttony that disgusts us when
+we<br>
+ see it in animals.</p>
+
+<p>"This is the first time I ever saw thirty infantrymen on one
+horse,"<br>
+ cried the grenadier who had shot the mare.</p>
+
+<p>It was the only jest made that night which proved the
+national<br>
+ character.</p>
+
+<p>Soon the great number of these poor soldiers wrapped
+themselves in<br>
+ what they could find and lay down on planks, or whatever would
+keep<br>
+ them from contact with the snow, and slept, heedless of the
+morrow.<br>
+ When the major was warm, and his hunger appeased, an invincible
+desire<br>
+ to sleep weighed down his eyelids. During the short moment of
+his<br>
+ struggle against that desire he looked at the young woman, who
+had<br>
+ turned her face to the fire and was now asleep, leaving her
+closed<br>
+ eyes and a portion of her forehead exposed to sight. She was
+wrapped<br>
+ in a furred pelisse and a heavy dragoon's cloak; her head rested
+on a<br>
+ pillow stained with blood; an astrakhan hood, kept in place by
+a<br>
+ handkerchief knotted round her neck, preserved her face from the
+cold<br>
+ as much as possible. Her feet were wrapped in the cloak. Thus
+rolled<br>
+ into a bundle, as it were, she looked like nothing at all. Was
+she the<br>
+ last of the "vivandieres"? Was she a charming woman, the glory
+of a<br>
+ lover, the queen of Parisian salons? Alas! even the eye of her
+most<br>
+ devoted friend could trace no sign of anything feminine in that
+mass<br>
+ of rags and tatters. Love had succumbed to cold in the heart of
+a<br>
+ woman!</p>
+
+<p>Through the thick veils of irresistible sleep, the major soon
+saw the<br>
+ husband and wife as mere points or formless objects. The flames
+of the<br>
+ fire, those outstretched figures, the relentless cold, waiting,
+not<br>
+ three feet distant from that fugitive heat, became all a dream.
+One<br>
+ importunate thought terrified Philippe:</p>
+
+<p>"If I sleep, we shall all die; I will not sleep," he said to
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>And yet he slept.</p>
+
+<p>A terrible clamor and an explosion awoke him an hour later.
+The sense<br>
+ of his duty, the peril of his friend, fell suddenly on his
+heart. He<br>
+ uttered a cry that was like a roar. He and his orderly were
+alone<br>
+ afoot. A sea of fire lay before them in the darkness of the
+night,<br>
+ licking up the cabins and the bivouacs; cries of despair, howls,
+and<br>
+ imprecations reached their ears; they saw against the flames
+thousands<br>
+ of human beings with agonized or furious faces. In the midst of
+that<br>
+ hell, a column of soldiers was forcing its way to the bridge,
+between<br>
+ two hedges of dead bodies.</p>
+
+<p>"It is the retreat of the rear-guard!" cried the major. "All
+hope is<br>
+ gone!"</p>
+
+<p>"I have saved your carriage, Philippe," said a friendly
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>Turning round, de Sucy recognized the young aide-de-camp in
+the<br>
+ flaring of the flames.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! all is lost!" replied the major, "they have eaten my
+horse; and<br>
+ how can I make this stupid general and his wife walk?"</p>
+
+<p>"Take a brand from the fire and threaten them."</p>
+
+<p>"Threaten the countess!"</p>
+
+<p>"Good-bye," said the aide-de-camp, "I have scarcely time to
+get across<br>
+ that fatal river--and I MUST; I have a mother in France. What a
+night!<br>
+ These poor wretches prefer to lie here in the snow; half will
+allow<br>
+ themselves to perish in those flames rather than rise and move
+on. It<br>
+ is four o'clock, Philippe! In two hours the Russians will begin
+to<br>
+ move. I assure you you will again see the Beresina choked
+with<br>
+ corpses. Philippe! think of yourself! You have no horses, you
+cannot<br>
+ carry the countess in your arms. Come--come with me!" he
+said<br>
+ urgently, pulling de Sucy by the arm.</p>
+
+<p>"My friend! abandon Stephanie!"</p>
+
+<p>De Sucy seized the countess, made her stand upright, shook her
+with<br>
+ the roughness of a despairing man, and compelled her to wake up.
+She<br>
+ looked at him with fixed, dead eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"You must walk, Stephanie, or we shall all die here."</p>
+
+<p>For all answer the countess tried to drop again upon the snow
+and<br>
+ sleep. The aide-de-camp seized a brand from the fire and waved
+it in<br>
+ her face.</p>
+
+<p>"We will save her in spite of herself!" cried Philippe,
+lifting the<br>
+ countess and placing her in the carriage.</p>
+
+<p>He returned to implore the help of his friend. Together they
+lifted<br>
+ the old general, without knowing whether he were dead or alive,
+and<br>
+ put him beside his wife. The major then rolled over the men who
+were<br>
+ sleeping on his blankets, which he tossed into the carriage,
+together<br>
+ with some roasted fragments of his mare.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean to do?" asked the aide-de-camp.</p>
+
+<p>"Drag them."</p>
+
+<p>"You are crazy."</p>
+
+<p>"True," said Philippe, crossing his arms in despair.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly, he was seized by a last despairing thought.</p>
+
+<p>"To you," he said, grasping the sound arm of his orderly, "I
+confide<br>
+ her for one hour. Remember that you must die sooner than let any
+one<br>
+ approach her."</p>
+
+<p>The major then snatched up the countess's diamonds, held them
+in one<br>
+ hand, drew his sabre with the other, and began to strike with
+the flat<br>
+ of its blade such of the sleepers as he thought the most
+intrepid. He<br>
+ succeeded in awaking the colossal grenadier, and two other men
+whose<br>
+ rank it was impossible to tell.</p>
+
+<p>"We are done for!" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"I know it," said the grenadier, "but I don't care."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, death for death, wouldn't you rather sell your life for
+a<br>
+ pretty woman, and take your chances of seeing France?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'd rather sleep," said a man, rolling over on the snow, "and
+if you<br>
+ trouble me again, I'll stick my bayonet into your stomach."</p>
+
+<p>"What is the business, my colonel?" said the grenadier. "That
+man is<br>
+ drunk; he's a Parisian; he likes his ease."</p>
+
+<p>"That is yours, my brave grenadier," cried the major, offering
+him a<br>
+ string of diamonds, "if you will follow me and fight like a
+madman.<br>
+ The Russians are ten minutes' march from here; they have horses;
+we<br>
+ are going up to their first battery for a pair."</p>
+
+<p>"But the sentinels?"</p>
+
+<p>"One of us three--" he interrupted himself, and turned to the
+aide-de-<br>
+ camp. "You will come, Hippolyte, won't you?"</p>
+
+<p>Hippolyte nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"One of us," continued the major, "will take care of the
+sentinel.<br>
+ Besides, perhaps they are asleep too, those cursed
+Russians."</p>
+
+<p>"Forward! major, you're a brave one! But you'll give me a lift
+on your<br>
+ carriage?" said the grenadier.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, if you don't leave your skin up there-- If I fall,
+Hippolyte,<br>
+ and you, grenadier, promise me to do your utmost to save the<br>
+ countess."</p>
+
+<p>"Agreed!" cried the grenadier.</p>
+
+<p>They started for the Russian lines, toward one of the
+batteries which<br>
+ had so decimated the hapless wretches lying on the banks of the
+river.<br>
+ A few moments later, the gallop of two horses echoed over the
+snow,<br>
+ and the wakened artillery men poured out a volley which ranged
+above<br>
+ the heads of the sleeping men. The pace of the horses was so
+fleet<br>
+ that their steps resounded like the blows of a blacksmith on
+his<br>
+ anvil. The generous aide-de-camp was killed. The athletic
+grenadier<br>
+ was safe and sound. Philippe in defending Hippolyte had received
+a<br>
+ bayonet in his shoulder; but he clung to his horse's mane, and
+clasped<br>
+ him so tightly with his knees that the animal was held as in a
+vice.</p>
+
+<p>"God be praised!" cried the major, finding his orderly
+untouched, and<br>
+ the carriage in its place.</p>
+
+<p>"If you are just, my officer, you will get me the cross for
+this,"<br>
+ said the man. "We've played a fine game of guns and sabres here,
+I can<br>
+ tell you."</p>
+
+<p>"We have done nothing yet-- Harness the horses. Take these
+ropes."</p>
+
+<p>"They are not long enough."</p>
+
+<p>"Grenadier, turn over those sleepers, and take their shawls
+and linen,<br>
+ to eke out."</p>
+
+<p>"Tiens! that's one dead," said the grenadier, stripping the
+first man<br>
+ he came to. "Bless me! what a joke, they are all dead!"</p>
+
+<p>"All?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, all; seems as if horse-meat must be indigestible if
+eaten with<br>
+ snow."</p>
+
+<p>The words made Philippe tremble. The cold was increasing.</p>
+
+<p>"My God! to lose the woman I have saved a dozen times!"</p>
+
+<p>The major shook the countess.</p>
+
+<p>"Stephanie! Stephanie!"</p>
+
+<p>The young woman opened her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Madame! we are saved."</p>
+
+<p>"Saved!" she repeated, sinking down again.</p>
+
+<p>The horses were harnessed as best they could. The major,
+holding his<br>
+ sabre in his well hand, with his pistols in his belt, gathered
+up the<br>
+ reins with the other hand and mounted one horse while the
+grenadier<br>
+ mounted the other. The orderly, whose feet were frozen, was
+thrown<br>
+ inside the carriage, across the general and the countess.
+Excited by<br>
+ pricks from a sabre, the horses drew the carriage rapidly, with
+a sort<br>
+ of fury, to the plain, where innumerable obstacles awaited it.
+It was<br>
+ impossible to force a way without danger of crushing the
+sleeping men,<br>
+ women, and even children, who refused to move when the grenadier
+awoke<br>
+ them. In vain did Monsieur de Sucy endeavor to find the swathe
+cut by<br>
+ the rear-guard through the mass of human beings; it was
+already<br>
+ obliterated, like the wake of a vessel through the sea. They
+could<br>
+ only creep along, being often stopped by soldiers who threatened
+to<br>
+ kill their horses.</p>
+
+<p><br>
+ "Do you want to reach the bridge?" said the grenadier.</p>
+
+<p>"At the cost of my life--at the cost of the whole world!"</p>
+
+<p>"Then forward, march! you can't make omelets without breaking
+eggs."</p>
+
+<p>And the grenadier of the guard urged the horses over men and
+bivouacs<br>
+ with bloody wheels and a double line of corpses on either side
+of<br>
+ them. We must do him the justice to say that he never spared
+his<br>
+ breath in shouting in stentorian tones,--</p>
+
+<p>"Look out there, carrion!"</p>
+
+<p>"Poor wretches!" cried the major.</p>
+
+<p>"Pooh! that or the cold, that or the cannon," said the
+grenadier,<br>
+ prodding the horses, and urging them on.</p>
+
+<p>A catastrophe, which might well have happened to them much
+sooner, put<br>
+ a stop to their advance. The carriage was overturned.</p>
+
+<p>"I expected it," cried the imperturbable grenadier. "Ho! ho!
+your man<br>
+ is dead."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor Laurent!" said the major.</p>
+
+<p>"Laurent? Was he in the 5th chasseurs?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Then he was my cousin. Oh, well, this dog's life isn't happy
+enough<br>
+ to waste any joy in grieving for him."</p>
+
+<p>The carriage could not be raised; the horses were taken out
+with<br>
+ serious and, as it proved, irreparable loss of time. The shock
+of the<br>
+ overturn was so violent that the young countess, roused from
+her<br>
+ lethargy, threw off her coverings and rose.</p>
+
+<p>"Philippe, where are we?" she cried in a gentle voice, looking
+about<br>
+ her.</p>
+
+<p>"Only five hundred feet from the bridge. We are now going to
+cross the<br>
+ Beresina, Stephanie, and once across I will not torment you any
+more;<br>
+ you shall sleep; we shall be in safety, and can reach Wilna
+easily.--<br>
+ God grant that she may never know what her life has cost!" he
+thought.</p>
+
+<p>"Philippe! you are wounded!"</p>
+
+<p>"That is nothing."</p>
+
+<p>Too late! the fatal hour had come. The Russian cannon sounded
+the<br>
+ reveille. Masters of Studzianka, they could sweep the plain, and
+by<br>
+ daylight the major could see two of their columns moving and
+forming<br>
+ on the heights. A cry of alarm arose from the multitude, who
+started<br>
+ to their feet in an instant. Every man now understood his
+danger<br>
+ instinctively, and the whole mass rushed to gain the bridge with
+the<br>
+ motion of a wave.</p>
+
+<p>The Russians came down with the rapidity of a conflagration.
+Men,<br>
+ women, children, horses,--all rushed tumultuously to the
+bridge.<br>
+ Fortunately the major, who was carrying the countess, was still
+some<br>
+ distance from it. General Eble had just set fire to the supports
+on<br>
+ the other bank. In spite of the warnings shouted to those who
+were<br>
+ rushing upon the bridge, not a soul went back. Not only did the
+bridge<br>
+ go down crowded with human beings, but the impetuosity of that
+flood<br>
+ of men toward the fatal bank was so furious that a mass of
+humanity<br>
+ poured itself violently into the river like an avalanche. Not a
+cry<br>
+ was heard; the only sound was like the dropping of monstrous
+stones<br>
+ into the water. Then the Beresina was a mass of floating
+corpses.</p>
+
+<p>The retrograde movement of those who now fell back into the
+plain to<br>
+ escape the death before them was so violent, and their
+concussion<br>
+ against those who were advancing from the rear so terrible,
+that<br>
+ numbers were smothered or trampled to death. The Comte and
+Comtesse de<br>
+ Vandieres owed their lives to their carriage, behind which
+Philippe<br>
+ forced them, using it as a breastwork. As for the major and
+the<br>
+ grenadier, they found their safety in their strength. They
+killed to<br>
+ escape being killed.</p>
+
+<p>This hurricane of human beings, the flux and reflux of living
+bodies,<br>
+ had the effect of leaving for a few short moments the whole bank
+of<br>
+ the Beresina deserted. The multitude were surging to the plain.
+If a<br>
+ few men rushed to the river, it was less in the hope of reaching
+the<br>
+ other bank, which to them was France, than to rush from the
+horrors of<br>
+ Siberia. Despair proved an aegis to some bold hearts. One
+officer<br>
+ sprang from ice-cake to ice-cake, and reached the opposite
+shore. A<br>
+ soldier clambered miraculously over mounds of dead bodies and
+heaps of<br>
+ ice. The multitude finally comprehended that the Russians would
+not<br>
+ put to death a body of twenty thousand men, without arms,
+torpid,<br>
+ stupid, unable to defend themselves; and each man awaited his
+fate<br>
+ with horrible resignation. Then the major and the grenadier,
+the<br>
+ general and his wife, remained almost alone on the river bank, a
+few<br>
+ steps from the spot where the bridge had been. They stood there,
+with<br>
+ dry eyes, silent, surrounded by heaps of dead. A few sound
+soldiers, a<br>
+ few officers to whom the emergency had restored their natural
+energy,<br>
+ were near them. This group consisted of some fifty men in all.
+The<br>
+ major noticed at a distance of some two hundred yards the
+remains of<br>
+ another bridge intended for carriages and destroyed the day
+before.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us make a raft!" he cried.</p>
+
+<p>He had hardly uttered the words before the whole group rushed
+to the<br>
+ ruins, and began to pick up iron bolts, and screws, and pieces
+of wood<br>
+ and ropes, whatever materials they could find that were suitable
+for<br>
+ the construction of a raft. A score of soldiers and officers,
+who were<br>
+ armed, formed a guard, commanded by the major, to protect the
+workers<br>
+ against the desperate attacks which might be expected from the
+crowd,<br>
+ if their scheme was discovered. The instinct of freedom, strong
+in all<br>
+ prisoners, inspiring them to miraculous acts, can only be
+compared<br>
+ with that which now drove to action these unfortunate
+Frenchmen.</p>
+
+<p>"The Russians! the Russians are coming!" cried the defenders
+to the<br>
+ workers; and the work went on, the raft increased in length
+and<br>
+ breadth and depth. Generals, soldiers, colonel, all put
+their<br>
+ shoulders to the wheel; it was a true image of the building of
+Noah's<br>
+ ark. The young countess, seated beside her husband, watched
+the<br>
+ progress of the work with regret that she could not help it; and
+yet<br>
+ she did assist in making knots to secure the cordage.</p>
+
+<p>At last the raft was finished. Forty men launched it on the
+river, a<br>
+ dozen others holding the cords which moored it to the shore. But
+no<br>
+ sooner had the builders seen their handiwork afloat, than they
+sprang<br>
+ from the bank with odious selfishness. The major, fearing the
+fury of<br>
+ this first rush, held back the countess and the general, but too
+late<br>
+ he saw the whole raft covered, men pressing together like crowds
+at a<br>
+ theatre.</p>
+
+<p>"Savages!" he cried, "it was I who gave you the idea of that
+raft. I<br>
+ have saved you, and you deny me a place."</p>
+
+<p>A confused murmur answered him. The men at the edge of the
+raft, armed<br>
+ with long sticks, pressed with violence against the shore to
+send off<br>
+ the frail construction with sufficient impetus to force its
+way<br>
+ through corpses and ice-floes to the other shore.</p>
+
+<p>"Thunder of heaven! I'll sweep you into the water if you don't
+take<br>
+ the major and his two companions," cried the stalwart grenadier,
+who<br>
+ swung his sabre, stopped the departure, and forced the men to
+stand<br>
+ closer in spite of furious outcries.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall fall,"--"I am falling,"--"Push off! push
+off!--Forward!"<br>
+ resounded on all sides.</p>
+
+<p>The major looked with haggard eyes at Stephanie, who lifted
+hers to<br>
+ heaven with a feeling of sublime resignation.</p>
+
+<p>"To die with thee!" she said.</p>
+
+<p>There was something even comical in the position of the men
+in<br>
+ possession of the raft. Though they were uttering awful groans
+and<br>
+ imprecations, they dared not resist the grenadier, for in truth
+they<br>
+ were so closely packed together, that a push to one man might
+send<br>
+ half of them overboard. This danger was so pressing that a
+cavalry<br>
+ captain endeavored to get rid of the grenadier; but the latter,
+seeing<br>
+ the hostile movement of the officer, seized him round the waist
+and<br>
+ flung him into the water, crying out,--</p>
+
+<p>"Ha! ha! my duck, do you want to drink? Well, then, drink!--
+Here are<br>
+ two places," he cried. "Come, major, toss me the little woman
+and<br>
+ follow yourself. Leave that old fossil, who'll be dead by
+to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"Make haste!" cried the voice of all, as one man.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, major, they are grumbling, and they have a right to do
+so."</p>
+
+<p>The Comte de Vandieres threw off his wrappings and showed
+himself in<br>
+ his general's uniform.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us save the count," said Philippe.</p>
+
+<p>Stephanie pressed his hand, and throwing herself on his
+breast, she<br>
+ clasped him tightly.</p>
+
+<p>"Adieu!" she said.</p>
+
+<p>They had understood each other.</p>
+
+<p>The Comte de Vandieres recovered sufficient strength and
+presence of<br>
+ mind to spring upon the raft, whither Stephanie followed him,
+after<br>
+ turning a last look to Philippe.</p>
+
+<p>"Major! will you take my place? I don't care a fig for life,"
+cried<br>
+ the grenadier. "I've neither wife nor child nor mother."</p>
+
+<p>"I confide them to your care," said the major, pointing to the
+count<br>
+ and his wife.</p>
+
+<p>"Then be easy; I'll care for them, as though they were my very
+eyes."</p>
+
+<p>The raft was now sent off with so much violence toward the
+opposite<br>
+ side of the river, that as it touched ground, the shock was felt
+by<br>
+ all. The count, who was at the edge of it, lost his balance and
+fell<br>
+ into the river; as he fell, a cake of sharp ice caught him, and
+cut<br>
+ off his head, flinging it to a great distance.</p>
+
+<p>"See there! major!" cried the grenadier.</p>
+
+<p>"Adieu!" said a woman's voice.</p>
+
+<p>Philippe de Sucy fell to the ground, overcome with horror and
+fatigue.</p>
+
+<p> </p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+<h3>THE CURE</h3>
+
+<p>"My poor niece became insane," continued the physician, after
+a few<br>
+ moment's silence. "Ah! monsieur," he said, seizing the marquis's
+hand,<br>
+ "life has been awful indeed for that poor little woman, so
+young, so<br>
+ delicate! After being, by dreadful fatality, separated from
+the<br>
+ grenadier, whose name was Fleuriot, she was dragged about for
+two<br>
+ years at the heels of the army, the plaything of a crowd of
+wretches.<br>
+ She was often, they tell me, barefooted, and scarcely clothed;
+for<br>
+ months together, she had no care, no food but what she could
+pick up;<br>
+ sometimes kept in hospitals, sometimes driven away like an
+animal, God<br>
+ alone knows the horrors that poor unfortunate creature has
+survived.<br>
+ She was locked up in a madhouse, in a little town in Germany, at
+the<br>
+ time her relatives, thinking her dead, divided her property. In
+1816,<br>
+ the grenadier Fleuriot was at an inn in Strasburg, where she
+went<br>
+ after making her escape from the madhouse. Several peasants told
+the<br>
+ grenadier that she had lived for a whole month in the forest,
+where<br>
+ they had tracked her in vain, trying to catch her, but she had
+always<br>
+ escaped them. I was then staying a few miles from Strasburg.
+Hearing<br>
+ much talk of a wild woman caught in the woods, I felt a desire
+to<br>
+ ascertain the truth of the ridiculous stories which were current
+about<br>
+ her. What were my feelings on beholding my own niece! Fleuriot
+told me<br>
+ all he knew of her dreadful history. I took the poor man with my
+niece<br>
+ back to my home in Auvergne, where, unfortunately, I lost him
+some<br>
+ months later. He had some slight control over Madame de
+Vandieres; he<br>
+ alone could induce her to wear clothing. 'Adieu,' that word,
+which is<br>
+ her only language, she seldom uttered at that time. Fleuriot
+had<br>
+ endeavored to awaken in her a few ideas, a few memories of the
+past;<br>
+ but he failed; all that he gained was to make her say that
+melancholy<br>
+ word a little oftener. Still, the grenadier knew how to amuse
+her and<br>
+ play with her; my hope was in him, but--"</p>
+
+<p><br>
+ He was silent for a moment.</p>
+
+<p>"Here," he continued, "she has found another creature, with
+whom she<br>
+ seems to have some strange understanding. It is a poor
+idiotic<br>
+ peasant-girl, who, in spite of her ugliness and stupidity, loved
+a<br>
+ man, a mason. The mason was willing to marry her, as she had
+some<br>
+ property. Poor Genevieve was happy for a year; she dressed in
+her best<br>
+ to dance with her lover on Sunday; she comprehended love; in her
+heart<br>
+ and soul there was room for that one sentiment. But the mason,
+Dallot,<br>
+ reflected. He found a girl with all her senses, and more land
+than<br>
+ Genevieve, and he deserted the poor creature. Since then she has
+lost<br>
+ the little intellect that love developed in her; she can do
+nothing<br>
+ but watch the cows, or help at harvesting. My niece and this
+poor girl<br>
+ are friends, apparently by some invisible chain of their
+common<br>
+ destiny, by the sentiment in each which has caused their
+madness.<br>
+ See!" added Stephanie's uncle, leading the marquis to a
+window.</p>
+
+<p>The latter then saw the countess seated on the ground
+between<br>
+ Genevieve's legs. The peasant-girl, armed with a huge horn comb,
+was<br>
+ giving her whole attention to the work of disentangling the long
+black<br>
+ hair of the poor countess, who was uttering little stifled
+cries,<br>
+ expressive of some instinctive sense of pleasure. Monsieur
+d'Albon<br>
+ shuddered as he saw the utter abandonment of the body, the
+careless<br>
+ animal ease which revealed in the hapless woman a total absence
+of<br>
+ soul.</p>
+
+<p>"Philippe, Philippe!" he muttered, "the past horrors are
+nothing!--Is<br>
+ there no hope?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>The old physician raised his eyes to heaven.</p>
+
+<p>"Adieu, monsieur," said the marquis, pressing his hand. "My
+friend is<br>
+ expecting me. He will soon come to you."</p>
+
+<p>"Then it was really she!" cried de Sucy at d'Albon's first
+words. "Ah!<br>
+ I still doubted it," he added, a few tears falling from his
+eyes,<br>
+ which were habitually stern.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it is the Comtesse de Vandieres," replied the
+marquis.</p>
+
+<p>The colonel rose abruptly from his bed and began to dress.</p>
+
+<p>"Philippe!" cried his friend, "are you mad?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am no longer ill," replied the colonel, simply. "This news
+has<br>
+ quieted my suffering. What pain can I feel when I think of
+Stephanie?<br>
+ I am going to the Bons-Hommes, to see her, speak to her, cure
+her. She<br>
+ is free. Well, happiness will smile upon us--or Providence is
+not in<br>
+ this world. Think you that that poor woman could hear my voice
+and not<br>
+ recover reason?"</p>
+
+<p>"She has already seen you and not recognized you," said his
+friend,<br>
+ gently, for he felt the danger of Philippe's excited hopes, and
+tried<br>
+ to cast a salutary doubt upon them.</p>
+
+<p>The colonel quivered; then he smiled, and made a motion of<br>
+ incredulity. No one dared to oppose his wish, and within a very
+short<br>
+ time he reached the old priory.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is she?" he cried, on arriving.</p>
+
+<p>"Hush!" said her uncle, "she is sleeping. See, here she
+is."</p>
+
+<p>Philippe then saw the poor insane creature lying on a bench in
+the<br>
+ sun. Her head was protected from the heat by a forest of hair
+which<br>
+ fell in tangled locks over her face. Her arms hung gracefully to
+the<br>
+ ground; her body lay easily posed like that of a doe; her feet
+were<br>
+ folded under her without effort; her bosom rose and fell at
+regular<br>
+ intervals; her skin, her complexion, had that porcelain
+whiteness,<br>
+ which we admire so much in the clear transparent faces of
+children.<br>
+ Standing motionless beside her, Genevieve held in her hand a
+branch<br>
+ which Stephanie had doubtless climbed a tall poplar to obtain,
+and the<br>
+ poor idiot was gently waving it above her sleeping companion, to
+chase<br>
+ away the flies and cool the atmosphere.</p>
+
+<p>The peasant-woman gazed at Monsieur Fanjat and the colonel;
+then, like<br>
+ an animal which recognizes its master, she turned her head
+slowly to<br>
+ the countess, and continued to watch her, without giving any
+sign of<br>
+ surprise or intelligence. The air was stifling; the stone
+bench<br>
+ glittered in the sunlight; the meadow exhaled to heaven those
+impish<br>
+ vapors which dance and dart above the herbage like silvery dust;
+but<br>
+ Genevieve seemed not to feel this all-consuming heat.</p>
+
+<p>The colonel pressed the hand of the doctor violently in his
+own. Tears<br>
+ rolled from his eyes along his manly cheeks, and fell to the
+earth at<br>
+ the feet of his Stephanie.</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur," said the uncle, "for two years past, my heart is
+broken<br>
+ day by day. Soon you will be like me. You may not always weep,
+but you<br>
+ will always feel your sorrow."</p>
+
+<p>The two men understood each other; and again, pressing each
+other's<br>
+ hands, they remained motionless, contemplating the exquisite
+calmness<br>
+ which sleep had cast upon that graceful creature. From time to
+time<br>
+ she gave a sigh, and that sigh, which had all the semblance
+of<br>
+ sensibilities, made the unhappy colonel tremble with hope.</p>
+
+<p>"Alas!" said Monsieur Fanjat, "do not deceive yourself,
+monsieur;<br>
+ there is no meaning in her sigh."</p>
+
+<p>Those who have ever watched for hours with delight the sleep
+of one<br>
+ who is tenderly beloved, whose eyes will smile to them at
+waking, can<br>
+ understand the sweet yet terrible emotion that shook the
+colonel's<br>
+ soul. To him, this sleep was an illusion; the waking might be
+death,<br>
+ death in its most awful form. Suddenly, a little goat jumped in
+three<br>
+ bounds to the bench, and smelt at Stephanie, who waked at the
+sound.<br>
+ She sprang to her feet, but so lightly that the movement did
+not<br>
+ frighten the freakish animal; then she caught sight of Philippe,
+and<br>
+ darted away, followed by her four-footed friend, to a hedge of
+elders;<br>
+ there she uttered the same little cry like a frightened bird,
+which<br>
+ the two men had heard near the other gate. Then she climbed an
+acacia,<br>
+ and nestling into its tufted top, she watched the stranger with
+the<br>
+ inquisitive attention of the forest birds.</p>
+
+<p>"Adieu, adieu, adieu," she said, without the soul
+communicating one<br>
+ single intelligent inflexion to the word.</p>
+
+<p>It was uttered impassively, as the bird sings his note.</p>
+
+<p>"She does not recognize me!" cried the colonel, in
+despair.<br>
+ "Stephanie! it is Philippe, thy Philippe, PHILIPPE!"</p>
+
+<p>And the poor soldier went to the acacia; but when he was a few
+steps<br>
+ from it, the countess looked at him, as if defying him, although
+a<br>
+ slight expression of fear seemed to flicker in her eye; then,
+with a<br>
+ single bound she sprang from the acacia to a laburnum, and
+thence to a<br>
+ Norway fir, where she darted from branch to branch with
+extraordinary<br>
+ agility.</p>
+
+<p>"Do not pursue her," said Monsieur Fanjat to the colonel, "or
+you will<br>
+ arouse an aversion which might become insurmountable. I will
+help you<br>
+ to tame her and make her come to you. Let us sit on this bench.
+If you<br>
+ pay no attention to her, she will come of her own accord to
+examine<br>
+ you."</p>
+
+<p>"SHE! not to know me! to flee me!" repeated the colonel,
+seating<br>
+ himself on a bench with his back to a tree that shaded it, and
+letting<br>
+ his head fall upon his breast.</p>
+
+<p>The doctor said nothing. Presently, the countess came gently
+down the<br>
+ fir-tree, letting herself swing easily on the branches, as the
+wind<br>
+ swayed them. At each branch she stopped to examine the stranger;
+but<br>
+ seeing him motionless, she at last sprang to the ground and
+came<br>
+ slowly towards him across the grass. When she reached a tree
+about ten<br>
+ feet distant, against which she leaned, Monsieur Fanjat said to
+the<br>
+ colonel in a low voice,--</p>
+
+<p>"Take out, adroitly, from my right hand pocket some lumps of
+sugar you<br>
+ will feel there. Show them to her, and she will come to us. I
+will<br>
+ renounce in your favor my sole means of giving her pleasure.
+With<br>
+ sugar, which she passionately loves, you will accustom her to
+approach<br>
+ you, and to know you again."</p>
+
+<p>"When she was a woman," said Philippe, sadly, "she had no
+taste for<br>
+ sweet things."</p>
+
+<p>When the colonel showed her the lump of sugar, holding it
+between the<br>
+ thumb and forefinger of his right hand, she again uttered her
+little<br>
+ wild cry, and sprang toward him; then she stopped, struggling
+against<br>
+ the instinctive fear he caused her; she looked at the sugar and
+turned<br>
+ away her head alternately, precisely like a dog whose master
+forbids<br>
+ him to touch his food until he has said a letter of the alphabet
+which<br>
+ he slowly repeats. At last the animal desire triumphed over
+fear.<br>
+ Stephanie darted to Philippe, cautiously putting out her little
+brown<br>
+ hand to seize the prize, touched the fingers of her poor lover
+as she<br>
+ snatched the sugar, and fled away among the trees. This dreadful
+scene<br>
+ overcame the colonel; he burst into tears and rushed into the
+house.</p>
+
+<p>"Has love less courage than friendship?" Monsieur Fanjat said
+to him.<br>
+ "I have some hope, Monsieur le baron. My poor niece was in a far
+worse<br>
+ state than that in which you now find her."</p>
+
+<p>"How was that possible?" cried Philippe.</p>
+
+<p>"She went naked," replied the doctor.</p>
+
+<p>The colonel made a gesture of horror and turned pale. The
+doctor saw<br>
+ in that sudden pallor alarming symptoms; he felt the colonel's
+pulse,<br>
+ found him in a violent fever, and half persuaded, half compelled
+him<br>
+ to go to bed. Then he gave him a dose of opium to ensure a calm
+sleep.</p>
+
+<p>Eight days elapsed, during which Colonel de Sucy struggled
+against<br>
+ mortal agony; tears no longer came to his eyes. His soul,
+often<br>
+ lacerated, could not harden itself to the sight of
+Stephanie's<br>
+ insanity; but he covenanted, so to speak, with his cruel
+situation,<br>
+ and found some assuaging of his sorrow. He had the courage to
+slowly<br>
+ tame the countess by bringing her sweetmeats; he took such pains
+in<br>
+ choosing them, and he learned so well how to keep the little
+conquests<br>
+ he sought to make upon her instincts--that last shred of her
+intellect<br>
+ --that he ended by making her much TAMER than she had ever
+been.</p>
+
+<p>Every morning he went into the park, and if, after searching
+for her<br>
+ long, he could not discover on what tree she was swaying, nor
+the<br>
+ covert in which she crouched to play with a bird, nor the roof
+on<br>
+ which she might have clambered, he would whistle the well-known
+air of<br>
+ "Partant pour la Syrie," to which some tender memory of their
+love<br>
+ attached. Instantly, Stephanie would run to him with the
+lightness of<br>
+ a fawn. She was now so accustomed to see him, that he frightened
+her<br>
+ no longer. Soon she was willing to sit upon his knee, and clasp
+him<br>
+ closely with her thin and agile arm. In that attitude--so dear
+to<br>
+ lovers!--Philippe would feed her with sugarplums. Then, having
+eaten<br>
+ those that he gave her, she would often search his pockets
+with<br>
+ gestures that had all the mechanical velocity of a monkey's
+motions.<br>
+ When she was very sure there was nothing more, she looked at
+Philippe<br>
+ with clear eyes, without ideas, with recognition. Then she would
+play<br>
+ with him, trying at times to take off his boots to see his
+feet,<br>
+ tearing his gloves, putting on his hat; she would even let him
+pass<br>
+ his hands through her hair, and take her in his arms; she
+accepted,<br>
+ but without pleasure, his ardent kisses. She would look at
+him<br>
+ silently, without emotion, when his tears flowed; but she
+always<br>
+ understood his "Partant pour la Syrie," when he whistled it,
+though he<br>
+ never succeeded in teaching her to say her own name
+Stephanie.</p>
+
+<p>Philippe was sustained in his agonizing enterprise by hope,
+which<br>
+ never abandoned him. When, on fine autumn mornings, he found
+the<br>
+ countess sitting peacefully on a bench, beneath a poplar now<br>
+ yellowing, the poor lover would sit at her feet, looking into
+her eyes<br>
+ as long as she would let him, hoping ever that the light that
+was in<br>
+ them would become intelligent. Sometimes the thought deluded him
+that<br>
+ he saw those hard immovable rays softening, vibrating, living,
+and he<br>
+ cried out,--</p>
+
+<p>"Stephanie! Stephanie! thou hearest me, thou seest me!"</p>
+
+<p>But she listened to that cry as to a noise, the soughing of
+the wind<br>
+ in the tree-tops, or the lowing of the cow on the back of which
+she<br>
+ climbed. Then the colonel would wring his hands in
+despair,--despair<br>
+ that was new each day.</p>
+
+<p>One evening, under a calm sky, amid the silence and peace of
+that<br>
+ rural haven, the doctor saw, from a distance, that the colonel
+was<br>
+ loading his pistols. The old man felt then that the young man
+had<br>
+ ceased to hope; he felt the blood rushing to his heart, and if
+he<br>
+ conquered the vertigo that threatened him, it was because he
+would<br>
+ rather see his niece living and mad than dead. He hastened
+up.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you doing?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"That is for me," replied the colonel, pointing to a pistol
+already<br>
+ loaded, which was lying on the bench; "and this is for her," he
+added,<br>
+ as he forced the wad into the weapon he held.</p>
+
+<p>The countess was lying on the ground beside him, playing with
+the<br>
+ balls.</p>
+
+<p>"Then you do not know," said the doctor, coldly, concealing
+his<br>
+ terror, "that in her sleep last night she called you:
+Philippe!"</p>
+
+<p>"She called me!" cried the baron, dropping his pistol, which
+Stephanie<br>
+ picked up. He took it from her hastily, caught up the one that
+was on<br>
+ the bench, and rushed away.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor darling!" said the doctor, happy in the success of his
+lie. He<br>
+ pressed the poor creature to his breast, and continued speaking
+to<br>
+ himself: "He would have killed thee, selfish man! because he
+suffers.<br>
+ He does not love thee for thyself, my child! But we forgive, do
+we<br>
+ not? He is mad, out of his senses, but thou art only senseless.
+No,<br>
+ God alone should call thee to Him. We think thee unhappy, we
+pity thee<br>
+ because thou canst not share our sorrows, fools that we
+are!--But," he<br>
+ said, sitting down and taking her on his knee, "nothing troubles
+thee;<br>
+ thy life is like that of a bird, of a fawn--"</p>
+
+<p>As he spoke she darted upon a young blackbird which was
+hopping near<br>
+ them, caught it with a little note of satisfaction, strangled
+it,<br>
+ looked at it, dead in her hand, and flung it down at the foot of
+a<br>
+ tree without a thought.</p>
+
+<p>The next day, as soon as it was light, the colonel came down
+into the<br>
+ gardens, and looked about for Stephanie,--he believed in the
+coming<br>
+ happiness. Not finding her he whistled. When his darling came to
+him,<br>
+ he took her on his arm; they walked together thus for the first
+time,<br>
+ and he led her within a group of trees, the autumn foliage of
+which<br>
+ was dropping to the breeze. The colonel sat down. Of her own
+accord<br>
+ Stephanie placed herself on his knee. Philippe trembled with
+joy.</p>
+
+<p>"Love," he said, kissing her hands passionately, "I am
+Philippe."</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him with curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>"Come," he said, pressing her to him, "dost thou feel my
+heart? It has<br>
+ beaten for thee alone. I love thee ever. Philippe is not dead;
+he is<br>
+ not dead, thou art on him, in his arms. Thou art MY Stephanie; I
+am<br>
+ thy Philippe."</p>
+
+<p>"Adieu," she said, "adieu."</p>
+
+<p>The colonel quivered, for he fancied he saw his own
+excitement<br>
+ communicated to his mistress. His heart-rending cry, drawn from
+him by<br>
+ despair, that last effort of an eternal love, of a delirious
+passion,<br>
+ was successful, the mind of his darling was awaking.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! Stephanie! Stephanie! we shall yet be happy."</p>
+
+<p>She gave a cry of satisfaction, and her eyes brightened with a
+flash<br>
+ of vague intelligence.</p>
+
+<p>"She knows me!--Stephanie!"</p>
+
+<p>His heart swelled; his eyelids were wet with tears. Then,
+suddenly,<br>
+ the countess showed him a bit of sugar she had found in his
+pocket<br>
+ while he was speaking to her. He had mistaken for human thought
+the<br>
+ amount of reason required for a monkey's trick. Philippe dropped
+to<br>
+ the ground unconscious. Monsieur Fanjat found the countess
+sitting on<br>
+ the colonel's body. She was biting her sugar, and testifying
+her<br>
+ pleasure by pretty gestures and affectations with which, had she
+her<br>
+ reason, she might have imitated her parrot or her cat.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! my friend," said Philippe, when he came to his senses, "I
+die<br>
+ every day, every moment! I love too well! I could still bear
+all, if,<br>
+ in her madness, she had kept her woman's nature. But to see her
+always<br>
+ a savage, devoid even of modesty, to see her--"</p>
+
+<p>"You want opera madness, do you? something picturesque and
+pleasing,"<br>
+ said the doctor, bitterly. "Your love and your devotion yield
+before a<br>
+ prejudice. Monsieur, I have deprived myself for your sake of the
+sad<br>
+ happiness of watching over my niece; I have left to you the
+pleasure<br>
+ of playing with her; I have kept for myself the heaviest cares.
+While<br>
+ you have slept, I have watched, I have-- Go, monsieur, go!
+abandon<br>
+ her! leave this sad refuge. I know how to live with that dear
+darling<br>
+ creature; I comprehend her madness, I watch her gestures, I know
+her<br>
+ secrets. Some day you will thank me for thus sending you
+away."</p>
+
+<p>The colonel left the old monastery, never to return but once.
+The<br>
+ doctor was horrified when he saw the effect he had produced upon
+his<br>
+ guest, whom he now began to love when he saw him thus. Surely,
+if<br>
+ either of the two lovers were worthy of pity, it was Philippe;
+did he<br>
+ not bear alone the burden of their dreadful sorrow?</p>
+
+<p>After the colonel's departure the doctor kept himself informed
+about<br>
+ him; he learned that the miserable man was living on an estate
+near<br>
+ Saint-Germain. In truth, the baron, on the faith of a dream,
+had<br>
+ formed a project which he believed would yet restore the mind of
+his<br>
+ darling. Unknown to the doctor, he spent the rest of the autumn
+in<br>
+ preparing for his enterprise. A little river flowed through his
+park<br>
+ and inundated during the winter the marshes on either side of
+it,<br>
+ giving it some resemblance to the Beresina. The village of
+Satout, on<br>
+ the heights above, closed in, like Studzianka, the scene of
+horror.<br>
+ The colonel collected workmen to deepen the banks, and by the
+help of<br>
+ his memory, he copied in his park the shore where General
+Eble<br>
+ destroyed the bridge. He planted piles, and made buttresses and
+burned<br>
+ them, leaving their charred and blackened ruins, standing in the
+water<br>
+ from shore to shore. Then he gathered fragments of all kinds,
+like<br>
+ those of which the raft was built. He ordered dilapidated
+uniforms and<br>
+ clothing of every grade, and hired hundreds of peasants to wear
+them;<br>
+ he erected huts and cabins for the purpose of burning them. In
+short,<br>
+ he forgot nothing that might recall that most awful of all
+scenes, and<br>
+ he succeeded.</p>
+
+<p>Toward the last of December, when the snow had covered with
+its thick,<br>
+ white mantle all his imitative preparations, he recognized
+the<br>
+ Beresina. This false Russia was so terribly truthful, that
+several of<br>
+ his army comrades recognized the scene of their past misery at
+once.<br>
+ Monsieur de Sucy took care to keep secret the motive for this
+tragic<br>
+ imitation, which was talked of in several Parisian circles as a
+proof<br>
+ of insanity.</p>
+
+<p>Early in January, 1820, the colonel drove in a carriage, the
+very<br>
+ counterpart of the one in which he had driven the Comte and
+Comtesse<br>
+ de Vandieres from Moscow to Studzianka. The horses, too, were
+like<br>
+ those he had gone, at the peril of his life, to fetch from the
+Russian<br>
+ outposts. He himself wore the soiled fantastic clothing, the
+same<br>
+ weapons, as on the 29th of November, 1812. He had let his beard
+grow,<br>
+ also his hair, which was tangled and matted, and his face
+was<br>
+ neglected, so that nothing might be wanting to represent the
+awful<br>
+ truth.</p>
+
+<p>"I can guess your purpose," cried Monsieur Fanjat, when he saw
+the<br>
+ colonel getting out of the carriage. "If you want to succeed, do
+not<br>
+ let my niece see you in that equipage. To-night I will give her
+opium.<br>
+ During her sleep, we will dress her as she was at Studzianka,
+and<br>
+ place her in the carriage. I will follow you in another
+vehicle."</p>
+
+<p>About two in the morning, the sleeping countess was placed in
+the<br>
+ carriage and wrapped in heavy coverings. A few peasants with
+torches<br>
+ lighted up this strange abduction. Suddenly, a piercing cry
+broke the<br>
+ silence of the night. Philippe and the doctor turned, and
+saw<br>
+ Genevieve coming half-naked from the ground-floor room in which
+she<br>
+ slept.</p>
+
+<p>"Adieu, adieu! all is over, adieu!" she cried, weeping hot
+tears.</p>
+
+<p>"Genevieve, what troubles you?" asked the doctor.</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve shook her head with a motion of despair, raised her
+arm to<br>
+ heaven, looked at the carriage, uttering a long-drawn moan with
+every<br>
+ sign of the utmost terror; then she returned to her room
+silently.</p>
+
+<p>"That is a good omen!" cried the colonel. "She feels she is to
+lose<br>
+ her companion. Perhaps she SEES that Stephanie will recover
+her<br>
+ reason."</p>
+
+<p>"God grant it!" said Monsieur Fanjat, who himself was affected
+by the<br>
+ incident.</p>
+
+<p>Ever since he had made a close study of insanity, the good man
+had met<br>
+ with many examples of the prophetic faculty and the gift of
+second<br>
+ sight, proofs of which are frequently given by alienated minds,
+and<br>
+ which may also be found, so travellers say, among certain tribes
+of<br>
+ savages.</p>
+
+<p>As the colonel had calculated, Stephanie crossed the
+fictitious plain<br>
+ of the Beresina at nine o'clock in the morning, when she was
+awakened<br>
+ by a cannon shot not a hundred yards from the spot where the<br>
+ experiment was to be tried. This was a signal. Hundreds of
+peasants<br>
+ made a frightful clamor like that on the shore of the river
+that<br>
+ memorable night, when twenty thousand stragglers were doomed to
+death<br>
+ or slavery by their own folly.</p>
+
+<p>At the cry, at the shot, the countess sprang from the
+carriage, and<br>
+ ran, with delirious emotion, over the snow to the banks of the
+river;<br>
+ she saw the burned bivouacs and the charred remains of the
+bridge, and<br>
+ the fatal raft, which the men were launching into the icy waters
+of<br>
+ the Beresina. The major, Philippe, was there, striking back the
+crowd<br>
+ with his sabre. Madame de Vandieres gave a cry, which went to
+all<br>
+ hearts, and threw herself before the colonel, whose heart beat
+wildly.<br>
+ She seemed to gather herself together, and, at first, looked
+vaguely<br>
+ at the singular scene. For an instant, as rapid as the
+lightning's<br>
+ flash, her eyes had that lucidity, devoid of mind, which we
+admire in<br>
+ the eye of birds; then passing her hand across her brow with the
+keen<br>
+ expression of one who meditates, she contemplated the living
+memory of<br>
+ a past scene spread before her, and, turning quickly to
+Philippe, she<br>
+ SAW HIM. An awful silence reigned in the crowd. The colonel
+gasped,<br>
+ but dared not speak; the doctor wept. Stephanie's sweet face
+colored<br>
+ faintly; then, from tint to tint, it returned to the brightness
+of<br>
+ youth, till it glowed with a beautiful crimson. Life and
+happiness,<br>
+ lighted by intelligence, came nearer and nearer like a
+conflagration.<br>
+ Convulsive trembling rose from her feet to her heart. Then
+these<br>
+ phenomena seemed to blend in one as Stephanie's eyes cast forth
+a<br>
+ celestial ray, the flame of a living soul. She lived, she
+thought! She<br>
+ shuddered, with fear perhaps, for God himself unloosed that
+silent<br>
+ tongue, and cast anew His fires into that long-extinguished
+soul.<br>
+ Human will came with its full electric torrent, and vivified the
+body<br>
+ from which it had been driven.</p>
+
+<p>"Stephanie!" cried the colonel.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! it is Philippe," said the poor countess.</p>
+
+<p>She threw herself into the trembling arms that the colonel
+held out to<br>
+ her, and the clasp of the lovers frightened the spectators.
+Stephanie<br>
+ burst into tears. Suddenly her tears stopped, she stiffened as
+though<br>
+ the lightning had touched her, and said in a feeble voice,--</p>
+
+<p>"Adieu, Philippe; I love thee, adieu!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! she is dead," cried the colonel, opening his arms.</p>
+
+<p>The old doctor received the inanimate body of his niece,
+kissed it as<br>
+ though he were a young man, and carrying it aside, sat down with
+it<br>
+ still in his arms on a pile of wood. He looked at the countess
+and<br>
+ placed his feeble trembling hand upon her heart. That heart no
+longer<br>
+ beat.</p>
+
+<p>"It is true," he said, looking up at the colonel, who
+stood<br>
+ motionless, and then at Stephanie, on whom death was placing
+that<br>
+ resplendent beauty, that fugitive halo, which is, perhaps, a
+pledge of<br>
+ the glorious future--"Yes, she is dead."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! that smile," cried Philippe, "do you see that smile? Can
+it be<br>
+ true?"</p>
+
+<p>"She is turning cold," replied Monsieur Fanjat.</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur de Sucy made a few steps to tear himself away from
+the sight;<br>
+ but he stopped, whistled the air that Stephanie had known, and
+when<br>
+ she did not come to him, went on with staggering steps like a
+drunken<br>
+ man, still whistling, but never turning back.</p>
+
+<p>General Philippe de Sucy was thought in the social world to be
+a very<br>
+ agreeable man, and above all a very gay one. A few days ago, a
+lady<br>
+ complimented him on his good humor, and the charming equability
+of his<br>
+ nature.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! madame," he said, "I pay dear for my liveliness in my
+lonely<br>
+ evenings."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you ever alone?" she said.</p>
+
+<p>"No," he replied smiling.</p>
+
+<p>If a judicious observer of human nature could have seen at
+that moment<br>
+ the expression on the Comte de Sucy's face, he would perhaps
+have<br>
+ shuddered.</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you marry?" said the lady, who had several
+daughters at<br>
+ school. "You are rich, titled, and of ancient lineage; you
+have<br>
+ talents, and a great future before you; all things smile upon
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he said, "but a smile kills me."</p>
+
+<p>The next day the lady heard with great astonishment that
+Monsieur de<br>
+ Sucy had blown his brains out during the night. The upper ranks
+of<br>
+ society talked in various ways over this extraordinary event,
+and each<br>
+ person looked for the cause of it. According to the proclivities
+of<br>
+ each reasoner, play, love, ambition, hidden disorders, and
+vices,<br>
+ explained the catastrophe, the last scene of a drama begun in
+1812.<br>
+ Two men alone, a marquis and former deputy, and an aged
+physician,<br>
+ knew that Philippe de Sucy was one of those strong men to whom
+God has<br>
+ given the unhappy power of issuing daily in triumph from awful
+combats<br>
+ which they fight with an unseen monster. If, for a moment,
+God<br>
+ withdraws from such men His all-powerful hand, they succumb.</p>
+
+<h3><br>
+ ADDENDUM</h3>
+
+<p>The following personage appears in other stories of the Human
+Comedy.</p>
+
+<p>Note: Adieu is also entitled Farewell.</p>
+
+<p>Granville, Vicomte de<br>
+ The Gondreville Mystery<br>
+ A Second Home<br>
+ Farewell (Adieu)<br>
+ Cesar Birotteau<br>
+ Scenes from a Courtesan's Life<br>
+ A Daughter of Eve<br>
+ Cousin Pons</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Adieu, by Honore de Balzac
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