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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Farewell, 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.org
+
+
+Title: Farewell
+
+Author: Honore de Balzac
+
+Release Date: June, 2004 [EBook #5873]
+Posting Date: March 28, 2009
+Last Updated: November 22, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FAREWELL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Dagny, and John Bickers
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+FAREWELL
+
+BY HONORE DE BALZAC
+
+
+Translated by Ellen Marriage
+
+
+
+                              DEDICATION
+
+                To Prince Friedrich von Schwarzenberg
+
+
+
+
+
+FAREWELL
+
+
+
+“Come, Deputy of the Centre, come along! We shall have to mend our pace
+if we mean to sit down to dinner when every one else does, and that’s
+a fact! Hurry up! Jump, Marquis! That’s it! Well done! You are bounding
+over the furrows just like a stag!”
+
+These words were uttered by a sportsman seated much at his ease on the
+outskirts of the Foret de l’Isle-Adam; he had just finished a Havana
+cigar, which he had smoked while he waited for his companion, who
+had evidently been straying about for some time among the forest
+undergrowth. Four panting dogs by the speaker’s side likewise watched
+the progress of the personage for whose benefit the remarks were made.
+To make their sarcastic import fully clear, it should be added that the
+second sportsman was both short and stout; his ample girth indicated a
+truly magisterial corpulence, and in consequence his progress across
+the furrows was by no means easy. He was striding over a vast field
+of stubble; the dried corn-stalks underfoot added not a little to the
+difficulties of his passage, and to add to his discomforts, the genial
+influence of the sun that slanted into his eyes brought great drops of
+perspiration into his face. The uppermost thought in his mind being a
+strong desire to keep his balance, he lurched to and fro like a coach
+jolted over an atrocious road.
+
+It was one of those September days of almost tropical heat that finishes
+the work of summer and ripens the grapes. Such heat forebodes a coming
+storm; and though as yet there were wide patches of blue between the
+dark rain-clouds low down on the horizon, pale golden masses were rising
+and scattering with ominous swiftness from west to east, and drawing
+a shadowy veil across the sky. The wind was still, save in the upper
+regions of the air, so that the weight of the atmosphere seemed to
+compress the steamy heat of the earth into the forest glades. The tall
+forest trees shut out every breath of air so completely that the little
+valley across which the sportsman was making his way was as hot as a
+furnace; the silent forest seemed parched with the fiery heat. Birds and
+insects were mute; the topmost twigs of the trees swayed with scarcely
+perceptible motion. Any one who retains some recollection of the summer
+of 1819 must surely compassionate the plight of the hapless supporter
+of the ministry who toiled and sweated over the stubble to rejoin his
+satirical comrade. That gentleman, as he smoked his cigar, had arrived,
+by a process of calculation based on the altitude of the sun, to the
+conclusion that it must be about five o’clock.
+
+“Where the devil are we?” asked the stout sportsman. He wiped his brow
+as he spoke, and propped himself against a tree in the field opposite
+his companion, feeling quite unequal to clearing the broad ditch that
+lay between them.
+
+“And you ask that question of _me_!” retorted the other, laughing from
+his bed of tall brown grasses on the top of the bank. He flung the end
+of his cigar into the ditch, exclaiming, “I swear by Saint Hubert that
+no one shall catch me risking myself again in a country that I don’t
+know with a magistrate, even if, like you, my dear d’Albon, he happens
+to be an old schoolfellow.”
+
+“Why, Philip, have you really forgotten your own language? You surely
+must have left your wits behind you in Siberia,” said the stouter of the
+two, with a glance half-comic, half-pathetic at the guide-post distant
+about a hundred paces from them.
+
+“I understand,” replied the one addressed as Philip. He snatched up his
+rifle, suddenly sprang to his feet, made but one jump of it into the
+field, and rushed off to the guide-post. “This way, d’Albon, here you
+are! left about!” he shouted, gesticulating in the direction of the
+highroad. “_To Baillet and l’Isle-Adam!_” he went on; “so if we go along
+here, we shall be sure to come upon the cross-road to Cassan.”
+
+“Quite right, Colonel,” said M. d’Albon, putting the cap with which he
+had been fanning himself back on his head.
+
+“Then _forward_! highly respected Councillor,” returned Colonel Philip,
+whistling to the dogs, that seemed already to obey him rather than the
+magistrate their owner.
+
+“Are you aware, my lord Marquis, that two leagues yet remain before
+us?” inquired the malicious soldier. “That village down yonder must be
+Baillet.”
+
+“Great heavens!” cried the Marquis d’Albon. “Go on to Cassan by all
+means, if you like; but if you do, you will go alone. I prefer to wait
+here, storm or no storm; you can send a horse for me from the chateau.
+You have been making game of me, Sucy. We were to have a nice day’s
+sport by ourselves; we were not to go very far from Cassan, and go
+over ground that I knew. Pooh! instead of a day’s fun, you have kept me
+running like a greyhound since four o’clock this morning, and nothing
+but a cup or two of milk by way of breakfast. Oh! if ever you find
+yourself in a court of law, I will take care that the day goes against
+you if you were in the right a hundred times over.”
+
+The dejected sportsman sat himself down on one of the stumps at the
+foot of the guide-post, disencumbered himself of his rifle and empty
+game-bag, and heaved a prolonged sigh.
+
+“Oh, France, behold thy Deputies!” laughed Colonel de Sucy. “Poor old
+d’Albon; if you had spent six months at the other end of Siberia as I
+did...”
+
+He broke off, and his eyes sought the sky, as if the story of his
+troubles was a secret between himself and God.
+
+“Come, march!” he added. “If you once sit down, it is all over with
+you.”
+
+“I can’t help it, Philip! It is such an old habit in a magistrate! I am
+dead beat, upon my honor. If I had only bagged one hare though!”
+
+Two men more different are seldom seen together. The civilian, a man
+of forty-two, seemed scarcely more than thirty; while the soldier, at
+thirty years of age, looked to be forty at the least. Both wore the red
+rosette that proclaimed them to be officers of the Legion of Honor. A
+few locks of hair, mingled white and black, like a magpie’s wing,
+had strayed from beneath the Colonel’s cap; while thick, fair curls
+clustered about the magistrate’s temples. The Colonel was tall, spare,
+dried up, but muscular; the lines in his pale face told a tale of
+vehement passions or of terrible sorrows; but his comrade’s jolly
+countenance beamed with health, and would have done credit to an
+Epicurean. Both men were deeply sunburnt. Their high gaiters of brown
+leather carried souvenirs of every ditch and swamp that they crossed
+that day.
+
+“Come, come,” cried M. de Sucy, “forward! One short hour’s march, and we
+shall be at Cassan with a good dinner before us.”
+
+“You never were in love, that is positive,” returned the Councillor,
+with a comically piteous expression. “You are as inexorable as Article
+304 of the Penal Code!”
+
+Philip de Sucy shuddered violently. Deep lines appeared in his broad
+forehead, his face was overcast like the sky above them; but though
+his features seemed to contract with the pain of an intolerably bitter
+memory, no tears came to his eyes. Like all men of strong character, he
+possessed the power of forcing his emotions down into some inner depth,
+and, perhaps, like many reserved natures, he shrank from laying bare a
+wound too deep for any words of human speech, and winced at the thought
+of ridicule from those who do not care to understand. M. d’Albon was one
+of those who are keenly sensitive by nature to the distress of others,
+who feel at once the pain they have unwillingly given by some blunder.
+He respected his friend’s mood, rose to his feet, forgot his weariness,
+and followed in silence, thoroughly annoyed with himself for having
+touched on a wound that seemed not yet healed.
+
+“Some day I will tell you my story,” Philip said at last, wringing
+his friend’s hand, while he acknowledged his dumb repentance with a
+heart-rending glance. “To-day I cannot.”
+
+They walked on in silence. As the Colonel’s distress passed off the
+Councillor’s fatigue returned. Instinctively, or rather urged by
+weariness, his eyes explored the depths of the forest around them; he
+looked high and low among the trees, and gazed along the avenues, hoping
+to discover some dwelling where he might ask for hospitality. They
+reached a place where several roads met; and the Councillor, fancying
+that he saw a thin film of smoke rising through the trees, made a stand
+and looked sharply about him. He caught a glimpse of the dark green
+branches of some firs among the other forest trees, and finally, “A
+house! a house!” he shouted. No sailor could have raised a cry of “Land
+ahead!” more joyfully than he.
+
+He plunged at once into undergrowth, somewhat of the thickest; and the
+Colonel, who had fallen into deep musings, followed him unheedingly.
+
+“I would rather have an omelette here and home-made bread, and a chair
+to sit down in, than go further for a sofa, truffles, and Bordeaux wine
+at Cassan.”
+
+This outburst of enthusiasm on the Councillor’s part was caused by the
+sight of the whitened wall of a house in the distance, standing out in
+strong contrast against the brown masses of knotted tree-trunks in the
+forest.
+
+“Aha! This used to be a priory, I should say,” the Marquis d’Albon cried
+once more, as they stood before a grim old gateway. Through the
+grating they could see the house itself standing in the midst of some
+considerable extent of park land; from the style of the architecture it
+appeared to have been a monastery once upon a time.
+
+“Those knowing rascals of monks knew how to choose a site!”
+
+This last exclamation was caused by the magistrate’s amazement at the
+romantic hermitage before his eyes. The house had been built on a spot
+half-way up the hillside on the slope below the village of Nerville,
+which crowned the summit. A huge circle of great oak-trees, hundreds of
+years old, guarded the solitary place from intrusion. There appeared
+to be about forty acres of the park. The main building of the monastery
+faced the south, and stood in a space of green meadow, picturesquely
+intersected by several tiny clear streams, and by larger sheets of water
+so disposed as to have a natural effect. Shapely trees with contrasting
+foliage grew here and there. Grottos had been ingeniously contrived; and
+broad terraced walks, now in ruin, though the steps were broken and
+the balustrades eaten through with rust, gave to this sylvan Thebaid a
+certain character of its own. The art of man and the picturesqueness of
+nature had wrought together to produce a charming effect. Human passions
+surely could not cross that boundary of tall oak-trees which shut out
+the sounds of the outer world, and screened the fierce heat of the sun
+from this forest sanctuary.
+
+“What neglect!” said M. d’Albon to himself, after the first sense of
+delight in the melancholy aspect of the ruins in the landscape, which
+seemed blighted by a curse.
+
+It was like some haunted spot, shunned of men. The twisted ivy stems
+clambered everywhere, hiding everything away beneath a luxuriant green
+mantle. Moss and lichens, brown and gray, yellow and red, covered the
+trees with fantastic patches of color, grew upon the benches in the
+garden, overran the roof and the walls of the house. The window-sashes
+were weather-worn and warped with age, the balconies were dropping to
+pieces, the terraces in ruins. Here and there the folding shutters hung
+by a single hinge. The crazy doors would have given way at the first
+attempt to force an entrance.
+
+Out in the orchard the neglected fruit-trees were running to wood, the
+rambling branches bore no fruit save the glistening mistletoe berries,
+and tall plants were growing in the garden walks. All this forlornness
+shed a charm across the picture that wrought on the spectator’s mind
+with an influence like that of some enchanting poem, filling his
+soul with dreamy fancies. A poet must have lingered there in deep and
+melancholy musings, marveling at the harmony of this wilderness, where
+decay had a certain grace of its own.
+
+In a moment a few gleams of sunlight struggled through a rift in the
+clouds, and a shower of colored light fell over the wild garden. The
+brown tiles of the roof glowed in the light, the mosses took bright
+hues, strange shadows played over the grass beneath the trees; the dead
+autumn tints grew vivid, bright unexpected contrasts were evoked by the
+light, every leaf stood out sharply in the clear, thin air. Then all
+at once the sunlight died away, and the landscape that seemed to have
+spoken grew silent and gloomy again, or rather, it took gray soft tones
+like the tenderest hues of autumn dusk.
+
+“It is the palace of the Sleeping Beauty,” the Councillor said to
+himself (he had already begun to look at the place from the point of
+view of an owner of property). “Whom can the place belong to, I wonder.
+He must be a great fool not to live on such a charming little estate!”
+
+Just at that moment, a woman sprang out from under a walnut tree on
+the right-hand side of the gateway, and passed before the Councillor as
+noiselessly and swiftly as the shadow of a cloud. This apparition struck
+him dumb with amazement.
+
+“Hallo, d’Albon, what is the matter?” asked the Colonel.
+
+“I am rubbing my eyes to find out whether I am awake or asleep,”
+ answered the magistrate, whose countenance was pressed against the
+grating in the hope of catching a second glimpse of the ghost.
+
+“In all probability she is under that fig-tree,” he went on, indicating,
+for Philip’s benefit, some branches that over-topped the wall on the
+left-hand side of the gateway.
+
+“She? Who?”
+
+“Eh! how should I know?” answered M. d’Albon. “A strange-looking woman
+sprang up there under my very eyes just now,” he added, in a low voice;
+“she looked to me more like a ghost than a living being. She was so
+slender, light and shadowy that she might be transparent. Her face was
+as white as milk, her hair, her eyes, and her dress were black. She gave
+me a glance as she flitted by. I am not easily frightened, but that cold
+stony stare of hers froze the blood in my veins.”
+
+“Was she pretty?” inquired Philip.
+
+“I don’t know. I saw nothing but those eyes in her head.”
+
+“The devil take dinner at Cassan!” exclaimed the Colonel; “let us stay
+here. I am as eager as a boy to see the inside of this queer place. The
+window-sashes are painted red, do you see? There is a red line round
+the panels of the doors and the edges of the shutters. It might be the
+devil’s own dwelling; perhaps he took it over when the monks went out.
+Now, then, let us give chase to the black and white lady; come along!”
+ cried Philip, with forced gaiety.
+
+He had scarcely finished speaking when the two sportsmen heard a cry as
+if some bird had been taken in a snare. They listened. There was a sound
+like the murmur of rippling water, as something forced its way through
+the bushes; but diligently as they lent their ears, there was no
+footfall on the path, the earth kept the secret of the mysterious
+woman’s passage, if indeed she had moved from her hiding-place.
+
+“This is very strange!” cried Philip.
+
+Following the wall of the path, the two friends reached before long
+a forest road leading to the village of Chauvry; they went along this
+track in the direction of the highway to Paris, and reached another
+large gateway. Through the railings they had a complete view of
+the facade of the mysterious house. From this point of view, the
+dilapidation was still more apparent. Huge cracks had riven the walls
+of the main body of the house built round three sides of a square.
+Evidently the place was allowed to fall to ruin; there were holes in
+the roof, broken slates and tiles lay about below. Fallen fruit from the
+orchard trees was left to rot on the ground; a cow was grazing over
+the bowling-green and trampling the flowers in the garden beds; a goat
+browsed on the green grapes and young vine-shoots on the trellis.
+
+“It is all of a piece,” remarked the Colonel. “The neglect is in a
+fashion systematic.” He laid his hand on the chain of the bell-pull, but
+the bell had lost its clapper. The two friends heard no sound save the
+peculiar grating creak of the rusty spring. A little door in the wall
+beside the gateway, though ruinous, held good against all their efforts
+to force it open.
+
+“Oho! all this is growing very interesting,” Philip said to his
+companion.
+
+“If I were not a magistrate,” returned M. d’Albon, “I should think that
+the woman in black is a witch.”
+
+The words were scarcely out of his mouth when the cow came up to the
+railings and held out her warm damp nose, as if she were glad of human
+society. Then a woman, if so indescribable a being could be called a
+woman, sprang up from the bushes, and pulled at the cord about the cow’s
+neck. From beneath the crimson handkerchief about the woman’s head, fair
+matted hair escaped, something as tow hangs about a spindle. She wore
+no kerchief at the throat. A coarse black-and-gray striped woolen
+petticoat, too short by several inches, left her legs bare. She might
+have belonged to some tribe of Redskins in Fenimore Cooper’s novels; for
+her neck, arms, and ankles looked as if they had been painted brick-red.
+There was no spark of intelligence in her featureless face; her pale,
+bluish eyes looked out dull and expressionless from beneath the eyebrows
+with one or two straggling white hairs on them. Her teeth were prominent
+and uneven, but white as a dog’s.
+
+“Hallo, good woman,” called M. de Sucy.
+
+She came slowly up to the railing, and stared at the two sportsmen with
+a contorted smile painful to see.
+
+“Where are we? What is the name of the house yonder? Whom does it belong
+to? Who are you? Do you come from hereabouts?”
+
+To these questions, and to a host of others poured out in succession
+upon her by the two friends, she made no answer save gurgling sounds
+in the throat, more like animal sounds than anything uttered by a human
+voice.
+
+“Don’t you see that she is deaf and dumb?” said M. d’Albon.
+
+“_Minorites_!” the peasant woman said at last.
+
+“Ah! she is right. The house looks as though it might once have been a
+Minorite convent,” he went on.
+
+Again they plied the peasant woman with questions, but, like a wayward
+child, she colored up, fidgeted with her sabot, twisted the rope by
+which she held the cow that had fallen to grazing again, stared at the
+sportsmen, and scrutinized every article of clothing upon them; she
+gibbered, grunted, and clucked, but no articulate word did she utter.
+
+“Your name?” asked Philip, fixing her with his eyes as if he were trying
+to bewitch the woman.
+
+“Genevieve,” she answered, with an empty laugh.
+
+“The cow is the most intelligent creature we have seen so far,”
+ exclaimed the magistrate. “I shall fire a shot, that ought to bring
+somebody out.”
+
+D’Albon had just taken up his rifle when the Colonel put out a hand
+to stop him, and pointed out the mysterious woman who had aroused such
+lively curiosity in them. She seemed to be absorbed in deep thought, as
+she went along a green alley some little distance away, so slowly that
+the friends had time to take a good look at her. She wore a threadbare
+black satin gown, her long hair curled thickly over her forehead, and
+fell like a shawl about her shoulders below her waist. Doubtless she was
+accustomed to the dishevelment of her locks, for she seldom put back
+the hair on either side of her brows; but when she did so, she shook her
+head with a sudden jerk that had not to be repeated to shake away
+the thick veil from her eyes or forehead. In everything that she
+did, moreover, there was a wonderful certainty in the working of the
+mechanism, an unerring swiftness and precision, like that of an animal,
+well-nigh marvelous in a woman.
+
+The two sportsmen were amazed to see her spring up into an apple-tree
+and cling to a bough lightly as a bird. She snatched at the fruit, ate
+it, and dropped to the ground with the same supple grace that charms
+us in a squirrel. The elasticity of her limbs took all appearance of
+awkwardness or effort from her movements. She played about upon the
+grass, rolling in it as a young child might have done; then, on a
+sudden, she lay still and stretched out her feet and hands, with the
+languid natural grace of a kitten dozing in the sun.
+
+There was a threatening growl of thunder far away, and at this she
+started up on all fours and listened, like a dog who hears a strange
+footstep. One result of this strange attitude was to separate her thick
+black hair into two masses, that fell away on either side of her face
+and left her shoulders bare; the two witnesses of this singular scene
+wondered at the whiteness of the skin that shone like a meadow daisy,
+and at the neck that indicated the perfection of the rest of her form.
+
+A wailing cry broke from her; she rose to her feet, and stood upright.
+Every successive movement was made so lightly, so gracefully, so easily,
+that she seemed to be no human being, but one of Ossian’s maids of the
+mist. She went across the grass to one of the pools of water, deftly
+shook off her shoe, and seemed to enjoy dipping her foot, white as
+marble, in the spring; doubtless it pleased her to make the circling
+ripples, and watch them glitter like gems. She knelt down by the brink,
+and played there like a child, dabbling her long tresses in the water,
+and flinging them loose again to see the water drip from the ends, like
+a string of pearls in the sunless light.
+
+“She is mad!” cried the Councillor.
+
+A hoarse cry rang through the air; it came from Genevieve, and seemed
+to be meant for the mysterious woman. She rose to her feet in a moment,
+flinging back the hair from her face, and then the Colonel and d’Albon
+could see her features distinctly. As soon as she saw the two friends
+she bounded to the railings with the swiftness of a fawn.
+
+“_Farewell_!” she said in low, musical tones, but they could not
+discover the least trace of feeling, the least idea in the sweet sounds
+that they had awaited impatiently.
+
+M. d’Albon admired the long lashes, the thick, dark eyebrows, the
+dazzling fairness of skin untinged by any trace of red. Only the
+delicate blue veins contrasted with that uniform whiteness.
+
+But when the Marquis turned to communicate his surprise at the sight of
+so strange an apparition, he saw the Colonel stretched on the grass like
+one dead. M. d’Albon fired his gun into the air, shouted for help, and
+tried to raise his friend. At the sound of the shot, the strange lady,
+who had stood motionless by the gate, fled away, crying out like a
+wounded wild creature, circling round and round in the meadow, with
+every sign of unspeakable terror.
+
+M. d’Albon heard a carriage rolling along the road to l’Isle-Adam, and
+waved his handkerchief to implore help. The carriage immediately came
+towards the Minorite convent, and M. d’Albon recognized neighbors, M.
+and Mme. de Grandville, who hastened to alight and put their carriage at
+his disposal. Colonel de Sucy inhaled the salts which Mme. de Grandville
+happened to have with her; he opened his eyes, looked towards the
+mysterious figure that still fled wailing through the meadow, and a
+faint cry of horror broke from him; he closed his eyes again, with
+a dumb gesture of entreaty to his friends to take him away from this
+scene. M. and Mme. de Grandville begged the Councillor to make use of
+their carriage, adding very obligingly that they themselves would walk.
+
+“Who can the lady be?” inquired the magistrate, looking towards the
+strange figure.
+
+“People think that she comes from Moulins,” answered M. de Grandville.
+“She is a Comtesse de Vandieres; she is said to be mad; but as she has
+only been here for two months, I cannot vouch for the truth of all this
+hearsay talk.”
+
+M. d’Albon thanked M. and Mme. de Grandville, and they set out for
+Cassan.
+
+“It is she!” cried Philip, coming to himself.
+
+“She? who?” asked d’Albon.
+
+“Stephanie.... Ah! dead and yet living still; still alive, but her mind
+is gone! I thought the sight would kill me.”
+
+The prudent magistrate, recognizing the gravity of the crisis through
+which his friend was passing, refrained from asking questions or
+exciting him further, and grew impatient of the length of the way to the
+chateau, for the change wrought in the Colonel’s face alarmed him. He
+feared lest the Countess’ terrible disease had communicated itself to
+Philip’s brain. When they reached the avenue at l’Isle-Adam, d’Albon
+sent the servant for the local doctor, so that the Colonel had scarcely
+been laid in bed before the surgeon was beside him.
+
+“If Monsieur le Colonel had not been fasting, the shock must have killed
+him,” pronounced the leech. “He was over-tired, and that saved him,” and
+with a few directions as to the patient’s treatment, he went to prepare
+a composing draught himself. M. de Sucy was better the next morning, but
+the doctor had insisted on sitting up all night with him.
+
+“I confess, Monsieur le Marquis,” the surgeon said, “that I feared for
+the brain. M. de Sucy has had some very violent shock; he is a man of
+strong passions, but, with his temperament, the first shock decides
+everything. He will very likely be out of danger to-morrow.”
+
+The doctor was perfectly right. The next day the patient was allowed to
+see his friend.
+
+“I want you to do something for me, dear d’Albon,” Philip said, grasping
+his friend’s hand. “Hasten at once to the Minorite convent, find out
+everything about the lady whom we saw there, and come back as soon as
+you can; I shall count the minutes till I see you again.”
+
+M. d’Albon called for his horse, and galloped over to the old monastery.
+When he reached the gateway he found some one standing there, a tall,
+spare man with a kindly face, who answered in the affirmative when he
+was asked if he lived in the ruined house. M. d’Albon explained his
+errand.
+
+“Why, then, it must have been you, sir, who fired that unlucky shot! You
+all but killed my poor invalid.”
+
+“Eh! I fired into the air!”
+
+“If you had actually hit Madame la Comtesse, you would have done less
+harm to her.”
+
+“Well, well, then, we can neither of us complain, for the sight of the
+Countess all but killed my friend, M. de Sucy.”
+
+“The Baron de Sucy, is it possible?” cried the doctor, clasping his
+hands. “Has he been in Russia? was he in the Beresina?”
+
+“Yes,” answered d’Albon. “He was taken prisoner by the Cossacks and sent
+to Siberia. He has not been back in this country a twelvemonth.”
+
+“Come in, monsieur,” said the other, and he led the way to a
+drawing-room on the ground-floor. Everything in the room showed signs of
+capricious destruction.
+
+Valuable china jars lay in fragments on either side of a clock beneath a
+glass shade, which had escaped. The silk hangings about the windows were
+torn to rags, while the muslin curtains were untouched.
+
+“You see about you the havoc wrought by a charming being to whom I
+have dedicated my life. She is my niece; and though medical science
+is powerless in her case, I hope to restore her to reason, though the
+method which I am trying is, unluckily, only possible to the wealthy.”
+
+Then, like all who live much alone and daily bear the burden of a heavy
+trouble, he fell to talk with the magistrate. This is the story that he
+told, set in order, and with the many digressions made by both teller
+and hearer omitted.
+
+
+
+When, at nine o’clock at night, on the 28th of November 1812, Marshal
+Victor abandoned the heights of Studzianka, which he had held through
+the day, he left a thousand men behind with instructions to protect,
+till the last possible moment, the two pontoon bridges over the Beresina
+that still held good. This rear guard was to save if possible an
+appalling number of stragglers, so numbed with the cold, that they
+obstinately refused to leave the baggage-wagons. The heroism of the
+generous band was doomed to fail; for, unluckily, the men who poured
+down to the eastern bank of the Beresina found carriages, caissons, and
+all kinds of property which the Army had been forced to abandon during
+its passage on the 27th and 28th days of November. The poor, half-frozen
+wretches, sunk almost to the level of brutes, finding such unhoped-for
+riches, bivouacked in the deserted space, laid hands on the military
+stores, improvised huts out of the material, lighted fires with anything
+that would burn, cut up the carcasses of the horses for food, tore out
+the linings of the carriages, wrapped themselves in them, and lay
+down to sleep instead of crossing the Beresina in peace under cover of
+night--the Beresina that even then had proved, by incredible fatality,
+so disastrous to the Army. Such apathy on the part of the poor fellows
+can only be understood by those who remember tramping across those vast
+deserts of snow, with nothing to quench their thirst but snow, snow for
+their bed, snow as far as the horizon on every side, and no food but
+snow, a little frozen beetroot, horseflesh, or a handful of meal.
+
+The miserable creatures were dropping down, overcome by hunger, thirst,
+weariness, and sleep, when they reached the shores of the Beresina and
+found fuel and fire and victuals, countless wagons and tents, a whole
+improvised town, in short. The whole village of Studzianka had been
+removed piecemeal from the heights of the plain, and the very perils and
+miseries of this dangerous and doleful habitation smiled invitingly to
+the wayfarers, who beheld no prospect beyond it but the awful Russian
+deserts. A huge hospice, in short, was erected for twenty hours of
+existence. Only one thought--the thought of rest--appealed to men weary
+of life or rejoicing in unlooked-for comfort.
+
+They lay right in the line of fire from the cannon of the Russian
+left; but to that vast mass of human creatures, a patch upon the
+snow, sometimes dark, sometimes breaking into flame, the indefatigable
+grapeshot was but one discomfort the more. For them it was only a storm,
+and they paid the less attention to the bolts that fell among them
+because there were none to strike down there save dying men, the
+wounded, or perhaps the dead. Stragglers came up in little bands at
+every moment. These walking corpses instantly separated, and wandered
+begging from fire to fire; and meeting, for the most part, with
+refusals, banded themselves together again, and took by force what
+they could not otherwise obtain. They were deaf to the voices of their
+officers prophesying death on the morrow, and spent the energy required
+to cross the swamp in building shelters for the night and preparing a
+meal that often proved fatal. The coming death no longer seemed an evil,
+for it gave them an hour of slumber before it came. Hunger and thirst
+and cold--these were evils, but not death.
+
+At last wood and fuel and canvas and shelters failed, and hideous brawls
+began between destitute late comers and the rich already in possession
+of a lodging. The weaker were driven away, until a few last fugitives
+before the Russian advance were obliged to make their bed in the snow,
+and lay down to rise no more.
+
+Little by little the mass of half-dead humanity became so dense, so
+deaf, so torpid,--or perhaps it should be said so happy--that Marshal
+Victor, their heroic defender against twenty thousand Russians under
+Wittgenstein, was actually compelled to cut his way by force through
+this forest of men, so as to cross the Beresina with the five thousand
+heroes whom he was leading to the Emperor. The miserable creatures
+preferred to be trampled and crushed to death rather than stir from
+their places, and died without a sound, smiling at the dead ashes of
+their fires, forgetful of France.
+
+Not before ten o’clock that night did the Duc de Belluno reach the other
+side of the river. Before committing his men to the pontoon bridges that
+led to Zembin, he left the fate of the rearguard at Studzianka in Eble’s
+hands, and to Eble the survivors of the calamities of the Beresina owed
+their lives.
+
+About midnight, the great General, followed by a courageous officer,
+came out of his little hut by the bridge, and gazed at the spectacle
+of this camp between the bank of the Beresina and the Borizof road to
+Studzianka. The thunder of the Russian cannonade had ceased. Here
+and there faces that had nothing human about them were lighted up by
+countless fires that seemed to grow pale in the glare of the snowfields,
+and to give no light. Nearly thirty thousand wretches, belonging to
+every nation that Napoleon had hurled upon Russia, lay there hazarding
+their lives with the indifference of brute beasts.
+
+“We have all these to save,” the General said to his subordinate.
+“To-morrow morning the Russians will be in Studzianka. The moment they
+come up we shall have to set fire to the bridge; so pluck up heart,
+my boy! Make your way out and up yonder through them, and tell General
+Fournier that he has barely time to evacuate his post and cut his way
+through to the bridge. As soon as you have seen him set out, follow
+him down, take some able-bodied men, and set fire to the tents, wagons,
+caissons, carriages, anything and everything, without pity, and drive
+these fellows on to the bridge. Compel everything that walks on two legs
+to take refuge on the other bank. We must set fire to the camp; it
+is our last resource. If Berthier had let me burn those d----d wagons
+sooner, no lives need have been lost in the river except my poor
+pontooners, my fifty heroes, who saved the Army, and will be forgotten.”
+
+The General passed his hand over his forehead and said no more. He felt
+that Poland would be his tomb, and foresaw that afterwards no voice
+would be raised to speak for the noble fellows who had plunged into the
+stream--into the waters of the Beresina!--to drive in the piles for the
+bridges. And, indeed, only one of them is living now, or, to be more
+accurate, starving, utterly forgotten in a country village![*] The
+brave officer had scarcely gone a hundred paces towards Studzianka, when
+General Eble roused some of his patient pontooners, and began his work
+of mercy by setting fire to the camp on the side nearest the bridge, so
+compelling the sleepers to rise and cross the Beresina. Meanwhile the
+young aide-de-camp, not without difficulty, reached the one wooden house
+yet left standing in Studzianka.
+
+     [*] This story can be found in _The Country Parson_.--eBook
+     preparers.
+
+“So the box is pretty full, is it, messmate?” he said to a man whom he
+found outside.
+
+“You will be a knowing fellow if you manage to get inside,” the officer
+returned, without turning round or stopping his occupation of hacking at
+the woodwork of the house with his sabre.
+
+“Philip, is that you?” cried the aide-de-camp, recognizing the voice of
+one of his friends.
+
+“Yes. Aha! is it you, old fellow?” returned M. de Sucy, looking round at
+the aide-de-camp, who like himself was not more than twenty-three years
+old. “I fancied you were on the other side of this confounded river.
+Do you come to bring us sweetmeats for dessert? You will get a warm
+welcome,” he added, as he tore away a strip of bark from the wood and
+gave it to his horse by way of fodder.
+
+“I am looking for your commandant. General Eble has sent me to tell him
+to file off to Zembin. You have only just time to cut your way through
+that mass of dead men; as soon as you get through, I am going to set
+fire to the place to make them move--”
+
+“You almost make me feel warm! Your news has put me in a fever; I have
+two friends to bring through. Ah! but for those marmots, I should have
+been dead before now, old fellow. On their account I am taking care
+of my horse instead of eating him. But have you a crust about you, for
+pity’s sake? It is thirty hours since I have stowed any victuals. I have
+been fighting like a madman to keep up a little warmth in my body and
+what courage I have left.”
+
+“Poor Philip! I have nothing--not a scrap!--But is your General in
+there?”
+
+“Don’t attempt to go in. The barn is full of our wounded. Go up a bit
+higher, and you will see a sort of pig-sty to the right--that is where
+the General is. Good-bye, my dear fellow. If ever we meet again in a
+quadrille in a ballroom in Paris--”
+
+He did not finish the sentence, for the treachery of the northeast wind
+that whistled about them froze Major Philip’s lips, and the aide-de-camp
+kept moving for fear of being frost-bitten. Silence soon prevailed,
+scarcely broken by the groans of the wounded in the barn, or the stifled
+sounds made by M. de Sucy’s horse crunching on the frozen bark with
+famished eagerness. Philip thrust his sabre into the sheath, caught at
+the bridle of the precious animal that he had managed to keep for so
+long, and drew her away from the miserable fodder that she was bolting
+with apparent relish.
+
+“Come along, Bichette! come along! It lies with you now, my beauty, to
+save Stephanie’s life. There, wait a little longer, and they will let us
+lie down and die, no doubt;” and Philip, wrapped in a pelisse, to which
+doubtless he owed his life and energies, began to run, stamping his feet
+on the frozen snow to keep them warm. He was scarce five hundred paces
+away before he saw a great fire blazing on the spot where he had left
+his carriage that morning with an old soldier to guard it. A dreadful
+misgiving seized upon him. Many a man under the influence of a powerful
+feeling during the Retreat summoned up energy for his friend’s sake when
+he would not have exerted himself to save his own life; so it was with
+Philip. He soon neared a hollow, where he had left a carriage sheltered
+from the cannonade, a carriage that held a young woman, his playmate in
+childhood, dearer to him than any one else on earth.
+
+Some thirty stragglers were sitting round a tremendous blaze, which
+they kept up with logs of wood, planks wrenched from the floors of the
+caissons, and wheels, and panels from carriage bodies. These had been,
+doubtless, among the last to join the sea of fires, huts, and human
+faces that filled the great furrow in the land between Studzianka and
+the fatal river, a restless living sea of almost imperceptibly moving
+figures, that sent up a smothered hum of sound blended with frightful
+shrieks. It seemed that hunger and despair had driven these forlorn
+creatures to take forcible possession of the carriage, for the old
+General and his young wife, whom they had found warmly wrapped in
+pelisses and traveling cloaks, were now crouching on the earth beside
+the fire, and one of the carriage doors was broken.
+
+As soon as the group of stragglers round the fire heard the footfall
+of the Major’s horse, a frenzied yell of hunger went up from them. “A
+horse!” they cried. “A horse!”
+
+All the voices went up as one voice.
+
+“Back! back! Look out!” shouted two or three of them, leveling their
+muskets at the animal.
+
+“I will pitch you neck and crop into your fire, you blackguards!” cried
+Philip, springing in front of the mare. “There are dead horses lying up
+yonder; go and look for them!”
+
+“What a rum customer the officer is!--Once, twice, will you get out of
+the way?” returned a giant grenadier. “You won’t? All right then, just
+as you please.”
+
+A woman’s shriek rang out above the report. Luckily, none of the bullets
+hit Philip; but poor Bichette lay in the agony of death. Three of the
+men came up and put an end to her with thrusts of the bayonet.
+
+“Cannibals! leave me the rug and my pistols,” cried Philip in
+desperation.
+
+“Oh! the pistols if you like; but as for the rug, there is a fellow
+yonder who has had nothing to wet his whistle these two days, and is
+shivering in his coat of cobwebs, and that’s our General.”
+
+Philips looked up and saw a man with worn-out shoes and a dozen rents in
+his trousers; the only covering for his head was a ragged foraging
+cap, white with rime. He said no more after that, but snatched up his
+pistols.
+
+Five of the men dragged the mare to the fire, and began to cut up the
+carcass as dexterously as any journeymen butchers in Paris. The scraps
+of meat were distributed and flung upon the coals, and the whole process
+was magically swift. Philip went over to the woman who had given the cry
+of terror when she recognized his danger, and sat down by her side. She
+sat motionless upon a cushion taken from the carriage, warming herself
+at the blaze; she said no word, and gazed at him without a smile. He
+saw beside her the soldier whom he had left mounting guard over the
+carriage; the poor fellow had been wounded; he had been overpowered by
+numbers, and forced to surrender to the stragglers who had set upon him,
+and, like a dog who defends his master’s dinner till the last moment,
+he had taken his share of the spoil, and had made a sort of cloak for
+himself out of a sheet. At that particular moment he was busy toasting
+a piece of horseflesh, and in his face the major saw a gleeful
+anticipation of the coming feast.
+
+The Comte de Vandieres, who seemed to have grown quite childish in the
+last few days, sat on a cushion close to his wife, and stared into
+the fire. He was only just beginning to shake off his torpor under
+the influence of the warmth. He had been no more affected by Philip’s
+arrival and danger than by the fight and subsequent pillaging of his
+traveling carriage.
+
+At first Sucy caught the young Countess’ hand in his, trying to express
+his affection for her, and the pain that it gave him to see her reduced
+like this to the last extremity of misery; but he said nothing as he
+sat by her side on the thawing heap of snow, he gave himself up to the
+pleasure of the sensation of warmth, forgetful of danger, forgetful of
+all things else in the world. In spite of himself his face expanded with
+an almost fatuous expression of satisfaction, and he waited impatiently
+till the scrap of horseflesh that had fallen to his soldier’s share
+should be cooked. The smell of charred flesh stimulated his hunger.
+Hunger clamored within and silenced his heart, his courage, and his
+love. He coolly looked round on the results of the spoliation of his
+carriage. Not a man seated round the fire but had shared the booty, the
+rugs, cushions, pelisses, dresses,--articles of clothing that belonged
+to the Count and Countess or to himself. Philip turned to see if
+anything worth taking was left in the berline. He saw by the light of
+the flames, gold, and diamonds, and silver lying scattered about; no one
+had cared to appropriate the least particle. There was something hideous
+in the silence among those human creatures round the fire; none of them
+spoke, none of them stirred, save to do such things as each considered
+necessary for his own comfort.
+
+It was a grotesque misery. The men’s faces were wrapped and disfigured
+with the cold, and plastered over with a layer of mud; you could see
+the thickness of the mask by the channel traced down their cheeks by
+the tears that ran from their eyes, and their long slovenly-kept beards
+added to the hideousness of their appearance. Some were wrapped round in
+women’s shawls, others in horse-cloths, dirty blankets, rags stiffened
+with melting hoar-frost; here and there a man wore a boot on one foot
+and a shoe on the other, in fact, there was not one of them but wore
+some ludicrously odd costume. But the men themselves with such matter
+for jest about them were gloomy and taciturn.
+
+The silence was unbroken save by the crackling of the wood, the roaring
+of the flames, the far-off hum of the camp, and the sound of sabres
+hacking at the carcass of the mare. Some of the hungriest of the men
+were still cutting tidbits for themselves. A few miserable creatures,
+more weary than the others, slept outright; and if they happened to roll
+into the fire, no one pulled them back. With cut-and-dried logic their
+fellows argued that if they were not dead, a scorching ought to be
+sufficient warning to quit and seek out more comfortable quarters. If
+the poor wretch woke to find himself on fire, he was burned to death,
+and nobody pitied him. Here and there the men exchanged glances, as if
+to excuse their indifference by the carelessness of the rest; the thing
+happened twice under the Countess’ eyes, and she uttered no sound. When
+all the scraps of horseflesh had been broiled upon the coals, they were
+devoured with a ravenous greediness that would have been disgusting in
+wild beasts.
+
+“And now we have seen thirty infantrymen on one horse for the first
+time in our lives!” cried the grenadier who had shot the mare, the one
+solitary joke that sustained the Frenchmen’s reputation for wit.
+
+Before long the poor fellows huddled themselves up in their clothes,
+and lay down on planks of timber, on anything but the bare snow, and
+slept--heedless of the morrow. Major de Sucy having warmed himself and
+satisfied his hunger, fought in vain against the drowsiness that weighed
+upon his eyes. During this brief struggle he gazed at the sleeping girl
+who had turned her face to the fire, so that he could see her closed
+eyelids and part of her forehead. She was wrapped round in a furred
+pelisse and a coarse horseman’s cloak, her head lay on a blood-stained
+cushion; a tall astrakhan cap tied over her head by a handkerchief
+knotted under the chin protected her face as much as possible from the
+cold, and she had tucked up her feet in the cloak. As she lay curled up
+in this fashion, she bore no likeness to any creature.
+
+Was this the lowest of camp-followers? Was this the charming woman, the
+pride of her lover’s heart, the queen of many a Parisian ballroom? Alas!
+even for the eyes of this most devoted friend, there was no discernible
+trace of womanhood in that bundle of rags and linen, and the cold was
+mightier than the love in a woman’s heart.
+
+Then for the major the husband and wife came to be like two distant dots
+seen through the thick veil that the most irresistible kind of slumber
+spread over his eyes. It all seemed to be part of a dream--the leaping
+flames, the recumbent figures, the awful cold that lay in wait for them
+three paces away from the warmth of the fire that glowed for a little
+while. One thought that could not be stifled haunted Philip--“If I go to
+sleep, we shall all die; I will not sleep,” he said to himself.
+
+He slept. After an hour’s slumber M. de Sucy was awakened by a hideous
+uproar and the sound of an explosion. The remembrance of his duty, of
+the danger of his beloved, rushed upon his mind with a sudden shock. He
+uttered a cry like the growl of a wild beast. He and his servant stood
+upright above the rest. They saw a sea of fire in the darkness, and
+against it moving masses of human figures. Flames were devouring the
+huts and tents. Despairing shrieks and yelling cries reached their
+ears; they saw thousands upon thousands of wild and desperate faces;
+and through this inferno a column of soldiers was cutting its way to the
+bridge, between the two hedges of dead bodies.
+
+“Our rearguard is in full retreat,” cried the major. “There is no hope
+left!”
+
+“I have spared your traveling carriage, Philip,” said a friendly voice.
+
+Sucy turned and saw the young aide-de-camp by the light of the flames.
+
+“Oh, it is all over with us,” he answered. “They have eaten my horse.
+And how am I to make this sleepy general and his wife stir a step?”
+
+“Take a brand, Philip, and threaten them.”
+
+“Threaten the Countess?...”
+
+“Good-bye,” cried the aide-de-camp; “I have only just time to get across
+that unlucky river, and go I must, there is my mother in France!... What
+a night! This herd of wretches would rather lie here in the snow, and
+most of them would sooner be burned alive than get up.... It is four
+o’clock, Philip! In two hours the Russians will begin to move, and you
+will see the Beresina covered with corpses a second time, I can tell
+you. You haven’t a horse, and you cannot carry the Countess, so come
+along with me,” he went on, taking his friend by the arm.
+
+“My dear fellow, how am I to leave Stephanie?”
+
+Major de Sucy grasped the Countess, set her on her feet, and shook her
+roughly; he was in despair. He compelled her to wake, and she stared at
+him with dull fixed eyes.
+
+“Stephanie, we must go, or we shall die here!”
+
+For all answer, the Countess tried to sink down again and sleep on the
+earth. The aide-de-camp snatched a brand from the fire and shook it in
+her face.
+
+“We must save her in spite of herself,” cried Philip, and he carried her
+in his arms to the carriage. He came back to entreat his friend to help
+him, and the two young men took the old general and put him beside his
+wife, without knowing whether he were alive or dead. The major rolled
+the men over as they crouched on the earth, took away the plundered
+clothing, and heaped it upon the husband and wife, then he flung some of
+the broiled fragments of horseflesh into a corner of the carriage.
+
+“Now, what do you mean to do?” asked the aide-de-camp.
+
+“Drag them along!” answered Sucy.
+
+“You are mad!”
+
+“You are right!” exclaimed Philip, folding his arms on his breast.
+
+Suddenly a desperate plan occurred to him.
+
+“Look you here!” he said, grasping his sentinel by the unwounded arm.
+“I leave her in your care for one hour. Bear in mind that you must die
+sooner than let any one, no matter whom, come near the carriage!”
+
+The major seized a handful of the lady’s diamonds, drew his sabre, and
+violently battered those who seemed to him to be the bravest among the
+sleepers. By this means he succeeded in rousing the gigantic grenadier
+and a couple of men whose rank and regiment were undiscoverable.
+
+“It is all up with us!” he cried.
+
+“Of course it is,” returned the grenadier; “but that is all one to me.”
+
+“Very well then, if die you must, isn’t it better to sell your life for
+a pretty woman, and stand a chance of going back to France again?”
+
+“I would rather go to sleep,” said one of the men, dropping down
+into the snow; “and if you worry me again, major, I shall stick my
+toasting-iron into your body.”
+
+“What is it all about, sir?” asked the grenadier. “The man’s drunk. He
+is a Parisian, and likes to lie in the lap of luxury.”
+
+“You shall have these, good fellow,” said the major, holding out a
+riviere of diamonds, “if you will follow me and fight like a madman. The
+Russians are not ten minutes away; they have horses; we will march up to
+the nearest battery and carry off two stout ones.”
+
+“How about the sentinels, major?”
+
+“One of us three--” he began; then he turned from the soldier and looked
+at the aide-de-camp.--“You are coming, aren’t you, Hippolyte?”
+
+Hippolyte nodded assent.
+
+“One of us,” the major went on, “will look after the sentry. Besides,
+perhaps those blessed Russians are also fast asleep.”
+
+“All right, major; you are a good sort! But will you take me in your
+carriage?” asked the grenadier.
+
+“Yes, if you don’t leave your bones up yonder.--If I come to grief,
+promise me, you two, that you will do everything in your power to save
+the Countess.”
+
+“All right,” said the grenadier.
+
+They set out for the Russian lines, taking the direction of the
+batteries that had so cruelly raked the mass of miserable creatures
+huddled together by the river bank. A few minutes later the hoofs of two
+galloping horses rang on the frozen snow, and the awakened battery fired
+a volley that passed over the heads of the sleepers; the hoof-beats
+rattled so fast on the iron ground that they sounded like the hammering
+in a smithy. The generous aide-de-camp had fallen; the stalwart
+grenadier had come off safe and sound; and Philip himself received
+a bayonet thrust in the shoulder while defending his friend.
+Notwithstanding his wound, he clung to his horse’s mane, and gripped him
+with his knees so tightly that the animal was held as in a vise.
+
+“God be praised!” cried the major, when he saw his soldier still on the
+spot, and the carriage standing where he had left it.
+
+“If you do the right thing by me, sir, you will get me the cross for
+this. We have treated them to a sword dance to a pretty tune from the
+rifle, eh?”
+
+“We have done nothing yet! Let us put the horses in. Take hold of these
+cords.”
+
+“They are not long enough.”
+
+“All right, grenadier, just go and overhaul those fellows sleeping
+there; take their shawls, sheets, anything--”
+
+“I say! the rascal is dead,” cried the grenadier, as he plundered the
+first man who came to hand. “Why, they are all dead! how queer!”
+
+“All of them?”
+
+“Yes, every one. It looks as though the horseflesh _a la neige_ was
+indigestible.”
+
+Philip shuddered at the words. The night had grown twice as cold as
+before.
+
+“Great heaven! to lose her when I have saved her life a score of times
+already.”
+
+He shook the Countess, “Stephanie! Stephanie!” he cried.
+
+She opened her eyes.
+
+“We are saved, madame!”
+
+“Saved!” she echoed, and fell back again.
+
+The horses were harnessed after a fashion at last. The major held his
+sabre in his unwounded hand, took the reins in the other, saw to his
+pistols, and sprang on one of the horses, while the grenadier mounted
+the other. The old sentinel had been pushed into the carriage, and lay
+across the knees of the general and the Countess; his feet were frozen.
+Urged on by blows from the flat of the sabre, the horses dragged the
+carriage at a mad gallop down to the plain, where endless difficulties
+awaited them. Before long it became almost impossible to advance without
+crushing sleeping men, women, and even children at every step, all of
+whom declined to stir when the grenadier awakened them. In vain M. de
+Sucy looked for the track that the rearguard had cut through this dense
+crowd of human beings; there was no more sign of their passage than the
+wake of a ship in the sea. The horses could only move at a foot-pace,
+and were stopped most frequently by soldiers, who threatened to kill
+them.
+
+“Do you mean to get there?” asked the grenadier.
+
+“Yes, if it costs every drop of blood in my body! if it costs the whole
+world!” the major answered.
+
+“Forward, then!... You can’t have the omelette without breaking eggs.”
+ And the grenadier of the Garde urged on the horses over the prostrate
+bodies, and upset the bivouacs; the blood-stained wheels ploughing that
+field of faces left a double furrow of dead. But in justice it should be
+said that he never ceased to thunder out his warning cry, “Carrion! look
+out!”
+
+“Poor wretches!” exclaimed the major.
+
+“Bah! That way, or the cold, or the cannon!” said the grenadier, goading
+on the horses with the point of his sword.
+
+Then came the catastrophe, which must have happened sooner but for
+miraculous good fortune; the carriage was overturned, and all further
+progress was stopped at once.
+
+“I expected as much!” exclaimed the imperturbable grenadier. “Oho! he is
+dead!” he added, looking at his comrade.
+
+“Poor Laurent!” said the major.
+
+“Laurent! Wasn’t he in the Fifth Chasseurs?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“My own cousin.--Pshaw! this beastly life is not so pleasant that one
+need be sorry for him as things go.”
+
+But all this time the carriage lay overturned, and the horses were only
+released after great and irreparable loss of time. The shock had been
+so violent that the Countess had been awakened by it, and the subsequent
+commotion aroused her from her stupor. She shook off the rugs and rose.
+
+“Where are we, Philip?” she asked in musical tones, as she looked about
+her.
+
+“About five hundred paces from the bridge. We are just about to cross
+the Beresina. When we are on the other side, Stephanie, I will not tease
+you any more; I will let you go to sleep; we shall be in safety, we can
+go on to Wilna in peace. God grant that you may never know what your
+life has cost!”
+
+“You are wounded!”
+
+“A mere trifle.”
+
+The hour of doom had come. The Russian cannon announced the day. The
+Russians were in possession of Studzianka, and thence were raking the
+plain with grapeshot; and by the first dim light of the dawn the major
+saw two columns moving and forming above the heights. Then a cry of
+horror went up from the crowd, and in a moment every one sprang to his
+feet. Each instinctively felt his danger, and all made a rush for the
+bridge, surging towards it like a wave.
+
+Then the Russians came down upon them, swift as a conflagration. Men,
+women, children, and horses all crowded towards the river. Luckily for
+the major and the Countess, they were still at some distance from the
+bank. General Eble had just set fire to the bridge on the other side;
+but in spite of all the warnings given to those who rushed towards the
+chance of salvation, not one among them could or would draw back. The
+overladen bridge gave way, and not only so, the impetus of the frantic
+living wave towards that fatal bank was such that a dense crowd of human
+beings was thrust into the water as if by an avalanche. The sound of a
+single human cry could not be distinguished; there was a dull crash as
+if an enormous stone had fallen into the water--and the Beresina was
+covered with corpses.
+
+The violent recoil of those in front, striving to escape this death,
+brought them into hideous collision with those behind then, who were
+pressing towards the bank, and many were suffocated and crushed. The
+Comte and Comtesse de Vandieres owed their lives to the carriage. The
+horses that had trampled and crushed so many dying men were crushed and
+trampled to death in their turn by the human maelstrom which eddied from
+the bank. Sheer physical strength saved the major and the grenadier.
+They killed others in self-defence. That wild sea of human faces and
+living bodies, surging to and fro as by one impulse, left the bank
+of the Beresina clear for a few moments. The multitude had hurled
+themselves back on the plain. Some few men sprang down from the banks
+of the river, not so much with any hope of reaching the opposite shore,
+which for them meant France, as from dread of the wastes of Siberia.
+For some bold spirits despair became a panoply. An officer leaped from
+hummock to hummock of ice, and reached the other shore; one of the
+soldiers scrambled over miraculously on the piles of dead bodies and
+drift ice. But the immense multitude left behind saw at last that the
+Russians would not slaughter twenty thousand unarmed men, too numb
+with the cold to attempt to resist them, and each awaited his fate
+with dreadful apathy. By this time the major and his grenadier, the
+old general and his wife, were left to themselves not very far from
+the place where the bridge had been. All four stood dry-eyed and silent
+among the heaps of dead. A few able-bodied men and one or two officers,
+who had recovered all their energy at this crisis, gathered about them.
+The group was sufficiently large; there were about fifty men all told.
+A couple of hundred paces from them stood the wreck of the artillery
+bridge, which had broken down the day before; the major saw this, and
+“Let us make a raft!” he cried.
+
+The words were scarcely out of his mouth before the whole group hurried
+to the ruins of the bridge. A crowd of men began to pick up iron clamps
+and to hunt for planks and ropes--for all the materials for a raft, in
+short. A score of armed men and officers, under command of the major,
+stood on guard to protect the workers from any desperate attempt on the
+part of the multitude if they should guess their design. The longing for
+freedom, which inspires prisoners to accomplish impossibilities, cannot
+be compared with the hope which lent energy at that moment to these
+forlorn Frenchmen.
+
+“The Russians are upon us! Here are the Russians!” the guard shouted to
+the workers.
+
+The timbers creaked, the raft grew larger, stronger, and more
+substantial. Generals, colonels, and common soldiers all alike bent
+beneath the weight of wagon-wheels, chains, coils of rope, and planks of
+timber; it was a modern realization of the building of Noah’s ark. The
+young Countess, sitting by her husband’s side, looked on, regretful that
+she could do nothing to aide the workers, though she helped to knot the
+lengths of rope together.
+
+At last the raft was finished. Forty men launched it out into the river,
+while ten of the soldiers held the ropes that must keep it moored to
+the shore. The moment that they saw their handiwork floating on
+the Beresina, they sprang down onto it from the bank with callous
+selfishness. The major, dreading the frenzy of the first rush, held back
+Stephanie and the general; but a shudder ran through him when he saw the
+landing place black with people, and men crowding down like playgoers
+into the pit of a theatre.
+
+“It was I who thought of the raft, you savages!” he cried. “I have saved
+your lives, and you will not make room for me!”
+
+A confused murmur was the only answer. The men at the edge took up stout
+poles, trust them against the bank with all their might, so as to shove
+the raft out and gain an impetus at its starting upon a journey across a
+sea of floating ice and dead bodies towards the other shore.
+
+“_Tonnerre de Dieu_! I will knock some of you off into the water if
+you don’t make room for the major and his two companions,” shouted the
+grenadier. He raised his sabre threateningly, delayed the departure, and
+made the men stand closer together, in spite of threatening yells.
+
+“I shall fall in!... I shall go overboard!...” his fellows shouted.
+
+“Let us start! Put off!”
+
+The major gazed with tearless eyes at the woman he loved; an impulse of
+sublime resignation raised her eyes to heaven.
+
+“To die with you!” she said.
+
+In the situation of the folk upon the raft there was a certain comic
+element. They might utter hideous yells, but not one of them dared to
+oppose the grenadier, for they were packed together so tightly that
+if one man were knocked down, the whole raft might capsize. At this
+delicate crisis, a captain tried to rid himself of one of his neighbors;
+the man saw the hostile intention of his officer, collared him, and
+pitched him overboard. “Aha! The duck has a mind to drink. ... Over with
+you!--There is room for two now!” he shouted. “Quick, major! throw your
+little woman over, and come! Never mind that old dotard! he will drop
+off to-morrow!”
+
+“Be quick!” cried a voice, made up of a hundred voices.
+
+“Come, major! Those fellows are making a fuss, and well they may.”
+
+The Comte de Vandieres flung off his ragged blankets, and stood before
+them in his general’s uniform.
+
+“Let us save the Count,” said Philip.
+
+Stephanie grasped his hand tightly in hers, flung her arms about, and
+clasped him close in an agonized embrace.
+
+“Farewell!” she said.
+
+Then each knew the other’s thoughts. The Comte de Vandieres recovered
+his energies and presence of mind sufficiently to jump on to the raft,
+whither Stephanie followed him after one last look at Philip.
+
+“Major, won’t you take my place? I do not care a straw for life; I have
+neither a wife, nor child, nor mother belonging to me--”
+
+“I give them into your charge,” cried the major, indicating the Count
+and his wife.
+
+“Be easy; I will take as much care of them as of the apple of my eye.”
+
+Philip stood stock-still on the bank. The raft sped so violently towards
+the opposite shore that it ran aground with a violent shock to all on
+board. The Count, standing on the very edge, was shaken into the stream;
+and as he fell, a mass of ice swept by and struck off his head, and sent
+it flying like a ball.
+
+“Hey! major!” shouted the grenadier.
+
+“Farewell!” a woman’s voice called aloud.
+
+An icy shiver ran through Philip de Sucy, and he dropped down where he
+stood, overcome with cold and sorrow and weariness.
+
+
+
+“My poor niece went out of her mind,” the doctor added after a brief
+pause. “Ah! monsieur,” he went on, grasping M. d’Albon’s hand, “what
+a fearful life for a poor little thing, so young, so delicate! An
+unheard-of misfortune separated her from that grenadier of the Garde
+(Fleuriot by name), and for two years she was dragged on after the army,
+the laughing-stock of a rabble of outcasts. She went barefoot, I
+heard, ill-clad, neglected, and starved for months at a time; sometimes
+confined to a hospital, sometimes living like a hunted animal. God alone
+knows all the misery which she endured, and yet she lives. She was shut
+up in a madhouse in a little German town, while her relations, believing
+her to be dead, were dividing her property here in France.
+
+“In 1816 the grenadier Fleuriot recognized her in an inn in Strasbourg.
+She had just managed to escape from captivity. Some peasants told him
+that the Countess had lived for a whole month in a forest, and how that
+they had tracked her and tried to catch her without success.
+
+“I was at that time not many leagues from Strasbourg; and hearing the
+talk about the girl in the wood, I wished to verify the strange facts
+that had given rise to absurd stories. What was my feeling when I beheld
+the Countess? Fleuriot told me all that he knew of the piteous story.
+I took the poor fellow with my niece into Auvergne, and there I had the
+misfortune to lose him. He had some ascendancy over Mme. de Vandieres.
+He alone succeeded in persuading her to wear clothes; and in those days
+her one word of human speech--_Farewell_--she seldom uttered. Fleuriot
+set himself to the task of awakening certain associations; but there
+he failed completely; he drew that one sorrowful word from her a little
+more frequently, that was all. But the old grenadier could amuse her,
+and devoted himself to playing with her, and through him I hoped; but--”
+ here Stephanie’s uncle broke off. After a moment he went on again.
+
+“Here she has found another creature with whom she seems to have
+an understanding--an idiot peasant girl, who once, in spite of her
+plainness and imbecility, fell in love with a mason. The mason thought
+of marrying her because she had a little bit of land, and for a whole
+year poor Genevieve was the happiest of living creatures. She dressed in
+her best, and danced on Sundays with Dallot; she understood love; there
+was room for love in her heart and brain. But Dallot thought better of
+it. He found another girl who had all her senses and rather more land
+than Genevieve, and he forsook Genevieve for her. Then the poor thing
+lost the little intelligence that love had developed in her; she can do
+nothing now but cut grass and look after the cattle. My niece and the
+poor girl are in some sort bound to each other by the invisible chain of
+their common destiny, and by their madness due to the same cause. Just
+come here a moment; look!” and Stephanie’s uncle led the Marquis d’Albon
+to the window.
+
+There, in fact, the magistrate beheld the pretty Countess sitting on the
+ground at Genevieve’s knee, while the peasant girl was wholly absorbed
+in combing out Stephanie’s long, black hair with a huge comb. The
+Countess submitted herself to this, uttering low smothered cries that
+expressed her enjoyment of the sensation of physical comfort. A shudder
+ran through M. d’Albon as he saw her attitude of languid abandonment,
+the animal supineness that revealed an utter lack of intelligence.
+
+“Oh! Philip, Philip!” he cried, “past troubles are as nothing. Is it
+quite hopeless?” he asked.
+
+The doctor raised his eyes to heaven.
+
+“Good-bye, monsieur,” said M. d’Albon, pressing the old man’s hand. “My
+friend is expecting me; you will see him here before long.”
+
+
+
+“Then it is Stephanie herself?” cried Sucy when the Marquis had spoken
+the first few words. “Ah! until now I did not feel sure!” he added.
+Tears filled the dark eyes that were wont to wear a stern expression.
+
+“Yes; she is the Comtesse de Vandieres,” his friend replied.
+
+The colonel started up, and hurriedly began to dress.
+
+“Why, Philip!” cried the horrified magistrate. “Are you going mad?”
+
+“I am quite well now,” said the colonel simply. “This news has soothed
+all my bitterest grief; what pain could hurt me while I think of
+Stephanie? I am going over to the Minorite convent, to see her and speak
+to her, to restore her to health again. She is free; ah, surely, surely,
+happiness will smile on us, or there is no Providence above. How can
+you think she could hear my voice, poor Stephanie, and not recover her
+reason?”
+
+“She has seen you once already, and she did not recognize you,” the
+magistrate answered gently, trying to suggest some wholesome fears to
+this friend, whose hopes were visibly too high.
+
+The colonel shuddered, but he began to smile again, with a slight
+involuntary gesture of incredulity. Nobody ventured to oppose his plans,
+and a few hours later he had taken up his abode in the old priory, to be
+near the doctor and the Comtesse de Vandieres.
+
+“Where is she?” he cried at once.
+
+“Hush!” answered M. Fanjat, Stephanie’s uncle. “She is sleeping. Stay;
+here she is.”
+
+Philip saw the poor distraught sleeper crouching on a stone bench in
+the sun. Her thick hair, straggling over her face, screened it from the
+glare and heat; her arms dropped languidly to the earth; she lay at ease
+as gracefully as a fawn, her feet tucked up beneath her; her bosom
+rose and fell with her even breathing; there was the same transparent
+whiteness as of porcelain in her skin and complexion that we so often
+admire in children’s faces. Genevieve sat there motionless, holding a
+spray that Stephanie doubtless had brought down from the top of one of
+the tallest poplars; the idiot girl was waving the green branch above
+her, driving away the flies from her sleeping companion, and gently
+fanning her.
+
+She stared at M. Fanjat and the colonel as they came up; then, like
+a dumb animal that recognizes its master, she slowly turned her face
+towards the countess, and watched over her as before, showing not
+the slightest sign of intelligence or of astonishment. The air was
+scorching. The glittering particles of the stone bench shone like sparks
+of fire; the meadow sent up the quivering vapors that hover above
+the grass and gleam like golden dust when they catch the light, but
+Genevieve did not seem to feel the raging heat.
+
+The colonel wrung M. Fanjat’s hands; the tears that gathered in
+the soldier’s eyes stole down his cheeks, and fell on the grass at
+Stephanie’s feet.
+
+“Sir,” said her uncle, “for these two years my heart has been broken
+daily. Before very long you will be as I am; if you do not weep, you
+will not feel your anguish the less.”
+
+“You have taken care of her!” said the colonel, and jealousy no less
+than gratitude could be read in his eyes.
+
+The two men understood one another. They grasped each other by the hand
+again, and stood motionless, gazing in admiration at the serenity that
+slumber had brought into the lovely face before them. Stephanie heaved
+a sigh from time to time, and this sigh, that had all the appearance of
+sensibility, made the unhappy colonel tremble with gladness.
+
+“Alas!” M. Fanjat said gently, “do not deceive yourself, monsieur; as
+you see her now, she is in full possession of such reason as she has.”
+
+Those who have sat for whole hours absorbed in the delight of watching
+over the slumber of some tenderly-beloved one, whose waking eyes will
+smile for them, will doubtless understand the bliss and anguish that
+shook the colonel. For him this slumber was an illusion, the waking must
+be a kind of death, the most dreadful of all deaths.
+
+Suddenly a kid frisked in two or three bounds towards the bench and
+snuffed at Stephanie. The sound awakened her; she sprang lightly to her
+feet without scaring away the capricious creature; but as soon as she
+saw Philip she fled, followed by her four-footed playmate, to a thicket
+of elder-trees; then she uttered a little cry like the note of a
+startled wild bird, the same sound that the colonel had heard once
+before near the grating, when the Countess appeared to M. d’Albon for
+the first time. At length she climbed into a laburnum-tree, ensconced
+herself in the feathery greenery, and peered out at the _strange man_
+with as much interest as the most inquisitive nightingale in the forest.
+
+“Farewell, farewell, farewell,” she said, but the soul sent no trace
+of expression of feeling through the words, spoken with the careless
+intonation of a bird’s notes.
+
+“She does not know me!” the colonel exclaimed in despair. “Stephanie!
+Here is Philip, your Philip!... Philip!” and the poor soldier went
+towards the laburnum-tree; but when he stood three paces away, the
+Countess eyed him almost defiantly, though there was timidity in her
+eyes; then at a bound she sprang from the laburnum to an acacia, and
+thence to a spruce-fir, swinging from bough to bough with marvelous
+dexterity.
+
+“Do not follow her,” said M. Fanjat, addressing the colonel. “You would
+arouse a feeling of aversion in her which might become insurmountable; I
+will help you to make her acquaintance and to tame her. Sit down on the
+bench. If you pay no heed whatever to her, poor child, it will not be
+long before you will see her come nearer by degrees to look at you.”
+
+“That _she_ should not know me; that she should fly from me!” the
+colonel repeated, sitting down on a rustic bench and leaning his back
+against a tree that overshadowed it.
+
+He bowed his head. The doctor remained silent. Before very long the
+Countess stole softly down from her high refuge in the spruce-fir,
+flitting like a will-o’-the-wisp; for as the wind stirred the boughs,
+she lent herself at times to the swaying movements of the trees. At
+each branch she stopped and peered at the stranger; but as she saw him
+sitting motionless, she at length jumped down to the grass, stood a
+while, and came slowly across the meadow. When she took up her position
+by a tree about ten paces from the bench, M. Fanjat spoke to the colonel
+in a low voice.
+
+“Feel in my pocket for some lumps of sugar,” he said, “and let her see
+them, she will come; I willingly give up to you the pleasure of giving
+her sweetmeats. She is passionately fond of sugar, and by that means you
+will accustom her to come to you and to know you.”
+
+“She never cared for sweet things when she was a woman,” Philip answered
+sadly.
+
+When he held out the lump of sugar between his thumb and finger, and
+shook it, Stephanie uttered the wild note again, and sprang quickly
+towards him; then she stopped short, there was a conflict between
+longing for the sweet morsel and instinctive fear of him; she looked at
+the sugar, turned her head away, and looked again like an unfortunate
+dog forbidden to touch some scrap of food, while his master slowly
+recites the greater part of the alphabet until he reaches the letter
+that gives permission. At length the animal appetite conquered fear;
+Stephanie rushed to Philip, held out a dainty brown hand to pounce upon
+the coveted morsel, touched her lover’s fingers, snatched the piece of
+sugar, and vanished with it into a thicket. This painful scene was
+too much for the colonel; he burst into tears, and took refuge in the
+drawing-room.
+
+“Then has love less courage than affection?” M. Fanjat asked him. “I
+have hope, Monsieur le Baron. My poor niece was once in a far more
+pitiable state than at present.”
+
+“Is it possible?” cried Philip.
+
+“She would not wear clothes,” answered the doctor.
+
+The colonel shuddered, and his face grew pale. To the doctor’s mind this
+pallor was an unhealthy symptom; he went over to him and felt his pulse.
+M. de Sucy was in a high fever; by dint of persuasion, he succeeded in
+putting the patient in bed, and gave him a few drops of laudanum to gain
+repose and sleep.
+
+The Baron de Sucy spent nearly a week, in a constant struggle with a
+deadly anguish, and before long he had no tears left to shed. He was
+often well-nigh heartbroken; he could not grow accustomed to the sight
+of the Countess’ madness; but he made terms for himself, as it were, in
+this cruel position, and sought alleviations in his pain. His heroism
+was boundless. He found courage to overcome Stephanie’s wild shyness
+by choosing sweetmeats for her, and devoted all his thoughts to this,
+bringing these dainties, and following up the little victories that
+he set himself to gain over Stephanie’s instincts (the last gleam
+of intelligence in her), until he succeeded to some extent--she grew
+_tamer_ than ever before. Every morning the colonel went into the park;
+and if, after a long search for the Countess, he could not discover the
+tree in which she was rocking herself gently, nor the nook where she
+lay crouching at play with some bird, nor the roof where she had perched
+herself, he would whistle the well-known air _Partant pour la Syrie_,
+which recalled old memories of their love, and Stephanie would run
+towards him lightly as a fawn. She saw the colonel so often that she was
+no longer afraid of him; before very long she would sit on his knee with
+her thin, lithe arms about him. And while thus they sat as lovers love
+to do, Philip doled out sweetmeats one by one to the eager Countess.
+When they were all finished, the fancy often took Stephanie to search
+through her lover’s pockets with a monkey’s quick instinctive dexterity,
+till she had assured herself that there was nothing left, and then she
+gazed at Philip with vacant eyes; there was no thought, no gratitude in
+their clear depths. Then she would play with him. She tried to take off
+his boots to see his foot; she tore his gloves to shreds, and put on his
+hat; and she would let him pass his hands through her hair, and take her
+in his arms, and submit passively to his passionate kisses, and at last,
+if he shed tears, she would gaze silently at him.
+
+She quite understood the signal when he whistled _Partant pour la
+Syrie_, but he could never succeed in inducing her to pronounce her
+own name--_Stephanie_. Philip persevered in his heart-rending task,
+sustained by a hope that never left him. If on some bright autumn
+morning he saw her sitting quietly on a bench under a poplar tree, grown
+brown now as the season wore, the unhappy lover would lie at her feet
+and gaze into her eyes as long as she would let him gaze, hoping that
+some spark of intelligence might gleam from them. At times he lent
+himself to an illusion; he would imagine that he saw the hard,
+changeless light in them falter, that there was a new life and softness
+in them, and he would cry, “Stephanie! oh, Stephanie! you hear me, you
+see me, do you not?”
+
+But for her the sound of his voice was like any other sound, the
+stirring of the wind in the trees, or the lowing of the cow on which she
+scrambled; and the colonel wrung his hands in a despair that lost none
+of its bitterness; nay, time and these vain efforts only added to his
+anguish.
+
+One evening, under the quiet sky, in the midst of the silence and peace
+of the forest hermitage, M. Fanjat saw from a distance that the Baron
+was busy loading a pistol, and knew that the lover had given up all
+hope. The blood surged to the old doctor’s heart; and if he overcame the
+dizzy sensation that seized on him, it was because he would rather
+see his niece live with a disordered brain than lose her for ever. He
+hurried to the place.
+
+“What are you doing?” he cried.
+
+“That is for me,” the colonel answered, pointing to a loaded pistol on
+the bench, “and this is for her!” he added, as he rammed down the wad
+into the pistol that he held in his hands.
+
+The Countess lay stretched out on the ground, playing with the balls.
+
+“Then you do not know that last night, as she slept, she murmured
+‘Philip?’” said the doctor quietly, dissembling his alarm.
+
+“She called my name?” cried the Baron, letting his weapon fall.
+Stephanie picked it up, but he snatched it out of her hands, caught the
+other pistol from the bench, and fled.
+
+“Poor little one!” exclaimed the doctor, rejoicing that his stratagem
+had succeeded so well. He held her tightly to his heart as he went
+on. “He would have killed you, selfish that he is! He wants you to die
+because he is unhappy. He cannot learn to love you for your own sake,
+little one! We forgive him, do we not? He is senseless; you are only
+mad. Never mind; God alone shall take you to Himself. We look upon
+you as unhappy because you no longer share our miseries, fools that we
+are!... Why, she is happy,” he said, taking her on his knee; “nothing
+troubles her; she lives like the birds, like the deer--”
+
+Stephanie sprang upon a young blackbird that was hopping about, caught
+it with a little shriek of glee, twisted its neck, looked at the dead
+bird, and dropped it at the foot of a tree without giving it another
+thought.
+
+The next morning at daybreak the colonel went out into the garden to
+look for Stephanie; hope was very strong in him. He did not see her,
+and whistled; and when she came, he took her arm, and for the first time
+they walked together along an alley beneath the trees, while the fresh
+morning wind shook down the dead leaves about them. The colonel sat
+down, and Stephanie, of her own accord, lit upon his knee. Philip
+trembled with gladness.
+
+“Love!” he cried, covering her hands with passionate kisses, “I am
+Philip...”
+
+She looked curiously at him.
+
+“Come close,” he added, as he held her tightly. “Do you feel the beating
+of my heart? It has beat for you, for you only. I love you always.
+Philip is not dead. He is here. You are sitting on his knee. You are my
+Stephanie, I am your Philip.”
+
+“Farewell!” she said, “farewell!”
+
+The colonel shivered. He thought that some vibration of his highly
+wrought feeling had surely reached his beloved; that the heart-rending
+cry, drawn from him by hope, the utmost effort of a love that must last
+for ever, of passion in its ecstasy, striving to reach the soul of the
+woman he loved, must awaken her.
+
+“Oh, Stephanie! we shall be happy yet!”
+
+A cry of satisfaction broke from her, a dim light of intelligence
+gleamed in her eyes.
+
+“She knows me!... Stephanie!...”
+
+The colonel felt his heart swell, and tears gathered under his eyelids.
+But all at once the Countess held up a bit of sugar for him to see; she
+had discovered it by searching diligently for it while he spoke. What he
+had mistaken for a human thought was a degree of reason required for a
+monkey’s mischievous trick!
+
+Philip fainted. M. Fanjat found the Countess sitting on his prostrate
+body. She was nibbling her bit of sugar, giving expression to her
+enjoyment by little grimaces and gestures that would have been thought
+clever in a woman in full possession of her senses if she tried to mimic
+her paroquet or her cat.
+
+“Oh, my friend!” cried Philip, when he came to himself. “This is
+like death every moment of the day! I love her too much! I could bear
+anything if only through her madness she had kept some little trace of
+womanhood. But, day after day, to see her like a wild animal, not even a
+sense of modesty left, to see her--”
+
+“So you must have a theatrical madness, must you!” said the doctor
+sharply, “and your prejudices are stronger than your lover’s devotion?
+What, monsieur! I resign to you the sad pleasure of giving my niece her
+food, and the enjoyment of her playtime; I have kept for myself nothing
+but the most burdensome cares. I watch over her while you are asleep,
+I--Go, monsieur, and give up the task. Leave this dreary hermitage; I
+can live with my little darling; I understand her disease; I study her
+movements; I know her secrets. Some day you shall thank me.”
+
+The colonel left the Minorite convent, that he was destined to see only
+once again. The doctor was alarmed by the effect that his words made
+upon his guest; his niece’s lover became as dear to him as his niece. If
+either of them deserved to be pitied, that one was certainly Philip; did
+he not bear alone the burden of an appalling sorrow?
+
+The doctor made inquiries, and learned that the hapless colonel had
+retired to a country house of his near Saint-Germain. A dream had
+suggested to him a plan for restoring the Countess to reason, and the
+doctor did not know that he was spending the rest of the autumn in
+carrying out a vast scheme. A small stream ran through his park, and in
+winter time flooded a low-lying land, something like the plain on the
+eastern side of the Beresina. The village of Satout, on the slope of
+a ridge above it, bounded the horizon of a picture of desolation,
+something as Studzianka lay on the heights that shut in the swamp of the
+Beresina. The colonel set laborers to work to make a channel to resemble
+the greedy river that had swallowed up the treasures of France and
+Napoleon’s army. By the help of his memories, Philip reconstructed on
+his own lands the bank where General Eble had built his bridges. He
+drove in piles, and then set fire to them, so as to reproduce the
+charred and blackened balks of timber that on either side of the river
+told the stragglers that their retreat to France had been cut off. He
+had materials collected like the fragments out of which his comrades in
+misfortune had made the raft; his park was laid waste to complete
+the illusion on which his last hopes were founded. He ordered ragged
+uniforms and clothing for several hundred peasants. Huts and bivouacs
+and batteries were raised and burned down. In short, he omitted
+no device that could reproduce that most hideous of all scenes. He
+succeeded. When, in the earliest days of December, snow covered the
+earth with a thick white mantle, it seemed to him that he saw the
+Beresina itself. The mimic Russia was so startlingly real, that several
+of his old comrades recognized the scene of their past sufferings. M.
+de Sucy kept the secret of the drama to be enacted with this tragical
+background, but it was looked upon as a mad freak in several circles of
+society in Paris.
+
+In the early days of the month of January 1820, the colonel drove over
+to the Forest of l’Isle-Adam in a carriage like the one in which M.
+and Mme. de Vandieres had driven from Moscow to Studzianka. The horses
+closely resembled that other pair that he had risked his life to
+bring from the Russian lines. He himself wore the grotesque and soiled
+clothes, accoutrements, and cap that he had worn on the 29th of November
+1812. He had even allowed his hair and beard to grow, and neglected his
+appearance, that no detail might be lacking to recall the scene in all
+its horror.
+
+“I guessed what you meant to do,” cried M. Fanjat, when he saw the
+colonel dismount. “If you mean your plan to succeed, do not let her
+see you in that carriage. This evening I will give my niece a little
+laudanum, and while she sleeps, we will dress her in such clothes as
+she wore at Studzianka, and put her in your traveling-carriage. I will
+follow you in a berline.”
+
+Soon after two o’clock in the morning, the young Countess was lifted
+into the carriage, laid on the cushions, and wrapped in a coarse
+blanket. A few peasants held torches while this strange elopement was
+arranged.
+
+A sudden cry rang through the silence of night, and Philip and the
+doctor, turning, saw Genevieve. She had come out half-dressed from the
+low room where she slept.
+
+“Farewell, farewell; it is all over, farewell!” she called, crying
+bitterly.
+
+“Why, Genevieve, what is it?” asked M. Fanjat.
+
+Genevieve shook her head despairingly, raised her arm to heaven, looked
+at the carriage, uttered a long snarling sound, and with evident signs
+of profound terror, slunk in again.
+
+“‘Tis a good omen,” cried the colonel. “The girl is sorry to lose her
+companion. Very likely she sees that Stephanie is about to recover her
+reason.”
+
+“God grant it may be so!” answered M. Fanjat, who seemed to be affected
+by this incident. Since insanity had interested him, he had known
+several cases in which a spirit of prophecy and the gift of second
+sight had been accorded to a disordered brain--two faculties which many
+travelers tell us are also found among savage tribes.
+
+So it happened that, as the colonel had foreseen and arranged, Stephanie
+traveled across the mimic Beresina about nine o’clock in the morning,
+and was awakened by an explosion of rockets about a hundred paces from
+the scene of action. It was a signal. Hundreds of peasants raised a
+terrible clamor, like the despairing shouts that startled the Russians
+when twenty thousand stragglers learned that by their own fault they
+were delivered over to death or to slavery.
+
+When the Countess heard the report and the cries that followed, she
+sprang out of the carriage, and rushed in frenzied anguish over the
+snow-covered plain; she saw the burned bivouacs and the fatal raft about
+to be launched on a frozen Beresina. She saw Major Philip brandishing
+his sabre among the crowd. The cry that broke from Mme. de Vandieres
+made the blood run cold in the veins of all who heard it. She stood face
+to face with the colonel, who watched her with a beating heart. At first
+she stared blankly at the strange scene about her, then she reflected.
+For an instant, brief as a lightning flash, there was the same quick
+gaze and total lack of comprehension that we see in the bright eyes of a
+bird; then she passed her hand across her forehead with the intelligent
+expression of a thinking being; she looked round on the memories that
+had taken substantial form, into the past life that had been transported
+into her present; she turned her face to Philip--and saw him! An awed
+silence fell upon the crowd. The colonel breathed hard, but dared
+not speak; tears filled the doctor’s eyes. A faint color overspread
+Stephanie’s beautiful face, deepening slowly, till at last she glowed
+like a girl radiant with youth. Still the bright flush grew. Life and
+joy, kindled within her at the blaze of intelligence, swept through her
+like leaping flames. A convulsive tremor ran from her feet to her heart.
+But all these tokens, which flashed on the sight in a moment, gathered
+and gained consistence, as it were, when Stephanie’s eyes gleamed with
+heavenly radiance, the light of a soul within. She lived, she thought!
+She shuddered--was it with fear? God Himself unloosed a second time
+the tongue that had been bound by death, and set His fire anew in the
+extinguished soul. The electric torrent of the human will vivified the
+body whence it had so long been absent.
+
+“Stephanie!” the colonel cried.
+
+“Oh! it is Philip!” said the poor Countess.
+
+She fled to the trembling arms held out towards her, and the embrace
+of the two lovers frightened those who beheld it. Stephanie burst into
+tears.
+
+Suddenly the tears ceased to flow; she lay in his arms a dead weight, as
+if stricken by a thunderbolt, and said faintly:
+
+“Farewell, Philip!... I love you.... farewell!”
+
+“She is dead!” cried the colonel, unclasping his arms.
+
+The old doctor received the lifeless body of his niece in his arms as a
+young man might have done; he carried her to a stack of wood and set
+her down. He looked at her face, and laid a feeble hand, tremulous with
+agitation, upon her heart--it beat no longer.
+
+“Can it really be so?” he said, looking from the colonel, who stood
+there motionless, to Stephanie’s face. Death had invested it with
+a radiant beauty, a transient aureole, the pledge, it may be, of a
+glorious life to come.
+
+“Yes, she is dead.”
+
+“Oh, but that smile!” cried Philip; “only see that smile. Is it
+possible?”
+
+“She has grown cold already,” answered M. Fanjat.
+
+M. de Sucy made a few strides to tear himself from the sight; then he
+stopped, and whistled the air that the mad Stephanie had understood;
+and when he saw that she did not rise and hasten to him, he walked away,
+staggering like a drunken man, still whistling, but he did not turn
+again.
+
+
+
+In society General de Sucy is looked upon as very agreeable, and
+above all things, as very lively and amusing. Not very long ago a lady
+complimented him upon his good humor and equable temper.
+
+“Ah! madame,” he answered, “I pay very dearly for my merriment in the
+evening if I am alone.”
+
+“Then, you are never alone, I suppose.”
+
+“No,” he answered, smiling.
+
+If a keen observer of human nature could have seen the look that Sucy’s
+face wore at that moment, he would, without doubt, have shuddered.
+
+“Why do you not marry?” the lady asked (she had several daughters of her
+own at a boarding-school). “You are wealthy; you belong to an old and
+noble house; you are clever; you have a future before you; everything
+smiles upon you.”
+
+“Yes,” he answered; “one smile is killing me--”
+
+On the morrow the lady heard with amazement that M. de Sucy had shot
+himself through the head that night.
+
+The fashionable world discussed the extraordinary news in divers
+ways, and each had a theory to account for it; play, love, ambition,
+irregularities in private life, according to the taste of the speaker,
+explained the last act of the tragedy begun in 1812. Two men alone, a
+magistrate and an old doctor, knew that Monsieur le Comte de Sucy was
+one of those souls unhappy in the strength God gives to them to enable
+them to triumph daily in a ghastly struggle with a mysterious horror. If
+for a minute God withdraws His sustaining hand, they succumb.
+
+
+
+PARIS, March 1830.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Farewell, by Honore de Balzac
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+  <head>
+    <title>
+      Farewell, by Honore de Balzac
+    </title>
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+
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+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Farewell, 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.org
+
+
+Title: Farewell
+
+Author: Honore de Balzac
+
+Release Date: March 28, 2009 [EBook #5873]
+Last Updated: November 22, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FAREWELL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Dagny, John Bickers, and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      FAREWELL
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      By Honore De Balzac
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      Translated by Ellen Marriage
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      DEDICATION<br /><br /> To Prince Friedrich von Schwarzenberg
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      FAREWELL
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, Deputy of the Centre, come along! We shall have to mend our pace if
+      we mean to sit down to dinner when every one else does, and that&rsquo;s a fact!
+      Hurry up! Jump, Marquis! That&rsquo;s it! Well done! You are bounding over the
+      furrows just like a stag!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      These words were uttered by a sportsman seated much at his ease on the
+      outskirts of the Foret de l&rsquo;Isle-Adam; he had just finished a Havana
+      cigar, which he had smoked while he waited for his companion, who had
+      evidently been straying about for some time among the forest undergrowth.
+      Four panting dogs by the speaker&rsquo;s side likewise watched the progress of
+      the personage for whose benefit the remarks were made. To make their
+      sarcastic import fully clear, it should be added that the second sportsman
+      was both short and stout; his ample girth indicated a truly magisterial
+      corpulence, and in consequence his progress across the furrows was by no
+      means easy. He was striding over a vast field of stubble; the dried
+      corn-stalks underfoot added not a little to the difficulties of his
+      passage, and to add to his discomforts, the genial influence of the sun
+      that slanted into his eyes brought great drops of perspiration into his
+      face. The uppermost thought in his mind being a strong desire to keep his
+      balance, he lurched to and fro like a coach jolted over an atrocious road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was one of those September days of almost tropical heat that finishes
+      the work of summer and ripens the grapes. Such heat forebodes a coming
+      storm; and though as yet there were wide patches of blue between the dark
+      rain-clouds low down on the horizon, pale golden masses were rising and
+      scattering with ominous swiftness from west to east, and drawing a shadowy
+      veil across the sky. The wind was still, save in the upper regions of the
+      air, so that the weight of the atmosphere seemed to compress the steamy
+      heat of the earth into the forest glades. The tall forest trees shut out
+      every breath of air so completely that the little valley across which the
+      sportsman was making his way was as hot as a furnace; the silent forest
+      seemed parched with the fiery heat. Birds and insects were mute; the
+      topmost twigs of the trees swayed with scarcely perceptible motion. Any
+      one who retains some recollection of the summer of 1819 must surely
+      compassionate the plight of the hapless supporter of the ministry who
+      toiled and sweated over the stubble to rejoin his satirical comrade. That
+      gentleman, as he smoked his cigar, had arrived, by a process of
+      calculation based on the altitude of the sun, to the conclusion that it
+      must be about five o&rsquo;clock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where the devil are we?&rdquo; asked the stout sportsman. He wiped his brow as
+      he spoke, and propped himself against a tree in the field opposite his
+      companion, feeling quite unequal to clearing the broad ditch that lay
+      between them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you ask that question of <i>me</i>!&rdquo; retorted the other, laughing
+      from his bed of tall brown grasses on the top of the bank. He flung the
+      end of his cigar into the ditch, exclaiming, &ldquo;I swear by Saint Hubert that
+      no one shall catch me risking myself again in a country that I don&rsquo;t know
+      with a magistrate, even if, like you, my dear d&rsquo;Albon, he happens to be an
+      old schoolfellow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Philip, have you really forgotten your own language? You surely must
+      have left your wits behind you in Siberia,&rdquo; said the stouter of the two,
+      with a glance half-comic, half-pathetic at the guide-post distant about a
+      hundred paces from them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I understand,&rdquo; replied the one addressed as Philip. He snatched up his
+      rifle, suddenly sprang to his feet, made but one jump of it into the
+      field, and rushed off to the guide-post. &ldquo;This way, d&rsquo;Albon, here you are!
+      left about!&rdquo; he shouted, gesticulating in the direction of the highroad. &ldquo;<i>To
+      Baillet and l&rsquo;Isle-Adam!</i>&rdquo; he went on; &ldquo;so if we go along here, we
+      shall be sure to come upon the cross-road to Cassan.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite right, Colonel,&rdquo; said M. d&rsquo;Albon, putting the cap with which he had
+      been fanning himself back on his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then <i>forward</i>! highly respected Councillor,&rdquo; returned Colonel
+      Philip, whistling to the dogs, that seemed already to obey him rather than
+      the magistrate their owner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you aware, my lord Marquis, that two leagues yet remain before us?&rdquo;
+       inquired the malicious soldier. &ldquo;That village down yonder must be
+      Baillet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Great heavens!&rdquo; cried the Marquis d&rsquo;Albon. &ldquo;Go on to Cassan by all means,
+      if you like; but if you do, you will go alone. I prefer to wait here,
+      storm or no storm; you can send a horse for me from the chateau. You have
+      been making game of me, Sucy. We were to have a nice day&rsquo;s sport by
+      ourselves; we were not to go very far from Cassan, and go over ground that
+      I knew. Pooh! instead of a day&rsquo;s fun, you have kept me running like a
+      greyhound since four o&rsquo;clock this morning, and nothing but a cup or two of
+      milk by way of breakfast. Oh! if ever you find yourself in a court of law,
+      I will take care that the day goes against you if you were in the right a
+      hundred times over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The dejected sportsman sat himself down on one of the stumps at the foot
+      of the guide-post, disencumbered himself of his rifle and empty game-bag,
+      and heaved a prolonged sigh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, France, behold thy Deputies!&rdquo; laughed Colonel de Sucy. &ldquo;Poor old
+      d&rsquo;Albon; if you had spent six months at the other end of Siberia as I
+      did...&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He broke off, and his eyes sought the sky, as if the story of his troubles
+      was a secret between himself and God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, march!&rdquo; he added. &ldquo;If you once sit down, it is all over with you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t help it, Philip! It is such an old habit in a magistrate! I am
+      dead beat, upon my honor. If I had only bagged one hare though!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Two men more different are seldom seen together. The civilian, a man of
+      forty-two, seemed scarcely more than thirty; while the soldier, at thirty
+      years of age, looked to be forty at the least. Both wore the red rosette
+      that proclaimed them to be officers of the Legion of Honor. A few locks of
+      hair, mingled white and black, like a magpie&rsquo;s wing, had strayed from
+      beneath the Colonel&rsquo;s cap; while thick, fair curls clustered about the
+      magistrate&rsquo;s temples. The Colonel was tall, spare, dried up, but muscular;
+      the lines in his pale face told a tale of vehement passions or of terrible
+      sorrows; but his comrade&rsquo;s jolly countenance beamed with health, and would
+      have done credit to an Epicurean. Both men were deeply sunburnt. Their
+      high gaiters of brown leather carried souvenirs of every ditch and swamp
+      that they crossed that day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, come,&rdquo; cried M. de Sucy, &ldquo;forward! One short hour&rsquo;s march, and we
+      shall be at Cassan with a good dinner before us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You never were in love, that is positive,&rdquo; returned the Councillor, with
+      a comically piteous expression. &ldquo;You are as inexorable as Article 304 of
+      the Penal Code!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Philip de Sucy shuddered violently. Deep lines appeared in his broad
+      forehead, his face was overcast like the sky above them; but though his
+      features seemed to contract with the pain of an intolerably bitter memory,
+      no tears came to his eyes. Like all men of strong character, he possessed
+      the power of forcing his emotions down into some inner depth, and,
+      perhaps, like many reserved natures, he shrank from laying bare a wound
+      too deep for any words of human speech, and winced at the thought of
+      ridicule from those who do not care to understand. M. d&rsquo;Albon was one of
+      those who are keenly sensitive by nature to the distress of others, who
+      feel at once the pain they have unwillingly given by some blunder. He
+      respected his friend&rsquo;s mood, rose to his feet, forgot his weariness, and
+      followed in silence, thoroughly annoyed with himself for having touched on
+      a wound that seemed not yet healed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some day I will tell you my story,&rdquo; Philip said at last, wringing his
+      friend&rsquo;s hand, while he acknowledged his dumb repentance with a
+      heart-rending glance. &ldquo;To-day I cannot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They walked on in silence. As the Colonel&rsquo;s distress passed off the
+      Councillor&rsquo;s fatigue returned. Instinctively, or rather urged by
+      weariness, his eyes explored the depths of the forest around them; he
+      looked high and low among the trees, and gazed along the avenues, hoping
+      to discover some dwelling where he might ask for hospitality. They reached
+      a place where several roads met; and the Councillor, fancying that he saw
+      a thin film of smoke rising through the trees, made a stand and looked
+      sharply about him. He caught a glimpse of the dark green branches of some
+      firs among the other forest trees, and finally, &ldquo;A house! a house!&rdquo; he
+      shouted. No sailor could have raised a cry of &ldquo;Land ahead!&rdquo; more joyfully
+      than he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He plunged at once into undergrowth, somewhat of the thickest; and the
+      Colonel, who had fallen into deep musings, followed him unheedingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I would rather have an omelette here and home-made bread, and a chair to
+      sit down in, than go further for a sofa, truffles, and Bordeaux wine at
+      Cassan.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This outburst of enthusiasm on the Councillor&rsquo;s part was caused by the
+      sight of the whitened wall of a house in the distance, standing out in
+      strong contrast against the brown masses of knotted tree-trunks in the
+      forest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aha! This used to be a priory, I should say,&rdquo; the Marquis d&rsquo;Albon cried
+      once more, as they stood before a grim old gateway. Through the grating
+      they could see the house itself standing in the midst of some considerable
+      extent of park land; from the style of the architecture it appeared to
+      have been a monastery once upon a time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Those knowing rascals of monks knew how to choose a site!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This last exclamation was caused by the magistrate&rsquo;s amazement at the
+      romantic hermitage before his eyes. The house had been built on a spot
+      half-way up the hillside on the slope below the village of Nerville, which
+      crowned the summit. A huge circle of great oak-trees, hundreds of years
+      old, guarded the solitary place from intrusion. There appeared to be about
+      forty acres of the park. The main building of the monastery faced the
+      south, and stood in a space of green meadow, picturesquely intersected by
+      several tiny clear streams, and by larger sheets of water so disposed as
+      to have a natural effect. Shapely trees with contrasting foliage grew here
+      and there. Grottos had been ingeniously contrived; and broad terraced
+      walks, now in ruin, though the steps were broken and the balustrades eaten
+      through with rust, gave to this sylvan Thebaid a certain character of its
+      own. The art of man and the picturesqueness of nature had wrought together
+      to produce a charming effect. Human passions surely could not cross that
+      boundary of tall oak-trees which shut out the sounds of the outer world,
+      and screened the fierce heat of the sun from this forest sanctuary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What neglect!&rdquo; said M. d&rsquo;Albon to himself, after the first sense of
+      delight in the melancholy aspect of the ruins in the landscape, which
+      seemed blighted by a curse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was like some haunted spot, shunned of men. The twisted ivy stems
+      clambered everywhere, hiding everything away beneath a luxuriant green
+      mantle. Moss and lichens, brown and gray, yellow and red, covered the
+      trees with fantastic patches of color, grew upon the benches in the
+      garden, overran the roof and the walls of the house. The window-sashes
+      were weather-worn and warped with age, the balconies were dropping to
+      pieces, the terraces in ruins. Here and there the folding shutters hung by
+      a single hinge. The crazy doors would have given way at the first attempt
+      to force an entrance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Out in the orchard the neglected fruit-trees were running to wood, the
+      rambling branches bore no fruit save the glistening mistletoe berries, and
+      tall plants were growing in the garden walks. All this forlornness shed a
+      charm across the picture that wrought on the spectator&rsquo;s mind with an
+      influence like that of some enchanting poem, filling his soul with dreamy
+      fancies. A poet must have lingered there in deep and melancholy musings,
+      marveling at the harmony of this wilderness, where decay had a certain
+      grace of its own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a moment a few gleams of sunlight struggled through a rift in the
+      clouds, and a shower of colored light fell over the wild garden. The brown
+      tiles of the roof glowed in the light, the mosses took bright hues,
+      strange shadows played over the grass beneath the trees; the dead autumn
+      tints grew vivid, bright unexpected contrasts were evoked by the light,
+      every leaf stood out sharply in the clear, thin air. Then all at once the
+      sunlight died away, and the landscape that seemed to have spoken grew
+      silent and gloomy again, or rather, it took gray soft tones like the
+      tenderest hues of autumn dusk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is the palace of the Sleeping Beauty,&rdquo; the Councillor said to himself
+      (he had already begun to look at the place from the point of view of an
+      owner of property). &ldquo;Whom can the place belong to, I wonder. He must be a
+      great fool not to live on such a charming little estate!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Just at that moment, a woman sprang out from under a walnut tree on the
+      right-hand side of the gateway, and passed before the Councillor as
+      noiselessly and swiftly as the shadow of a cloud. This apparition struck
+      him dumb with amazement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hallo, d&rsquo;Albon, what is the matter?&rdquo; asked the Colonel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am rubbing my eyes to find out whether I am awake or asleep,&rdquo; answered
+      the magistrate, whose countenance was pressed against the grating in the
+      hope of catching a second glimpse of the ghost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In all probability she is under that fig-tree,&rdquo; he went on, indicating,
+      for Philip&rsquo;s benefit, some branches that over-topped the wall on the
+      left-hand side of the gateway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She? Who?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eh! how should I know?&rdquo; answered M. d&rsquo;Albon. &ldquo;A strange-looking woman
+      sprang up there under my very eyes just now,&rdquo; he added, in a low voice;
+      &ldquo;she looked to me more like a ghost than a living being. She was so
+      slender, light and shadowy that she might be transparent. Her face was as
+      white as milk, her hair, her eyes, and her dress were black. She gave me a
+      glance as she flitted by. I am not easily frightened, but that cold stony
+      stare of hers froze the blood in my veins.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was she pretty?&rdquo; inquired Philip.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know. I saw nothing but those eyes in her head.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The devil take dinner at Cassan!&rdquo; exclaimed the Colonel; &ldquo;let us stay
+      here. I am as eager as a boy to see the inside of this queer place. The
+      window-sashes are painted red, do you see? There is a red line round the
+      panels of the doors and the edges of the shutters. It might be the devil&rsquo;s
+      own dwelling; perhaps he took it over when the monks went out. Now, then,
+      let us give chase to the black and white lady; come along!&rdquo; cried Philip,
+      with forced gaiety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had scarcely finished speaking when the two sportsmen heard a cry as if
+      some bird had been taken in a snare. They listened. There was a sound like
+      the murmur of rippling water, as something forced its way through the
+      bushes; but diligently as they lent their ears, there was no footfall on
+      the path, the earth kept the secret of the mysterious woman&rsquo;s passage, if
+      indeed she had moved from her hiding-place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is very strange!&rdquo; cried Philip.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Following the wall of the path, the two friends reached before long a
+      forest road leading to the village of Chauvry; they went along this track
+      in the direction of the highway to Paris, and reached another large
+      gateway. Through the railings they had a complete view of the facade of
+      the mysterious house. From this point of view, the dilapidation was still
+      more apparent. Huge cracks had riven the walls of the main body of the
+      house built round three sides of a square. Evidently the place was allowed
+      to fall to ruin; there were holes in the roof, broken slates and tiles lay
+      about below. Fallen fruit from the orchard trees was left to rot on the
+      ground; a cow was grazing over the bowling-green and trampling the flowers
+      in the garden beds; a goat browsed on the green grapes and young
+      vine-shoots on the trellis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is all of a piece,&rdquo; remarked the Colonel. &ldquo;The neglect is in a fashion
+      systematic.&rdquo; He laid his hand on the chain of the bell-pull, but the bell
+      had lost its clapper. The two friends heard no sound save the peculiar
+      grating creak of the rusty spring. A little door in the wall beside the
+      gateway, though ruinous, held good against all their efforts to force it
+      open.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oho! all this is growing very interesting,&rdquo; Philip said to his companion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I were not a magistrate,&rdquo; returned M. d&rsquo;Albon, &ldquo;I should think that
+      the woman in black is a witch.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The words were scarcely out of his mouth when the cow came up to the
+      railings and held out her warm damp nose, as if she were glad of human
+      society. Then a woman, if so indescribable a being could be called a
+      woman, sprang up from the bushes, and pulled at the cord about the cow&rsquo;s
+      neck. From beneath the crimson handkerchief about the woman&rsquo;s head, fair
+      matted hair escaped, something as tow hangs about a spindle. She wore no
+      kerchief at the throat. A coarse black-and-gray striped woolen petticoat,
+      too short by several inches, left her legs bare. She might have belonged
+      to some tribe of Redskins in Fenimore Cooper&rsquo;s novels; for her neck, arms,
+      and ankles looked as if they had been painted brick-red. There was no
+      spark of intelligence in her featureless face; her pale, bluish eyes
+      looked out dull and expressionless from beneath the eyebrows with one or
+      two straggling white hairs on them. Her teeth were prominent and uneven,
+      but white as a dog&rsquo;s.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hallo, good woman,&rdquo; called M. de Sucy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She came slowly up to the railing, and stared at the two sportsmen with a
+      contorted smile painful to see.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where are we? What is the name of the house yonder? Whom does it belong
+      to? Who are you? Do you come from hereabouts?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      To these questions, and to a host of others poured out in succession upon
+      her by the two friends, she made no answer save gurgling sounds in the
+      throat, more like animal sounds than anything uttered by a human voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you see that she is deaf and dumb?&rdquo; said M. d&rsquo;Albon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Minorites</i>!&rdquo; the peasant woman said at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! she is right. The house looks as though it might once have been a
+      Minorite convent,&rdquo; he went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again they plied the peasant woman with questions, but, like a wayward
+      child, she colored up, fidgeted with her sabot, twisted the rope by which
+      she held the cow that had fallen to grazing again, stared at the
+      sportsmen, and scrutinized every article of clothing upon them; she
+      gibbered, grunted, and clucked, but no articulate word did she utter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your name?&rdquo; asked Philip, fixing her with his eyes as if he were trying
+      to bewitch the woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Genevieve,&rdquo; she answered, with an empty laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The cow is the most intelligent creature we have seen so far,&rdquo; exclaimed
+      the magistrate. &ldquo;I shall fire a shot, that ought to bring somebody out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      D&rsquo;Albon had just taken up his rifle when the Colonel put out a hand to
+      stop him, and pointed out the mysterious woman who had aroused such lively
+      curiosity in them. She seemed to be absorbed in deep thought, as she went
+      along a green alley some little distance away, so slowly that the friends
+      had time to take a good look at her. She wore a threadbare black satin
+      gown, her long hair curled thickly over her forehead, and fell like a
+      shawl about her shoulders below her waist. Doubtless she was accustomed to
+      the dishevelment of her locks, for she seldom put back the hair on either
+      side of her brows; but when she did so, she shook her head with a sudden
+      jerk that had not to be repeated to shake away the thick veil from her
+      eyes or forehead. In everything that she did, moreover, there was a
+      wonderful certainty in the working of the mechanism, an unerring swiftness
+      and precision, like that of an animal, well-nigh marvelous in a woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two sportsmen were amazed to see her spring up into an apple-tree and
+      cling to a bough lightly as a bird. She snatched at the fruit, ate it, and
+      dropped to the ground with the same supple grace that charms us in a
+      squirrel. The elasticity of her limbs took all appearance of awkwardness
+      or effort from her movements. She played about upon the grass, rolling in
+      it as a young child might have done; then, on a sudden, she lay still and
+      stretched out her feet and hands, with the languid natural grace of a
+      kitten dozing in the sun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a threatening growl of thunder far away, and at this she started
+      up on all fours and listened, like a dog who hears a strange footstep. One
+      result of this strange attitude was to separate her thick black hair into
+      two masses, that fell away on either side of her face and left her
+      shoulders bare; the two witnesses of this singular scene wondered at the
+      whiteness of the skin that shone like a meadow daisy, and at the neck that
+      indicated the perfection of the rest of her form.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A wailing cry broke from her; she rose to her feet, and stood upright.
+      Every successive movement was made so lightly, so gracefully, so easily,
+      that she seemed to be no human being, but one of Ossian&rsquo;s maids of the
+      mist. She went across the grass to one of the pools of water, deftly shook
+      off her shoe, and seemed to enjoy dipping her foot, white as marble, in
+      the spring; doubtless it pleased her to make the circling ripples, and
+      watch them glitter like gems. She knelt down by the brink, and played
+      there like a child, dabbling her long tresses in the water, and flinging
+      them loose again to see the water drip from the ends, like a string of
+      pearls in the sunless light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is mad!&rdquo; cried the Councillor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A hoarse cry rang through the air; it came from Genevieve, and seemed to
+      be meant for the mysterious woman. She rose to her feet in a moment,
+      flinging back the hair from her face, and then the Colonel and d&rsquo;Albon
+      could see her features distinctly. As soon as she saw the two friends she
+      bounded to the railings with the swiftness of a fawn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Farewell</i>!&rdquo; she said in low, musical tones, but they could not
+      discover the least trace of feeling, the least idea in the sweet sounds
+      that they had awaited impatiently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      M. d&rsquo;Albon admired the long lashes, the thick, dark eyebrows, the dazzling
+      fairness of skin untinged by any trace of red. Only the delicate blue
+      veins contrasted with that uniform whiteness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when the Marquis turned to communicate his surprise at the sight of so
+      strange an apparition, he saw the Colonel stretched on the grass like one
+      dead. M. d&rsquo;Albon fired his gun into the air, shouted for help, and tried
+      to raise his friend. At the sound of the shot, the strange lady, who had
+      stood motionless by the gate, fled away, crying out like a wounded wild
+      creature, circling round and round in the meadow, with every sign of
+      unspeakable terror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      M. d&rsquo;Albon heard a carriage rolling along the road to l&rsquo;Isle-Adam, and
+      waved his handkerchief to implore help. The carriage immediately came
+      towards the Minorite convent, and M. d&rsquo;Albon recognized neighbors, M. and
+      Mme. de Grandville, who hastened to alight and put their carriage at his
+      disposal. Colonel de Sucy inhaled the salts which Mme. de Grandville
+      happened to have with her; he opened his eyes, looked towards the
+      mysterious figure that still fled wailing through the meadow, and a faint
+      cry of horror broke from him; he closed his eyes again, with a dumb
+      gesture of entreaty to his friends to take him away from this scene. M.
+      and Mme. de Grandville begged the Councillor to make use of their
+      carriage, adding very obligingly that they themselves would walk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who can the lady be?&rdquo; inquired the magistrate, looking towards the
+      strange figure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;People think that she comes from Moulins,&rdquo; answered M. de Grandville.
+      &ldquo;She is a Comtesse de Vandieres; she is said to be mad; but as she has
+      only been here for two months, I cannot vouch for the truth of all this
+      hearsay talk.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      M. d&rsquo;Albon thanked M. and Mme. de Grandville, and they set out for Cassan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is she!&rdquo; cried Philip, coming to himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She? who?&rdquo; asked d&rsquo;Albon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stephanie.... Ah! dead and yet living still; still alive, but her mind is
+      gone! I thought the sight would kill me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The prudent magistrate, recognizing the gravity of the crisis through
+      which his friend was passing, refrained from asking questions or exciting
+      him further, and grew impatient of the length of the way to the chateau,
+      for the change wrought in the Colonel&rsquo;s face alarmed him. He feared lest
+      the Countess&rsquo; terrible disease had communicated itself to Philip&rsquo;s brain.
+      When they reached the avenue at l&rsquo;Isle-Adam, d&rsquo;Albon sent the servant for
+      the local doctor, so that the Colonel had scarcely been laid in bed before
+      the surgeon was beside him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If Monsieur le Colonel had not been fasting, the shock must have killed
+      him,&rdquo; pronounced the leech. &ldquo;He was over-tired, and that saved him,&rdquo; and
+      with a few directions as to the patient&rsquo;s treatment, he went to prepare a
+      composing draught himself. M. de Sucy was better the next morning, but the
+      doctor had insisted on sitting up all night with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I confess, Monsieur le Marquis,&rdquo; the surgeon said, &ldquo;that I feared for the
+      brain. M. de Sucy has had some very violent shock; he is a man of strong
+      passions, but, with his temperament, the first shock decides everything.
+      He will very likely be out of danger to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor was perfectly right. The next day the patient was allowed to
+      see his friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want you to do something for me, dear d&rsquo;Albon,&rdquo; Philip said, grasping
+      his friend&rsquo;s hand. &ldquo;Hasten at once to the Minorite convent, find out
+      everything about the lady whom we saw there, and come back as soon as you
+      can; I shall count the minutes till I see you again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      M. d&rsquo;Albon called for his horse, and galloped over to the old monastery.
+      When he reached the gateway he found some one standing there, a tall,
+      spare man with a kindly face, who answered in the affirmative when he was
+      asked if he lived in the ruined house. M. d&rsquo;Albon explained his errand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, then, it must have been you, sir, who fired that unlucky shot! You
+      all but killed my poor invalid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eh! I fired into the air!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you had actually hit Madame la Comtesse, you would have done less harm
+      to her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, well, then, we can neither of us complain, for the sight of the
+      Countess all but killed my friend, M. de Sucy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Baron de Sucy, is it possible?&rdquo; cried the doctor, clasping his hands.
+      &ldquo;Has he been in Russia? was he in the Beresina?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; answered d&rsquo;Albon. &ldquo;He was taken prisoner by the Cossacks and sent
+      to Siberia. He has not been back in this country a twelvemonth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come in, monsieur,&rdquo; said the other, and he led the way to a drawing-room
+      on the ground-floor. Everything in the room showed signs of capricious
+      destruction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Valuable china jars lay in fragments on either side of a clock beneath a
+      glass shade, which had escaped. The silk hangings about the windows were
+      torn to rags, while the muslin curtains were untouched.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see about you the havoc wrought by a charming being to whom I have
+      dedicated my life. She is my niece; and though medical science is
+      powerless in her case, I hope to restore her to reason, though the method
+      which I am trying is, unluckily, only possible to the wealthy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, like all who live much alone and daily bear the burden of a heavy
+      trouble, he fell to talk with the magistrate. This is the story that he
+      told, set in order, and with the many digressions made by both teller and
+      hearer omitted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When, at nine o&rsquo;clock at night, on the 28th of November 1812, Marshal
+      Victor abandoned the heights of Studzianka, which he had held through the
+      day, he left a thousand men behind with instructions to protect, till the
+      last possible moment, the two pontoon bridges over the Beresina that still
+      held good. This rear guard was to save if possible an appalling number of
+      stragglers, so numbed with the cold, that they obstinately refused to
+      leave the baggage-wagons. The heroism of the generous band was doomed to
+      fail; for, unluckily, the men who poured down to the eastern bank of the
+      Beresina found carriages, caissons, and all kinds of property which the
+      Army had been forced to abandon during its passage on the 27th and 28th
+      days of November. The poor, half-frozen wretches, sunk almost to the level
+      of brutes, finding such unhoped-for riches, bivouacked in the deserted
+      space, laid hands on the military stores, improvised huts out of the
+      material, lighted fires with anything that would burn, cut up the
+      carcasses of the horses for food, tore out the linings of the carriages,
+      wrapped themselves in them, and lay down to sleep instead of crossing the
+      Beresina in peace under cover of night&mdash;the Beresina that even then
+      had proved, by incredible fatality, so disastrous to the Army. Such apathy
+      on the part of the poor fellows can only be understood by those who
+      remember tramping across those vast deserts of snow, with nothing to
+      quench their thirst but snow, snow for their bed, snow as far as the
+      horizon on every side, and no food but snow, a little frozen beetroot,
+      horseflesh, or a handful of meal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The miserable creatures were dropping down, overcome by hunger, thirst,
+      weariness, and sleep, when they reached the shores of the Beresina and
+      found fuel and fire and victuals, countless wagons and tents, a whole
+      improvised town, in short. The whole village of Studzianka had been
+      removed piecemeal from the heights of the plain, and the very perils and
+      miseries of this dangerous and doleful habitation smiled invitingly to the
+      wayfarers, who beheld no prospect beyond it but the awful Russian deserts.
+      A huge hospice, in short, was erected for twenty hours of existence. Only
+      one thought&mdash;the thought of rest&mdash;appealed to men weary of life
+      or rejoicing in unlooked-for comfort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They lay right in the line of fire from the cannon of the Russian left;
+      but to that vast mass of human creatures, a patch upon the snow, sometimes
+      dark, sometimes breaking into flame, the indefatigable grapeshot was but
+      one discomfort the more. For them it was only a storm, and they paid the
+      less attention to the bolts that fell among them because there were none
+      to strike down there save dying men, the wounded, or perhaps the dead.
+      Stragglers came up in little bands at every moment. These walking corpses
+      instantly separated, and wandered begging from fire to fire; and meeting,
+      for the most part, with refusals, banded themselves together again, and
+      took by force what they could not otherwise obtain. They were deaf to the
+      voices of their officers prophesying death on the morrow, and spent the
+      energy required to cross the swamp in building shelters for the night and
+      preparing a meal that often proved fatal. The coming death no longer
+      seemed an evil, for it gave them an hour of slumber before it came. Hunger
+      and thirst and cold&mdash;these were evils, but not death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last wood and fuel and canvas and shelters failed, and hideous brawls
+      began between destitute late comers and the rich already in possession of
+      a lodging. The weaker were driven away, until a few last fugitives before
+      the Russian advance were obliged to make their bed in the snow, and lay
+      down to rise no more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Little by little the mass of half-dead humanity became so dense, so deaf,
+      so torpid,&mdash;or perhaps it should be said so happy&mdash;that Marshal
+      Victor, their heroic defender against twenty thousand Russians under
+      Wittgenstein, was actually compelled to cut his way by force through this
+      forest of men, so as to cross the Beresina with the five thousand heroes
+      whom he was leading to the Emperor. The miserable creatures preferred to
+      be trampled and crushed to death rather than stir from their places, and
+      died without a sound, smiling at the dead ashes of their fires, forgetful
+      of France.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not before ten o&rsquo;clock that night did the Duc de Belluno reach the other
+      side of the river. Before committing his men to the pontoon bridges that
+      led to Zembin, he left the fate of the rearguard at Studzianka in Eble&rsquo;s
+      hands, and to Eble the survivors of the calamities of the Beresina owed
+      their lives.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About midnight, the great General, followed by a courageous officer, came
+      out of his little hut by the bridge, and gazed at the spectacle of this
+      camp between the bank of the Beresina and the Borizof road to Studzianka.
+      The thunder of the Russian cannonade had ceased. Here and there faces that
+      had nothing human about them were lighted up by countless fires that
+      seemed to grow pale in the glare of the snowfields, and to give no light.
+      Nearly thirty thousand wretches, belonging to every nation that Napoleon
+      had hurled upon Russia, lay there hazarding their lives with the
+      indifference of brute beasts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have all these to save,&rdquo; the General said to his subordinate.
+      &ldquo;To-morrow morning the Russians will be in Studzianka. The moment they
+      come up we shall have to set fire to the bridge; so pluck up heart, my
+      boy! Make your way out and up yonder through them, and tell General
+      Fournier that he has barely time to evacuate his post and cut his way
+      through to the bridge. As soon as you have seen him set out, follow him
+      down, take some able-bodied men, and set fire to the tents, wagons,
+      caissons, carriages, anything and everything, without pity, and drive
+      these fellows on to the bridge. Compel everything that walks on two legs
+      to take refuge on the other bank. We must set fire to the camp; it is our
+      last resource. If Berthier had let me burn those d&mdash;&mdash;d wagons
+      sooner, no lives need have been lost in the river except my poor
+      pontooners, my fifty heroes, who saved the Army, and will be forgotten.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The General passed his hand over his forehead and said no more. He felt
+      that Poland would be his tomb, and foresaw that afterwards no voice would
+      be raised to speak for the noble fellows who had plunged into the stream&mdash;into
+      the waters of the Beresina!&mdash;to drive in the piles for the bridges.
+      And, indeed, only one of them is living now, or, to be more accurate,
+      starving, utterly forgotten in a country village![*] The brave officer had
+      scarcely gone a hundred paces towards Studzianka, when General Eble roused
+      some of his patient pontooners, and began his work of mercy by setting
+      fire to the camp on the side nearest the bridge, so compelling the
+      sleepers to rise and cross the Beresina. Meanwhile the young aide-de-camp,
+      not without difficulty, reached the one wooden house yet left standing in
+      Studzianka.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     [*] This story can be found in <i>The Country Parson</i>.&mdash;eBook
+     preparers.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So the box is pretty full, is it, messmate?&rdquo; he said to a man whom he
+      found outside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will be a knowing fellow if you manage to get inside,&rdquo; the officer
+      returned, without turning round or stopping his occupation of hacking at
+      the woodwork of the house with his sabre.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Philip, is that you?&rdquo; cried the aide-de-camp, recognizing the voice of
+      one of his friends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. Aha! is it you, old fellow?&rdquo; returned M. de Sucy, looking round at
+      the aide-de-camp, who like himself was not more than twenty-three years
+      old. &ldquo;I fancied you were on the other side of this confounded river. Do
+      you come to bring us sweetmeats for dessert? You will get a warm welcome,&rdquo;
+       he added, as he tore away a strip of bark from the wood and gave it to his
+      horse by way of fodder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am looking for your commandant. General Eble has sent me to tell him to
+      file off to Zembin. You have only just time to cut your way through that
+      mass of dead men; as soon as you get through, I am going to set fire to
+      the place to make them move&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You almost make me feel warm! Your news has put me in a fever; I have two
+      friends to bring through. Ah! but for those marmots, I should have been
+      dead before now, old fellow. On their account I am taking care of my horse
+      instead of eating him. But have you a crust about you, for pity&rsquo;s sake? It
+      is thirty hours since I have stowed any victuals. I have been fighting
+      like a madman to keep up a little warmth in my body and what courage I
+      have left.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor Philip! I have nothing&mdash;not a scrap!&mdash;But is your General
+      in there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t attempt to go in. The barn is full of our wounded. Go up a bit
+      higher, and you will see a sort of pig-sty to the right&mdash;that is
+      where the General is. Good-bye, my dear fellow. If ever we meet again in a
+      quadrille in a ballroom in Paris&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not finish the sentence, for the treachery of the northeast wind
+      that whistled about them froze Major Philip&rsquo;s lips, and the aide-de-camp
+      kept moving for fear of being frost-bitten. Silence soon prevailed,
+      scarcely broken by the groans of the wounded in the barn, or the stifled
+      sounds made by M. de Sucy&rsquo;s horse crunching on the frozen bark with
+      famished eagerness. Philip thrust his sabre into the sheath, caught at the
+      bridle of the precious animal that he had managed to keep for so long, and
+      drew her away from the miserable fodder that she was bolting with apparent
+      relish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come along, Bichette! come along! It lies with you now, my beauty, to
+      save Stephanie&rsquo;s life. There, wait a little longer, and they will let us
+      lie down and die, no doubt;&rdquo; and Philip, wrapped in a pelisse, to which
+      doubtless he owed his life and energies, began to run, stamping his feet
+      on the frozen snow to keep them warm. He was scarce five hundred paces
+      away before he saw a great fire blazing on the spot where he had left his
+      carriage that morning with an old soldier to guard it. A dreadful
+      misgiving seized upon him. Many a man under the influence of a powerful
+      feeling during the Retreat summoned up energy for his friend&rsquo;s sake when
+      he would not have exerted himself to save his own life; so it was with
+      Philip. He soon neared a hollow, where he had left a carriage sheltered
+      from the cannonade, a carriage that held a young woman, his playmate in
+      childhood, dearer to him than any one else on earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some thirty stragglers were sitting round a tremendous blaze, which they
+      kept up with logs of wood, planks wrenched from the floors of the
+      caissons, and wheels, and panels from carriage bodies. These had been,
+      doubtless, among the last to join the sea of fires, huts, and human faces
+      that filled the great furrow in the land between Studzianka and the fatal
+      river, a restless living sea of almost imperceptibly moving figures, that
+      sent up a smothered hum of sound blended with frightful shrieks. It seemed
+      that hunger and despair had driven these forlorn creatures to take
+      forcible possession of the carriage, for the old General and his young
+      wife, whom they had found warmly wrapped in pelisses and traveling cloaks,
+      were now crouching on the earth beside the fire, and one of the carriage
+      doors was broken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As soon as the group of stragglers round the fire heard the footfall of
+      the Major&rsquo;s horse, a frenzied yell of hunger went up from them. &ldquo;A horse!&rdquo;
+       they cried. &ldquo;A horse!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      All the voices went up as one voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Back! back! Look out!&rdquo; shouted two or three of them, leveling their
+      muskets at the animal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will pitch you neck and crop into your fire, you blackguards!&rdquo; cried
+      Philip, springing in front of the mare. &ldquo;There are dead horses lying up
+      yonder; go and look for them!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a rum customer the officer is!&mdash;Once, twice, will you get out
+      of the way?&rdquo; returned a giant grenadier. &ldquo;You won&rsquo;t? All right then, just
+      as you please.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A woman&rsquo;s shriek rang out above the report. Luckily, none of the bullets
+      hit Philip; but poor Bichette lay in the agony of death. Three of the men
+      came up and put an end to her with thrusts of the bayonet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cannibals! leave me the rug and my pistols,&rdquo; cried Philip in desperation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! the pistols if you like; but as for the rug, there is a fellow yonder
+      who has had nothing to wet his whistle these two days, and is shivering in
+      his coat of cobwebs, and that&rsquo;s our General.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Philips looked up and saw a man with worn-out shoes and a dozen rents in
+      his trousers; the only covering for his head was a ragged foraging cap,
+      white with rime. He said no more after that, but snatched up his pistols.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Five of the men dragged the mare to the fire, and began to cut up the
+      carcass as dexterously as any journeymen butchers in Paris. The scraps of
+      meat were distributed and flung upon the coals, and the whole process was
+      magically swift. Philip went over to the woman who had given the cry of
+      terror when she recognized his danger, and sat down by her side. She sat
+      motionless upon a cushion taken from the carriage, warming herself at the
+      blaze; she said no word, and gazed at him without a smile. He saw beside
+      her the soldier whom he had left mounting guard over the carriage; the
+      poor fellow had been wounded; he had been overpowered by numbers, and
+      forced to surrender to the stragglers who had set upon him, and, like a
+      dog who defends his master&rsquo;s dinner till the last moment, he had taken his
+      share of the spoil, and had made a sort of cloak for himself out of a
+      sheet. At that particular moment he was busy toasting a piece of
+      horseflesh, and in his face the major saw a gleeful anticipation of the
+      coming feast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Comte de Vandieres, who seemed to have grown quite childish in the
+      last few days, sat on a cushion close to his wife, and stared into the
+      fire. He was only just beginning to shake off his torpor under the
+      influence of the warmth. He had been no more affected by Philip&rsquo;s arrival
+      and danger than by the fight and subsequent pillaging of his traveling
+      carriage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At first Sucy caught the young Countess&rsquo; hand in his, trying to express
+      his affection for her, and the pain that it gave him to see her reduced
+      like this to the last extremity of misery; but he said nothing as he sat
+      by her side on the thawing heap of snow, he gave himself up to the
+      pleasure of the sensation of warmth, forgetful of danger, forgetful of all
+      things else in the world. In spite of himself his face expanded with an
+      almost fatuous expression of satisfaction, and he waited impatiently till
+      the scrap of horseflesh that had fallen to his soldier&rsquo;s share should be
+      cooked. The smell of charred flesh stimulated his hunger. Hunger clamored
+      within and silenced his heart, his courage, and his love. He coolly looked
+      round on the results of the spoliation of his carriage. Not a man seated
+      round the fire but had shared the booty, the rugs, cushions, pelisses,
+      dresses,&mdash;articles of clothing that belonged to the Count and
+      Countess or to himself. Philip turned to see if anything worth taking was
+      left in the berline. He saw by the light of the flames, gold, and
+      diamonds, and silver lying scattered about; no one had cared to
+      appropriate the least particle. There was something hideous in the silence
+      among those human creatures round the fire; none of them spoke, none of
+      them stirred, save to do such things as each considered necessary for his
+      own comfort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a grotesque misery. The men&rsquo;s faces were wrapped and disfigured
+      with the cold, and plastered over with a layer of mud; you could see the
+      thickness of the mask by the channel traced down their cheeks by the tears
+      that ran from their eyes, and their long slovenly-kept beards added to the
+      hideousness of their appearance. Some were wrapped round in women&rsquo;s
+      shawls, others in horse-cloths, dirty blankets, rags stiffened with
+      melting hoar-frost; here and there a man wore a boot on one foot and a
+      shoe on the other, in fact, there was not one of them but wore some
+      ludicrously odd costume. But the men themselves with such matter for jest
+      about them were gloomy and taciturn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The silence was unbroken save by the crackling of the wood, the roaring of
+      the flames, the far-off hum of the camp, and the sound of sabres hacking
+      at the carcass of the mare. Some of the hungriest of the men were still
+      cutting tidbits for themselves. A few miserable creatures, more weary than
+      the others, slept outright; and if they happened to roll into the fire, no
+      one pulled them back. With cut-and-dried logic their fellows argued that
+      if they were not dead, a scorching ought to be sufficient warning to quit
+      and seek out more comfortable quarters. If the poor wretch woke to find
+      himself on fire, he was burned to death, and nobody pitied him. Here and
+      there the men exchanged glances, as if to excuse their indifference by the
+      carelessness of the rest; the thing happened twice under the Countess&rsquo; 
+      eyes, and she uttered no sound. When all the scraps of horseflesh had been
+      broiled upon the coals, they were devoured with a ravenous greediness that
+      would have been disgusting in wild beasts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now we have seen thirty infantrymen on one horse for the first time
+      in our lives!&rdquo; cried the grenadier who had shot the mare, the one solitary
+      joke that sustained the Frenchmen&rsquo;s reputation for wit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before long the poor fellows huddled themselves up in their clothes, and
+      lay down on planks of timber, on anything but the bare snow, and slept&mdash;heedless
+      of the morrow. Major de Sucy having warmed himself and satisfied his
+      hunger, fought in vain against the drowsiness that weighed upon his eyes.
+      During this brief struggle he gazed at the sleeping girl who had turned
+      her face to the fire, so that he could see her closed eyelids and part of
+      her forehead. She was wrapped round in a furred pelisse and a coarse
+      horseman&rsquo;s cloak, her head lay on a blood-stained cushion; a tall
+      astrakhan cap tied over her head by a handkerchief knotted under the chin
+      protected her face as much as possible from the cold, and she had tucked
+      up her feet in the cloak. As she lay curled up in this fashion, she bore
+      no likeness to any creature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Was this the lowest of camp-followers? Was this the charming woman, the
+      pride of her lover&rsquo;s heart, the queen of many a Parisian ballroom? Alas!
+      even for the eyes of this most devoted friend, there was no discernible
+      trace of womanhood in that bundle of rags and linen, and the cold was
+      mightier than the love in a woman&rsquo;s heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then for the major the husband and wife came to be like two distant dots
+      seen through the thick veil that the most irresistible kind of slumber
+      spread over his eyes. It all seemed to be part of a dream&mdash;the
+      leaping flames, the recumbent figures, the awful cold that lay in wait for
+      them three paces away from the warmth of the fire that glowed for a little
+      while. One thought that could not be stifled haunted Philip&mdash;&ldquo;If I go
+      to sleep, we shall all die; I will not sleep,&rdquo; he said to himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He slept. After an hour&rsquo;s slumber M. de Sucy was awakened by a hideous
+      uproar and the sound of an explosion. The remembrance of his duty, of the
+      danger of his beloved, rushed upon his mind with a sudden shock. He
+      uttered a cry like the growl of a wild beast. He and his servant stood
+      upright above the rest. They saw a sea of fire in the darkness, and
+      against it moving masses of human figures. Flames were devouring the huts
+      and tents. Despairing shrieks and yelling cries reached their ears; they
+      saw thousands upon thousands of wild and desperate faces; and through this
+      inferno a column of soldiers was cutting its way to the bridge, between
+      the two hedges of dead bodies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Our rearguard is in full retreat,&rdquo; cried the major. &ldquo;There is no hope
+      left!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have spared your traveling carriage, Philip,&rdquo; said a friendly voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sucy turned and saw the young aide-de-camp by the light of the flames.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, it is all over with us,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;They have eaten my horse. And
+      how am I to make this sleepy general and his wife stir a step?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take a brand, Philip, and threaten them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Threaten the Countess?...&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye,&rdquo; cried the aide-de-camp; &ldquo;I have only just time to get across
+      that unlucky river, and go I must, there is my mother in France!... What a
+      night! This herd of wretches would rather lie here in the snow, and most
+      of them would sooner be burned alive than get up.... It is four o&rsquo;clock,
+      Philip! In two hours the Russians will begin to move, and you will see the
+      Beresina covered with corpses a second time, I can tell you. You haven&rsquo;t a
+      horse, and you cannot carry the Countess, so come along with me,&rdquo; he went
+      on, taking his friend by the arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear fellow, how am I to leave Stephanie?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Major de Sucy grasped the Countess, set her on her feet, and shook her
+      roughly; he was in despair. He compelled her to wake, and she stared at
+      him with dull fixed eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stephanie, we must go, or we shall die here!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For all answer, the Countess tried to sink down again and sleep on the
+      earth. The aide-de-camp snatched a brand from the fire and shook it in her
+      face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We must save her in spite of herself,&rdquo; cried Philip, and he carried her
+      in his arms to the carriage. He came back to entreat his friend to help
+      him, and the two young men took the old general and put him beside his
+      wife, without knowing whether he were alive or dead. The major rolled the
+      men over as they crouched on the earth, took away the plundered clothing,
+      and heaped it upon the husband and wife, then he flung some of the broiled
+      fragments of horseflesh into a corner of the carriage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, what do you mean to do?&rdquo; asked the aide-de-camp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Drag them along!&rdquo; answered Sucy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are mad!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are right!&rdquo; exclaimed Philip, folding his arms on his breast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly a desperate plan occurred to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look you here!&rdquo; he said, grasping his sentinel by the unwounded arm. &ldquo;I
+      leave her in your care for one hour. Bear in mind that you must die sooner
+      than let any one, no matter whom, come near the carriage!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The major seized a handful of the lady&rsquo;s diamonds, drew his sabre, and
+      violently battered those who seemed to him to be the bravest among the
+      sleepers. By this means he succeeded in rousing the gigantic grenadier and
+      a couple of men whose rank and regiment were undiscoverable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is all up with us!&rdquo; he cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course it is,&rdquo; returned the grenadier; &ldquo;but that is all one to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well then, if die you must, isn&rsquo;t it better to sell your life for a
+      pretty woman, and stand a chance of going back to France again?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I would rather go to sleep,&rdquo; said one of the men, dropping down into the
+      snow; &ldquo;and if you worry me again, major, I shall stick my toasting-iron
+      into your body.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it all about, sir?&rdquo; asked the grenadier. &ldquo;The man&rsquo;s drunk. He is
+      a Parisian, and likes to lie in the lap of luxury.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You shall have these, good fellow,&rdquo; said the major, holding out a riviere
+      of diamonds, &ldquo;if you will follow me and fight like a madman. The Russians
+      are not ten minutes away; they have horses; we will march up to the
+      nearest battery and carry off two stout ones.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How about the sentinels, major?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One of us three&mdash;&rdquo; he began; then he turned from the soldier and
+      looked at the aide-de-camp.&mdash;&ldquo;You are coming, aren&rsquo;t you, Hippolyte?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hippolyte nodded assent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One of us,&rdquo; the major went on, &ldquo;will look after the sentry. Besides,
+      perhaps those blessed Russians are also fast asleep.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, major; you are a good sort! But will you take me in your
+      carriage?&rdquo; asked the grenadier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, if you don&rsquo;t leave your bones up yonder.&mdash;If I come to grief,
+      promise me, you two, that you will do everything in your power to save the
+      Countess.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; said the grenadier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They set out for the Russian lines, taking the direction of the batteries
+      that had so cruelly raked the mass of miserable creatures huddled together
+      by the river bank. A few minutes later the hoofs of two galloping horses
+      rang on the frozen snow, and the awakened battery fired a volley that
+      passed over the heads of the sleepers; the hoof-beats rattled so fast on
+      the iron ground that they sounded like the hammering in a smithy. The
+      generous aide-de-camp had fallen; the stalwart grenadier had come off safe
+      and sound; and Philip himself received a bayonet thrust in the shoulder
+      while defending his friend. Notwithstanding his wound, he clung to his
+      horse&rsquo;s mane, and gripped him with his knees so tightly that the animal
+      was held as in a vise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God be praised!&rdquo; cried the major, when he saw his soldier still on the
+      spot, and the carriage standing where he had left it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you do the right thing by me, sir, you will get me the cross for this.
+      We have treated them to a sword dance to a pretty tune from the rifle,
+      eh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have done nothing yet! Let us put the horses in. Take hold of these
+      cords.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are not long enough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, grenadier, just go and overhaul those fellows sleeping there;
+      take their shawls, sheets, anything&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say! the rascal is dead,&rdquo; cried the grenadier, as he plundered the
+      first man who came to hand. &ldquo;Why, they are all dead! how queer!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All of them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, every one. It looks as though the horseflesh <i>a la neige</i> was
+      indigestible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Philip shuddered at the words. The night had grown twice as cold as
+      before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Great heaven! to lose her when I have saved her life a score of times
+      already.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He shook the Countess, &ldquo;Stephanie! Stephanie!&rdquo; he cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She opened her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are saved, madame!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Saved!&rdquo; she echoed, and fell back again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The horses were harnessed after a fashion at last. The major held his
+      sabre in his unwounded hand, took the reins in the other, saw to his
+      pistols, and sprang on one of the horses, while the grenadier mounted the
+      other. The old sentinel had been pushed into the carriage, and lay across
+      the knees of the general and the Countess; his feet were frozen. Urged on
+      by blows from the flat of the sabre, the horses dragged the carriage at a
+      mad gallop down to the plain, where endless difficulties awaited them.
+      Before long it became almost impossible to advance without crushing
+      sleeping men, women, and even children at every step, all of whom declined
+      to stir when the grenadier awakened them. In vain M. de Sucy looked for
+      the track that the rearguard had cut through this dense crowd of human
+      beings; there was no more sign of their passage than the wake of a ship in
+      the sea. The horses could only move at a foot-pace, and were stopped most
+      frequently by soldiers, who threatened to kill them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean to get there?&rdquo; asked the grenadier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, if it costs every drop of blood in my body! if it costs the whole
+      world!&rdquo; the major answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Forward, then!... You can&rsquo;t have the omelette without breaking eggs.&rdquo; And
+      the grenadier of the Garde urged on the horses over the prostrate bodies,
+      and upset the bivouacs; the blood-stained wheels ploughing that field of
+      faces left a double furrow of dead. But in justice it should be said that
+      he never ceased to thunder out his warning cry, &ldquo;Carrion! look out!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor wretches!&rdquo; exclaimed the major.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bah! That way, or the cold, or the cannon!&rdquo; said the grenadier, goading
+      on the horses with the point of his sword.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then came the catastrophe, which must have happened sooner but for
+      miraculous good fortune; the carriage was overturned, and all further
+      progress was stopped at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I expected as much!&rdquo; exclaimed the imperturbable grenadier. &ldquo;Oho! he is
+      dead!&rdquo; he added, looking at his comrade.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor Laurent!&rdquo; said the major.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Laurent! Wasn&rsquo;t he in the Fifth Chasseurs?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My own cousin.&mdash;Pshaw! this beastly life is not so pleasant that one
+      need be sorry for him as things go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But all this time the carriage lay overturned, and the horses were only
+      released after great and irreparable loss of time. The shock had been so
+      violent that the Countess had been awakened by it, and the subsequent
+      commotion aroused her from her stupor. She shook off the rugs and rose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where are we, Philip?&rdquo; she asked in musical tones, as she looked about
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About five hundred paces from the bridge. We are just about to cross the
+      Beresina. When we are on the other side, Stephanie, I will not tease you
+      any more; I will let you go to sleep; we shall be in safety, we can go on
+      to Wilna in peace. God grant that you may never know what your life has
+      cost!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are wounded!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A mere trifle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The hour of doom had come. The Russian cannon announced the day. The
+      Russians were in possession of Studzianka, and thence were raking the
+      plain with grapeshot; and by the first dim light of the dawn the major saw
+      two columns moving and forming above the heights. Then a cry of horror
+      went up from the crowd, and in a moment every one sprang to his feet. Each
+      instinctively felt his danger, and all made a rush for the bridge, surging
+      towards it like a wave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the Russians came down upon them, swift as a conflagration. Men,
+      women, children, and horses all crowded towards the river. Luckily for the
+      major and the Countess, they were still at some distance from the bank.
+      General Eble had just set fire to the bridge on the other side; but in
+      spite of all the warnings given to those who rushed towards the chance of
+      salvation, not one among them could or would draw back. The overladen
+      bridge gave way, and not only so, the impetus of the frantic living wave
+      towards that fatal bank was such that a dense crowd of human beings was
+      thrust into the water as if by an avalanche. The sound of a single human
+      cry could not be distinguished; there was a dull crash as if an enormous
+      stone had fallen into the water&mdash;and the Beresina was covered with
+      corpses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The violent recoil of those in front, striving to escape this death,
+      brought them into hideous collision with those behind then, who were
+      pressing towards the bank, and many were suffocated and crushed. The Comte
+      and Comtesse de Vandieres owed their lives to the carriage. The horses
+      that had trampled and crushed so many dying men were crushed and trampled
+      to death in their turn by the human maelstrom which eddied from the bank.
+      Sheer physical strength saved the major and the grenadier. They killed
+      others in self-defence. That wild sea of human faces and living bodies,
+      surging to and fro as by one impulse, left the bank of the Beresina clear
+      for a few moments. The multitude had hurled themselves back on the plain.
+      Some few men sprang down from the banks of the river, not so much with any
+      hope of reaching the opposite shore, which for them meant France, as from
+      dread of the wastes of Siberia. For some bold spirits despair became a
+      panoply. An officer leaped from hummock to hummock of ice, and reached the
+      other shore; one of the soldiers scrambled over miraculously on the piles
+      of dead bodies and drift ice. But the immense multitude left behind saw at
+      last that the Russians would not slaughter twenty thousand unarmed men,
+      too numb with the cold to attempt to resist them, and each awaited his
+      fate with dreadful apathy. By this time the major and his grenadier, the
+      old general and his wife, were left to themselves not very far from the
+      place where the bridge had been. All four stood dry-eyed and silent among
+      the heaps of dead. A few able-bodied men and one or two officers, who had
+      recovered all their energy at this crisis, gathered about them. The group
+      was sufficiently large; there were about fifty men all told. A couple of
+      hundred paces from them stood the wreck of the artillery bridge, which had
+      broken down the day before; the major saw this, and &ldquo;Let us make a raft!&rdquo;
+       he cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The words were scarcely out of his mouth before the whole group hurried to
+      the ruins of the bridge. A crowd of men began to pick up iron clamps and
+      to hunt for planks and ropes&mdash;for all the materials for a raft, in
+      short. A score of armed men and officers, under command of the major,
+      stood on guard to protect the workers from any desperate attempt on the
+      part of the multitude if they should guess their design. The longing for
+      freedom, which inspires prisoners to accomplish impossibilities, cannot be
+      compared with the hope which lent energy at that moment to these forlorn
+      Frenchmen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Russians are upon us! Here are the Russians!&rdquo; the guard shouted to
+      the workers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The timbers creaked, the raft grew larger, stronger, and more substantial.
+      Generals, colonels, and common soldiers all alike bent beneath the weight
+      of wagon-wheels, chains, coils of rope, and planks of timber; it was a
+      modern realization of the building of Noah&rsquo;s ark. The young Countess,
+      sitting by her husband&rsquo;s side, looked on, regretful that she could do
+      nothing to aide the workers, though she helped to knot the lengths of rope
+      together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last the raft was finished. Forty men launched it out into the river,
+      while ten of the soldiers held the ropes that must keep it moored to the
+      shore. The moment that they saw their handiwork floating on the Beresina,
+      they sprang down onto it from the bank with callous selfishness. The
+      major, dreading the frenzy of the first rush, held back Stephanie and the
+      general; but a shudder ran through him when he saw the landing place black
+      with people, and men crowding down like playgoers into the pit of a
+      theatre.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was I who thought of the raft, you savages!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;I have saved
+      your lives, and you will not make room for me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A confused murmur was the only answer. The men at the edge took up stout
+      poles, trust them against the bank with all their might, so as to shove
+      the raft out and gain an impetus at its starting upon a journey across a
+      sea of floating ice and dead bodies towards the other shore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Tonnerre de Dieu</i>! I will knock some of you off into the water if
+      you don&rsquo;t make room for the major and his two companions,&rdquo; shouted the
+      grenadier. He raised his sabre threateningly, delayed the departure, and
+      made the men stand closer together, in spite of threatening yells.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall fall in!... I shall go overboard!...&rdquo; his fellows shouted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us start! Put off!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The major gazed with tearless eyes at the woman he loved; an impulse of
+      sublime resignation raised her eyes to heaven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To die with you!&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the situation of the folk upon the raft there was a certain comic
+      element. They might utter hideous yells, but not one of them dared to
+      oppose the grenadier, for they were packed together so tightly that if one
+      man were knocked down, the whole raft might capsize. At this delicate
+      crisis, a captain tried to rid himself of one of his neighbors; the man
+      saw the hostile intention of his officer, collared him, and pitched him
+      overboard. &ldquo;Aha! The duck has a mind to drink. ... Over with you!&mdash;There
+      is room for two now!&rdquo; he shouted. &ldquo;Quick, major! throw your little woman
+      over, and come! Never mind that old dotard! he will drop off to-morrow!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be quick!&rdquo; cried a voice, made up of a hundred voices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, major! Those fellows are making a fuss, and well they may.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Comte de Vandieres flung off his ragged blankets, and stood before
+      them in his general&rsquo;s uniform.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us save the Count,&rdquo; said Philip.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Stephanie grasped his hand tightly in hers, flung her arms about, and
+      clasped him close in an agonized embrace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Farewell!&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then each knew the other&rsquo;s thoughts. The Comte de Vandieres recovered his
+      energies and presence of mind sufficiently to jump on to the raft, whither
+      Stephanie followed him after one last look at Philip.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Major, won&rsquo;t you take my place? I do not care a straw for life; I have
+      neither a wife, nor child, nor mother belonging to me&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I give them into your charge,&rdquo; cried the major, indicating the Count and
+      his wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be easy; I will take as much care of them as of the apple of my eye.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Philip stood stock-still on the bank. The raft sped so violently towards
+      the opposite shore that it ran aground with a violent shock to all on
+      board. The Count, standing on the very edge, was shaken into the stream;
+      and as he fell, a mass of ice swept by and struck off his head, and sent
+      it flying like a ball.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hey! major!&rdquo; shouted the grenadier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Farewell!&rdquo; a woman&rsquo;s voice called aloud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An icy shiver ran through Philip de Sucy, and he dropped down where he
+      stood, overcome with cold and sorrow and weariness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My poor niece went out of her mind,&rdquo; the doctor added after a brief
+      pause. &ldquo;Ah! monsieur,&rdquo; he went on, grasping M. d&rsquo;Albon&rsquo;s hand, &ldquo;what a
+      fearful life for a poor little thing, so young, so delicate! An unheard-of
+      misfortune separated her from that grenadier of the Garde (Fleuriot by
+      name), and for two years she was dragged on after the army, the
+      laughing-stock of a rabble of outcasts. She went barefoot, I heard,
+      ill-clad, neglected, and starved for months at a time; sometimes confined
+      to a hospital, sometimes living like a hunted animal. God alone knows all
+      the misery which she endured, and yet she lives. She was shut up in a
+      madhouse in a little German town, while her relations, believing her to be
+      dead, were dividing her property here in France.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In 1816 the grenadier Fleuriot recognized her in an inn in Strasbourg.
+      She had just managed to escape from captivity. Some peasants told him that
+      the Countess had lived for a whole month in a forest, and how that they
+      had tracked her and tried to catch her without success.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was at that time not many leagues from Strasbourg; and hearing the talk
+      about the girl in the wood, I wished to verify the strange facts that had
+      given rise to absurd stories. What was my feeling when I beheld the
+      Countess? Fleuriot told me all that he knew of the piteous story. I took
+      the poor fellow with my niece into Auvergne, and there I had the
+      misfortune to lose him. He had some ascendancy over Mme. de Vandieres. He
+      alone succeeded in persuading her to wear clothes; and in those days her
+      one word of human speech&mdash;<i>Farewell</i>&mdash;she seldom uttered.
+      Fleuriot set himself to the task of awakening certain associations; but
+      there he failed completely; he drew that one sorrowful word from her a
+      little more frequently, that was all. But the old grenadier could amuse
+      her, and devoted himself to playing with her, and through him I hoped; but&mdash;&rdquo;
+       here Stephanie&rsquo;s uncle broke off. After a moment he went on again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here she has found another creature with whom she seems to have an
+      understanding&mdash;an idiot peasant girl, who once, in spite of her
+      plainness and imbecility, fell in love with a mason. The mason thought of
+      marrying her because she had a little bit of land, and for a whole year
+      poor Genevieve was the happiest of living creatures. She dressed in her
+      best, and danced on Sundays with Dallot; she understood love; there was
+      room for love in her heart and brain. But Dallot thought better of it. He
+      found another girl who had all her senses and rather more land than
+      Genevieve, and he forsook Genevieve for her. Then the poor thing lost the
+      little intelligence that love had developed in her; she can do nothing now
+      but cut grass and look after the cattle. My niece and the poor girl are in
+      some sort bound to each other by the invisible chain of their common
+      destiny, and by their madness due to the same cause. Just come here a
+      moment; look!&rdquo; and Stephanie&rsquo;s uncle led the Marquis d&rsquo;Albon to the
+      window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There, in fact, the magistrate beheld the pretty Countess sitting on the
+      ground at Genevieve&rsquo;s knee, while the peasant girl was wholly absorbed in
+      combing out Stephanie&rsquo;s long, black hair with a huge comb. The Countess
+      submitted herself to this, uttering low smothered cries that expressed her
+      enjoyment of the sensation of physical comfort. A shudder ran through M.
+      d&rsquo;Albon as he saw her attitude of languid abandonment, the animal
+      supineness that revealed an utter lack of intelligence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! Philip, Philip!&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;past troubles are as nothing. Is it quite
+      hopeless?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor raised his eyes to heaven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye, monsieur,&rdquo; said M. d&rsquo;Albon, pressing the old man&rsquo;s hand. &ldquo;My
+      friend is expecting me; you will see him here before long.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then it is Stephanie herself?&rdquo; cried Sucy when the Marquis had spoken the
+      first few words. &ldquo;Ah! until now I did not feel sure!&rdquo; he added. Tears
+      filled the dark eyes that were wont to wear a stern expression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; she is the Comtesse de Vandieres,&rdquo; his friend replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The colonel started up, and hurriedly began to dress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Philip!&rdquo; cried the horrified magistrate. &ldquo;Are you going mad?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am quite well now,&rdquo; said the colonel simply. &ldquo;This news has soothed all
+      my bitterest grief; what pain could hurt me while I think of Stephanie? I
+      am going over to the Minorite convent, to see her and speak to her, to
+      restore her to health again. She is free; ah, surely, surely, happiness
+      will smile on us, or there is no Providence above. How can you think she
+      could hear my voice, poor Stephanie, and not recover her reason?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She has seen you once already, and she did not recognize you,&rdquo; the
+      magistrate answered gently, trying to suggest some wholesome fears to this
+      friend, whose hopes were visibly too high.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The colonel shuddered, but he began to smile again, with a slight
+      involuntary gesture of incredulity. Nobody ventured to oppose his plans,
+      and a few hours later he had taken up his abode in the old priory, to be
+      near the doctor and the Comtesse de Vandieres.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where is she?&rdquo; he cried at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hush!&rdquo; answered M. Fanjat, Stephanie&rsquo;s uncle. &ldquo;She is sleeping. Stay;
+      here she is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Philip saw the poor distraught sleeper crouching on a stone bench in the
+      sun. Her thick hair, straggling over her face, screened it from the glare
+      and heat; her arms dropped languidly to the earth; she lay at ease as
+      gracefully as a fawn, her feet tucked up beneath her; her bosom rose and
+      fell with her even breathing; there was the same transparent whiteness as
+      of porcelain in her skin and complexion that we so often admire in
+      children&rsquo;s faces. Genevieve sat there motionless, holding a spray that
+      Stephanie doubtless had brought down from the top of one of the tallest
+      poplars; the idiot girl was waving the green branch above her, driving
+      away the flies from her sleeping companion, and gently fanning her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She stared at M. Fanjat and the colonel as they came up; then, like a dumb
+      animal that recognizes its master, she slowly turned her face towards the
+      countess, and watched over her as before, showing not the slightest sign
+      of intelligence or of astonishment. The air was scorching. The glittering
+      particles of the stone bench shone like sparks of fire; the meadow sent up
+      the quivering vapors that hover above the grass and gleam like golden dust
+      when they catch the light, but Genevieve did not seem to feel the raging
+      heat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The colonel wrung M. Fanjat&rsquo;s hands; the tears that gathered in the
+      soldier&rsquo;s eyes stole down his cheeks, and fell on the grass at Stephanie&rsquo;s
+      feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sir,&rdquo; said her uncle, &ldquo;for these two years my heart has been broken
+      daily. Before very long you will be as I am; if you do not weep, you will
+      not feel your anguish the less.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have taken care of her!&rdquo; said the colonel, and jealousy no less than
+      gratitude could be read in his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two men understood one another. They grasped each other by the hand
+      again, and stood motionless, gazing in admiration at the serenity that
+      slumber had brought into the lovely face before them. Stephanie heaved a
+      sigh from time to time, and this sigh, that had all the appearance of
+      sensibility, made the unhappy colonel tremble with gladness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alas!&rdquo; M. Fanjat said gently, &ldquo;do not deceive yourself, monsieur; as you
+      see her now, she is in full possession of such reason as she has.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Those who have sat for whole hours absorbed in the delight of watching
+      over the slumber of some tenderly-beloved one, whose waking eyes will
+      smile for them, will doubtless understand the bliss and anguish that shook
+      the colonel. For him this slumber was an illusion, the waking must be a
+      kind of death, the most dreadful of all deaths.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly a kid frisked in two or three bounds towards the bench and
+      snuffed at Stephanie. The sound awakened her; she sprang lightly to her
+      feet without scaring away the capricious creature; but as soon as she saw
+      Philip she fled, followed by her four-footed playmate, to a thicket of
+      elder-trees; then she uttered a little cry like the note of a startled
+      wild bird, the same sound that the colonel had heard once before near the
+      grating, when the Countess appeared to M. d&rsquo;Albon for the first time. At
+      length she climbed into a laburnum-tree, ensconced herself in the feathery
+      greenery, and peered out at the <i>strange man</i> with as much interest
+      as the most inquisitive nightingale in the forest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Farewell, farewell, farewell,&rdquo; she said, but the soul sent no trace of
+      expression of feeling through the words, spoken with the careless
+      intonation of a bird&rsquo;s notes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She does not know me!&rdquo; the colonel exclaimed in despair. &ldquo;Stephanie! Here
+      is Philip, your Philip!... Philip!&rdquo; and the poor soldier went towards the
+      laburnum-tree; but when he stood three paces away, the Countess eyed him
+      almost defiantly, though there was timidity in her eyes; then at a bound
+      she sprang from the laburnum to an acacia, and thence to a spruce-fir,
+      swinging from bough to bough with marvelous dexterity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do not follow her,&rdquo; said M. Fanjat, addressing the colonel. &ldquo;You would
+      arouse a feeling of aversion in her which might become insurmountable; I
+      will help you to make her acquaintance and to tame her. Sit down on the
+      bench. If you pay no heed whatever to her, poor child, it will not be long
+      before you will see her come nearer by degrees to look at you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That <i>she</i> should not know me; that she should fly from me!&rdquo; the
+      colonel repeated, sitting down on a rustic bench and leaning his back
+      against a tree that overshadowed it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He bowed his head. The doctor remained silent. Before very long the
+      Countess stole softly down from her high refuge in the spruce-fir,
+      flitting like a will-o&rsquo;-the-wisp; for as the wind stirred the boughs, she
+      lent herself at times to the swaying movements of the trees. At each
+      branch she stopped and peered at the stranger; but as she saw him sitting
+      motionless, she at length jumped down to the grass, stood a while, and
+      came slowly across the meadow. When she took up her position by a tree
+      about ten paces from the bench, M. Fanjat spoke to the colonel in a low
+      voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Feel in my pocket for some lumps of sugar,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and let her see
+      them, she will come; I willingly give up to you the pleasure of giving her
+      sweetmeats. She is passionately fond of sugar, and by that means you will
+      accustom her to come to you and to know you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She never cared for sweet things when she was a woman,&rdquo; Philip answered
+      sadly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he held out the lump of sugar between his thumb and finger, and shook
+      it, Stephanie uttered the wild note again, and sprang quickly towards him;
+      then she stopped short, there was a conflict between longing for the sweet
+      morsel and instinctive fear of him; she looked at the sugar, turned her
+      head away, and looked again like an unfortunate dog forbidden to touch
+      some scrap of food, while his master slowly recites the greater part of
+      the alphabet until he reaches the letter that gives permission. At length
+      the animal appetite conquered fear; Stephanie rushed to Philip, held out a
+      dainty brown hand to pounce upon the coveted morsel, touched her lover&rsquo;s
+      fingers, snatched the piece of sugar, and vanished with it into a thicket.
+      This painful scene was too much for the colonel; he burst into tears, and
+      took refuge in the drawing-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then has love less courage than affection?&rdquo; M. Fanjat asked him. &ldquo;I have
+      hope, Monsieur le Baron. My poor niece was once in a far more pitiable
+      state than at present.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it possible?&rdquo; cried Philip.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She would not wear clothes,&rdquo; answered the doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The colonel shuddered, and his face grew pale. To the doctor&rsquo;s mind this
+      pallor was an unhealthy symptom; he went over to him and felt his pulse.
+      M. de Sucy was in a high fever; by dint of persuasion, he succeeded in
+      putting the patient in bed, and gave him a few drops of laudanum to gain
+      repose and sleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Baron de Sucy spent nearly a week, in a constant struggle with a
+      deadly anguish, and before long he had no tears left to shed. He was often
+      well-nigh heartbroken; he could not grow accustomed to the sight of the
+      Countess&rsquo; madness; but he made terms for himself, as it were, in this
+      cruel position, and sought alleviations in his pain. His heroism was
+      boundless. He found courage to overcome Stephanie&rsquo;s wild shyness by
+      choosing sweetmeats for her, and devoted all his thoughts to this,
+      bringing these dainties, and following up the little victories that he set
+      himself to gain over Stephanie&rsquo;s instincts (the last gleam of intelligence
+      in her), until he succeeded to some extent&mdash;she grew <i>tamer</i>
+      than ever before. Every morning the colonel went into the park; and if,
+      after a long search for the Countess, he could not discover the tree in
+      which she was rocking herself gently, nor the nook where she lay crouching
+      at play with some bird, nor the roof where she had perched herself, he
+      would whistle the well-known air <i>Partant pour la Syrie</i>, which
+      recalled old memories of their love, and Stephanie would run towards him
+      lightly as a fawn. She saw the colonel so often that she was no longer
+      afraid of him; before very long she would sit on his knee with her thin,
+      lithe arms about him. And while thus they sat as lovers love to do, Philip
+      doled out sweetmeats one by one to the eager Countess. When they were all
+      finished, the fancy often took Stephanie to search through her lover&rsquo;s
+      pockets with a monkey&rsquo;s quick instinctive dexterity, till she had assured
+      herself that there was nothing left, and then she gazed at Philip with
+      vacant eyes; there was no thought, no gratitude in their clear depths.
+      Then she would play with him. She tried to take off his boots to see his
+      foot; she tore his gloves to shreds, and put on his hat; and she would let
+      him pass his hands through her hair, and take her in his arms, and submit
+      passively to his passionate kisses, and at last, if he shed tears, she
+      would gaze silently at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She quite understood the signal when he whistled <i>Partant pour la Syrie</i>,
+      but he could never succeed in inducing her to pronounce her own name&mdash;<i>Stephanie</i>.
+      Philip persevered in his heart-rending task, sustained by a hope that
+      never left him. If on some bright autumn morning he saw her sitting
+      quietly on a bench under a poplar tree, grown brown now as the season
+      wore, the unhappy lover would lie at her feet and gaze into her eyes as
+      long as she would let him gaze, hoping that some spark of intelligence
+      might gleam from them. At times he lent himself to an illusion; he would
+      imagine that he saw the hard, changeless light in them falter, that there
+      was a new life and softness in them, and he would cry, &ldquo;Stephanie! oh,
+      Stephanie! you hear me, you see me, do you not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But for her the sound of his voice was like any other sound, the stirring
+      of the wind in the trees, or the lowing of the cow on which she scrambled;
+      and the colonel wrung his hands in a despair that lost none of its
+      bitterness; nay, time and these vain efforts only added to his anguish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One evening, under the quiet sky, in the midst of the silence and peace of
+      the forest hermitage, M. Fanjat saw from a distance that the Baron was
+      busy loading a pistol, and knew that the lover had given up all hope. The
+      blood surged to the old doctor&rsquo;s heart; and if he overcame the dizzy
+      sensation that seized on him, it was because he would rather see his niece
+      live with a disordered brain than lose her for ever. He hurried to the
+      place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you doing?&rdquo; he cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is for me,&rdquo; the colonel answered, pointing to a loaded pistol on the
+      bench, &ldquo;and this is for her!&rdquo; he added, as he rammed down the wad into the
+      pistol that he held in his hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Countess lay stretched out on the ground, playing with the balls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you do not know that last night, as she slept, she murmured
+      &lsquo;Philip?&rsquo;&rdquo; said the doctor quietly, dissembling his alarm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She called my name?&rdquo; cried the Baron, letting his weapon fall. Stephanie
+      picked it up, but he snatched it out of her hands, caught the other pistol
+      from the bench, and fled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor little one!&rdquo; exclaimed the doctor, rejoicing that his stratagem had
+      succeeded so well. He held her tightly to his heart as he went on. &ldquo;He
+      would have killed you, selfish that he is! He wants you to die because he
+      is unhappy. He cannot learn to love you for your own sake, little one! We
+      forgive him, do we not? He is senseless; you are only mad. Never mind; God
+      alone shall take you to Himself. We look upon you as unhappy because you
+      no longer share our miseries, fools that we are!... Why, she is happy,&rdquo; he
+      said, taking her on his knee; &ldquo;nothing troubles her; she lives like the
+      birds, like the deer&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Stephanie sprang upon a young blackbird that was hopping about, caught it
+      with a little shriek of glee, twisted its neck, looked at the dead bird,
+      and dropped it at the foot of a tree without giving it another thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next morning at daybreak the colonel went out into the garden to look
+      for Stephanie; hope was very strong in him. He did not see her, and
+      whistled; and when she came, he took her arm, and for the first time they
+      walked together along an alley beneath the trees, while the fresh morning
+      wind shook down the dead leaves about them. The colonel sat down, and
+      Stephanie, of her own accord, lit upon his knee. Philip trembled with
+      gladness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Love!&rdquo; he cried, covering her hands with passionate kisses, &ldquo;I am
+      Philip...&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked curiously at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come close,&rdquo; he added, as he held her tightly. &ldquo;Do you feel the beating
+      of my heart? It has beat for you, for you only. I love you always. Philip
+      is not dead. He is here. You are sitting on his knee. You are my
+      Stephanie, I am your Philip.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Farewell!&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;farewell!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The colonel shivered. He thought that some vibration of his highly wrought
+      feeling had surely reached his beloved; that the heart-rending cry, drawn
+      from him by hope, the utmost effort of a love that must last for ever, of
+      passion in its ecstasy, striving to reach the soul of the woman he loved,
+      must awaken her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Stephanie! we shall be happy yet!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A cry of satisfaction broke from her, a dim light of intelligence gleamed
+      in her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She knows me!... Stephanie!...&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The colonel felt his heart swell, and tears gathered under his eyelids.
+      But all at once the Countess held up a bit of sugar for him to see; she
+      had discovered it by searching diligently for it while he spoke. What he
+      had mistaken for a human thought was a degree of reason required for a
+      monkey&rsquo;s mischievous trick!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Philip fainted. M. Fanjat found the Countess sitting on his prostrate
+      body. She was nibbling her bit of sugar, giving expression to her
+      enjoyment by little grimaces and gestures that would have been thought
+      clever in a woman in full possession of her senses if she tried to mimic
+      her paroquet or her cat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, my friend!&rdquo; cried Philip, when he came to himself. &ldquo;This is like
+      death every moment of the day! I love her too much! I could bear anything
+      if only through her madness she had kept some little trace of womanhood.
+      But, day after day, to see her like a wild animal, not even a sense of
+      modesty left, to see her&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you must have a theatrical madness, must you!&rdquo; said the doctor
+      sharply, &ldquo;and your prejudices are stronger than your lover&rsquo;s devotion?
+      What, monsieur! I resign to you the sad pleasure of giving my niece her
+      food, and the enjoyment of her playtime; I have kept for myself nothing
+      but the most burdensome cares. I watch over her while you are asleep, I&mdash;Go,
+      monsieur, and give up the task. Leave this dreary hermitage; I can live
+      with my little darling; I understand her disease; I study her movements; I
+      know her secrets. Some day you shall thank me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The colonel left the Minorite convent, that he was destined to see only
+      once again. The doctor was alarmed by the effect that his words made upon
+      his guest; his niece&rsquo;s lover became as dear to him as his niece. If either
+      of them deserved to be pitied, that one was certainly Philip; did he not
+      bear alone the burden of an appalling sorrow?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor made inquiries, and learned that the hapless colonel had
+      retired to a country house of his near Saint-Germain. A dream had
+      suggested to him a plan for restoring the Countess to reason, and the
+      doctor did not know that he was spending the rest of the autumn in
+      carrying out a vast scheme. A small stream ran through his park, and in
+      winter time flooded a low-lying land, something like the plain on the
+      eastern side of the Beresina. The village of Satout, on the slope of a
+      ridge above it, bounded the horizon of a picture of desolation, something
+      as Studzianka lay on the heights that shut in the swamp of the Beresina.
+      The colonel set laborers to work to make a channel to resemble the greedy
+      river that had swallowed up the treasures of France and Napoleon&rsquo;s army.
+      By the help of his memories, Philip reconstructed on his own lands the
+      bank where General Eble had built his bridges. He drove in piles, and then
+      set fire to them, so as to reproduce the charred and blackened balks of
+      timber that on either side of the river told the stragglers that their
+      retreat to France had been cut off. He had materials collected like the
+      fragments out of which his comrades in misfortune had made the raft; his
+      park was laid waste to complete the illusion on which his last hopes were
+      founded. He ordered ragged uniforms and clothing for several hundred
+      peasants. Huts and bivouacs and batteries were raised and burned down. In
+      short, he omitted no device that could reproduce that most hideous of all
+      scenes. He succeeded. When, in the earliest days of December, snow covered
+      the earth with a thick white mantle, it seemed to him that he saw the
+      Beresina itself. The mimic Russia was so startlingly real, that several of
+      his old comrades recognized the scene of their past sufferings. M. de Sucy
+      kept the secret of the drama to be enacted with this tragical background,
+      but it was looked upon as a mad freak in several circles of society in
+      Paris.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the early days of the month of January 1820, the colonel drove over to
+      the Forest of l&rsquo;Isle-Adam in a carriage like the one in which M. and Mme.
+      de Vandieres had driven from Moscow to Studzianka. The horses closely
+      resembled that other pair that he had risked his life to bring from the
+      Russian lines. He himself wore the grotesque and soiled clothes,
+      accoutrements, and cap that he had worn on the 29th of November 1812. He
+      had even allowed his hair and beard to grow, and neglected his appearance,
+      that no detail might be lacking to recall the scene in all its horror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guessed what you meant to do,&rdquo; cried M. Fanjat, when he saw the colonel
+      dismount. &ldquo;If you mean your plan to succeed, do not let her see you in
+      that carriage. This evening I will give my niece a little laudanum, and
+      while she sleeps, we will dress her in such clothes as she wore at
+      Studzianka, and put her in your traveling-carriage. I will follow you in a
+      berline.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Soon after two o&rsquo;clock in the morning, the young Countess was lifted into
+      the carriage, laid on the cushions, and wrapped in a coarse blanket. A few
+      peasants held torches while this strange elopement was arranged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A sudden cry rang through the silence of night, and Philip and the doctor,
+      turning, saw Genevieve. She had come out half-dressed from the low room
+      where she slept.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Farewell, farewell; it is all over, farewell!&rdquo; she called, crying
+      bitterly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Genevieve, what is it?&rdquo; asked M. Fanjat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Genevieve shook her head despairingly, raised her arm to heaven, looked at
+      the carriage, uttered a long snarling sound, and with evident signs of
+      profound terror, slunk in again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Tis a good omen,&rdquo; cried the colonel. &ldquo;The girl is sorry to lose her
+      companion. Very likely she sees that Stephanie is about to recover her
+      reason.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God grant it may be so!&rdquo; answered M. Fanjat, who seemed to be affected by
+      this incident. Since insanity had interested him, he had known several
+      cases in which a spirit of prophecy and the gift of second sight had been
+      accorded to a disordered brain&mdash;two faculties which many travelers
+      tell us are also found among savage tribes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So it happened that, as the colonel had foreseen and arranged, Stephanie
+      traveled across the mimic Beresina about nine o&rsquo;clock in the morning, and
+      was awakened by an explosion of rockets about a hundred paces from the
+      scene of action. It was a signal. Hundreds of peasants raised a terrible
+      clamor, like the despairing shouts that startled the Russians when twenty
+      thousand stragglers learned that by their own fault they were delivered
+      over to death or to slavery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the Countess heard the report and the cries that followed, she sprang
+      out of the carriage, and rushed in frenzied anguish over the snow-covered
+      plain; she saw the burned bivouacs and the fatal raft about to be launched
+      on a frozen Beresina. She saw Major Philip brandishing his sabre among the
+      crowd. The cry that broke from Mme. de Vandieres made the blood run cold
+      in the veins of all who heard it. She stood face to face with the colonel,
+      who watched her with a beating heart. At first she stared blankly at the
+      strange scene about her, then she reflected. For an instant, brief as a
+      lightning flash, there was the same quick gaze and total lack of
+      comprehension that we see in the bright eyes of a bird; then she passed
+      her hand across her forehead with the intelligent expression of a thinking
+      being; she looked round on the memories that had taken substantial form,
+      into the past life that had been transported into her present; she turned
+      her face to Philip&mdash;and saw him! An awed silence fell upon the crowd.
+      The colonel breathed hard, but dared not speak; tears filled the doctor&rsquo;s
+      eyes. A faint color overspread Stephanie&rsquo;s beautiful face, deepening
+      slowly, till at last she glowed like a girl radiant with youth. Still the
+      bright flush grew. Life and joy, kindled within her at the blaze of
+      intelligence, swept through her like leaping flames. A convulsive tremor
+      ran from her feet to her heart. But all these tokens, which flashed on the
+      sight in a moment, gathered and gained consistence, as it were, when
+      Stephanie&rsquo;s eyes gleamed with heavenly radiance, the light of a soul
+      within. She lived, she thought! She shuddered&mdash;was it with fear? God
+      Himself unloosed a second time the tongue that had been bound by death,
+      and set His fire anew in the extinguished soul. The electric torrent of
+      the human will vivified the body whence it had so long been absent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stephanie!&rdquo; the colonel cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! it is Philip!&rdquo; said the poor Countess.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She fled to the trembling arms held out towards her, and the embrace of
+      the two lovers frightened those who beheld it. Stephanie burst into tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly the tears ceased to flow; she lay in his arms a dead weight, as
+      if stricken by a thunderbolt, and said faintly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Farewell, Philip!... I love you.... farewell!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is dead!&rdquo; cried the colonel, unclasping his arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old doctor received the lifeless body of his niece in his arms as a
+      young man might have done; he carried her to a stack of wood and set her
+      down. He looked at her face, and laid a feeble hand, tremulous with
+      agitation, upon her heart&mdash;it beat no longer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can it really be so?&rdquo; he said, looking from the colonel, who stood there
+      motionless, to Stephanie&rsquo;s face. Death had invested it with a radiant
+      beauty, a transient aureole, the pledge, it may be, of a glorious life to
+      come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, she is dead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, but that smile!&rdquo; cried Philip; &ldquo;only see that smile. Is it possible?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She has grown cold already,&rdquo; answered M. Fanjat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      M. de Sucy made a few strides to tear himself from the sight; then he
+      stopped, and whistled the air that the mad Stephanie had understood; and
+      when he saw that she did not rise and hasten to him, he walked away,
+      staggering like a drunken man, still whistling, but he did not turn again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In society General de Sucy is looked upon as very agreeable, and above all
+      things, as very lively and amusing. Not very long ago a lady complimented
+      him upon his good humor and equable temper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! madame,&rdquo; he answered, &ldquo;I pay very dearly for my merriment in the
+      evening if I am alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then, you are never alone, I suppose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he answered, smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If a keen observer of human nature could have seen the look that Sucy&rsquo;s
+      face wore at that moment, he would, without doubt, have shuddered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why do you not marry?&rdquo; the lady asked (she had several daughters of her
+      own at a boarding-school). &ldquo;You are wealthy; you belong to an old and
+      noble house; you are clever; you have a future before you; everything
+      smiles upon you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he answered; &ldquo;one smile is killing me&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      On the morrow the lady heard with amazement that M. de Sucy had shot
+      himself through the head that night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fashionable world discussed the extraordinary news in divers ways, and
+      each had a theory to account for it; play, love, ambition, irregularities
+      in private life, according to the taste of the speaker, explained the last
+      act of the tragedy begun in 1812. Two men alone, a magistrate and an old
+      doctor, knew that Monsieur le Comte de Sucy was one of those souls unhappy
+      in the strength God gives to them to enable them to triumph daily in a
+      ghastly struggle with a mysterious horror. If for a minute God withdraws
+      His sustaining hand, they succumb.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PARIS, March 1830.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Farewell, 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.org
+
+
+Title: Farewell
+
+Author: Honore de Balzac
+
+Release Date: June, 2004 [EBook #5873]
+Posting Date: March 28, 2009
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FAREWELL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Dagny, and John Bickers
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+FAREWELL
+
+BY HONORE DE BALZAC
+
+
+Translated by Ellen Marriage
+
+
+
+                              DEDICATION
+
+                To Prince Friedrich von Schwarzenberg
+
+
+
+
+
+FAREWELL
+
+
+
+"Come, Deputy of the Centre, come along! We shall have to mend our pace
+if we mean to sit down to dinner when every one else does, and that's
+a fact! Hurry up! Jump, Marquis! That's it! Well done! You are bounding
+over the furrows just like a stag!"
+
+These words were uttered by a sportsman seated much at his ease on the
+outskirts of the Foret de l'Isle-Adam; he had just finished a Havana
+cigar, which he had smoked while he waited for his companion, who
+had evidently been straying about for some time among the forest
+undergrowth. Four panting dogs by the speaker's side likewise watched
+the progress of the personage for whose benefit the remarks were made.
+To make their sarcastic import fully clear, it should be added that the
+second sportsman was both short and stout; his ample girth indicated a
+truly magisterial corpulence, and in consequence his progress across
+the furrows was by no means easy. He was striding over a vast field
+of stubble; the dried corn-stalks underfoot added not a little to the
+difficulties of his passage, and to add to his discomforts, the genial
+influence of the sun that slanted into his eyes brought great drops of
+perspiration into his face. The uppermost thought in his mind being a
+strong desire to keep his balance, he lurched to and fro like a coach
+jolted over an atrocious road.
+
+It was one of those September days of almost tropical heat that finishes
+the work of summer and ripens the grapes. Such heat forebodes a coming
+storm; and though as yet there were wide patches of blue between the
+dark rain-clouds low down on the horizon, pale golden masses were rising
+and scattering with ominous swiftness from west to east, and drawing
+a shadowy veil across the sky. The wind was still, save in the upper
+regions of the air, so that the weight of the atmosphere seemed to
+compress the steamy heat of the earth into the forest glades. The tall
+forest trees shut out every breath of air so completely that the little
+valley across which the sportsman was making his way was as hot as a
+furnace; the silent forest seemed parched with the fiery heat. Birds and
+insects were mute; the topmost twigs of the trees swayed with scarcely
+perceptible motion. Any one who retains some recollection of the summer
+of 1819 must surely compassionate the plight of the hapless supporter
+of the ministry who toiled and sweated over the stubble to rejoin his
+satirical comrade. That gentleman, as he smoked his cigar, had arrived,
+by a process of calculation based on the altitude of the sun, to the
+conclusion that it must be about five o'clock.
+
+"Where the devil are we?" asked the stout sportsman. He wiped his brow
+as he spoke, and propped himself against a tree in the field opposite
+his companion, feeling quite unequal to clearing the broad ditch that
+lay between them.
+
+"And you ask that question of _me_!" retorted the other, laughing from
+his bed of tall brown grasses on the top of the bank. He flung the end
+of his cigar into the ditch, exclaiming, "I swear by Saint Hubert that
+no one shall catch me risking myself again in a country that I don't
+know with a magistrate, even if, like you, my dear d'Albon, he happens
+to be an old schoolfellow."
+
+"Why, Philip, have you really forgotten your own language? You surely
+must have left your wits behind you in Siberia," said the stouter of the
+two, with a glance half-comic, half-pathetic at the guide-post distant
+about a hundred paces from them.
+
+"I understand," replied the one addressed as Philip. He snatched up his
+rifle, suddenly sprang to his feet, made but one jump of it into the
+field, and rushed off to the guide-post. "This way, d'Albon, here you
+are! left about!" he shouted, gesticulating in the direction of the
+highroad. "_To Baillet and l'Isle-Adam!_" he went on; "so if we go along
+here, we shall be sure to come upon the cross-road to Cassan."
+
+"Quite right, Colonel," said M. d'Albon, putting the cap with which he
+had been fanning himself back on his head.
+
+"Then _forward_! highly respected Councillor," returned Colonel Philip,
+whistling to the dogs, that seemed already to obey him rather than the
+magistrate their owner.
+
+"Are you aware, my lord Marquis, that two leagues yet remain before
+us?" inquired the malicious soldier. "That village down yonder must be
+Baillet."
+
+"Great heavens!" cried the Marquis d'Albon. "Go on to Cassan by all
+means, if you like; but if you do, you will go alone. I prefer to wait
+here, storm or no storm; you can send a horse for me from the chateau.
+You have been making game of me, Sucy. We were to have a nice day's
+sport by ourselves; we were not to go very far from Cassan, and go
+over ground that I knew. Pooh! instead of a day's fun, you have kept me
+running like a greyhound since four o'clock this morning, and nothing
+but a cup or two of milk by way of breakfast. Oh! if ever you find
+yourself in a court of law, I will take care that the day goes against
+you if you were in the right a hundred times over."
+
+The dejected sportsman sat himself down on one of the stumps at the
+foot of the guide-post, disencumbered himself of his rifle and empty
+game-bag, and heaved a prolonged sigh.
+
+"Oh, France, behold thy Deputies!" laughed Colonel de Sucy. "Poor old
+d'Albon; if you had spent six months at the other end of Siberia as I
+did..."
+
+He broke off, and his eyes sought the sky, as if the story of his
+troubles was a secret between himself and God.
+
+"Come, march!" he added. "If you once sit down, it is all over with
+you."
+
+"I can't help it, Philip! It is such an old habit in a magistrate! I am
+dead beat, upon my honor. If I had only bagged one hare though!"
+
+Two men more different are seldom seen together. The civilian, a man
+of forty-two, seemed scarcely more than thirty; while the soldier, at
+thirty years of age, looked to be forty at the least. Both wore the red
+rosette that proclaimed them to be officers of the Legion of Honor. A
+few locks of hair, mingled white and black, like a magpie's wing,
+had strayed from beneath the Colonel's cap; while thick, fair curls
+clustered about the magistrate's temples. The Colonel was tall, spare,
+dried up, but muscular; the lines in his pale face told a tale of
+vehement passions or of terrible sorrows; but his comrade's jolly
+countenance beamed with health, and would have done credit to an
+Epicurean. Both men were deeply sunburnt. Their high gaiters of brown
+leather carried souvenirs of every ditch and swamp that they crossed
+that day.
+
+"Come, come," cried M. de Sucy, "forward! One short hour's march, and we
+shall be at Cassan with a good dinner before us."
+
+"You never were in love, that is positive," returned the Councillor,
+with a comically piteous expression. "You are as inexorable as Article
+304 of the Penal Code!"
+
+Philip de Sucy shuddered violently. Deep lines appeared in his broad
+forehead, his face was overcast like the sky above them; but though
+his features seemed to contract with the pain of an intolerably bitter
+memory, no tears came to his eyes. Like all men of strong character, he
+possessed the power of forcing his emotions down into some inner depth,
+and, perhaps, like many reserved natures, he shrank from laying bare a
+wound too deep for any words of human speech, and winced at the thought
+of ridicule from those who do not care to understand. M. d'Albon was one
+of those who are keenly sensitive by nature to the distress of others,
+who feel at once the pain they have unwillingly given by some blunder.
+He respected his friend's mood, rose to his feet, forgot his weariness,
+and followed in silence, thoroughly annoyed with himself for having
+touched on a wound that seemed not yet healed.
+
+"Some day I will tell you my story," Philip said at last, wringing
+his friend's hand, while he acknowledged his dumb repentance with a
+heart-rending glance. "To-day I cannot."
+
+They walked on in silence. As the Colonel's distress passed off the
+Councillor's fatigue returned. Instinctively, or rather urged by
+weariness, his eyes explored the depths of the forest around them; he
+looked high and low among the trees, and gazed along the avenues, hoping
+to discover some dwelling where he might ask for hospitality. They
+reached a place where several roads met; and the Councillor, fancying
+that he saw a thin film of smoke rising through the trees, made a stand
+and looked sharply about him. He caught a glimpse of the dark green
+branches of some firs among the other forest trees, and finally, "A
+house! a house!" he shouted. No sailor could have raised a cry of "Land
+ahead!" more joyfully than he.
+
+He plunged at once into undergrowth, somewhat of the thickest; and the
+Colonel, who had fallen into deep musings, followed him unheedingly.
+
+"I would rather have an omelette here and home-made bread, and a chair
+to sit down in, than go further for a sofa, truffles, and Bordeaux wine
+at Cassan."
+
+This outburst of enthusiasm on the Councillor's part was caused by the
+sight of the whitened wall of a house in the distance, standing out in
+strong contrast against the brown masses of knotted tree-trunks in the
+forest.
+
+"Aha! This used to be a priory, I should say," the Marquis d'Albon cried
+once more, as they stood before a grim old gateway. Through the
+grating they could see the house itself standing in the midst of some
+considerable extent of park land; from the style of the architecture it
+appeared to have been a monastery once upon a time.
+
+"Those knowing rascals of monks knew how to choose a site!"
+
+This last exclamation was caused by the magistrate's amazement at the
+romantic hermitage before his eyes. The house had been built on a spot
+half-way up the hillside on the slope below the village of Nerville,
+which crowned the summit. A huge circle of great oak-trees, hundreds of
+years old, guarded the solitary place from intrusion. There appeared
+to be about forty acres of the park. The main building of the monastery
+faced the south, and stood in a space of green meadow, picturesquely
+intersected by several tiny clear streams, and by larger sheets of water
+so disposed as to have a natural effect. Shapely trees with contrasting
+foliage grew here and there. Grottos had been ingeniously contrived; and
+broad terraced walks, now in ruin, though the steps were broken and
+the balustrades eaten through with rust, gave to this sylvan Thebaid a
+certain character of its own. The art of man and the picturesqueness of
+nature had wrought together to produce a charming effect. Human passions
+surely could not cross that boundary of tall oak-trees which shut out
+the sounds of the outer world, and screened the fierce heat of the sun
+from this forest sanctuary.
+
+"What neglect!" said M. d'Albon to himself, after the first sense of
+delight in the melancholy aspect of the ruins in the landscape, which
+seemed blighted by a curse.
+
+It was like some haunted spot, shunned of men. The twisted ivy stems
+clambered everywhere, hiding everything away beneath a luxuriant green
+mantle. Moss and lichens, brown and gray, yellow and red, covered the
+trees with fantastic patches of color, grew upon the benches in the
+garden, overran the roof and the walls of the house. The window-sashes
+were weather-worn and warped with age, the balconies were dropping to
+pieces, the terraces in ruins. Here and there the folding shutters hung
+by a single hinge. The crazy doors would have given way at the first
+attempt to force an entrance.
+
+Out in the orchard the neglected fruit-trees were running to wood, the
+rambling branches bore no fruit save the glistening mistletoe berries,
+and tall plants were growing in the garden walks. All this forlornness
+shed a charm across the picture that wrought on the spectator's mind
+with an influence like that of some enchanting poem, filling his
+soul with dreamy fancies. A poet must have lingered there in deep and
+melancholy musings, marveling at the harmony of this wilderness, where
+decay had a certain grace of its own.
+
+In a moment a few gleams of sunlight struggled through a rift in the
+clouds, and a shower of colored light fell over the wild garden. The
+brown tiles of the roof glowed in the light, the mosses took bright
+hues, strange shadows played over the grass beneath the trees; the dead
+autumn tints grew vivid, bright unexpected contrasts were evoked by the
+light, every leaf stood out sharply in the clear, thin air. Then all
+at once the sunlight died away, and the landscape that seemed to have
+spoken grew silent and gloomy again, or rather, it took gray soft tones
+like the tenderest hues of autumn dusk.
+
+"It is the palace of the Sleeping Beauty," the Councillor said to
+himself (he had already begun to look at the place from the point of
+view of an owner of property). "Whom can the place belong to, I wonder.
+He must be a great fool not to live on such a charming little estate!"
+
+Just at that moment, a woman sprang out from under a walnut tree on
+the right-hand side of the gateway, and passed before the Councillor as
+noiselessly and swiftly as the shadow of a cloud. This apparition struck
+him dumb with amazement.
+
+"Hallo, d'Albon, what is the matter?" asked the Colonel.
+
+"I am rubbing my eyes to find out whether I am awake or asleep,"
+answered the magistrate, whose countenance was pressed against the
+grating in the hope of catching a second glimpse of the ghost.
+
+"In all probability she is under that fig-tree," he went on, indicating,
+for Philip's benefit, some branches that over-topped the wall on the
+left-hand side of the gateway.
+
+"She? Who?"
+
+"Eh! how should I know?" answered M. d'Albon. "A strange-looking woman
+sprang up there under my very eyes just now," he added, in a low voice;
+"she looked to me more like a ghost than a living being. She was so
+slender, light and shadowy that she might be transparent. Her face was
+as white as milk, her hair, her eyes, and her dress were black. She gave
+me a glance as she flitted by. I am not easily frightened, but that cold
+stony stare of hers froze the blood in my veins."
+
+"Was she pretty?" inquired Philip.
+
+"I don't know. I saw nothing but those eyes in her head."
+
+"The devil take dinner at Cassan!" exclaimed the Colonel; "let us stay
+here. I am as eager as a boy to see the inside of this queer place. The
+window-sashes are painted red, do you see? There is a red line round
+the panels of the doors and the edges of the shutters. It might be the
+devil's own dwelling; perhaps he took it over when the monks went out.
+Now, then, let us give chase to the black and white lady; come along!"
+cried Philip, with forced gaiety.
+
+He had scarcely finished speaking when the two sportsmen heard a cry as
+if some bird had been taken in a snare. They listened. There was a sound
+like the murmur of rippling water, as something forced its way through
+the bushes; but diligently as they lent their ears, there was no
+footfall on the path, the earth kept the secret of the mysterious
+woman's passage, if indeed she had moved from her hiding-place.
+
+"This is very strange!" cried Philip.
+
+Following the wall of the path, the two friends reached before long
+a forest road leading to the village of Chauvry; they went along this
+track in the direction of the highway to Paris, and reached another
+large gateway. Through the railings they had a complete view of
+the facade of the mysterious house. From this point of view, the
+dilapidation was still more apparent. Huge cracks had riven the walls
+of the main body of the house built round three sides of a square.
+Evidently the place was allowed to fall to ruin; there were holes in
+the roof, broken slates and tiles lay about below. Fallen fruit from the
+orchard trees was left to rot on the ground; a cow was grazing over
+the bowling-green and trampling the flowers in the garden beds; a goat
+browsed on the green grapes and young vine-shoots on the trellis.
+
+"It is all of a piece," remarked the Colonel. "The neglect is in a
+fashion systematic." He laid his hand on the chain of the bell-pull, but
+the bell had lost its clapper. The two friends heard no sound save the
+peculiar grating creak of the rusty spring. A little door in the wall
+beside the gateway, though ruinous, held good against all their efforts
+to force it open.
+
+"Oho! all this is growing very interesting," Philip said to his
+companion.
+
+"If I were not a magistrate," returned M. d'Albon, "I should think that
+the woman in black is a witch."
+
+The words were scarcely out of his mouth when the cow came up to the
+railings and held out her warm damp nose, as if she were glad of human
+society. Then a woman, if so indescribable a being could be called a
+woman, sprang up from the bushes, and pulled at the cord about the cow's
+neck. From beneath the crimson handkerchief about the woman's head, fair
+matted hair escaped, something as tow hangs about a spindle. She wore
+no kerchief at the throat. A coarse black-and-gray striped woolen
+petticoat, too short by several inches, left her legs bare. She might
+have belonged to some tribe of Redskins in Fenimore Cooper's novels; for
+her neck, arms, and ankles looked as if they had been painted brick-red.
+There was no spark of intelligence in her featureless face; her pale,
+bluish eyes looked out dull and expressionless from beneath the eyebrows
+with one or two straggling white hairs on them. Her teeth were prominent
+and uneven, but white as a dog's.
+
+"Hallo, good woman," called M. de Sucy.
+
+She came slowly up to the railing, and stared at the two sportsmen with
+a contorted smile painful to see.
+
+"Where are we? What is the name of the house yonder? Whom does it belong
+to? Who are you? Do you come from hereabouts?"
+
+To these questions, and to a host of others poured out in succession
+upon her by the two friends, she made no answer save gurgling sounds
+in the throat, more like animal sounds than anything uttered by a human
+voice.
+
+"Don't you see that she is deaf and dumb?" said M. d'Albon.
+
+"_Minorites_!" the peasant woman said at last.
+
+"Ah! she is right. The house looks as though it might once have been a
+Minorite convent," he went on.
+
+Again they plied the peasant woman with questions, but, like a wayward
+child, she colored up, fidgeted with her sabot, twisted the rope by
+which she held the cow that had fallen to grazing again, stared at the
+sportsmen, and scrutinized every article of clothing upon them; she
+gibbered, grunted, and clucked, but no articulate word did she utter.
+
+"Your name?" asked Philip, fixing her with his eyes as if he were trying
+to bewitch the woman.
+
+"Genevieve," she answered, with an empty laugh.
+
+"The cow is the most intelligent creature we have seen so far,"
+exclaimed the magistrate. "I shall fire a shot, that ought to bring
+somebody out."
+
+D'Albon had just taken up his rifle when the Colonel put out a hand
+to stop him, and pointed out the mysterious woman who had aroused such
+lively curiosity in them. She seemed to be absorbed in deep thought, as
+she went along a green alley some little distance away, so slowly that
+the friends had time to take a good look at her. She wore a threadbare
+black satin gown, her long hair curled thickly over her forehead, and
+fell like a shawl about her shoulders below her waist. Doubtless she was
+accustomed to the dishevelment of her locks, for she seldom put back
+the hair on either side of her brows; but when she did so, she shook her
+head with a sudden jerk that had not to be repeated to shake away
+the thick veil from her eyes or forehead. In everything that she
+did, moreover, there was a wonderful certainty in the working of the
+mechanism, an unerring swiftness and precision, like that of an animal,
+well-nigh marvelous in a woman.
+
+The two sportsmen were amazed to see her spring up into an apple-tree
+and cling to a bough lightly as a bird. She snatched at the fruit, ate
+it, and dropped to the ground with the same supple grace that charms
+us in a squirrel. The elasticity of her limbs took all appearance of
+awkwardness or effort from her movements. She played about upon the
+grass, rolling in it as a young child might have done; then, on a
+sudden, she lay still and stretched out her feet and hands, with the
+languid natural grace of a kitten dozing in the sun.
+
+There was a threatening growl of thunder far away, and at this she
+started up on all fours and listened, like a dog who hears a strange
+footstep. One result of this strange attitude was to separate her thick
+black hair into two masses, that fell away on either side of her face
+and left her shoulders bare; the two witnesses of this singular scene
+wondered at the whiteness of the skin that shone like a meadow daisy,
+and at the neck that indicated the perfection of the rest of her form.
+
+A wailing cry broke from her; she rose to her feet, and stood upright.
+Every successive movement was made so lightly, so gracefully, so easily,
+that she seemed to be no human being, but one of Ossian's maids of the
+mist. She went across the grass to one of the pools of water, deftly
+shook off her shoe, and seemed to enjoy dipping her foot, white as
+marble, in the spring; doubtless it pleased her to make the circling
+ripples, and watch them glitter like gems. She knelt down by the brink,
+and played there like a child, dabbling her long tresses in the water,
+and flinging them loose again to see the water drip from the ends, like
+a string of pearls in the sunless light.
+
+"She is mad!" cried the Councillor.
+
+A hoarse cry rang through the air; it came from Genevieve, and seemed
+to be meant for the mysterious woman. She rose to her feet in a moment,
+flinging back the hair from her face, and then the Colonel and d'Albon
+could see her features distinctly. As soon as she saw the two friends
+she bounded to the railings with the swiftness of a fawn.
+
+"_Farewell_!" she said in low, musical tones, but they could not
+discover the least trace of feeling, the least idea in the sweet sounds
+that they had awaited impatiently.
+
+M. d'Albon admired the long lashes, the thick, dark eyebrows, the
+dazzling fairness of skin untinged by any trace of red. Only the
+delicate blue veins contrasted with that uniform whiteness.
+
+But when the Marquis turned to communicate his surprise at the sight of
+so strange an apparition, he saw the Colonel stretched on the grass like
+one dead. M. d'Albon fired his gun into the air, shouted for help, and
+tried to raise his friend. At the sound of the shot, the strange lady,
+who had stood motionless by the gate, fled away, crying out like a
+wounded wild creature, circling round and round in the meadow, with
+every sign of unspeakable terror.
+
+M. d'Albon heard a carriage rolling along the road to l'Isle-Adam, and
+waved his handkerchief to implore help. The carriage immediately came
+towards the Minorite convent, and M. d'Albon recognized neighbors, M.
+and Mme. de Grandville, who hastened to alight and put their carriage at
+his disposal. Colonel de Sucy inhaled the salts which Mme. de Grandville
+happened to have with her; he opened his eyes, looked towards the
+mysterious figure that still fled wailing through the meadow, and a
+faint cry of horror broke from him; he closed his eyes again, with
+a dumb gesture of entreaty to his friends to take him away from this
+scene. M. and Mme. de Grandville begged the Councillor to make use of
+their carriage, adding very obligingly that they themselves would walk.
+
+"Who can the lady be?" inquired the magistrate, looking towards the
+strange figure.
+
+"People think that she comes from Moulins," answered M. de Grandville.
+"She is a Comtesse de Vandieres; she is said to be mad; but as she has
+only been here for two months, I cannot vouch for the truth of all this
+hearsay talk."
+
+M. d'Albon thanked M. and Mme. de Grandville, and they set out for
+Cassan.
+
+"It is she!" cried Philip, coming to himself.
+
+"She? who?" asked d'Albon.
+
+"Stephanie.... Ah! dead and yet living still; still alive, but her mind
+is gone! I thought the sight would kill me."
+
+The prudent magistrate, recognizing the gravity of the crisis through
+which his friend was passing, refrained from asking questions or
+exciting him further, and grew impatient of the length of the way to the
+chateau, for the change wrought in the Colonel's face alarmed him. He
+feared lest the Countess' terrible disease had communicated itself to
+Philip's brain. When they reached the avenue at l'Isle-Adam, d'Albon
+sent the servant for the local doctor, so that the Colonel had scarcely
+been laid in bed before the surgeon was beside him.
+
+"If Monsieur le Colonel had not been fasting, the shock must have killed
+him," pronounced the leech. "He was over-tired, and that saved him," and
+with a few directions as to the patient's treatment, he went to prepare
+a composing draught himself. M. de Sucy was better the next morning, but
+the doctor had insisted on sitting up all night with him.
+
+"I confess, Monsieur le Marquis," the surgeon said, "that I feared for
+the brain. M. de Sucy has had some very violent shock; he is a man of
+strong passions, but, with his temperament, the first shock decides
+everything. He will very likely be out of danger to-morrow."
+
+The doctor was perfectly right. The next day the patient was allowed to
+see his friend.
+
+"I want you to do something for me, dear d'Albon," Philip said, grasping
+his friend's hand. "Hasten at once to the Minorite convent, find out
+everything about the lady whom we saw there, and come back as soon as
+you can; I shall count the minutes till I see you again."
+
+M. d'Albon called for his horse, and galloped over to the old monastery.
+When he reached the gateway he found some one standing there, a tall,
+spare man with a kindly face, who answered in the affirmative when he
+was asked if he lived in the ruined house. M. d'Albon explained his
+errand.
+
+"Why, then, it must have been you, sir, who fired that unlucky shot! You
+all but killed my poor invalid."
+
+"Eh! I fired into the air!"
+
+"If you had actually hit Madame la Comtesse, you would have done less
+harm to her."
+
+"Well, well, then, we can neither of us complain, for the sight of the
+Countess all but killed my friend, M. de Sucy."
+
+"The Baron de Sucy, is it possible?" cried the doctor, clasping his
+hands. "Has he been in Russia? was he in the Beresina?"
+
+"Yes," answered d'Albon. "He was taken prisoner by the Cossacks and sent
+to Siberia. He has not been back in this country a twelvemonth."
+
+"Come in, monsieur," said the other, and he led the way to a
+drawing-room on the ground-floor. Everything in the room showed signs of
+capricious destruction.
+
+Valuable china jars lay in fragments on either side of a clock beneath a
+glass shade, which had escaped. The silk hangings about the windows were
+torn to rags, while the muslin curtains were untouched.
+
+"You see about you the havoc wrought by a charming being to whom I
+have dedicated my life. She is my niece; and though medical science
+is powerless in her case, I hope to restore her to reason, though the
+method which I am trying is, unluckily, only possible to the wealthy."
+
+Then, like all who live much alone and daily bear the burden of a heavy
+trouble, he fell to talk with the magistrate. This is the story that he
+told, set in order, and with the many digressions made by both teller
+and hearer omitted.
+
+
+
+When, at nine o'clock at night, on the 28th of November 1812, Marshal
+Victor abandoned the heights of Studzianka, which he had held through
+the day, he left a thousand men behind with instructions to protect,
+till the last possible moment, the two pontoon bridges over the Beresina
+that still held good. This rear guard was to save if possible an
+appalling number of stragglers, so numbed with the cold, that they
+obstinately refused to leave the baggage-wagons. The heroism of the
+generous band was doomed to fail; for, unluckily, the men who poured
+down to the eastern bank of the Beresina found carriages, caissons, and
+all kinds of property which the Army had been forced to abandon during
+its passage on the 27th and 28th days of November. The poor, half-frozen
+wretches, sunk almost to the level of brutes, finding such unhoped-for
+riches, bivouacked in the deserted space, laid hands on the military
+stores, improvised huts out of the material, lighted fires with anything
+that would burn, cut up the carcasses of the horses for food, tore out
+the linings of the carriages, wrapped themselves in them, and lay
+down to sleep instead of crossing the Beresina in peace under cover of
+night--the Beresina that even then had proved, by incredible fatality,
+so disastrous to the Army. Such apathy on the part of the poor fellows
+can only be understood by those who remember tramping across those vast
+deserts of snow, with nothing to quench their thirst but snow, snow for
+their bed, snow as far as the horizon on every side, and no food but
+snow, a little frozen beetroot, horseflesh, or a handful of meal.
+
+The miserable creatures were dropping down, overcome by hunger, thirst,
+weariness, and sleep, when they reached the shores of the Beresina and
+found fuel and fire and victuals, countless wagons and tents, a whole
+improvised town, in short. The whole village of Studzianka had been
+removed piecemeal from the heights of the plain, and the very perils and
+miseries of this dangerous and doleful habitation smiled invitingly to
+the wayfarers, who beheld no prospect beyond it but the awful Russian
+deserts. A huge hospice, in short, was erected for twenty hours of
+existence. Only one thought--the thought of rest--appealed to men weary
+of life or rejoicing in unlooked-for comfort.
+
+They lay right in the line of fire from the cannon of the Russian
+left; but to that vast mass of human creatures, a patch upon the
+snow, sometimes dark, sometimes breaking into flame, the indefatigable
+grapeshot was but one discomfort the more. For them it was only a storm,
+and they paid the less attention to the bolts that fell among them
+because there were none to strike down there save dying men, the
+wounded, or perhaps the dead. Stragglers came up in little bands at
+every moment. These walking corpses instantly separated, and wandered
+begging from fire to fire; and meeting, for the most part, with
+refusals, banded themselves together again, and took by force what
+they could not otherwise obtain. They were deaf to the voices of their
+officers prophesying death on the morrow, and spent the energy required
+to cross the swamp in building shelters for the night and preparing a
+meal that often proved fatal. The coming death no longer seemed an evil,
+for it gave them an hour of slumber before it came. Hunger and thirst
+and cold--these were evils, but not death.
+
+At last wood and fuel and canvas and shelters failed, and hideous brawls
+began between destitute late comers and the rich already in possession
+of a lodging. The weaker were driven away, until a few last fugitives
+before the Russian advance were obliged to make their bed in the snow,
+and lay down to rise no more.
+
+Little by little the mass of half-dead humanity became so dense, so
+deaf, so torpid,--or perhaps it should be said so happy--that Marshal
+Victor, their heroic defender against twenty thousand Russians under
+Wittgenstein, was actually compelled to cut his way by force through
+this forest of men, so as to cross the Beresina with the five thousand
+heroes whom he was leading to the Emperor. The miserable creatures
+preferred to be trampled and crushed to death rather than stir from
+their places, and died without a sound, smiling at the dead ashes of
+their fires, forgetful of France.
+
+Not before ten o'clock that night did the Duc de Belluno reach the other
+side of the river. Before committing his men to the pontoon bridges that
+led to Zembin, he left the fate of the rearguard at Studzianka in Eble's
+hands, and to Eble the survivors of the calamities of the Beresina owed
+their lives.
+
+About midnight, the great General, followed by a courageous officer,
+came out of his little hut by the bridge, and gazed at the spectacle
+of this camp between the bank of the Beresina and the Borizof road to
+Studzianka. The thunder of the Russian cannonade had ceased. Here
+and there faces that had nothing human about them were lighted up by
+countless fires that seemed to grow pale in the glare of the snowfields,
+and to give no light. Nearly thirty thousand wretches, belonging to
+every nation that Napoleon had hurled upon Russia, lay there hazarding
+their lives with the indifference of brute beasts.
+
+"We have all these to save," the General said to his subordinate.
+"To-morrow morning the Russians will be in Studzianka. The moment they
+come up we shall have to set fire to the bridge; so pluck up heart,
+my boy! Make your way out and up yonder through them, and tell General
+Fournier that he has barely time to evacuate his post and cut his way
+through to the bridge. As soon as you have seen him set out, follow
+him down, take some able-bodied men, and set fire to the tents, wagons,
+caissons, carriages, anything and everything, without pity, and drive
+these fellows on to the bridge. Compel everything that walks on two legs
+to take refuge on the other bank. We must set fire to the camp; it
+is our last resource. If Berthier had let me burn those d----d wagons
+sooner, no lives need have been lost in the river except my poor
+pontooners, my fifty heroes, who saved the Army, and will be forgotten."
+
+The General passed his hand over his forehead and said no more. He felt
+that Poland would be his tomb, and foresaw that afterwards no voice
+would be raised to speak for the noble fellows who had plunged into the
+stream--into the waters of the Beresina!--to drive in the piles for the
+bridges. And, indeed, only one of them is living now, or, to be more
+accurate, starving, utterly forgotten in a country village![*] The
+brave officer had scarcely gone a hundred paces towards Studzianka, when
+General Eble roused some of his patient pontooners, and began his work
+of mercy by setting fire to the camp on the side nearest the bridge, so
+compelling the sleepers to rise and cross the Beresina. Meanwhile the
+young aide-de-camp, not without difficulty, reached the one wooden house
+yet left standing in Studzianka.
+
+     [*] This story can be found in _The Country Parson_.--eBook
+     preparers.
+
+"So the box is pretty full, is it, messmate?" he said to a man whom he
+found outside.
+
+"You will be a knowing fellow if you manage to get inside," the officer
+returned, without turning round or stopping his occupation of hacking at
+the woodwork of the house with his sabre.
+
+"Philip, is that you?" cried the aide-de-camp, recognizing the voice of
+one of his friends.
+
+"Yes. Aha! is it you, old fellow?" returned M. de Sucy, looking round at
+the aide-de-camp, who like himself was not more than twenty-three years
+old. "I fancied you were on the other side of this confounded river.
+Do you come to bring us sweetmeats for dessert? You will get a warm
+welcome," he added, as he tore away a strip of bark from the wood and
+gave it to his horse by way of fodder.
+
+"I am looking for your commandant. General Eble has sent me to tell him
+to file off to Zembin. You have only just time to cut your way through
+that mass of dead men; as soon as you get through, I am going to set
+fire to the place to make them move--"
+
+"You almost make me feel warm! Your news has put me in a fever; I have
+two friends to bring through. Ah! but for those marmots, I should have
+been dead before now, old fellow. On their account I am taking care
+of my horse instead of eating him. But have you a crust about you, for
+pity's sake? It is thirty hours since I have stowed any victuals. I have
+been fighting like a madman to keep up a little warmth in my body and
+what courage I have left."
+
+"Poor Philip! I have nothing--not a scrap!--But is your General in
+there?"
+
+"Don't attempt to go in. The barn is full of our wounded. Go up a bit
+higher, and you will see a sort of pig-sty to the right--that is where
+the General is. Good-bye, my dear fellow. If ever we meet again in a
+quadrille in a ballroom in Paris--"
+
+He did not finish the sentence, for the treachery of the northeast wind
+that whistled about them froze Major Philip's lips, and the aide-de-camp
+kept moving for fear of being frost-bitten. Silence soon prevailed,
+scarcely broken by the groans of the wounded in the barn, or the stifled
+sounds made by M. de Sucy's horse crunching on the frozen bark with
+famished eagerness. Philip thrust his sabre into the sheath, caught at
+the bridle of the precious animal that he had managed to keep for so
+long, and drew her away from the miserable fodder that she was bolting
+with apparent relish.
+
+"Come along, Bichette! come along! It lies with you now, my beauty, to
+save Stephanie's life. There, wait a little longer, and they will let us
+lie down and die, no doubt;" and Philip, wrapped in a pelisse, to which
+doubtless he owed his life and energies, began to run, stamping his feet
+on the frozen snow to keep them warm. He was scarce five hundred paces
+away before he saw a great fire blazing on the spot where he had left
+his carriage that morning with an old soldier to guard it. A dreadful
+misgiving seized upon him. Many a man under the influence of a powerful
+feeling during the Retreat summoned up energy for his friend's sake when
+he would not have exerted himself to save his own life; so it was with
+Philip. He soon neared a hollow, where he had left a carriage sheltered
+from the cannonade, a carriage that held a young woman, his playmate in
+childhood, dearer to him than any one else on earth.
+
+Some thirty stragglers were sitting round a tremendous blaze, which
+they kept up with logs of wood, planks wrenched from the floors of the
+caissons, and wheels, and panels from carriage bodies. These had been,
+doubtless, among the last to join the sea of fires, huts, and human
+faces that filled the great furrow in the land between Studzianka and
+the fatal river, a restless living sea of almost imperceptibly moving
+figures, that sent up a smothered hum of sound blended with frightful
+shrieks. It seemed that hunger and despair had driven these forlorn
+creatures to take forcible possession of the carriage, for the old
+General and his young wife, whom they had found warmly wrapped in
+pelisses and traveling cloaks, were now crouching on the earth beside
+the fire, and one of the carriage doors was broken.
+
+As soon as the group of stragglers round the fire heard the footfall
+of the Major's horse, a frenzied yell of hunger went up from them. "A
+horse!" they cried. "A horse!"
+
+All the voices went up as one voice.
+
+"Back! back! Look out!" shouted two or three of them, leveling their
+muskets at the animal.
+
+"I will pitch you neck and crop into your fire, you blackguards!" cried
+Philip, springing in front of the mare. "There are dead horses lying up
+yonder; go and look for them!"
+
+"What a rum customer the officer is!--Once, twice, will you get out of
+the way?" returned a giant grenadier. "You won't? All right then, just
+as you please."
+
+A woman's shriek rang out above the report. Luckily, none of the bullets
+hit Philip; but poor Bichette lay in the agony of death. Three of the
+men came up and put an end to her with thrusts of the bayonet.
+
+"Cannibals! leave me the rug and my pistols," cried Philip in
+desperation.
+
+"Oh! the pistols if you like; but as for the rug, there is a fellow
+yonder who has had nothing to wet his whistle these two days, and is
+shivering in his coat of cobwebs, and that's our General."
+
+Philips looked up and saw a man with worn-out shoes and a dozen rents in
+his trousers; the only covering for his head was a ragged foraging
+cap, white with rime. He said no more after that, but snatched up his
+pistols.
+
+Five of the men dragged the mare to the fire, and began to cut up the
+carcass as dexterously as any journeymen butchers in Paris. The scraps
+of meat were distributed and flung upon the coals, and the whole process
+was magically swift. Philip went over to the woman who had given the cry
+of terror when she recognized his danger, and sat down by her side. She
+sat motionless upon a cushion taken from the carriage, warming herself
+at the blaze; she said no word, and gazed at him without a smile. He
+saw beside her the soldier whom he had left mounting guard over the
+carriage; the poor fellow had been wounded; he had been overpowered by
+numbers, and forced to surrender to the stragglers who had set upon him,
+and, like a dog who defends his master's dinner till the last moment,
+he had taken his share of the spoil, and had made a sort of cloak for
+himself out of a sheet. At that particular moment he was busy toasting
+a piece of horseflesh, and in his face the major saw a gleeful
+anticipation of the coming feast.
+
+The Comte de Vandieres, who seemed to have grown quite childish in the
+last few days, sat on a cushion close to his wife, and stared into
+the fire. He was only just beginning to shake off his torpor under
+the influence of the warmth. He had been no more affected by Philip's
+arrival and danger than by the fight and subsequent pillaging of his
+traveling carriage.
+
+At first Sucy caught the young Countess' hand in his, trying to express
+his affection for her, and the pain that it gave him to see her reduced
+like this to the last extremity of misery; but he said nothing as he
+sat by her side on the thawing heap of snow, he gave himself up to the
+pleasure of the sensation of warmth, forgetful of danger, forgetful of
+all things else in the world. In spite of himself his face expanded with
+an almost fatuous expression of satisfaction, and he waited impatiently
+till the scrap of horseflesh that had fallen to his soldier's share
+should be cooked. The smell of charred flesh stimulated his hunger.
+Hunger clamored within and silenced his heart, his courage, and his
+love. He coolly looked round on the results of the spoliation of his
+carriage. Not a man seated round the fire but had shared the booty, the
+rugs, cushions, pelisses, dresses,--articles of clothing that belonged
+to the Count and Countess or to himself. Philip turned to see if
+anything worth taking was left in the berline. He saw by the light of
+the flames, gold, and diamonds, and silver lying scattered about; no one
+had cared to appropriate the least particle. There was something hideous
+in the silence among those human creatures round the fire; none of them
+spoke, none of them stirred, save to do such things as each considered
+necessary for his own comfort.
+
+It was a grotesque misery. The men's faces were wrapped and disfigured
+with the cold, and plastered over with a layer of mud; you could see
+the thickness of the mask by the channel traced down their cheeks by
+the tears that ran from their eyes, and their long slovenly-kept beards
+added to the hideousness of their appearance. Some were wrapped round in
+women's shawls, others in horse-cloths, dirty blankets, rags stiffened
+with melting hoar-frost; here and there a man wore a boot on one foot
+and a shoe on the other, in fact, there was not one of them but wore
+some ludicrously odd costume. But the men themselves with such matter
+for jest about them were gloomy and taciturn.
+
+The silence was unbroken save by the crackling of the wood, the roaring
+of the flames, the far-off hum of the camp, and the sound of sabres
+hacking at the carcass of the mare. Some of the hungriest of the men
+were still cutting tidbits for themselves. A few miserable creatures,
+more weary than the others, slept outright; and if they happened to roll
+into the fire, no one pulled them back. With cut-and-dried logic their
+fellows argued that if they were not dead, a scorching ought to be
+sufficient warning to quit and seek out more comfortable quarters. If
+the poor wretch woke to find himself on fire, he was burned to death,
+and nobody pitied him. Here and there the men exchanged glances, as if
+to excuse their indifference by the carelessness of the rest; the thing
+happened twice under the Countess' eyes, and she uttered no sound. When
+all the scraps of horseflesh had been broiled upon the coals, they were
+devoured with a ravenous greediness that would have been disgusting in
+wild beasts.
+
+"And now we have seen thirty infantrymen on one horse for the first
+time in our lives!" cried the grenadier who had shot the mare, the one
+solitary joke that sustained the Frenchmen's reputation for wit.
+
+Before long the poor fellows huddled themselves up in their clothes,
+and lay down on planks of timber, on anything but the bare snow, and
+slept--heedless of the morrow. Major de Sucy having warmed himself and
+satisfied his hunger, fought in vain against the drowsiness that weighed
+upon his eyes. During this brief struggle he gazed at the sleeping girl
+who had turned her face to the fire, so that he could see her closed
+eyelids and part of her forehead. She was wrapped round in a furred
+pelisse and a coarse horseman's cloak, her head lay on a blood-stained
+cushion; a tall astrakhan cap tied over her head by a handkerchief
+knotted under the chin protected her face as much as possible from the
+cold, and she had tucked up her feet in the cloak. As she lay curled up
+in this fashion, she bore no likeness to any creature.
+
+Was this the lowest of camp-followers? Was this the charming woman, the
+pride of her lover's heart, the queen of many a Parisian ballroom? Alas!
+even for the eyes of this most devoted friend, there was no discernible
+trace of womanhood in that bundle of rags and linen, and the cold was
+mightier than the love in a woman's heart.
+
+Then for the major the husband and wife came to be like two distant dots
+seen through the thick veil that the most irresistible kind of slumber
+spread over his eyes. It all seemed to be part of a dream--the leaping
+flames, the recumbent figures, the awful cold that lay in wait for them
+three paces away from the warmth of the fire that glowed for a little
+while. One thought that could not be stifled haunted Philip--"If I go to
+sleep, we shall all die; I will not sleep," he said to himself.
+
+He slept. After an hour's slumber M. de Sucy was awakened by a hideous
+uproar and the sound of an explosion. The remembrance of his duty, of
+the danger of his beloved, rushed upon his mind with a sudden shock. He
+uttered a cry like the growl of a wild beast. He and his servant stood
+upright above the rest. They saw a sea of fire in the darkness, and
+against it moving masses of human figures. Flames were devouring the
+huts and tents. Despairing shrieks and yelling cries reached their
+ears; they saw thousands upon thousands of wild and desperate faces;
+and through this inferno a column of soldiers was cutting its way to the
+bridge, between the two hedges of dead bodies.
+
+"Our rearguard is in full retreat," cried the major. "There is no hope
+left!"
+
+"I have spared your traveling carriage, Philip," said a friendly voice.
+
+Sucy turned and saw the young aide-de-camp by the light of the flames.
+
+"Oh, it is all over with us," he answered. "They have eaten my horse.
+And how am I to make this sleepy general and his wife stir a step?"
+
+"Take a brand, Philip, and threaten them."
+
+"Threaten the Countess?..."
+
+"Good-bye," cried the aide-de-camp; "I have only just time to get across
+that unlucky river, and go I must, there is my mother in France!... What
+a night! This herd of wretches would rather lie here in the snow, and
+most of them would sooner be burned alive than get up.... It is four
+o'clock, Philip! In two hours the Russians will begin to move, and you
+will see the Beresina covered with corpses a second time, I can tell
+you. You haven't a horse, and you cannot carry the Countess, so come
+along with me," he went on, taking his friend by the arm.
+
+"My dear fellow, how am I to leave Stephanie?"
+
+Major de Sucy grasped the Countess, set her on her feet, and shook her
+roughly; he was in despair. He compelled her to wake, and she stared at
+him with dull fixed eyes.
+
+"Stephanie, we must go, or we shall die here!"
+
+For all answer, the Countess tried to sink down again and sleep on the
+earth. The aide-de-camp snatched a brand from the fire and shook it in
+her face.
+
+"We must save her in spite of herself," cried Philip, and he carried her
+in his arms to the carriage. He came back to entreat his friend to help
+him, and the two young men took the old general and put him beside his
+wife, without knowing whether he were alive or dead. The major rolled
+the men over as they crouched on the earth, took away the plundered
+clothing, and heaped it upon the husband and wife, then he flung some of
+the broiled fragments of horseflesh into a corner of the carriage.
+
+"Now, what do you mean to do?" asked the aide-de-camp.
+
+"Drag them along!" answered Sucy.
+
+"You are mad!"
+
+"You are right!" exclaimed Philip, folding his arms on his breast.
+
+Suddenly a desperate plan occurred to him.
+
+"Look you here!" he said, grasping his sentinel by the unwounded arm.
+"I leave her in your care for one hour. Bear in mind that you must die
+sooner than let any one, no matter whom, come near the carriage!"
+
+The major seized a handful of the lady's diamonds, drew his sabre, and
+violently battered those who seemed to him to be the bravest among the
+sleepers. By this means he succeeded in rousing the gigantic grenadier
+and a couple of men whose rank and regiment were undiscoverable.
+
+"It is all up with us!" he cried.
+
+"Of course it is," returned the grenadier; "but that is all one to me."
+
+"Very well then, if die you must, isn't it better to sell your life for
+a pretty woman, and stand a chance of going back to France again?"
+
+"I would rather go to sleep," said one of the men, dropping down
+into the snow; "and if you worry me again, major, I shall stick my
+toasting-iron into your body."
+
+"What is it all about, sir?" asked the grenadier. "The man's drunk. He
+is a Parisian, and likes to lie in the lap of luxury."
+
+"You shall have these, good fellow," said the major, holding out a
+riviere of diamonds, "if you will follow me and fight like a madman. The
+Russians are not ten minutes away; they have horses; we will march up to
+the nearest battery and carry off two stout ones."
+
+"How about the sentinels, major?"
+
+"One of us three--" he began; then he turned from the soldier and looked
+at the aide-de-camp.--"You are coming, aren't you, Hippolyte?"
+
+Hippolyte nodded assent.
+
+"One of us," the major went on, "will look after the sentry. Besides,
+perhaps those blessed Russians are also fast asleep."
+
+"All right, major; you are a good sort! But will you take me in your
+carriage?" asked the grenadier.
+
+"Yes, if you don't leave your bones up yonder.--If I come to grief,
+promise me, you two, that you will do everything in your power to save
+the Countess."
+
+"All right," said the grenadier.
+
+They set out for the Russian lines, taking the direction of the
+batteries that had so cruelly raked the mass of miserable creatures
+huddled together by the river bank. A few minutes later the hoofs of two
+galloping horses rang on the frozen snow, and the awakened battery fired
+a volley that passed over the heads of the sleepers; the hoof-beats
+rattled so fast on the iron ground that they sounded like the hammering
+in a smithy. The generous aide-de-camp had fallen; the stalwart
+grenadier had come off safe and sound; and Philip himself received
+a bayonet thrust in the shoulder while defending his friend.
+Notwithstanding his wound, he clung to his horse's mane, and gripped him
+with his knees so tightly that the animal was held as in a vise.
+
+"God be praised!" cried the major, when he saw his soldier still on the
+spot, and the carriage standing where he had left it.
+
+"If you do the right thing by me, sir, you will get me the cross for
+this. We have treated them to a sword dance to a pretty tune from the
+rifle, eh?"
+
+"We have done nothing yet! Let us put the horses in. Take hold of these
+cords."
+
+"They are not long enough."
+
+"All right, grenadier, just go and overhaul those fellows sleeping
+there; take their shawls, sheets, anything--"
+
+"I say! the rascal is dead," cried the grenadier, as he plundered the
+first man who came to hand. "Why, they are all dead! how queer!"
+
+"All of them?"
+
+"Yes, every one. It looks as though the horseflesh _a la neige_ was
+indigestible."
+
+Philip shuddered at the words. The night had grown twice as cold as
+before.
+
+"Great heaven! to lose her when I have saved her life a score of times
+already."
+
+He shook the Countess, "Stephanie! Stephanie!" he cried.
+
+She opened her eyes.
+
+"We are saved, madame!"
+
+"Saved!" she echoed, and fell back again.
+
+The horses were harnessed after a fashion at last. The major held his
+sabre in his unwounded hand, took the reins in the other, saw to his
+pistols, and sprang on one of the horses, while the grenadier mounted
+the other. The old sentinel had been pushed into the carriage, and lay
+across the knees of the general and the Countess; his feet were frozen.
+Urged on by blows from the flat of the sabre, the horses dragged the
+carriage at a mad gallop down to the plain, where endless difficulties
+awaited them. Before long it became almost impossible to advance without
+crushing sleeping men, women, and even children at every step, all of
+whom declined to stir when the grenadier awakened them. In vain M. de
+Sucy looked for the track that the rearguard had cut through this dense
+crowd of human beings; there was no more sign of their passage than the
+wake of a ship in the sea. The horses could only move at a foot-pace,
+and were stopped most frequently by soldiers, who threatened to kill
+them.
+
+"Do you mean to get there?" asked the grenadier.
+
+"Yes, if it costs every drop of blood in my body! if it costs the whole
+world!" the major answered.
+
+"Forward, then!... You can't have the omelette without breaking eggs."
+And the grenadier of the Garde urged on the horses over the prostrate
+bodies, and upset the bivouacs; the blood-stained wheels ploughing that
+field of faces left a double furrow of dead. But in justice it should be
+said that he never ceased to thunder out his warning cry, "Carrion! look
+out!"
+
+"Poor wretches!" exclaimed the major.
+
+"Bah! That way, or the cold, or the cannon!" said the grenadier, goading
+on the horses with the point of his sword.
+
+Then came the catastrophe, which must have happened sooner but for
+miraculous good fortune; the carriage was overturned, and all further
+progress was stopped at once.
+
+"I expected as much!" exclaimed the imperturbable grenadier. "Oho! he is
+dead!" he added, looking at his comrade.
+
+"Poor Laurent!" said the major.
+
+"Laurent! Wasn't he in the Fifth Chasseurs?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"My own cousin.--Pshaw! this beastly life is not so pleasant that one
+need be sorry for him as things go."
+
+But all this time the carriage lay overturned, and the horses were only
+released after great and irreparable loss of time. The shock had been
+so violent that the Countess had been awakened by it, and the subsequent
+commotion aroused her from her stupor. She shook off the rugs and rose.
+
+"Where are we, Philip?" she asked in musical tones, as she looked about
+her.
+
+"About five hundred paces from the bridge. We are just about to cross
+the Beresina. When we are on the other side, Stephanie, I will not tease
+you any more; I will let you go to sleep; we shall be in safety, we can
+go on to Wilna in peace. God grant that you may never know what your
+life has cost!"
+
+"You are wounded!"
+
+"A mere trifle."
+
+The hour of doom had come. The Russian cannon announced the day. The
+Russians were in possession of Studzianka, and thence were raking the
+plain with grapeshot; and by the first dim light of the dawn the major
+saw two columns moving and forming above the heights. Then a cry of
+horror went up from the crowd, and in a moment every one sprang to his
+feet. Each instinctively felt his danger, and all made a rush for the
+bridge, surging towards it like a wave.
+
+Then the Russians came down upon them, swift as a conflagration. Men,
+women, children, and horses all crowded towards the river. Luckily for
+the major and the Countess, they were still at some distance from the
+bank. General Eble had just set fire to the bridge on the other side;
+but in spite of all the warnings given to those who rushed towards the
+chance of salvation, not one among them could or would draw back. The
+overladen bridge gave way, and not only so, the impetus of the frantic
+living wave towards that fatal bank was such that a dense crowd of human
+beings was thrust into the water as if by an avalanche. The sound of a
+single human cry could not be distinguished; there was a dull crash as
+if an enormous stone had fallen into the water--and the Beresina was
+covered with corpses.
+
+The violent recoil of those in front, striving to escape this death,
+brought them into hideous collision with those behind then, who were
+pressing towards the bank, and many were suffocated and crushed. The
+Comte and Comtesse de Vandieres owed their lives to the carriage. The
+horses that had trampled and crushed so many dying men were crushed and
+trampled to death in their turn by the human maelstrom which eddied from
+the bank. Sheer physical strength saved the major and the grenadier.
+They killed others in self-defence. That wild sea of human faces and
+living bodies, surging to and fro as by one impulse, left the bank
+of the Beresina clear for a few moments. The multitude had hurled
+themselves back on the plain. Some few men sprang down from the banks
+of the river, not so much with any hope of reaching the opposite shore,
+which for them meant France, as from dread of the wastes of Siberia.
+For some bold spirits despair became a panoply. An officer leaped from
+hummock to hummock of ice, and reached the other shore; one of the
+soldiers scrambled over miraculously on the piles of dead bodies and
+drift ice. But the immense multitude left behind saw at last that the
+Russians would not slaughter twenty thousand unarmed men, too numb
+with the cold to attempt to resist them, and each awaited his fate
+with dreadful apathy. By this time the major and his grenadier, the
+old general and his wife, were left to themselves not very far from
+the place where the bridge had been. All four stood dry-eyed and silent
+among the heaps of dead. A few able-bodied men and one or two officers,
+who had recovered all their energy at this crisis, gathered about them.
+The group was sufficiently large; there were about fifty men all told.
+A couple of hundred paces from them stood the wreck of the artillery
+bridge, which had broken down the day before; the major saw this, and
+"Let us make a raft!" he cried.
+
+The words were scarcely out of his mouth before the whole group hurried
+to the ruins of the bridge. A crowd of men began to pick up iron clamps
+and to hunt for planks and ropes--for all the materials for a raft, in
+short. A score of armed men and officers, under command of the major,
+stood on guard to protect the workers from any desperate attempt on the
+part of the multitude if they should guess their design. The longing for
+freedom, which inspires prisoners to accomplish impossibilities, cannot
+be compared with the hope which lent energy at that moment to these
+forlorn Frenchmen.
+
+"The Russians are upon us! Here are the Russians!" the guard shouted to
+the workers.
+
+The timbers creaked, the raft grew larger, stronger, and more
+substantial. Generals, colonels, and common soldiers all alike bent
+beneath the weight of wagon-wheels, chains, coils of rope, and planks of
+timber; it was a modern realization of the building of Noah's ark. The
+young Countess, sitting by her husband's side, looked on, regretful that
+she could do nothing to aide the workers, though she helped to knot the
+lengths of rope together.
+
+At last the raft was finished. Forty men launched it out into the river,
+while ten of the soldiers held the ropes that must keep it moored to
+the shore. The moment that they saw their handiwork floating on
+the Beresina, they sprang down onto it from the bank with callous
+selfishness. The major, dreading the frenzy of the first rush, held back
+Stephanie and the general; but a shudder ran through him when he saw the
+landing place black with people, and men crowding down like playgoers
+into the pit of a theatre.
+
+"It was I who thought of the raft, you savages!" he cried. "I have saved
+your lives, and you will not make room for me!"
+
+A confused murmur was the only answer. The men at the edge took up stout
+poles, trust them against the bank with all their might, so as to shove
+the raft out and gain an impetus at its starting upon a journey across a
+sea of floating ice and dead bodies towards the other shore.
+
+"_Tonnerre de Dieu_! I will knock some of you off into the water if
+you don't make room for the major and his two companions," shouted the
+grenadier. He raised his sabre threateningly, delayed the departure, and
+made the men stand closer together, in spite of threatening yells.
+
+"I shall fall in!... I shall go overboard!..." his fellows shouted.
+
+"Let us start! Put off!"
+
+The major gazed with tearless eyes at the woman he loved; an impulse of
+sublime resignation raised her eyes to heaven.
+
+"To die with you!" she said.
+
+In the situation of the folk upon the raft there was a certain comic
+element. They might utter hideous yells, but not one of them dared to
+oppose the grenadier, for they were packed together so tightly that
+if one man were knocked down, the whole raft might capsize. At this
+delicate crisis, a captain tried to rid himself of one of his neighbors;
+the man saw the hostile intention of his officer, collared him, and
+pitched him overboard. "Aha! The duck has a mind to drink. ... Over with
+you!--There is room for two now!" he shouted. "Quick, major! throw your
+little woman over, and come! Never mind that old dotard! he will drop
+off to-morrow!"
+
+"Be quick!" cried a voice, made up of a hundred voices.
+
+"Come, major! Those fellows are making a fuss, and well they may."
+
+The Comte de Vandieres flung off his ragged blankets, and stood before
+them in his general's uniform.
+
+"Let us save the Count," said Philip.
+
+Stephanie grasped his hand tightly in hers, flung her arms about, and
+clasped him close in an agonized embrace.
+
+"Farewell!" she said.
+
+Then each knew the other's thoughts. The Comte de Vandieres recovered
+his energies and presence of mind sufficiently to jump on to the raft,
+whither Stephanie followed him after one last look at Philip.
+
+"Major, won't you take my place? I do not care a straw for life; I have
+neither a wife, nor child, nor mother belonging to me--"
+
+"I give them into your charge," cried the major, indicating the Count
+and his wife.
+
+"Be easy; I will take as much care of them as of the apple of my eye."
+
+Philip stood stock-still on the bank. The raft sped so violently towards
+the opposite shore that it ran aground with a violent shock to all on
+board. The Count, standing on the very edge, was shaken into the stream;
+and as he fell, a mass of ice swept by and struck off his head, and sent
+it flying like a ball.
+
+"Hey! major!" shouted the grenadier.
+
+"Farewell!" a woman's voice called aloud.
+
+An icy shiver ran through Philip de Sucy, and he dropped down where he
+stood, overcome with cold and sorrow and weariness.
+
+
+
+"My poor niece went out of her mind," the doctor added after a brief
+pause. "Ah! monsieur," he went on, grasping M. d'Albon's hand, "what
+a fearful life for a poor little thing, so young, so delicate! An
+unheard-of misfortune separated her from that grenadier of the Garde
+(Fleuriot by name), and for two years she was dragged on after the army,
+the laughing-stock of a rabble of outcasts. She went barefoot, I
+heard, ill-clad, neglected, and starved for months at a time; sometimes
+confined to a hospital, sometimes living like a hunted animal. God alone
+knows all the misery which she endured, and yet she lives. She was shut
+up in a madhouse in a little German town, while her relations, believing
+her to be dead, were dividing her property here in France.
+
+"In 1816 the grenadier Fleuriot recognized her in an inn in Strasbourg.
+She had just managed to escape from captivity. Some peasants told him
+that the Countess had lived for a whole month in a forest, and how that
+they had tracked her and tried to catch her without success.
+
+"I was at that time not many leagues from Strasbourg; and hearing the
+talk about the girl in the wood, I wished to verify the strange facts
+that had given rise to absurd stories. What was my feeling when I beheld
+the Countess? Fleuriot told me all that he knew of the piteous story.
+I took the poor fellow with my niece into Auvergne, and there I had the
+misfortune to lose him. He had some ascendancy over Mme. de Vandieres.
+He alone succeeded in persuading her to wear clothes; and in those days
+her one word of human speech--_Farewell_--she seldom uttered. Fleuriot
+set himself to the task of awakening certain associations; but there
+he failed completely; he drew that one sorrowful word from her a little
+more frequently, that was all. But the old grenadier could amuse her,
+and devoted himself to playing with her, and through him I hoped; but--"
+here Stephanie's uncle broke off. After a moment he went on again.
+
+"Here she has found another creature with whom she seems to have
+an understanding--an idiot peasant girl, who once, in spite of her
+plainness and imbecility, fell in love with a mason. The mason thought
+of marrying her because she had a little bit of land, and for a whole
+year poor Genevieve was the happiest of living creatures. She dressed in
+her best, and danced on Sundays with Dallot; she understood love; there
+was room for love in her heart and brain. But Dallot thought better of
+it. He found another girl who had all her senses and rather more land
+than Genevieve, and he forsook Genevieve for her. Then the poor thing
+lost the little intelligence that love had developed in her; she can do
+nothing now but cut grass and look after the cattle. My niece and the
+poor girl are in some sort bound to each other by the invisible chain of
+their common destiny, and by their madness due to the same cause. Just
+come here a moment; look!" and Stephanie's uncle led the Marquis d'Albon
+to the window.
+
+There, in fact, the magistrate beheld the pretty Countess sitting on the
+ground at Genevieve's knee, while the peasant girl was wholly absorbed
+in combing out Stephanie's long, black hair with a huge comb. The
+Countess submitted herself to this, uttering low smothered cries that
+expressed her enjoyment of the sensation of physical comfort. A shudder
+ran through M. d'Albon as he saw her attitude of languid abandonment,
+the animal supineness that revealed an utter lack of intelligence.
+
+"Oh! Philip, Philip!" he cried, "past troubles are as nothing. Is it
+quite hopeless?" he asked.
+
+The doctor raised his eyes to heaven.
+
+"Good-bye, monsieur," said M. d'Albon, pressing the old man's hand. "My
+friend is expecting me; you will see him here before long."
+
+
+
+"Then it is Stephanie herself?" cried Sucy when the Marquis had spoken
+the first few words. "Ah! until now I did not feel sure!" he added.
+Tears filled the dark eyes that were wont to wear a stern expression.
+
+"Yes; she is the Comtesse de Vandieres," his friend replied.
+
+The colonel started up, and hurriedly began to dress.
+
+"Why, Philip!" cried the horrified magistrate. "Are you going mad?"
+
+"I am quite well now," said the colonel simply. "This news has soothed
+all my bitterest grief; what pain could hurt me while I think of
+Stephanie? I am going over to the Minorite convent, to see her and speak
+to her, to restore her to health again. She is free; ah, surely, surely,
+happiness will smile on us, or there is no Providence above. How can
+you think she could hear my voice, poor Stephanie, and not recover her
+reason?"
+
+"She has seen you once already, and she did not recognize you," the
+magistrate answered gently, trying to suggest some wholesome fears to
+this friend, whose hopes were visibly too high.
+
+The colonel shuddered, but he began to smile again, with a slight
+involuntary gesture of incredulity. Nobody ventured to oppose his plans,
+and a few hours later he had taken up his abode in the old priory, to be
+near the doctor and the Comtesse de Vandieres.
+
+"Where is she?" he cried at once.
+
+"Hush!" answered M. Fanjat, Stephanie's uncle. "She is sleeping. Stay;
+here she is."
+
+Philip saw the poor distraught sleeper crouching on a stone bench in
+the sun. Her thick hair, straggling over her face, screened it from the
+glare and heat; her arms dropped languidly to the earth; she lay at ease
+as gracefully as a fawn, her feet tucked up beneath her; her bosom
+rose and fell with her even breathing; there was the same transparent
+whiteness as of porcelain in her skin and complexion that we so often
+admire in children's faces. Genevieve sat there motionless, holding a
+spray that Stephanie doubtless had brought down from the top of one of
+the tallest poplars; the idiot girl was waving the green branch above
+her, driving away the flies from her sleeping companion, and gently
+fanning her.
+
+She stared at M. Fanjat and the colonel as they came up; then, like
+a dumb animal that recognizes its master, she slowly turned her face
+towards the countess, and watched over her as before, showing not
+the slightest sign of intelligence or of astonishment. The air was
+scorching. The glittering particles of the stone bench shone like sparks
+of fire; the meadow sent up the quivering vapors that hover above
+the grass and gleam like golden dust when they catch the light, but
+Genevieve did not seem to feel the raging heat.
+
+The colonel wrung M. Fanjat's hands; the tears that gathered in
+the soldier's eyes stole down his cheeks, and fell on the grass at
+Stephanie's feet.
+
+"Sir," said her uncle, "for these two years my heart has been broken
+daily. Before very long you will be as I am; if you do not weep, you
+will not feel your anguish the less."
+
+"You have taken care of her!" said the colonel, and jealousy no less
+than gratitude could be read in his eyes.
+
+The two men understood one another. They grasped each other by the hand
+again, and stood motionless, gazing in admiration at the serenity that
+slumber had brought into the lovely face before them. Stephanie heaved
+a sigh from time to time, and this sigh, that had all the appearance of
+sensibility, made the unhappy colonel tremble with gladness.
+
+"Alas!" M. Fanjat said gently, "do not deceive yourself, monsieur; as
+you see her now, she is in full possession of such reason as she has."
+
+Those who have sat for whole hours absorbed in the delight of watching
+over the slumber of some tenderly-beloved one, whose waking eyes will
+smile for them, will doubtless understand the bliss and anguish that
+shook the colonel. For him this slumber was an illusion, the waking must
+be a kind of death, the most dreadful of all deaths.
+
+Suddenly a kid frisked in two or three bounds towards the bench and
+snuffed at Stephanie. The sound awakened her; she sprang lightly to her
+feet without scaring away the capricious creature; but as soon as she
+saw Philip she fled, followed by her four-footed playmate, to a thicket
+of elder-trees; then she uttered a little cry like the note of a
+startled wild bird, the same sound that the colonel had heard once
+before near the grating, when the Countess appeared to M. d'Albon for
+the first time. At length she climbed into a laburnum-tree, ensconced
+herself in the feathery greenery, and peered out at the _strange man_
+with as much interest as the most inquisitive nightingale in the forest.
+
+"Farewell, farewell, farewell," she said, but the soul sent no trace
+of expression of feeling through the words, spoken with the careless
+intonation of a bird's notes.
+
+"She does not know me!" the colonel exclaimed in despair. "Stephanie!
+Here is Philip, your Philip!... Philip!" and the poor soldier went
+towards the laburnum-tree; but when he stood three paces away, the
+Countess eyed him almost defiantly, though there was timidity in her
+eyes; then at a bound she sprang from the laburnum to an acacia, and
+thence to a spruce-fir, swinging from bough to bough with marvelous
+dexterity.
+
+"Do not follow her," said M. Fanjat, addressing the colonel. "You would
+arouse a feeling of aversion in her which might become insurmountable; I
+will help you to make her acquaintance and to tame her. Sit down on the
+bench. If you pay no heed whatever to her, poor child, it will not be
+long before you will see her come nearer by degrees to look at you."
+
+"That _she_ should not know me; that she should fly from me!" the
+colonel repeated, sitting down on a rustic bench and leaning his back
+against a tree that overshadowed it.
+
+He bowed his head. The doctor remained silent. Before very long the
+Countess stole softly down from her high refuge in the spruce-fir,
+flitting like a will-o'-the-wisp; for as the wind stirred the boughs,
+she lent herself at times to the swaying movements of the trees. At
+each branch she stopped and peered at the stranger; but as she saw him
+sitting motionless, she at length jumped down to the grass, stood a
+while, and came slowly across the meadow. When she took up her position
+by a tree about ten paces from the bench, M. Fanjat spoke to the colonel
+in a low voice.
+
+"Feel in my pocket for some lumps of sugar," he said, "and let her see
+them, she will come; I willingly give up to you the pleasure of giving
+her sweetmeats. She is passionately fond of sugar, and by that means you
+will accustom her to come to you and to know you."
+
+"She never cared for sweet things when she was a woman," Philip answered
+sadly.
+
+When he held out the lump of sugar between his thumb and finger, and
+shook it, Stephanie uttered the wild note again, and sprang quickly
+towards him; then she stopped short, there was a conflict between
+longing for the sweet morsel and instinctive fear of him; she looked at
+the sugar, turned her head away, and looked again like an unfortunate
+dog forbidden to touch some scrap of food, while his master slowly
+recites the greater part of the alphabet until he reaches the letter
+that gives permission. At length the animal appetite conquered fear;
+Stephanie rushed to Philip, held out a dainty brown hand to pounce upon
+the coveted morsel, touched her lover's fingers, snatched the piece of
+sugar, and vanished with it into a thicket. This painful scene was
+too much for the colonel; he burst into tears, and took refuge in the
+drawing-room.
+
+"Then has love less courage than affection?" M. Fanjat asked him. "I
+have hope, Monsieur le Baron. My poor niece was once in a far more
+pitiable state than at present."
+
+"Is it possible?" cried Philip.
+
+"She would not wear clothes," answered the doctor.
+
+The colonel shuddered, and his face grew pale. To the doctor's mind this
+pallor was an unhealthy symptom; he went over to him and felt his pulse.
+M. de Sucy was in a high fever; by dint of persuasion, he succeeded in
+putting the patient in bed, and gave him a few drops of laudanum to gain
+repose and sleep.
+
+The Baron de Sucy spent nearly a week, in a constant struggle with a
+deadly anguish, and before long he had no tears left to shed. He was
+often well-nigh heartbroken; he could not grow accustomed to the sight
+of the Countess' madness; but he made terms for himself, as it were, in
+this cruel position, and sought alleviations in his pain. His heroism
+was boundless. He found courage to overcome Stephanie's wild shyness
+by choosing sweetmeats for her, and devoted all his thoughts to this,
+bringing these dainties, and following up the little victories that
+he set himself to gain over Stephanie's instincts (the last gleam
+of intelligence in her), until he succeeded to some extent--she grew
+_tamer_ than ever before. Every morning the colonel went into the park;
+and if, after a long search for the Countess, he could not discover the
+tree in which she was rocking herself gently, nor the nook where she
+lay crouching at play with some bird, nor the roof where she had perched
+herself, he would whistle the well-known air _Partant pour la Syrie_,
+which recalled old memories of their love, and Stephanie would run
+towards him lightly as a fawn. She saw the colonel so often that she was
+no longer afraid of him; before very long she would sit on his knee with
+her thin, lithe arms about him. And while thus they sat as lovers love
+to do, Philip doled out sweetmeats one by one to the eager Countess.
+When they were all finished, the fancy often took Stephanie to search
+through her lover's pockets with a monkey's quick instinctive dexterity,
+till she had assured herself that there was nothing left, and then she
+gazed at Philip with vacant eyes; there was no thought, no gratitude in
+their clear depths. Then she would play with him. She tried to take off
+his boots to see his foot; she tore his gloves to shreds, and put on his
+hat; and she would let him pass his hands through her hair, and take her
+in his arms, and submit passively to his passionate kisses, and at last,
+if he shed tears, she would gaze silently at him.
+
+She quite understood the signal when he whistled _Partant pour la
+Syrie_, but he could never succeed in inducing her to pronounce her
+own name--_Stephanie_. Philip persevered in his heart-rending task,
+sustained by a hope that never left him. If on some bright autumn
+morning he saw her sitting quietly on a bench under a poplar tree, grown
+brown now as the season wore, the unhappy lover would lie at her feet
+and gaze into her eyes as long as she would let him gaze, hoping that
+some spark of intelligence might gleam from them. At times he lent
+himself to an illusion; he would imagine that he saw the hard,
+changeless light in them falter, that there was a new life and softness
+in them, and he would cry, "Stephanie! oh, Stephanie! you hear me, you
+see me, do you not?"
+
+But for her the sound of his voice was like any other sound, the
+stirring of the wind in the trees, or the lowing of the cow on which she
+scrambled; and the colonel wrung his hands in a despair that lost none
+of its bitterness; nay, time and these vain efforts only added to his
+anguish.
+
+One evening, under the quiet sky, in the midst of the silence and peace
+of the forest hermitage, M. Fanjat saw from a distance that the Baron
+was busy loading a pistol, and knew that the lover had given up all
+hope. The blood surged to the old doctor's heart; and if he overcame the
+dizzy sensation that seized on him, it was because he would rather
+see his niece live with a disordered brain than lose her for ever. He
+hurried to the place.
+
+"What are you doing?" he cried.
+
+"That is for me," the colonel answered, pointing to a loaded pistol on
+the bench, "and this is for her!" he added, as he rammed down the wad
+into the pistol that he held in his hands.
+
+The Countess lay stretched out on the ground, playing with the balls.
+
+"Then you do not know that last night, as she slept, she murmured
+'Philip?'" said the doctor quietly, dissembling his alarm.
+
+"She called my name?" cried the Baron, letting his weapon fall.
+Stephanie picked it up, but he snatched it out of her hands, caught the
+other pistol from the bench, and fled.
+
+"Poor little one!" exclaimed the doctor, rejoicing that his stratagem
+had succeeded so well. He held her tightly to his heart as he went
+on. "He would have killed you, selfish that he is! He wants you to die
+because he is unhappy. He cannot learn to love you for your own sake,
+little one! We forgive him, do we not? He is senseless; you are only
+mad. Never mind; God alone shall take you to Himself. We look upon
+you as unhappy because you no longer share our miseries, fools that we
+are!... Why, she is happy," he said, taking her on his knee; "nothing
+troubles her; she lives like the birds, like the deer--"
+
+Stephanie sprang upon a young blackbird that was hopping about, caught
+it with a little shriek of glee, twisted its neck, looked at the dead
+bird, and dropped it at the foot of a tree without giving it another
+thought.
+
+The next morning at daybreak the colonel went out into the garden to
+look for Stephanie; hope was very strong in him. He did not see her,
+and whistled; and when she came, he took her arm, and for the first time
+they walked together along an alley beneath the trees, while the fresh
+morning wind shook down the dead leaves about them. The colonel sat
+down, and Stephanie, of her own accord, lit upon his knee. Philip
+trembled with gladness.
+
+"Love!" he cried, covering her hands with passionate kisses, "I am
+Philip..."
+
+She looked curiously at him.
+
+"Come close," he added, as he held her tightly. "Do you feel the beating
+of my heart? It has beat for you, for you only. I love you always.
+Philip is not dead. He is here. You are sitting on his knee. You are my
+Stephanie, I am your Philip."
+
+"Farewell!" she said, "farewell!"
+
+The colonel shivered. He thought that some vibration of his highly
+wrought feeling had surely reached his beloved; that the heart-rending
+cry, drawn from him by hope, the utmost effort of a love that must last
+for ever, of passion in its ecstasy, striving to reach the soul of the
+woman he loved, must awaken her.
+
+"Oh, Stephanie! we shall be happy yet!"
+
+A cry of satisfaction broke from her, a dim light of intelligence
+gleamed in her eyes.
+
+"She knows me!... Stephanie!..."
+
+The colonel felt his heart swell, and tears gathered under his eyelids.
+But all at once the Countess held up a bit of sugar for him to see; she
+had discovered it by searching diligently for it while he spoke. What he
+had mistaken for a human thought was a degree of reason required for a
+monkey's mischievous trick!
+
+Philip fainted. M. Fanjat found the Countess sitting on his prostrate
+body. She was nibbling her bit of sugar, giving expression to her
+enjoyment by little grimaces and gestures that would have been thought
+clever in a woman in full possession of her senses if she tried to mimic
+her paroquet or her cat.
+
+"Oh, my friend!" cried Philip, when he came to himself. "This is
+like death every moment of the day! I love her too much! I could bear
+anything if only through her madness she had kept some little trace of
+womanhood. But, day after day, to see her like a wild animal, not even a
+sense of modesty left, to see her--"
+
+"So you must have a theatrical madness, must you!" said the doctor
+sharply, "and your prejudices are stronger than your lover's devotion?
+What, monsieur! I resign to you the sad pleasure of giving my niece her
+food, and the enjoyment of her playtime; I have kept for myself nothing
+but the most burdensome cares. I watch over her while you are asleep,
+I--Go, monsieur, and give up the task. Leave this dreary hermitage; I
+can live with my little darling; I understand her disease; I study her
+movements; I know her secrets. Some day you shall thank me."
+
+The colonel left the Minorite convent, that he was destined to see only
+once again. The doctor was alarmed by the effect that his words made
+upon his guest; his niece's lover became as dear to him as his niece. If
+either of them deserved to be pitied, that one was certainly Philip; did
+he not bear alone the burden of an appalling sorrow?
+
+The doctor made inquiries, and learned that the hapless colonel had
+retired to a country house of his near Saint-Germain. A dream had
+suggested to him a plan for restoring the Countess to reason, and the
+doctor did not know that he was spending the rest of the autumn in
+carrying out a vast scheme. A small stream ran through his park, and in
+winter time flooded a low-lying land, something like the plain on the
+eastern side of the Beresina. The village of Satout, on the slope of
+a ridge above it, bounded the horizon of a picture of desolation,
+something as Studzianka lay on the heights that shut in the swamp of the
+Beresina. The colonel set laborers to work to make a channel to resemble
+the greedy river that had swallowed up the treasures of France and
+Napoleon's army. By the help of his memories, Philip reconstructed on
+his own lands the bank where General Eble had built his bridges. He
+drove in piles, and then set fire to them, so as to reproduce the
+charred and blackened balks of timber that on either side of the river
+told the stragglers that their retreat to France had been cut off. He
+had materials collected like the fragments out of which his comrades in
+misfortune had made the raft; his park was laid waste to complete
+the illusion on which his last hopes were founded. He ordered ragged
+uniforms and clothing for several hundred peasants. Huts and bivouacs
+and batteries were raised and burned down. In short, he omitted
+no device that could reproduce that most hideous of all scenes. He
+succeeded. When, in the earliest days of December, snow covered the
+earth with a thick white mantle, it seemed to him that he saw the
+Beresina itself. The mimic Russia was so startlingly real, that several
+of his old comrades recognized the scene of their past sufferings. M.
+de Sucy kept the secret of the drama to be enacted with this tragical
+background, but it was looked upon as a mad freak in several circles of
+society in Paris.
+
+In the early days of the month of January 1820, the colonel drove over
+to the Forest of l'Isle-Adam in a carriage like the one in which M.
+and Mme. de Vandieres had driven from Moscow to Studzianka. The horses
+closely resembled that other pair that he had risked his life to
+bring from the Russian lines. He himself wore the grotesque and soiled
+clothes, accoutrements, and cap that he had worn on the 29th of November
+1812. He had even allowed his hair and beard to grow, and neglected his
+appearance, that no detail might be lacking to recall the scene in all
+its horror.
+
+"I guessed what you meant to do," cried M. Fanjat, when he saw the
+colonel dismount. "If you mean your plan to succeed, do not let her
+see you in that carriage. This evening I will give my niece a little
+laudanum, and while she sleeps, we will dress her in such clothes as
+she wore at Studzianka, and put her in your traveling-carriage. I will
+follow you in a berline."
+
+Soon after two o'clock in the morning, the young Countess was lifted
+into the carriage, laid on the cushions, and wrapped in a coarse
+blanket. A few peasants held torches while this strange elopement was
+arranged.
+
+A sudden cry rang through the silence of night, and Philip and the
+doctor, turning, saw Genevieve. She had come out half-dressed from the
+low room where she slept.
+
+"Farewell, farewell; it is all over, farewell!" she called, crying
+bitterly.
+
+"Why, Genevieve, what is it?" asked M. Fanjat.
+
+Genevieve shook her head despairingly, raised her arm to heaven, looked
+at the carriage, uttered a long snarling sound, and with evident signs
+of profound terror, slunk in again.
+
+"'Tis a good omen," cried the colonel. "The girl is sorry to lose her
+companion. Very likely she sees that Stephanie is about to recover her
+reason."
+
+"God grant it may be so!" answered M. Fanjat, who seemed to be affected
+by this incident. Since insanity had interested him, he had known
+several cases in which a spirit of prophecy and the gift of second
+sight had been accorded to a disordered brain--two faculties which many
+travelers tell us are also found among savage tribes.
+
+So it happened that, as the colonel had foreseen and arranged, Stephanie
+traveled across the mimic Beresina about nine o'clock in the morning,
+and was awakened by an explosion of rockets about a hundred paces from
+the scene of action. It was a signal. Hundreds of peasants raised a
+terrible clamor, like the despairing shouts that startled the Russians
+when twenty thousand stragglers learned that by their own fault they
+were delivered over to death or to slavery.
+
+When the Countess heard the report and the cries that followed, she
+sprang out of the carriage, and rushed in frenzied anguish over the
+snow-covered plain; she saw the burned bivouacs and the fatal raft about
+to be launched on a frozen Beresina. She saw Major Philip brandishing
+his sabre among the crowd. The cry that broke from Mme. de Vandieres
+made the blood run cold in the veins of all who heard it. She stood face
+to face with the colonel, who watched her with a beating heart. At first
+she stared blankly at the strange scene about her, then she reflected.
+For an instant, brief as a lightning flash, there was the same quick
+gaze and total lack of comprehension that we see in the bright eyes of a
+bird; then she passed her hand across her forehead with the intelligent
+expression of a thinking being; she looked round on the memories that
+had taken substantial form, into the past life that had been transported
+into her present; she turned her face to Philip--and saw him! An awed
+silence fell upon the crowd. The colonel breathed hard, but dared
+not speak; tears filled the doctor's eyes. A faint color overspread
+Stephanie's beautiful face, deepening slowly, till at last she glowed
+like a girl radiant with youth. Still the bright flush grew. Life and
+joy, kindled within her at the blaze of intelligence, swept through her
+like leaping flames. A convulsive tremor ran from her feet to her heart.
+But all these tokens, which flashed on the sight in a moment, gathered
+and gained consistence, as it were, when Stephanie's eyes gleamed with
+heavenly radiance, the light of a soul within. She lived, she thought!
+She shuddered--was it with fear? God Himself unloosed a second time
+the tongue that had been bound by death, and set His fire anew in the
+extinguished soul. The electric torrent of the human will vivified the
+body whence it had so long been absent.
+
+"Stephanie!" the colonel cried.
+
+"Oh! it is Philip!" said the poor Countess.
+
+She fled to the trembling arms held out towards her, and the embrace
+of the two lovers frightened those who beheld it. Stephanie burst into
+tears.
+
+Suddenly the tears ceased to flow; she lay in his arms a dead weight, as
+if stricken by a thunderbolt, and said faintly:
+
+"Farewell, Philip!... I love you.... farewell!"
+
+"She is dead!" cried the colonel, unclasping his arms.
+
+The old doctor received the lifeless body of his niece in his arms as a
+young man might have done; he carried her to a stack of wood and set
+her down. He looked at her face, and laid a feeble hand, tremulous with
+agitation, upon her heart--it beat no longer.
+
+"Can it really be so?" he said, looking from the colonel, who stood
+there motionless, to Stephanie's face. Death had invested it with
+a radiant beauty, a transient aureole, the pledge, it may be, of a
+glorious life to come.
+
+"Yes, she is dead."
+
+"Oh, but that smile!" cried Philip; "only see that smile. Is it
+possible?"
+
+"She has grown cold already," answered M. Fanjat.
+
+M. de Sucy made a few strides to tear himself from the sight; then he
+stopped, and whistled the air that the mad Stephanie had understood;
+and when he saw that she did not rise and hasten to him, he walked away,
+staggering like a drunken man, still whistling, but he did not turn
+again.
+
+
+
+In society General de Sucy is looked upon as very agreeable, and
+above all things, as very lively and amusing. Not very long ago a lady
+complimented him upon his good humor and equable temper.
+
+"Ah! madame," he answered, "I pay very dearly for my merriment in the
+evening if I am alone."
+
+"Then, you are never alone, I suppose."
+
+"No," he answered, smiling.
+
+If a keen observer of human nature could have seen the look that Sucy's
+face wore at that moment, he would, without doubt, have shuddered.
+
+"Why do you not marry?" the lady asked (she had several daughters of her
+own at a boarding-school). "You are wealthy; you belong to an old and
+noble house; you are clever; you have a future before you; everything
+smiles upon you."
+
+"Yes," he answered; "one smile is killing me--"
+
+On the morrow the lady heard with amazement that M. de Sucy had shot
+himself through the head that night.
+
+The fashionable world discussed the extraordinary news in divers
+ways, and each had a theory to account for it; play, love, ambition,
+irregularities in private life, according to the taste of the speaker,
+explained the last act of the tragedy begun in 1812. Two men alone, a
+magistrate and an old doctor, knew that Monsieur le Comte de Sucy was
+one of those souls unhappy in the strength God gives to them to enable
+them to triumph daily in a ghastly struggle with a mysterious horror. If
+for a minute God withdraws His sustaining hand, they succumb.
+
+
+
+PARIS, March 1830.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Farewell, by Honore de Balzac
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Farewell, by Honore de Balzac
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+Title: Farewell
+
+Author: Honore de Balzac
+
+Release Date: June, 2004 [EBook #5873]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on September 15, 2002]
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+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FAREWELL ***
+
+
+
+
+Etext prepared by Dagny, dagnypg@yahoo.com
+              and John Bickers, jbickers@ihug.co.nz
+
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+
+
+                               FAREWELL
+
+                                  BY
+
+                           HONORE DE BALZAC
+
+                            Translated By
+                            Ellen Marriage
+
+
+
+                              DEDICATION
+
+                To Prince Friedrich von Schwarzenberg
+
+
+
+
+
+                               FAREWELL
+
+
+
+"Come, Deputy of the Centre, come along! We shall have to mend our
+pace if we mean to sit down to dinner when every one else does, and
+that's a fact! Hurry up! Jump, Marquis! That's it! Well done! You are
+bounding over the furrows just like a stag!"
+
+These words were uttered by a sportsman seated much at his ease on the
+outskirts of the Foret de l'Isle-Adam; he had just finished a Havana
+cigar, which he had smoked while he waited for his companion, who had
+evidently been straying about for some time among the forest
+undergrowth. Four panting dogs by the speaker's side likewise watched
+the progress of the personage for whose benefit the remarks were made.
+To make their sarcastic import fully clear, it should be added that
+the second sportsman was both short and stout; his ample girth
+indicated a truly magisterial corpulence, and in consequence his
+progress across the furrows was by no means easy. He was striding over
+a vast field of stubble; the dried corn-stalks underfoot added not a
+little to the difficulties of his passage, and to add to his
+discomforts, the genial influence of the sun that slanted into his
+eyes brought great drops of perspiration into his face. The uppermost
+thought in his mind being a strong desire to keep his balance, he
+lurched to and fro like a coach jolted over an atrocious road.
+
+It was one of those September days of almost tropical heat that
+finishes the work of summer and ripens the grapes. Such heat forebodes
+a coming storm; and though as yet there were wide patches of blue
+between the dark rain-clouds low down on the horizon, pale golden
+masses were rising and scattering with ominous swiftness from west to
+east, and drawing a shadowy veil across the sky. The wind was still,
+save in the upper regions of the air, so that the weight of the
+atmosphere seemed to compress the steamy heat of the earth into the
+forest glades. The tall forest trees shut out every breath of air so
+completely that the little valley across which the sportsman was
+making his way was as hot as a furnace; the silent forest seemed
+parched with the fiery heat. Birds and insects were mute; the topmost
+twigs of the trees swayed with scarcely perceptible motion. Any one
+who retains some recollection of the summer of 1819 must surely
+compassionate the plight of the hapless supporter of the ministry who
+toiled and sweated over the stubble to rejoin his satirical comrade.
+That gentleman, as he smoked his cigar, had arrived, by a process of
+calculation based on the altitude of the sun, to the conclusion that
+it must be about five o'clock.
+
+"Where the devil are we?" asked the stout sportsman. He wiped his brow
+as he spoke, and propped himself against a tree in the field opposite
+his companion, feeling quite unequal to clearing the broad ditch that
+lay between them.
+
+"And you ask that question of /me/!" retorted the other, laughing from
+his bed of tall brown grasses on the top of the bank. He flung the end
+of his cigar into the ditch, exclaiming, "I swear by Saint Hubert that
+no one shall catch me risking myself again in a country that I don't
+know with a magistrate, even if, like you, my dear d'Albon, he happens
+to be an old schoolfellow."
+
+"Why, Philip, have you really forgotten your own language? You surely
+must have left your wits behind you in Siberia," said the stouter of
+the two, with a glance half-comic, half-pathetic at the guide-post
+distant about a hundred paces from them.
+
+"I understand," replied the one addressed as Philip. He snatched up
+his rifle, suddenly sprang to his feet, made but one jump of it into
+the field, and rushed off to the guide-post. "This way, d'Albon, here
+you are! left about!" he shouted, gesticulating in the direction of
+the highroad. "/To Baillet and l'Isle-Adam!/" he went on; "so if we go
+along here, we shall be sure to come upon the cross-road to Cassan."
+
+"Quite right, Colonel," said M. d'Albon, putting the cap with which he
+had been fanning himself back on his head.
+
+"Then /forward/! highly respected Councillor," returned Colonel
+Philip, whistling to the dogs, that seemed already to obey him rather
+than the magistrate their owner.
+
+"Are you aware, my lord Marquis, that two leagues yet remain before
+us?" inquired the malicious soldier. "That village down yonder must be
+Baillet."
+
+"Great heavens!" cried the Marquis d'Albon. "Go on to Cassan by all
+means, if you like; but if you do, you will go alone. I prefer to wait
+here, storm or no storm; you can send a horse for me from the chateau.
+You have been making game of me, Sucy. We were to have a nice day's
+sport by ourselves; we were not to go very far from Cassan, and go
+over ground that I knew. Pooh! instead of a day's fun, you have kept
+me running like a greyhound since four o'clock this morning, and
+nothing but a cup or two of milk by way of breakfast. Oh! if ever you
+find yourself in a court of law, I will take care that the day goes
+against you if you were in the right a hundred times over."
+
+The dejected sportsman sat himself down on one of the stumps at the
+foot of the guide-post, disencumbered himself of his rifle and empty
+game-bag, and heaved a prolonged sigh.
+
+"Oh, France, behold thy Deputies!" laughed Colonel de Sucy. "Poor old
+d'Albon; if you had spent six months at the other end of Siberia as I
+did . . ."
+
+He broke off, and his eyes sought the sky, as if the story of his
+troubles was a secret between himself and God.
+
+"Come, march!" he added. "If you once sit down, it is all over with
+you."
+
+"I can't help it, Philip! It is such an old habit in a magistrate! I
+am dead beat, upon my honor. If I had only bagged one hare though!"
+
+Two men more different are seldom seen together. The civilian, a man
+of forty-two, seemed scarcely more than thirty; while the soldier, at
+thirty years of age, looked to be forty at the least. Both wore the
+red rosette that proclaimed them to be officers of the Legion of
+Honor. A few locks of hair, mingled white and black, like a magpie's
+wing, had strayed from beneath the Colonel's cap; while thick, fair
+curls clustered about the magistrate's temples. The Colonel was tall,
+spare, dried up, but muscular; the lines in his pale face told a tale
+of vehement passions or of terrible sorrows; but his comrade's jolly
+countenance beamed with health, and would have done credit to an
+Epicurean. Both men were deeply sunburnt. Their high gaiters of brown
+leather carried souvenirs of every ditch and swamp that they crossed
+that day.
+
+"Come, come," cried M. de Sucy, "forward! One short hour's march, and
+we shall be at Cassan with a good dinner before us."
+
+"You never were in love, that is positive," returned the Councillor,
+with a comically piteous expression. "You are as inexorable as Article
+304 of the Penal Code!"
+
+Philip de Sucy shuddered violently. Deep lines appeared in his broad
+forehead, his face was overcast like the sky above them; but though
+his features seemed to contract with the pain of an intolerably bitter
+memory, no tears came to his eyes. Like all men of strong character,
+he possessed the power of forcing his emotions down into some inner
+depth, and, perhaps, like many reserved natures, he shrank from laying
+bare a wound too deep for any words of human speech, and winced at the
+thought of ridicule from those who do not care to understand. M.
+d'Albon was one of those who are keenly sensitive by nature to the
+distress of others, who feel at once the pain they have unwillingly
+given by some blunder. He respected his friend's mood, rose to his
+feet, forgot his weariness, and followed in silence, thoroughly
+annoyed with himself for having touched on a wound that seemed not yet
+healed.
+
+"Some day I will tell you my story," Philip said at last, wringing his
+friend's hand, while he acknowledged his dumb repentance with a heart-
+rending glance. "To-day I cannot."
+
+They walked on in silence. As the Colonel's distress passed off the
+Councillor's fatigue returned. Instinctively, or rather urged by
+weariness, his eyes explored the depths of the forest around them; he
+looked high and low among the trees, and gazed along the avenues,
+hoping to discover some dwelling where he might ask for hospitality.
+They reached a place where several roads met; and the Councillor,
+fancying that he saw a thin film of smoke rising through the trees,
+made a stand and looked sharply about him. He caught a glimpse of the
+dark green branches of some firs among the other forest trees, and
+finally, "A house! a house!" he shouted. No sailor could have raised a
+cry of "Land ahead!" more joyfully than he.
+
+He plunged at once into undergrowth, somewhat of the thickest; and the
+Colonel, who had fallen into deep musings, followed him unheedingly.
+
+"I would rather have an omelette here and home-made bread, and a chair
+to sit down in, than go further for a sofa, truffles, and Bordeaux
+wine at Cassan."
+
+This outburst of enthusiasm on the Councillor's part was caused by the
+sight of the whitened wall of a house in the distance, standing out in
+strong contrast against the brown masses of knotted tree-trunks in the
+forest.
+
+"Aha! This used to be a priory, I should say," the Marquis d'Albon
+cried once more, as they stood before a grim old gateway. Through the
+grating they could see the house itself standing in the midst of some
+considerable extent of park land; from the style of the architecture
+it appeared to have been a monastery once upon a time.
+
+"Those knowing rascals of monks knew how to choose a site!"
+
+This last exclamation was caused by the magistrate's amazement at the
+romantic hermitage before his eyes. The house had been built on a spot
+half-way up the hillside on the slope below the village of Nerville,
+which crowned the summit. A huge circle of great oak-trees, hundreds
+of years old, guarded the solitary place from intrusion. There
+appeared to be about forty acres of the park. The main building of the
+monastery faced the south, and stood in a space of green meadow,
+picturesquely intersected by several tiny clear streams, and by larger
+sheets of water so disposed as to have a natural effect. Shapely trees
+with contrasting foliage grew here and there. Grottos had been
+ingeniously contrived; and broad terraced walks, now in ruin, though
+the steps were broken and the balustrades eaten through with rust,
+gave to this sylvan Thebaid a certain character of its own. The art of
+man and the picturesqueness of nature had wrought together to produce
+a charming effect. Human passions surely could not cross that boundary
+of tall oak-trees which shut out the sounds of the outer world, and
+screened the fierce heat of the sun from this forest sanctuary.
+
+"What neglect!" said M. d'Albon to himself, after the first sense of
+delight in the melancholy aspect of the ruins in the landscape, which
+seemed blighted by a curse.
+
+It was like some haunted spot, shunned of men. The twisted ivy stems
+clambered everywhere, hiding everything away beneath a luxuriant green
+mantle. Moss and lichens, brown and gray, yellow and red, covered the
+trees with fantastic patches of color, grew upon the benches in the
+garden, overran the roof and the walls of the house. The window-sashes
+were weather-worn and warped with age, the balconies were dropping to
+pieces, the terraces in ruins. Here and there the folding shutters
+hung by a single hinge. The crazy doors would have given way at the
+first attempt to force an entrance.
+
+Out in the orchard the neglected fruit-trees were running to wood, the
+rambling branches bore no fruit save the glistening mistletoe berries,
+and tall plants were growing in the garden walks. All this forlornness
+shed a charm across the picture that wrought on the spectator's mind
+with an influence like that of some enchanting poem, filling his soul
+with dreamy fancies. A poet must have lingered there in deep and
+melancholy musings, marveling at the harmony of this wilderness, where
+decay had a certain grace of its own.
+
+In a moment a few gleams of sunlight struggled through a rift in the
+clouds, and a shower of colored light fell over the wild garden. The
+brown tiles of the roof glowed in the light, the mosses took bright
+hues, strange shadows played over the grass beneath the trees; the
+dead autumn tints grew vivid, bright unexpected contrasts were evoked
+by the light, every leaf stood out sharply in the clear, thin air.
+Then all at once the sunlight died away, and the landscape that seemed
+to have spoken grew silent and gloomy again, or rather, it took gray
+soft tones like the tenderest hues of autumn dusk.
+
+"It is the palace of the Sleeping Beauty," the Councillor said to
+himself (he had already begun to look at the place from the point of
+view of an owner of property). "Whom can the place belong to, I
+wonder. He must be a great fool not to live on such a charming little
+estate!"
+
+Just at that moment, a woman sprang out from under a walnut tree on
+the right-hand side of the gateway, and passed before the Councillor
+as noiselessly and swiftly as the shadow of a cloud. This apparition
+struck him dumb with amazement.
+
+"Hallo, d'Albon, what is the matter?" asked the Colonel.
+
+"I am rubbing my eyes to find out whether I am awake or asleep,"
+answered the magistrate, whose countenance was pressed against the
+grating in the hope of catching a second glimpse of the ghost.
+
+"In all probability she is under that fig-tree," he went on,
+indicating, for Philip's benefit, some branches that over-topped the
+wall on the left-hand side of the gateway.
+
+"She? Who?"
+
+"Eh! how should I know?" answered M. d'Albon. "A strange-looking woman
+sprang up there under my very eyes just now," he added, in a low
+voice; "she looked to me more like a ghost than a living being. She
+was so slender, light and shadowy that she might be transparent. Her
+face was as white as milk, her hair, her eyes, and her dress were
+black. She gave me a glance as she flitted by. I am not easily
+frightened, but that cold stony stare of hers froze the blood in my
+veins."
+
+"Was she pretty?" inquired Philip.
+
+"I don't know. I saw nothing but those eyes in her head."
+
+"The devil take dinner at Cassan!" exclaimed the Colonel; "let us stay
+here. I am as eager as a boy to see the inside of this queer place.
+The window-sashes are painted red, do you see? There is a red line
+round the panels of the doors and the edges of the shutters. It might
+be the devil's own dwelling; perhaps he took it over when the monks
+went out. Now, then, let us give chase to the black and white lady;
+come along!" cried Philip, with forced gaiety.
+
+He had scarcely finished speaking when the two sportsmen heard a cry
+as if some bird had been taken in a snare. They listened. There was a
+sound like the murmur of rippling water, as something forced its way
+through the bushes; but diligently as they lent their ears, there was
+no footfall on the path, the earth kept the secret of the mysterious
+woman's passage, if indeed she had moved from her hiding-place.
+
+"This is very strange!" cried Philip.
+
+Following the wall of the path, the two friends reached before long a
+forest road leading to the village of Chauvry; they went along this
+track in the direction of the highway to Paris, and reached another
+large gateway. Through the railings they had a complete view of the
+facade of the mysterious house. From this point of view, the
+dilapidation was still more apparent. Huge cracks had riven the walls
+of the main body of the house built round three sides of a square.
+Evidently the place was allowed to fall to ruin; there were holes in
+the roof, broken slates and tiles lay about below. Fallen fruit from
+the orchard trees was left to rot on the ground; a cow was grazing
+over the bowling-green and trampling the flowers in the garden beds; a
+goat browsed on the green grapes and young vine-shoots on the trellis.
+
+"It is all of a piece," remarked the Colonel. "The neglect is in a
+fashion systematic." He laid his hand on the chain of the bell-pull,
+but the bell had lost its clapper. The two friends heard no sound save
+the peculiar grating creak of the rusty spring. A little door in the
+wall beside the gateway, though ruinous, held good against all their
+efforts to force it open.
+
+"Oho! all this is growing very interesting," Philip said to his
+companion.
+
+"If I were not a magistrate," returned M. d'Albon, "I should think
+that the woman in black is a witch."
+
+The words were scarcely out of his mouth when the cow came up to the
+railings and held out her warm damp nose, as if she were glad of human
+society. Then a woman, if so indescribable a being could be called a
+woman, sprang up from the bushes, and pulled at the cord about the
+cow's neck. From beneath the crimson handkerchief about the woman's
+head, fair matted hair escaped, something as tow hangs about a
+spindle. She wore no kerchief at the throat. A coarse black-and-gray
+striped woolen petticoat, too short by several inches, left her legs
+bare. She might have belonged to some tribe of Redskins in Fenimore
+Cooper's novels; for her neck, arms, and ankles looked as if they had
+been painted brick-red. There was no spark of intelligence in her
+featureless face; her pale, bluish eyes looked out dull and
+expressionless from beneath the eyebrows with one or two straggling
+white hairs on them. Her teeth were prominent and uneven, but white as
+a dog's.
+
+"Hallo, good woman," called M. de Sucy.
+
+She came slowly up to the railing, and stared at the two sportsmen
+with a contorted smile painful to see.
+
+"Where are we? What is the name of the house yonder? Whom does it
+belong to? Who are you? Do you come from hereabouts?"
+
+To these questions, and to a host of others poured out in succession
+upon her by the two friends, she made no answer save gurgling sounds
+in the throat, more like animal sounds than anything uttered by a
+human voice.
+
+"Don't you see that she is deaf and dumb?" said M. d'Albon.
+
+"/Minorites/!" the peasant woman said at last.
+
+"Ah! she is right. The house looks as though it might once have been a
+Minorite convent," he went on.
+
+Again they plied the peasant woman with questions, but, like a wayward
+child, she colored up, fidgeted with her sabot, twisted the rope by
+which she held the cow that had fallen to grazing again, stared at the
+sportsmen, and scrutinized every article of clothing upon them; she
+gibbered, grunted, and clucked, but no articulate word did she utter.
+
+"Your name?" asked Philip, fixing her with his eyes as if he were
+trying to bewitch the woman.
+
+"Genevieve," she answered, with an empty laugh.
+
+"The cow is the most intelligent creature we have seen so far,"
+exclaimed the magistrate. "I shall fire a shot, that ought to bring
+somebody out."
+
+D'Albon had just taken up his rifle when the Colonel put out a hand to
+stop him, and pointed out the mysterious woman who had aroused such
+lively curiosity in them. She seemed to be absorbed in deep thought,
+as she went along a green alley some little distance away, so slowly
+that the friends had time to take a good look at her. She wore a
+threadbare black satin gown, her long hair curled thickly over her
+forehead, and fell like a shawl about her shoulders below her waist.
+Doubtless she was accustomed to the dishevelment of her locks, for she
+seldom put back the hair on either side of her brows; but when she did
+so, she shook her head with a sudden jerk that had not to be repeated
+to shake away the thick veil from her eyes or forehead. In everything
+that she did, moreover, there was a wonderful certainty in the working
+of the mechanism, an unerring swiftness and precision, like that of an
+animal, well-nigh marvelous in a woman.
+
+The two sportsmen were amazed to see her spring up into an apple-tree
+and cling to a bough lightly as a bird. She snatched at the fruit, ate
+it, and dropped to the ground with the same supple grace that charms
+us in a squirrel. The elasticity of her limbs took all appearance of
+awkwardness or effort from her movements. She played about upon the
+grass, rolling in it as a young child might have done; then, on a
+sudden, she lay still and stretched out her feet and hands, with the
+languid natural grace of a kitten dozing in the sun.
+
+There was a threatening growl of thunder far away, and at this she
+started up on all fours and listened, like a dog who hears a strange
+footstep. One result of this strange attitude was to separate her
+thick black hair into two masses, that fell away on either side of her
+face and left her shoulders bare; the two witnesses of this singular
+scene wondered at the whiteness of the skin that shone like a meadow
+daisy, and at the neck that indicated the perfection of the rest of
+her form.
+
+A wailing cry broke from her; she rose to her feet, and stood upright.
+Every successive movement was made so lightly, so gracefully, so
+easily, that she seemed to be no human being, but one of Ossian's
+maids of the mist. She went across the grass to one of the pools of
+water, deftly shook off her shoe, and seemed to enjoy dipping her
+foot, white as marble, in the spring; doubtless it pleased her to make
+the circling ripples, and watch them glitter like gems. She knelt down
+by the brink, and played there like a child, dabbling her long tresses
+in the water, and flinging them loose again to see the water drip from
+the ends, like a string of pearls in the sunless light.
+
+"She is mad!" cried the Councillor.
+
+A hoarse cry rang through the air; it came from Genevieve, and seemed
+to be meant for the mysterious woman. She rose to her feet in a
+moment, flinging back the hair from her face, and then the Colonel and
+d'Albon could see her features distinctly. As soon as she saw the two
+friends she bounded to the railings with the swiftness of a fawn.
+
+"/Farewell/!" she said in low, musical tones, but they could not
+discover the least trace of feeling, the least idea in the sweet
+sounds that they had awaited impatiently.
+
+M. d'Albon admired the long lashes, the thick, dark eyebrows, the
+dazzling fairness of skin untinged by any trace of red. Only the
+delicate blue veins contrasted with that uniform whiteness.
+
+But when the Marquis turned to communicate his surprise at the sight
+of so strange an apparition, he saw the Colonel stretched on the grass
+like one dead. M. d'Albon fired his gun into the air, shouted for
+help, and tried to raise his friend. At the sound of the shot, the
+strange lady, who had stood motionless by the gate, fled away, crying
+out like a wounded wild creature, circling round and round in the
+meadow, with every sign of unspeakable terror.
+
+M. d'Albon heard a carriage rolling along the road to l'Isle-Adam, and
+waved his handkerchief to implore help. The carriage immediately came
+towards the Minorite convent, and M. d'Albon recognized neighbors, M.
+and Mme. de Grandville, who hastened to alight and put their carriage
+at his disposal. Colonel de Sucy inhaled the salts which Mme. de
+Grandville happened to have with her; he opened his eyes, looked
+towards the mysterious figure that still fled wailing through the
+meadow, and a faint cry of horror broke from him; he closed his eyes
+again, with a dumb gesture of entreaty to his friends to take him away
+from this scene. M. and Mme. de Grandville begged the Councillor to
+make use of their carriage, adding very obligingly that they
+themselves would walk.
+
+"Who can the lady be?" inquired the magistrate, looking towards the
+strange figure.
+
+"People think that she comes from Moulins," answered M. de Grandville.
+"She is a Comtesse de Vandieres; she is said to be mad; but as she has
+only been here for two months, I cannot vouch for the truth of all
+this hearsay talk."
+
+M. d'Albon thanked M. and Mme. de Grandville, and they set out for
+Cassan.
+
+"It is she!" cried Philip, coming to himself.
+
+"She? who?" asked d'Albon.
+
+"Stephanie. . . . Ah! dead and yet living still; still alive, but her
+mind is gone! I thought the sight would kill me."
+
+The prudent magistrate, recognizing the gravity of the crisis through
+which his friend was passing, refrained from asking questions or
+exciting him further, and grew impatient of the length of the way to
+the chateau, for the change wrought in the Colonel's face alarmed him.
+He feared lest the Countess' terrible disease had communicated itself
+to Philip's brain. When they reached the avenue at l'Isle-Adam,
+d'Albon sent the servant for the local doctor, so that the Colonel had
+scarcely been laid in bed before the surgeon was beside him.
+
+"If Monsieur le Colonel had not been fasting, the shock must have
+killed him," pronounced the leech. "He was over-tired, and that saved
+him," and with a few directions as to the patient's treatment, he went
+to prepare a composing draught himself. M. de Sucy was better the next
+morning, but the doctor had insisted on sitting up all night with him.
+
+"I confess, Monsieur le Marquis," the surgeon said, "that I feared for
+the brain. M. de Sucy has had some very violent shock; he is a man of
+strong passions, but, with his temperament, the first shock decides
+everything. He will very likely be out of danger to-morrow."
+
+The doctor was perfectly right. The next day the patient was allowed
+to see his friend.
+
+"I want you to do something for me, dear d'Albon," Philip said,
+grasping his friend's hand. "Hasten at once to the Minorite convent,
+find out everything about the lady whom we saw there, and come back as
+soon as you can; I shall count the minutes till I see you again."
+
+M. d'Albon called for his horse, and galloped over to the old
+monastery. When he reached the gateway he found some one standing
+there, a tall, spare man with a kindly face, who answered in the
+affirmative when he was asked if he lived in the ruined house. M.
+d'Albon explained his errand.
+
+"Why, then, it must have been you, sir, who fired that unlucky shot!
+You all but killed my poor invalid."
+
+"Eh! I fired into the air!"
+
+"If you had actually hit Madame la Comtesse, you would have done less
+harm to her."
+
+"Well, well, then, we can neither of us complain, for the sight of the
+Countess all but killed my friend, M. de Sucy."
+
+"The Baron de Sucy, is it possible?" cried the doctor, clasping his
+hands. "Has he been in Russia? was he in the Beresina?"
+
+"Yes," answered d'Albon. "He was taken prisoner by the Cossacks and
+sent to Siberia. He has not been back in this country a twelvemonth."
+
+"Come in, monsieur," said the other, and he led the way to a drawing-
+room on the ground-floor. Everything in the room showed signs of
+capricious destruction.
+
+Valuable china jars lay in fragments on either side of a clock beneath
+a glass shade, which had escaped. The silk hangings about the windows
+were torn to rags, while the muslin curtains were untouched.
+
+"You see about you the havoc wrought by a charming being to whom I
+have dedicated my life. She is my niece; and though medical science is
+powerless in her case, I hope to restore her to reason, though the
+method which I am trying is, unluckily, only possible to the wealthy."
+
+Then, like all who live much alone and daily bear the burden of a
+heavy trouble, he fell to talk with the magistrate. This is the story
+that he told, set in order, and with the many digressions made by both
+teller and hearer omitted.
+
+
+
+When, at nine o'clock at night, on the 28th of November 1812, Marshal
+Victor abandoned the heights of Studzianka, which he had held through
+the day, he left a thousand men behind with instructions to protect,
+till the last possible moment, the two pontoon bridges over the
+Beresina that still held good. This rear guard was to save if possible
+an appalling number of stragglers, so numbed with the cold, that they
+obstinately refused to leave the baggage-wagons. The heroism of the
+generous band was doomed to fail; for, unluckily, the men who poured
+down to the eastern bank of the Beresina found carriages, caissons,
+and all kinds of property which the Army had been forced to abandon
+during its passage on the 27th and 28th days of November. The poor,
+half-frozen wretches, sunk almost to the level of brutes, finding such
+unhoped-for riches, bivouacked in the deserted space, laid hands on
+the military stores, improvised huts out of the material, lighted
+fires with anything that would burn, cut up the carcasses of the
+horses for food, tore out the linings of the carriages, wrapped
+themselves in them, and lay down to sleep instead of crossing the
+Beresina in peace under cover of night--the Beresina that even then
+had proved, by incredible fatality, so disastrous to the Army. Such
+apathy on the part of the poor fellows can only be understood by those
+who remember tramping across those vast deserts of snow, with nothing
+to quench their thirst but snow, snow for their bed, snow as far as
+the horizon on every side, and no food but snow, a little frozen
+beetroot, horseflesh, or a handful of meal.
+
+The miserable creatures were dropping down, overcome by hunger,
+thirst, weariness, and sleep, when they reached the shores of the
+Beresina and found fuel and fire and victuals, countless wagons and
+tents, a whole improvised town, in short. The whole village of
+Studzianka had been removed piecemeal from the heights of the plain,
+and the very perils and miseries of this dangerous and doleful
+habitation smiled invitingly to the wayfarers, who beheld no prospect
+beyond it but the awful Russian deserts. A huge hospice, in short, was
+erected for twenty hours of existence. Only one thought--the thought
+of rest--appealed to men weary of life or rejoicing in unlooked-for
+comfort.
+
+They lay right in the line of fire from the cannon of the Russian
+left; but to that vast mass of human creatures, a patch upon the snow,
+sometimes dark, sometimes breaking into flame, the indefatigable
+grapeshot was but one discomfort the more. For them it was only a
+storm, and they paid the less attention to the bolts that fell among
+them because there were none to strike down there save dying men, the
+wounded, or perhaps the dead. Stragglers came up in little bands at
+every moment. These walking corpses instantly separated, and wandered
+begging from fire to fire; and meeting, for the most part, with
+refusals, banded themselves together again, and took by force what
+they could not otherwise obtain. They were deaf to the voices of their
+officers prophesying death on the morrow, and spent the energy
+required to cross the swamp in building shelters for the night and
+preparing a meal that often proved fatal. The coming death no longer
+seemed an evil, for it gave them an hour of slumber before it came.
+Hunger and thirst and cold--these were evils, but not death.
+
+At last wood and fuel and canvas and shelters failed, and hideous
+brawls began between destitute late comers and the rich already in
+possession of a lodging. The weaker were driven away, until a few last
+fugitives before the Russian advance were obliged to make their bed in
+the snow, and lay down to rise no more.
+
+Little by little the mass of half-dead humanity became so dense, so
+deaf, so torpid,--or perhaps it should be said so happy--that Marshal
+Victor, their heroic defender against twenty thousand Russians under
+Wittgenstein, was actually compelled to cut his way by force through
+this forest of men, so as to cross the Beresina with the five thousand
+heroes whom he was leading to the Emperor. The miserable creatures
+preferred to be trampled and crushed to death rather than stir from
+their places, and died without a sound, smiling at the dead ashes of
+their fires, forgetful of France.
+
+Not before ten o'clock that night did the Duc de Belluno reach the
+other side of the river. Before committing his men to the pontoon
+bridges that led to Zembin, he left the fate of the rearguard at
+Studzianka in Eble's hands, and to Eble the survivors of the
+calamities of the Beresina owed their lives.
+
+About midnight, the great General, followed by a courageous officer,
+came out of his little hut by the bridge, and gazed at the spectacle
+of this camp between the bank of the Beresina and the Borizof road to
+Studzianka. The thunder of the Russian cannonade had ceased. Here and
+there faces that had nothing human about them were lighted up by
+countless fires that seemed to grow pale in the glare of the
+snowfields, and to give no light. Nearly thirty thousand wretches,
+belonging to every nation that Napoleon had hurled upon Russia, lay
+there hazarding their lives with the indifference of brute beasts.
+
+"We have all these to save," the General said to his subordinate.
+"To-morrow morning the Russians will be in Studzianka. The moment they
+come up we shall have to set fire to the bridge; so pluck up heart, my
+boy! Make your way out and up yonder through them, and tell General
+Fournier that he has barely time to evacuate his post and cut his way
+through to the bridge. As soon as you have seen him set out, follow
+him down, take some able-bodied men, and set fire to the tents,
+wagons, caissons, carriages, anything and everything, without pity,
+and drive these fellows on to the bridge. Compel everything that walks
+on two legs to take refuge on the other bank. We must set fire to the
+camp; it is our last resource. If Berthier had let me burn those
+d----d wagons sooner, no lives need have been lost in the river except
+my poor pontooners, my fifty heroes, who saved the Army, and will be
+forgotten."
+
+The General passed his hand over his forehead and said no more. He
+felt that Poland would be his tomb, and foresaw that afterwards no
+voice would be raised to speak for the noble fellows who had plunged
+into the stream--into the waters of the Beresina!--to drive in the
+piles for the bridges. And, indeed, only one of them is living now,
+or, to be more accurate, starving, utterly forgotten in a country
+village![*] The brave officer had scarcely gone a hundred paces
+towards Studzianka, when General Eble roused some of his patient
+pontooners, and began his work of mercy by setting fire to the camp on
+the side nearest the bridge, so compelling the sleepers to rise and
+cross the Beresina. Meanwhile the young aide-de-camp, not without
+difficulty, reached the one wooden house yet left standing in
+Studzianka.
+
+[*] This story can be found in /The Country Parson/.--eBook preparers.
+
+"So the box is pretty full, is it, messmate?" he said to a man whom he
+found outside.
+
+"You will be a knowing fellow if you manage to get inside," the
+officer returned, without turning round or stopping his occupation of
+hacking at the woodwork of the house with his sabre.
+
+"Philip, is that you?" cried the aide-de-camp, recognizing the voice
+of one of his friends.
+
+"Yes. Aha! is it you, old fellow?" returned M. de Sucy, looking round
+at the aide-de-camp, who like himself was not more than twenty-three
+years old. "I fancied you were on the other side of this confounded
+river. Do you come to bring us sweetmeats for dessert? You will get a
+warm welcome," he added, as he tore away a strip of bark from the wood
+and gave it to his horse by way of fodder.
+
+"I am looking for your commandant. General Eble has sent me to tell
+him to file off to Zembin. You have only just time to cut your way
+through that mass of dead men; as soon as you get through, I am going
+to set fire to the place to make them move --"
+
+"You almost make me feel warm! Your news has put me in a fever; I have
+two friends to bring through. Ah! but for those marmots, I should have
+been dead before now, old fellow. On their account I am taking care of
+my horse instead of eating him. But have you a crust about you, for
+pity's sake? It is thirty hours since I have stowed any victuals. I
+have been fighting like a madman to keep up a little warmth in my body
+and what courage I have left."
+
+"Poor Philip! I have nothing--not a scrap!-- But is your General in
+there?"
+
+"Don't attempt to go in. The barn is full of our wounded. Go up a bit
+higher, and you will see a sort of pig-sty to the right--that is where
+the General is. Good-bye, my dear fellow. If ever we meet again in a
+quadrille in a ballroom in Paris--"
+
+He did not finish the sentence, for the treachery of the northeast
+wind that whistled about them froze Major Philip's lips, and the
+aide-de-camp kept moving for fear of being frost-bitten. Silence soon
+prevailed, scarcely broken by the groans of the wounded in the barn,
+or the stifled sounds made by M. de Sucy's horse crunching on the
+frozen bark with famished eagerness. Philip thrust his sabre into the
+sheath, caught at the bridle of the precious animal that he had
+managed to keep for so long, and drew her away from the miserable
+fodder that she was bolting with apparent relish.
+
+"Come along, Bichette! come along! It lies with you now, my beauty, to
+save Stephanie's life. There, wait a little longer, and they will let
+us lie down and die, no doubt;" and Philip, wrapped in a pelisse, to
+which doubtless he owed his life and energies, began to run, stamping
+his feet on the frozen snow to keep them warm. He was scarce five
+hundred paces away before he saw a great fire blazing on the spot
+where he had left his carriage that morning with an old soldier to
+guard it. A dreadful misgiving seized upon him. Many a man under the
+influence of a powerful feeling during the Retreat summoned up energy
+for his friend's sake when he would not have exerted himself to save
+his own life; so it was with Philip. He soon neared a hollow, where he
+had left a carriage sheltered from the cannonade, a carriage that held
+a young woman, his playmate in childhood, dearer to him than any one
+else on earth.
+
+Some thirty stragglers were sitting round a tremendous blaze, which
+they kept up with logs of wood, planks wrenched from the floors of the
+caissons, and wheels, and panels from carriage bodies. These had been,
+doubtless, among the last to join the sea of fires, huts, and human
+faces that filled the great furrow in the land between Studzianka and
+the fatal river, a restless living sea of almost imperceptibly moving
+figures, that sent up a smothered hum of sound blended with frightful
+shrieks. It seemed that hunger and despair had driven these forlorn
+creatures to take forcible possession of the carriage, for the old
+General and his young wife, whom they had found warmly wrapped in
+pelisses and traveling cloaks, were now crouching on the earth beside
+the fire, and one of the carriage doors was broken.
+
+As soon as the group of stragglers round the fire heard the footfall
+of the Major's horse, a frenzied yell of hunger went up from them. "A
+horse!" they cried. "A horse!"
+
+All the voices went up as one voice.
+
+"Back! back! Look out!" shouted two or three of them, leveling their
+muskets at the animal.
+
+"I will pitch you neck and crop into your fire, you blackguards!"
+cried Philip, springing in front of the mare. "There are dead horses
+lying up yonder; go and look for them!"
+
+"What a rum customer the officer is!-- Once, twice, will you get out
+of the way?" returned a giant grenadier. "You won't? All right then,
+just as you please."
+
+A woman's shriek rang out above the report. Luckily, none of the
+bullets hit Philip; but poor Bichette lay in the agony of death. Three
+of the men came up and put an end to her with thrusts of the bayonet.
+
+"Cannibals! leave me the rug and my pistols," cried Philip in
+desperation.
+
+"Oh! the pistols if you like; but as for the rug, there is a fellow
+yonder who has had nothing to wet his whistle these two days, and is
+shivering in his coat of cobwebs, and that's our General."
+
+Philips looked up and saw a man with worn-out shoes and a dozen rents
+in his trousers; the only covering for his head was a ragged foraging
+cap, white with rime. He said no more after that, but snatched up his
+pistols.
+
+Five of the men dragged the mare to the fire, and began to cut up the
+carcass as dexterously as any journeymen butchers in Paris. The scraps
+of meat were distributed and flung upon the coals, and the whole
+process was magically swift. Philip went over to the woman who had
+given the cry of terror when she recognized his danger, and sat down
+by her side. She sat motionless upon a cushion taken from the
+carriage, warming herself at the blaze; she said no word, and gazed at
+him without a smile. He saw beside her the soldier whom he had left
+mounting guard over the carriage; the poor fellow had been wounded; he
+had been overpowered by numbers, and forced to surrender to the
+stragglers who had set upon him, and, like a dog who defends his
+master's dinner till the last moment, he had taken his share of the
+spoil, and had made a sort of cloak for himself out of a sheet. At
+that particular moment he was busy toasting a piece of horseflesh, and
+in his face the major saw a gleeful anticipation of the coming feast.
+
+The Comte de Vandieres, who seemed to have grown quite childish in the
+last few days, sat on a cushion close to his wife, and stared into the
+fire. He was only just beginning to shake off his torpor under the
+influence of the warmth. He had been no more affected by Philip's
+arrival and danger than by the fight and subsequent pillaging of his
+traveling carriage.
+
+At first Sucy caught the young Countess' hand in his, trying to
+express his affection for her, and the pain that it gave him to see
+her reduced like this to the last extremity of misery; but he said
+nothing as he sat by her side on the thawing heap of snow, he gave
+himself up to the pleasure of the sensation of warmth, forgetful of
+danger, forgetful of all things else in the world. In spite of himself
+his face expanded with an almost fatuous expression of satisfaction,
+and he waited impatiently till the scrap of horseflesh that had fallen
+to his soldier's share should be cooked. The smell of charred flesh
+stimulated his hunger. Hunger clamored within and silenced his heart,
+his courage, and his love. He coolly looked round on the results of
+the spoliation of his carriage. Not a man seated round the fire but
+had shared the booty, the rugs, cushions, pelisses, dresses,--articles
+of clothing that belonged to the Count and Countess or to himself.
+Philip turned to see if anything worth taking was left in the berline.
+He saw by the light of the flames, gold, and diamonds, and silver
+lying scattered about; no one had cared to appropriate the least
+particle. There was something hideous in the silence among those human
+creatures round the fire; none of them spoke, none of them stirred,
+save to do such things as each considered necessary for his own
+comfort.
+
+It was a grotesque misery. The men's faces were wrapped and disfigured
+with the cold, and plastered over with a layer of mud; you could see
+the thickness of the mask by the channel traced down their cheeks by
+the tears that ran from their eyes, and their long slovenly-kept
+beards added to the hideousness of their appearance. Some were wrapped
+round in women's shawls, others in horse-cloths, dirty blankets, rags
+stiffened with melting hoar-frost; here and there a man wore a boot on
+one foot and a shoe on the other, in fact, there was not one of them
+but wore some ludicrously odd costume. But the men themselves with
+such matter for jest about them were gloomy and taciturn.
+
+The silence was unbroken save by the crackling of the wood, the
+roaring of the flames, the far-off hum of the camp, and the sound of
+sabres hacking at the carcass of the mare. Some of the hungriest of
+the men were still cutting tidbits for themselves. A few miserable
+creatures, more weary than the others, slept outright; and if they
+happened to roll into the fire, no one pulled them back. With
+cut-and-dried logic their fellows argued that if they were not dead, a
+scorching ought to be sufficient warning to quit and seek out more
+comfortable quarters. If the poor wretch woke to find himself on fire,
+he was burned to death, and nobody pitied him. Here and there the men
+exchanged glances, as if to excuse their indifference by the
+carelessness of the rest; the thing happened twice under the Countess'
+eyes, and she uttered no sound. When all the scraps of horseflesh had
+been broiled upon the coals, they were devoured with a ravenous
+greediness that would have been disgusting in wild beasts.
+
+"And now we have seen thirty infantrymen on one horse for the first
+time in our lives!" cried the grenadier who had shot the mare, the one
+solitary joke that sustained the Frenchmen's reputation for wit.
+
+Before long the poor fellows huddled themselves up in their clothes,
+and lay down on planks of timber, on anything but the bare snow, and
+slept--heedless of the morrow. Major de Sucy having warmed himself and
+satisfied his hunger, fought in vain against the drowsiness that
+weighed upon his eyes. During this brief struggle he gazed at the
+sleeping girl who had turned her face to the fire, so that he could
+see her closed eyelids and part of her forehead. She was wrapped round
+in a furred pelisse and a coarse horseman's cloak, her head lay on a
+blood-stained cushion; a tall astrakhan cap tied over her head by a
+handkerchief knotted under the chin protected her face as much as
+possible from the cold, and she had tucked up her feet in the cloak.
+As she lay curled up in this fashion, she bore no likeness to any
+creature.
+
+Was this the lowest of camp-followers? Was this the charming woman,
+the pride of her lover's heart, the queen of many a Parisian ballroom?
+Alas! even for the eyes of this most devoted friend, there was no
+discernible trace of womanhood in that bundle of rags and linen, and
+the cold was mightier than the love in a woman's heart.
+
+Then for the major the husband and wife came to be like two distant
+dots seen through the thick veil that the most irresistible kind of
+slumber spread over his eyes. It all seemed to be part of a dream--the
+leaping flames, the recumbent figures, the awful cold that lay in wait
+for them three paces away from the warmth of the fire that glowed for
+a little while. One thought that could not be stifled haunted Philip--
+"If I go to sleep, we shall all die; I will not sleep," he said to
+himself.
+
+He slept. After an hour's slumber M. de Sucy was awakened by a hideous
+uproar and the sound of an explosion. The remembrance of his duty, of
+the danger of his beloved, rushed upon his mind with a sudden shock.
+He uttered a cry like the growl of a wild beast. He and his servant
+stood upright above the rest. They saw a sea of fire in the darkness,
+and against it moving masses of human figures. Flames were devouring
+the huts and tents. Despairing shrieks and yelling cries reached their
+ears; they saw thousands upon thousands of wild and desperate faces;
+and through this inferno a column of soldiers was cutting its way to
+the bridge, between the two hedges of dead bodies.
+
+"Our rearguard is in full retreat," cried the major. "There is no hope
+left!"
+
+"I have spared your traveling carriage, Philip," said a friendly
+voice.
+
+Sucy turned and saw the young aide-de-camp by the light of the flames.
+
+"Oh, it is all over with us," he answered. "They have eaten my horse.
+And how am I to make this sleepy general and his wife stir a step?"
+
+"Take a brand, Philip, and threaten them."
+
+"Threaten the Countess? . . ."
+
+"Good-bye," cried the aide-de-camp; "I have only just time to get
+across that unlucky river, and go I must, there is my mother in
+France! . . . What a night! This herd of wretches would rather lie
+here in the snow, and most of them would sooner be burned alive than
+get up. . . . It is four o'clock, Philip! In two hours the Russians
+will begin to move, and you will see the Beresina covered with corpses
+a second time, I can tell you. You haven't a horse, and you cannot
+carry the Countess, so come along with me," he went on, taking his
+friend by the arm.
+
+"My dear fellow, how am I to leave Stephanie?"
+
+Major de Sucy grasped the Countess, set her on her feet, and shook her
+roughly; he was in despair. He compelled her to wake, and she stared
+at him with dull fixed eyes.
+
+"Stephanie, we must go, or we shall die here!"
+
+For all answer, the Countess tried to sink down again and sleep on the
+earth. The aide-de-camp snatched a brand from the fire and shook it in
+her face.
+
+"We must save her in spite of herself," cried Philip, and he carried
+her in his arms to the carriage. He came back to entreat his friend to
+help him, and the two young men took the old general and put him
+beside his wife, without knowing whether he were alive or dead. The
+major rolled the men over as they crouched on the earth, took away the
+plundered clothing, and heaped it upon the husband and wife, then he
+flung some of the broiled fragments of horseflesh into a corner of the
+carriage.
+
+"Now, what do you mean to do?" asked the aide-de-camp.
+
+"Drag them along!" answered Sucy.
+
+"You are mad!"
+
+"You are right!" exclaimed Philip, folding his arms on his breast.
+
+Suddenly a desperate plan occurred to him.
+
+"Look you here!" he said, grasping his sentinel by the unwounded arm.
+"I leave her in your care for one hour. Bear in mind that you must die
+sooner than let any one, no matter whom, come near the carriage!"
+
+The major seized a handful of the lady's diamonds, drew his sabre, and
+violently battered those who seemed to him to be the bravest among the
+sleepers. By this means he succeeded in rousing the gigantic grenadier
+and a couple of men whose rank and regiment were undiscoverable.
+
+"It is all up with us!" he cried.
+
+"Of course it is," returned the grenadier; "but that is all one to
+me."
+
+"Very well then, if die you must, isn't it better to sell your life
+for a pretty woman, and stand a chance of going back to France again?"
+
+"I would rather go to sleep," said one of the men, dropping down into
+the snow; "and if you worry me again, major, I shall stick my
+toasting-iron into your body."
+
+"What is it all about, sir?" asked the grenadier. "The man's drunk. He
+is a Parisian, and likes to lie in the lap of luxury."
+
+"You shall have these, good fellow," said the major, holding out a
+riviere of diamonds, "if you will follow me and fight like a madman.
+The Russians are not ten minutes away; they have horses; we will march
+up to the nearest battery and carry off two stout ones."
+
+"How about the sentinels, major?"
+
+"One of us three--" he began; then he turned from the soldier and
+looked at the aide-de-camp.--"You are coming, aren't you, Hippolyte?"
+
+Hippolyte nodded assent.
+
+"One of us," the major went on, "will look after the sentry. Besides,
+perhaps those blessed Russians are also fast asleep."
+
+"All right, major; you are a good sort! But will you take me in your
+carriage?" asked the grenadier.
+
+"Yes, if you don't leave your bones up yonder.-- If I come to grief,
+promise me, you two, that you will do everything in your power to save
+the Countess."
+
+"All right," said the grenadier.
+
+They set out for the Russian lines, taking the direction of the
+batteries that had so cruelly raked the mass of miserable creatures
+huddled together by the river bank. A few minutes later the hoofs of
+two galloping horses rang on the frozen snow, and the awakened battery
+fired a volley that passed over the heads of the sleepers; the
+hoof-beats rattled so fast on the iron ground that they sounded like
+the hammering in a smithy. The generous aide-de-camp had fallen; the
+stalwart grenadier had come off safe and sound; and Philip himself
+received a bayonet thrust in the shoulder while defending his friend.
+Notwithstanding his wound, he clung to his horse's mane, and gripped
+him with his knees so tightly that the animal was held as in a vise.
+
+"God be praised!" cried the major, when he saw his soldier still on
+the spot, and the carriage standing where he had left it.
+
+"If you do the right thing by me, sir, you will get me the cross for
+this. We have treated them to a sword dance to a pretty tune from the
+rifle, eh?"
+
+"We have done nothing yet! Let us put the horses in. Take hold of
+these cords."
+
+"They are not long enough."
+
+"All right, grenadier, just go and overhaul those fellows sleeping
+there; take their shawls, sheets, anything--"
+
+"I say! the rascal is dead," cried the grenadier, as he plundered the
+first man who came to hand. "Why, they are all dead! how queer!"
+
+"All of them?"
+
+"Yes, every one. It looks as though the horseflesh /a la neige/ was
+indigestible."
+
+Philip shuddered at the words. The night had grown twice as cold as
+before.
+
+"Great heaven! to lose her when I have saved her life a score of times
+already."
+
+He shook the Countess, "Stephanie! Stephanie!" he cried.
+
+She opened her eyes.
+
+"We are saved, madame!"
+
+"Saved!" she echoed, and fell back again.
+
+The horses were harnessed after a fashion at last. The major held his
+sabre in his unwounded hand, took the reins in the other, saw to his
+pistols, and sprang on one of the horses, while the grenadier mounted
+the other. The old sentinel had been pushed into the carriage, and lay
+across the knees of the general and the Countess; his feet were
+frozen. Urged on by blows from the flat of the sabre, the horses
+dragged the carriage at a mad gallop down to the plain, where endless
+difficulties awaited them. Before long it became almost impossible to
+advance without crushing sleeping men, women, and even children at
+every step, all of whom declined to stir when the grenadier awakened
+them. In vain M. de Sucy looked for the track that the rearguard had
+cut through this dense crowd of human beings; there was no more sign
+of their passage than the wake of a ship in the sea. The horses could
+only move at a foot-pace, and were stopped most frequently by
+soldiers, who threatened to kill them.
+
+"Do you mean to get there?" asked the grenadier.
+
+"Yes, if it costs every drop of blood in my body! if it costs the
+whole world!" the major answered.
+
+"Forward, then! . . . You can't have the omelette without breaking
+eggs." And the grenadier of the Garde urged on the horses over the
+prostrate bodies, and upset the bivouacs; the blood-stained wheels
+ploughing that field of faces left a double furrow of dead. But in
+justice it should be said that he never ceased to thunder out his
+warning cry, "Carrion! look out!"
+
+"Poor wretches!" exclaimed the major.
+
+"Bah! That way, or the cold, or the cannon!" said the grenadier,
+goading on the horses with the point of his sword.
+
+Then came the catastrophe, which must have happened sooner but for
+miraculous good fortune; the carriage was overturned, and all further
+progress was stopped at once.
+
+"I expected as much!" exclaimed the imperturbable grenadier. "Oho! he
+is dead!" he added, looking at his comrade.
+
+"Poor Laurent!" said the major.
+
+"Laurent! Wasn't he in the Fifth Chasseurs?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"My own cousin.-- Pshaw! this beastly life is not so pleasant that one
+need be sorry for him as things go."
+
+But all this time the carriage lay overturned, and the horses were
+only released after great and irreparable loss of time. The shock had
+been so violent that the Countess had been awakened by it, and the
+subsequent commotion aroused her from her stupor. She shook off the
+rugs and rose.
+
+"Where are we, Philip?" she asked in musical tones, as she looked
+about her.
+
+"About five hundred paces from the bridge. We are just about to cross
+the Beresina. When we are on the other side, Stephanie, I will not
+tease you any more; I will let you go to sleep; we shall be in safety,
+we can go on to Wilna in peace. God grant that you may never know what
+your life has cost!"
+
+"You are wounded!"
+
+"A mere trifle."
+
+The hour of doom had come. The Russian cannon announced the day. The
+Russians were in possession of Studzianka, and thence were raking the
+plain with grapeshot; and by the first dim light of the dawn the major
+saw two columns moving and forming above the heights. Then a cry of
+horror went up from the crowd, and in a moment every one sprang to his
+feet. Each instinctively felt his danger, and all made a rush for the
+bridge, surging towards it like a wave.
+
+Then the Russians came down upon them, swift as a conflagration. Men,
+women, children, and horses all crowded towards the river. Luckily for
+the major and the Countess, they were still at some distance from the
+bank. General Eble had just set fire to the bridge on the other side;
+but in spite of all the warnings given to those who rushed towards the
+chance of salvation, not one among them could or would draw back. The
+overladen bridge gave way, and not only so, the impetus of the frantic
+living wave towards that fatal bank was such that a dense crowd of
+human beings was thrust into the water as if by an avalanche. The
+sound of a single human cry could not be distinguished; there was a
+dull crash as if an enormous stone had fallen into the water--and the
+Beresina was covered with corpses.
+
+The violent recoil of those in front, striving to escape this death,
+brought them into hideous collision with those behind then, who were
+pressing towards the bank, and many were suffocated and crushed. The
+Comte and Comtesse de Vandieres owed their lives to the carriage. The
+horses that had trampled and crushed so many dying men were crushed
+and trampled to death in their turn by the human maelstrom which
+eddied from the bank. Sheer physical strength saved the major and the
+grenadier. They killed others in self-defence. That wild sea of human
+faces and living bodies, surging to and fro as by one impulse, left
+the bank of the Beresina clear for a few moments. The multitude had
+hurled themselves back on the plain. Some few men sprang down from the
+banks of the river, not so much with any hope of reaching the opposite
+shore, which for them meant France, as from dread of the wastes of
+Siberia. For some bold spirits despair became a panoply. An officer
+leaped from hummock to hummock of ice, and reached the other shore;
+one of the soldiers scrambled over miraculously on the piles of dead
+bodies and drift ice. But the immense multitude left behind saw at
+last that the Russians would not slaughter twenty thousand unarmed
+men, too numb with the cold to attempt to resist them, and each
+awaited his fate with dreadful apathy. By this time the major and his
+grenadier, the old general and his wife, were left to themselves not
+very far from the place where the bridge had been. All four stood dry-
+eyed and silent among the heaps of dead. A few able-bodied men and one
+or two officers, who had recovered all their energy at this crisis,
+gathered about them. The group was sufficiently large; there were
+about fifty men all told. A couple of hundred paces from them stood
+the wreck of the artillery bridge, which had broken down the day
+before; the major saw this, and "Let us make a raft!" he cried.
+
+The words were scarcely out of his mouth before the whole group
+hurried to the ruins of the bridge. A crowd of men began to pick up
+iron clamps and to hunt for planks and ropes--for all the materials
+for a raft, in short. A score of armed men and officers, under command
+of the major, stood on guard to protect the workers from any desperate
+attempt on the part of the multitude if they should guess their
+design. The longing for freedom, which inspires prisoners to
+accomplish impossibilities, cannot be compared with the hope which
+lent energy at that moment to these forlorn Frenchmen.
+
+"The Russians are upon us! Here are the Russians!" the guard shouted
+to the workers.
+
+The timbers creaked, the raft grew larger, stronger, and more
+substantial. Generals, colonels, and common soldiers all alike bent
+beneath the weight of wagon-wheels, chains, coils of rope, and planks
+of timber; it was a modern realization of the building of Noah's ark.
+The young Countess, sitting by her husband's side, looked on,
+regretful that she could do nothing to aide the workers, though she
+helped to knot the lengths of rope together.
+
+At last the raft was finished. Forty men launched it out into the
+river, while ten of the soldiers held the ropes that must keep it
+moored to the shore. The moment that they saw their handiwork floating
+on the Beresina, they sprang down onto it from the bank with callous
+selfishness. The major, dreading the frenzy of the first rush, held
+back Stephanie and the general; but a shudder ran through him when he
+saw the landing place black with people, and men crowding down like
+playgoers into the pit of a theatre.
+
+"It was I who thought of the raft, you savages!" he cried. "I have
+saved your lives, and you will not make room for me!"
+
+A confused murmur was the only answer. The men at the edge took up
+stout poles, trust them against the bank with all their might, so as
+to shove the raft out and gain an impetus at its starting upon a
+journey across a sea of floating ice and dead bodies towards the other
+shore.
+
+"/Tonnerre de Dieu/! I will knock some of you off into the water if
+you don't make room for the major and his two companions," shouted the
+grenadier. He raised his sabre threateningly, delayed the departure,
+and made the men stand closer together, in spite of threatening yells.
+
+"I shall fall in! . . . I shall go overboard! . . ." his fellows
+shouted.
+
+"Let us start! Put off!"
+
+The major gazed with tearless eyes at the woman he loved; an impulse
+of sublime resignation raised her eyes to heaven.
+
+"To die with you!" she said.
+
+In the situation of the folk upon the raft there was a certain comic
+element. They might utter hideous yells, but not one of them dared to
+oppose the grenadier, for they were packed together so tightly that if
+one man were knocked down, the whole raft might capsize. At this
+delicate crisis, a captain tried to rid himself of one of his
+neighbors; the man saw the hostile intention of his officer, collared
+him, and pitched him overboard. "Aha! The duck has a mind to drink.
+. . . Over with you!-- There is room for two now!" he shouted. "Quick,
+major! throw your little woman over, and come! Never mind that old
+dotard! he will drop off to-morrow!"
+
+"Be quick!" cried a voice, made up of a hundred voices.
+
+"Come, major! Those fellows are making a fuss, and well they may."
+
+The Comte de Vandieres flung off his ragged blankets, and stood before
+them in his general's uniform.
+
+"Let us save the Count," said Philip.
+
+Stephanie grasped his hand tightly in hers, flung her arms about, and
+clasped him close in an agonized embrace.
+
+"Farewell!" she said.
+
+Then each knew the other's thoughts. The Comte de Vandieres recovered
+his energies and presence of mind sufficiently to jump on to the raft,
+whither Stephanie followed him after one last look at Philip.
+
+"Major, won't you take my place? I do not care a straw for life; I
+have neither a wife, nor child, nor mother belonging to me--"
+
+"I give them into your charge," cried the major, indicating the Count
+and his wife.
+
+"Be easy; I will take as much care of them as of the apple of my eye."
+
+Philip stood stock-still on the bank. The raft sped so violently
+towards the opposite shore that it ran aground with a violent shock to
+all on board. The Count, standing on the very edge, was shaken into
+the stream; and as he fell, a mass of ice swept by and struck off his
+head, and sent it flying like a ball.
+
+"Hey! major!" shouted the grenadier.
+
+"Farewell!" a woman's voice called aloud.
+
+An icy shiver ran through Philip de Sucy, and he dropped down where he
+stood, overcome with cold and sorrow and weariness.
+
+
+
+"My poor niece went out of her mind," the doctor added after a brief
+pause. "Ah! monsieur," he went on, grasping M. d'Albon's hand, "what a
+fearful life for a poor little thing, so young, so delicate! An
+unheard-of misfortune separated her from that grenadier of the Garde
+(Fleuriot by name), and for two years she was dragged on after the
+army, the laughing-stock of a rabble of outcasts. She went barefoot, I
+heard, ill-clad, neglected, and starved for months at a time;
+sometimes confined to a hospital, sometimes living like a hunted
+animal. God alone knows all the misery which she endured, and yet she
+lives. She was shut up in a madhouse in a little German town, while
+her relations, believing her to be dead, were dividing her property
+here in France.
+
+"In 1816 the grenadier Fleuriot recognized her in an inn in
+Strasbourg. She had just managed to escape from captivity. Some
+peasants told him that the Countess had lived for a whole month in a
+forest, and how that they had tracked her and tried to catch her
+without success.
+
+"I was at that time not many leagues from Strasbourg; and hearing the
+talk about the girl in the wood, I wished to verify the strange facts
+that had given rise to absurd stories. What was my feeling when I
+beheld the Countess? Fleuriot told me all that he knew of the piteous
+story. I took the poor fellow with my niece into Auvergne, and there I
+had the misfortune to lose him. He had some ascendancy over Mme. de
+Vandieres. He alone succeeded in persuading her to wear clothes; and
+in those days her one word of human speech--/Farewell/--she seldom
+uttered. Fleuriot set himself to the task of awakening certain
+associations; but there he failed completely; he drew that one
+sorrowful word from her a little more frequently, that was all. But
+the old grenadier could amuse her, and devoted himself to playing with
+her, and through him I hoped; but--" here Stephanie's uncle broke off.
+After a moment he went on again.
+
+"Here she has found another creature with whom she seems to have an
+understanding--an idiot peasant girl, who once, in spite of her
+plainness and imbecility, fell in love with a mason. The mason thought
+of marrying her because she had a little bit of land, and for a whole
+year poor Genevieve was the happiest of living creatures. She dressed
+in her best, and danced on Sundays with Dallot; she understood love;
+there was room for love in her heart and brain. But Dallot thought
+better of it. He found another girl who had all her senses and rather
+more land than Genevieve, and he forsook Genevieve for her. Then the
+poor thing lost the little intelligence that love had developed in
+her; she can do nothing now but cut grass and look after the cattle.
+My niece and the poor girl are in some sort bound to each other by the
+invisible chain of their common destiny, and by their madness due to
+the same cause. Just come here a moment; look!" and Stephanie's uncle
+led the Marquis d'Albon to the window.
+
+There, in fact, the magistrate beheld the pretty Countess sitting on
+the ground at Genevieve's knee, while the peasant girl was wholly
+absorbed in combing out Stephanie's long, black hair with a huge comb.
+The Countess submitted herself to this, uttering low smothered cries
+that expressed her enjoyment of the sensation of physical comfort. A
+shudder ran through M. d'Albon as he saw her attitude of languid
+abandonment, the animal supineness that revealed an utter lack of
+intelligence.
+
+"Oh! Philip, Philip!" he cried, "past troubles are as nothing. Is it
+quite hopeless?" he asked.
+
+The doctor raised his eyes to heaven.
+
+"Good-bye, monsieur," said M. d'Albon, pressing the old man's hand.
+"My friend is expecting me; you will see him here before long."
+
+
+
+"Then it is Stephanie herself?" cried Sucy when the Marquis had spoken
+the first few words. "Ah! until now I did not feel sure!" he added.
+Tears filled the dark eyes that were wont to wear a stern expression.
+
+"Yes; she is the Comtesse de Vandieres," his friend replied.
+
+The colonel started up, and hurriedly began to dress.
+
+"Why, Philip!" cried the horrified magistrate. "Are you going mad?"
+
+"I am quite well now," said the colonel simply. "This news has soothed
+all my bitterest grief; what pain could hurt me while I think of
+Stephanie? I am going over to the Minorite convent, to see her and
+speak to her, to restore her to health again. She is free; ah, surely,
+surely, happiness will smile on us, or there is no Providence above.
+How can you think she could hear my voice, poor Stephanie, and not
+recover her reason?"
+
+"She has seen you once already, and she did not recognize you," the
+magistrate answered gently, trying to suggest some wholesome fears to
+this friend, whose hopes were visibly too high.
+
+The colonel shuddered, but he began to smile again, with a slight
+involuntary gesture of incredulity. Nobody ventured to oppose his
+plans, and a few hours later he had taken up his abode in the old
+priory, to be near the doctor and the Comtesse de Vandieres.
+
+"Where is she?" he cried at once.
+
+"Hush!" answered M. Fanjat, Stephanie's uncle. "She is sleeping. Stay;
+here she is."
+
+Philip saw the poor distraught sleeper crouching on a stone bench in
+the sun. Her thick hair, straggling over her face, screened it from
+the glare and heat; her arms dropped languidly to the earth; she lay
+at ease as gracefully as a fawn, her feet tucked up beneath her; her
+bosom rose and fell with her even breathing; there was the same
+transparent whiteness as of porcelain in her skin and complexion that
+we so often admire in children's faces. Genevieve sat there
+motionless, holding a spray that Stephanie doubtless had brought down
+from the top of one of the tallest poplars; the idiot girl was waving
+the green branch above her, driving away the flies from her sleeping
+companion, and gently fanning her.
+
+She stared at M. Fanjat and the colonel as they came up; then, like a
+dumb animal that recognizes its master, she slowly turned her face
+towards the countess, and watched over her as before, showing not the
+slightest sign of intelligence or of astonishment. The air was
+scorching. The glittering particles of the stone bench shone like
+sparks of fire; the meadow sent up the quivering vapors that hover
+above the grass and gleam like golden dust when they catch the light,
+but Genevieve did not seem to feel the raging heat.
+
+The colonel wrung M. Fanjat's hands; the tears that gathered in the
+soldier's eyes stole down his cheeks, and fell on the grass at
+Stephanie's feet.
+
+"Sir," said her uncle, "for these two years my heart has been broken
+daily. Before very long you will be as I am; if you do not weep, you
+will not feel your anguish the less."
+
+"You have taken care of her!" said the colonel, and jealousy no less
+than gratitude could be read in his eyes.
+
+The two men understood one another. They grasped each other by the
+hand again, and stood motionless, gazing in admiration at the serenity
+that slumber had brought into the lovely face before them. Stephanie
+heaved a sigh from time to time, and this sigh, that had all the
+appearance of sensibility, made the unhappy colonel tremble with
+gladness.
+
+"Alas!" M. Fanjat said gently, "do not deceive yourself, monsieur; as
+you see her now, she is in full possession of such reason as she has."
+
+Those who have sat for whole hours absorbed in the delight of watching
+over the slumber of some tenderly-beloved one, whose waking eyes will
+smile for them, will doubtless understand the bliss and anguish that
+shook the colonel. For him this slumber was an illusion, the waking
+must be a kind of death, the most dreadful of all deaths.
+
+Suddenly a kid frisked in two or three bounds towards the bench and
+snuffed at Stephanie. The sound awakened her; she sprang lightly to
+her feet without scaring away the capricious creature; but as soon as
+she saw Philip she fled, followed by her four-footed playmate, to a
+thicket of elder-trees; then she uttered a little cry like the note of
+a startled wild bird, the same sound that the colonel had heard once
+before near the grating, when the Countess appeared to M. d'Albon for
+the first time. At length she climbed into a laburnum-tree, ensconced
+herself in the feathery greenery, and peered out at the /strange man/
+with as much interest as the most inquisitive nightingale in the
+forest.
+
+"Farewell, farewell, farewell," she said, but the soul sent no trace
+of expression of feeling through the words, spoken with the careless
+intonation of a bird's notes.
+
+"She does not know me!" the colonel exclaimed in despair. "Stephanie!
+Here is Philip, your Philip! . . . Philip!" and the poor soldier went
+towards the laburnum-tree; but when he stood three paces away, the
+Countess eyed him almost defiantly, though there was timidity in her
+eyes; then at a bound she sprang from the laburnum to an acacia, and
+thence to a spruce-fir, swinging from bough to bough with marvelous
+dexterity.
+
+"Do not follow her," said M. Fanjat, addressing the colonel. "You
+would arouse a feeling of aversion in her which might become
+insurmountable; I will help you to make her acquaintance and to tame
+her. Sit down on the bench. If you pay no heed whatever to her, poor
+child, it will not be long before you will see her come nearer by
+degrees to look at you."
+
+"That /she/ should not know me; that she should fly from me!" the
+colonel repeated, sitting down on a rustic bench and leaning his back
+against a tree that overshadowed it.
+
+He bowed his head. The doctor remained silent. Before very long the
+Countess stole softly down from her high refuge in the spruce-fir,
+flitting like a will-o'-the-wisp; for as the wind stirred the boughs,
+she lent herself at times to the swaying movements of the trees. At
+each branch she stopped and peered at the stranger; but as she saw him
+sitting motionless, she at length jumped down to the grass, stood a
+while, and came slowly across the meadow. When she took up her
+position by a tree about ten paces from the bench, M. Fanjat spoke to
+the colonel in a low voice.
+
+"Feel in my pocket for some lumps of sugar," he said, "and let her see
+them, she will come; I willingly give up to you the pleasure of giving
+her sweetmeats. She is passionately fond of sugar, and by that means
+you will accustom her to come to you and to know you."
+
+"She never cared for sweet things when she was a woman," Philip
+answered sadly.
+
+When he held out the lump of sugar between his thumb and finger, and
+shook it, Stephanie uttered the wild note again, and sprang quickly
+towards him; then she stopped short, there was a conflict between
+longing for the sweet morsel and instinctive fear of him; she looked
+at the sugar, turned her head away, and looked again like an
+unfortunate dog forbidden to touch some scrap of food, while his
+master slowly recites the greater part of the alphabet until he
+reaches the letter that gives permission. At length the animal
+appetite conquered fear; Stephanie rushed to Philip, held out a dainty
+brown hand to pounce upon the coveted morsel, touched her lover's
+fingers, snatched the piece of sugar, and vanished with it into a
+thicket. This painful scene was too much for the colonel; he burst
+into tears, and took refuge in the drawing-room.
+
+"Then has love less courage than affection?" M. Fanjat asked him. "I
+have hope, Monsieur le Baron. My poor niece was once in a far more
+pitiable state than at present."
+
+"Is it possible?" cried Philip.
+
+"She would not wear clothes," answered the doctor.
+
+The colonel shuddered, and his face grew pale. To the doctor's mind
+this pallor was an unhealthy symptom; he went over to him and felt his
+pulse. M. de Sucy was in a high fever; by dint of persuasion, he
+succeeded in putting the patient in bed, and gave him a few drops of
+laudanum to gain repose and sleep.
+
+The Baron de Sucy spent nearly a week, in a constant struggle with a
+deadly anguish, and before long he had no tears left to shed. He was
+often well-nigh heartbroken; he could not grow accustomed to the sight
+of the Countess' madness; but he made terms for himself, as it were,
+in this cruel position, and sought alleviations in his pain. His
+heroism was boundless. He found courage to overcome Stephanie's wild
+shyness by choosing sweetmeats for her, and devoted all his thoughts
+to this, bringing these dainties, and following up the little
+victories that he set himself to gain over Stephanie's instincts (the
+last gleam of intelligence in her), until he succeeded to some extent
+--she grew /tamer/ than ever before. Every morning the colonel went
+into the park; and if, after a long search for the Countess, he could
+not discover the tree in which she was rocking herself gently, nor the
+nook where she lay crouching at play with some bird, nor the roof
+where she had perched herself, he would whistle the well-known air
+/Partant pour la Syrie/, which recalled old memories of their love,
+and Stephanie would run towards him lightly as a fawn. She saw the
+colonel so often that she was no longer afraid of him; before very
+long she would sit on his knee with her thin, lithe arms about him.
+And while thus they sat as lovers love to do, Philip doled out
+sweetmeats one by one to the eager Countess. When they were all
+finished, the fancy often took Stephanie to search through her lover's
+pockets with a monkey's quick instinctive dexterity, till she had
+assured herself that there was nothing left, and then she gazed at
+Philip with vacant eyes; there was no thought, no gratitude in their
+clear depths. Then she would play with him. She tried to take off his
+boots to see his foot; she tore his gloves to shreds, and put on his
+hat; and she would let him pass his hands through her hair, and take
+her in his arms, and submit passively to his passionate kisses, and at
+last, if he shed tears, she would gaze silently at him.
+
+She quite understood the signal when he whistled /Partant pour la
+Syrie/, but he could never succeed in inducing her to pronounce her
+own name--/Stephanie/. Philip persevered in his heart-rending task,
+sustained by a hope that never left him. If on some bright autumn
+morning he saw her sitting quietly on a bench under a poplar tree,
+grown brown now as the season wore, the unhappy lover would lie at her
+feet and gaze into her eyes as long as she would let him gaze, hoping
+that some spark of intelligence might gleam from them. At times he
+lent himself to an illusion; he would imagine that he saw the hard,
+changeless light in them falter, that there was a new life and
+softness in them, and he would cry, "Stephanie! oh, Stephanie! you
+hear me, you see me, do you not?"
+
+But for her the sound of his voice was like any other sound, the
+stirring of the wind in the trees, or the lowing of the cow on which
+she scrambled; and the colonel wrung his hands in a despair that lost
+none of its bitterness; nay, time and these vain efforts only added to
+his anguish.
+
+One evening, under the quiet sky, in the midst of the silence and
+peace of the forest hermitage, M. Fanjat saw from a distance that the
+Baron was busy loading a pistol, and knew that the lover had given up
+all hope. The blood surged to the old doctor's heart; and if he
+overcame the dizzy sensation that seized on him, it was because he
+would rather see his niece live with a disordered brain than lose her
+for ever. He hurried to the place.
+
+"What are you doing?" he cried.
+
+"That is for me," the colonel answered, pointing to a loaded pistol on
+the bench, "and this is for her!" he added, as he rammed down the wad
+into the pistol that he held in his hands.
+
+The Countess lay stretched out on the ground, playing with the balls.
+
+"Then you do not know that last night, as she slept, she murmured
+'Philip?'" said the doctor quietly, dissembling his alarm.
+
+"She called my name?" cried the Baron, letting his weapon fall.
+Stephanie picked it up, but he snatched it out of her hands, caught
+the other pistol from the bench, and fled.
+
+"Poor little one!" exclaimed the doctor, rejoicing that his stratagem
+had succeeded so well. He held her tightly to his heart as he went on.
+"He would have killed you, selfish that he is! He wants you to die
+because he is unhappy. He cannot learn to love you for your own sake,
+little one! We forgive him, do we not? He is senseless; you are only
+mad. Never mind; God alone shall take you to Himself. We look upon you
+as unhappy because you no longer share our miseries, fools that we
+are! . . . Why, she is happy," he said, taking her on his knee;
+"nothing troubles her; she lives like the birds, like the deer--"
+
+Stephanie sprang upon a young blackbird that was hopping about, caught
+it with a little shriek of glee, twisted its neck, looked at the dead
+bird, and dropped it at the foot of a tree without giving it another
+thought.
+
+The next morning at daybreak the colonel went out into the garden to
+look for Stephanie; hope was very strong in him. He did not see her,
+and whistled; and when she came, he took her arm, and for the first
+time they walked together along an alley beneath the trees, while the
+fresh morning wind shook down the dead leaves about them. The colonel
+sat down, and Stephanie, of her own accord, lit upon his knee. Philip
+trembled with gladness.
+
+"Love!" he cried, covering her hands with passionate kisses, "I am
+Philip . . ."
+
+She looked curiously at him.
+
+"Come close," he added, as he held her tightly. "Do you feel the
+beating of my heart? It has beat for you, for you only. I love you
+always. Philip is not dead. He is here. You are sitting on his knee.
+You are my Stephanie, I am your Philip."
+
+"Farewell!" she said, "farewell!"
+
+The colonel shivered. He thought that some vibration of his highly
+wrought feeling had surely reached his beloved; that the heart-rending
+cry, drawn from him by hope, the utmost effort of a love that must
+last for ever, of passion in its ecstasy, striving to reach the soul
+of the woman he loved, must awaken her.
+
+"Oh, Stephanie! we shall be happy yet!"
+
+A cry of satisfaction broke from her, a dim light of intelligence
+gleamed in her eyes.
+
+"She knows me! . . . Stephanie! . . ."
+
+The colonel felt his heart swell, and tears gathered under his
+eyelids. But all at once the Countess held up a bit of sugar for him
+to see; she had discovered it by searching diligently for it while he
+spoke. What he had mistaken for a human thought was a degree of reason
+required for a monkey's mischievous trick!
+
+Philip fainted. M. Fanjat found the Countess sitting on his prostrate
+body. She was nibbling her bit of sugar, giving expression to her
+enjoyment by little grimaces and gestures that would have been thought
+clever in a woman in full possession of her senses if she tried to
+mimic her paroquet or her cat.
+
+"Oh, my friend!" cried Philip, when he came to himself. "This is like
+death every moment of the day! I love her too much! I could bear
+anything if only through her madness she had kept some little trace of
+womanhood. But, day after day, to see her like a wild animal, not even
+a sense of modesty left, to see her--"
+
+"So you must have a theatrical madness, must you!" said the doctor
+sharply, "and your prejudices are stronger than your lover's devotion?
+What, monsieur! I resign to you the sad pleasure of giving my niece
+her food, and the enjoyment of her playtime; I have kept for myself
+nothing but the most burdensome cares. I watch over her while you are
+asleep, I-- Go, monsieur, and give up the task. Leave this dreary
+hermitage; I can live with my little darling; I understand her
+disease; I study her movements; I know her secrets. Some day you shall
+thank me."
+
+The colonel left the Minorite convent, that he was destined to see
+only once again. The doctor was alarmed by the effect that his words
+made upon his guest; his niece's lover became as dear to him as his
+niece. If either of them deserved to be pitied, that one was certainly
+Philip; did he not bear alone the burden of an appalling sorrow?
+
+The doctor made inquiries, and learned that the hapless colonel had
+retired to a country house of his near Saint-Germain. A dream had
+suggested to him a plan for restoring the Countess to reason, and the
+doctor did not know that he was spending the rest of the autumn in
+carrying out a vast scheme. A small stream ran through his park, and
+in winter time flooded a low-lying land, something like the plain on
+the eastern side of the Beresina. The village of Satout, on the slope
+of a ridge above it, bounded the horizon of a picture of desolation,
+something as Studzianka lay on the heights that shut in the swamp of
+the Beresina. The colonel set laborers to work to make a channel to
+resemble the greedy river that had swallowed up the treasures of
+France and Napoleon's army. By the help of his memories, Philip
+reconstructed on his own lands the bank where General Eble had built
+his bridges. He drove in piles, and then set fire to them, so as to
+reproduce the charred and blackened balks of timber that on either
+side of the river told the stragglers that their retreat to France had
+been cut off. He had materials collected like the fragments out of
+which his comrades in misfortune had made the raft; his park was laid
+waste to complete the illusion on which his last hopes were founded.
+He ordered ragged uniforms and clothing for several hundred peasants.
+Huts and bivouacs and batteries were raised and burned down. In short,
+he omitted no device that could reproduce that most hideous of all
+scenes. He succeeded. When, in the earliest days of December, snow
+covered the earth with a thick white mantle, it seemed to him that he
+saw the Beresina itself. The mimic Russia was so startlingly real,
+that several of his old comrades recognized the scene of their past
+sufferings. M. de Sucy kept the secret of the drama to be enacted with
+this tragical background, but it was looked upon as a mad freak in
+several circles of society in Paris.
+
+In the early days of the month of January 1820, the colonel drove over
+to the Forest of l'Isle-Adam in a carriage like the one in which M.
+and Mme. de Vandieres had driven from Moscow to Studzianka. The horses
+closely resembled that other pair that he had risked his life to bring
+from the Russian lines. He himself wore the grotesque and soiled
+clothes, accoutrements, and cap that he had worn on the 29th of
+November 1812. He had even allowed his hair and beard to grow, and
+neglected his appearance, that no detail might be lacking to recall
+the scene in all its horror.
+
+"I guessed what you meant to do," cried M. Fanjat, when he saw the
+colonel dismount. "If you mean your plan to succeed, do not let her
+see you in that carriage. This evening I will give my niece a little
+laudanum, and while she sleeps, we will dress her in such clothes as
+she wore at Studzianka, and put her in your traveling-carriage. I will
+follow you in a berline."
+
+Soon after two o'clock in the morning, the young Countess was lifted
+into the carriage, laid on the cushions, and wrapped in a coarse
+blanket. A few peasants held torches while this strange elopement was
+arranged.
+
+A sudden cry rang through the silence of night, and Philip and the
+doctor, turning, saw Genevieve. She had come out half-dressed from the
+low room where she slept.
+
+"Farewell, farewell; it is all over, farewell!" she called, crying
+bitterly.
+
+"Why, Genevieve, what is it?" asked M. Fanjat.
+
+Genevieve shook her head despairingly, raised her arm to heaven,
+looked at the carriage, uttered a long snarling sound, and with
+evident signs of profound terror, slunk in again.
+
+"'Tis a good omen," cried the colonel. "The girl is sorry to lose her
+companion. Very likely she sees that Stephanie is about to recover her
+reason."
+
+"God grant it may be so!" answered M. Fanjat, who seemed to be
+affected by this incident. Since insanity had interested him, he had
+known several cases in which a spirit of prophecy and the gift of
+second sight had been accorded to a disordered brain--two faculties
+which many travelers tell us are also found among savage tribes.
+
+So it happened that, as the colonel had foreseen and arranged,
+Stephanie traveled across the mimic Beresina about nine o'clock in the
+morning, and was awakened by an explosion of rockets about a hundred
+paces from the scene of action. It was a signal. Hundreds of peasants
+raised a terrible clamor, like the despairing shouts that startled the
+Russians when twenty thousand stragglers learned that by their own
+fault they were delivered over to death or to slavery.
+
+When the Countess heard the report and the cries that followed, she
+sprang out of the carriage, and rushed in frenzied anguish over the
+snow-covered plain; she saw the burned bivouacs and the fatal raft
+about to be launched on a frozen Beresina. She saw Major Philip
+brandishing his sabre among the crowd. The cry that broke from Mme. de
+Vandieres made the blood run cold in the veins of all who heard it.
+She stood face to face with the colonel, who watched her with a
+beating heart. At first she stared blankly at the strange scene about
+her, then she reflected. For an instant, brief as a lightning flash,
+there was the same quick gaze and total lack of comprehension that we
+see in the bright eyes of a bird; then she passed her hand across her
+forehead with the intelligent expression of a thinking being; she
+looked round on the memories that had taken substantial form, into the
+past life that had been transported into her present; she turned her
+face to Philip--and saw him! An awed silence fell upon the crowd. The
+colonel breathed hard, but dared not speak; tears filled the doctor's
+eyes. A faint color overspread Stephanie's beautiful face, deepening
+slowly, till at last she glowed like a girl radiant with youth. Still
+the bright flush grew. Life and joy, kindled within her at the blaze
+of intelligence, swept through her like leaping flames. A convulsive
+tremor ran from her feet to her heart. But all these tokens, which
+flashed on the sight in a moment, gathered and gained consistence, as
+it were, when Stephanie's eyes gleamed with heavenly radiance, the
+light of a soul within. She lived, she thought! She shuddered--was it
+with fear? God Himself unloosed a second time the tongue that had been
+bound by death, and set His fire anew in the extinguished soul. The
+electric torrent of the human will vivified the body whence it had so
+long been absent.
+
+"Stephanie!" the colonel cried.
+
+"Oh! it is Philip!" said the poor Countess.
+
+She fled to the trembling arms held out towards her, and the embrace
+of the two lovers frightened those who beheld it. Stephanie burst into
+tears.
+
+Suddenly the tears ceased to flow; she lay in his arms a dead weight,
+as if stricken by a thunderbolt, and said faintly:
+
+"Farewell, Philip! . . . I love you. . . . farewell!"
+
+"She is dead!" cried the colonel, unclasping his arms.
+
+The old doctor received the lifeless body of his niece in his arms as
+a young man might have done; he carried her to a stack of wood and set
+her down. He looked at her face, and laid a feeble hand, tremulous
+with agitation, upon her heart--it beat no longer.
+
+"Can it really be so?" he said, looking from the colonel, who stood
+there motionless, to Stephanie's face. Death had invested it with a
+radiant beauty, a transient aureole, the pledge, it may be, of a
+glorious life to come.
+
+"Yes, she is dead."
+
+"Oh, but that smile!" cried Philip; "only see that smile. Is it
+possible?"
+
+"She has grown cold already," answered M. Fanjat.
+
+M. de Sucy made a few strides to tear himself from the sight; then he
+stopped, and whistled the air that the mad Stephanie had understood;
+and when he saw that she did not rise and hasten to him, he walked
+away, staggering like a drunken man, still whistling, but he did not
+turn again.
+
+
+
+In society General de Sucy is looked upon as very agreeable, and above
+all things, as very lively and amusing. Not very long ago a lady
+complimented him upon his good humor and equable temper.
+
+"Ah! madame," he answered, "I pay very dearly for my merriment in the
+evening if I am alone."
+
+"Then, you are never alone, I suppose."
+
+"No," he answered, smiling.
+
+If a keen observer of human nature could have seen the look that
+Sucy's face wore at that moment, he would, without doubt, have
+shuddered.
+
+"Why do you not marry?" the lady asked (she had several daughters of
+her own at a boarding-school). "You are wealthy; you belong to an old
+and noble house; you are clever; you have a future before you;
+everything smiles upon you."
+
+"Yes," he answered; "one smile is killing me--"
+
+On the morrow the lady heard with amazement that M. de Sucy had shot
+himself through the head that night.
+
+The fashionable world discussed the extraordinary news in divers ways,
+and each had a theory to account for it; play, love, ambition,
+irregularities in private life, according to the taste of the speaker,
+explained the last act of the tragedy begun in 1812. Two men alone, a
+magistrate and an old doctor, knew that Monsieur le Comte de Sucy was
+one of those souls unhappy in the strength God gives to them to enable
+them to triumph daily in a ghastly struggle with a mysterious horror.
+If for a minute God withdraws His sustaining hand, they succumb.
+
+
+
+PARIS, March 1830.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Farewell, by Honore de Balzac
+
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