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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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