"Let us save them!" said General Eble to the officer who accompanied him. "To-morrow morning the Russians will be masters of Studzianka. We must burn the bridge the moment they appear. Therefore, my friend, take your courage in your hand! Go to the heights. Tell General Fournier he has barely time to evacuate his position, force a way through this crowd, and cross the bridge. When you have seen him in motion follow him. Find men you can trust, and the moment Fournier had crossed the bridge, burn, without pity, huts, equipages, caissons, carriages,--EVERYTHING! Drive that mass of men to the bridge. Compel all that has two legs to get to the other side of the river. The burning of everything--EVERYTHING--is now our last resource. If Berthier had let me destroy those damned camp equipages, this river would swallow only my poor pontoniers, those fifty heroes who will save the army, but who themselves will be forgotten."The general laid his hand on his forehead and was silent. He felt that Poland would be his grave, and that no voice would rise to do justice to those noble men who stood in the water, the icy water of Beresina, to destroy the buttresses of the bridges. One alone of those heroes still lives--or, to speak more correctly, suffers--in a village, totally ignored.
The aide-de-camp started. Hardly had this generous officer gone a hundred yards towards Studzianka than General Eble wakened a number of his weary pontoniers, and began the work,--the charitable work of burning the bivouacs set up about the bridge, and forcing the sleepers, thus dislodged, to cross the river.
Meanwhile the young aide-de-camp reached, not without difficulty, the only wooden house still left standing in Studzianka.
"This barrack seems pretty full, comrade," he said to a man whom he saw by the doorway.
"If you can get in you'll be a clever trooper," replied the officer, without turning his head or ceasing to slice off with his sabre the bark of the logs of which the house was built.
"Is that you, Philippe?" said the aide-de-camp, recognizing a friend by the tones of his voice.
"Yes. Ha, ha! is it you, old fellow?" replied Monsieur de Sucy, looking at the aide-de-camp, who, like himself, was only twenty-three years of age. "I thought you were the other side of that cursed river.
What are you here for? Have you brought cakes and wine for our dessert? You'll be welcome," and he went on slicing off the bark, which he gave as a sort of provender to his horse.
"I am looking for your commander to tell him, from General Eble, to make for Zembin. You'll have barely enough time to get through that crowd of men below. I am going presently to set fire to their camp and force them to march.""You warm me up--almost! That news makes me perspire. I have two friends I MUST save. Ah! without those two to cling to me, I should be dead already. It is for them that I feed my horse and don't eat myself. Have you any food,--a mere crust? It is thirty hours since anything has gone into my stomach, and yet I have fought like a madman --just to keep a little warmth and courage in me.""Poor Philippe, I have nothing--nothing! But where's your general,--in this house?""No, don't go there; the place is full of wounded. Go up the street;you'll find on your left a sort of pig-pen; the general is there.
Good-bye, old fellow. If we ever dance a trenis on a Paris floor--"He did not end his sentence; the north wind blew at that moment with such ferocity that the aide-de-camp hurried on to escape being frozen, and the lips of Major de Sucy stiffened. Silence reigned, broken only by the moans which came from the house, and the dull sound made by the major's horse as it chewed in a fury of hunger the icy bark of the trees with which the house was built. Monsieur de Sucy replaced his sabre in its scabbard, took the bridle of the precious horse he had hitherto been able to preserve, and led it, in spite of the animal's resistance, from the wretched fodder it appeared to think excellent.
"We'll start, Bichette, we'll start! There's none but you, my beauty, who can save Stephanie. Ha! by and bye you and I may be able to rest--and die," he added.
Philippe, wrapped in a fur pelisse, to which he owed his preservation and his energy, began to run, striking his feet hard upon the frozen snow to keep them warm. Scarcely had he gone a few hundred yards from the village than he saw a blaze in the direction of the place where, since morning, he had left his carriage in charge of his former orderly, an old soldier. Horrible anxiety laid hold of him. Like all others who were controlled during this fatal retreat by some powerful sentiment, he found a strength to save his friends which he could not have put forth to save himself.
Presently he reached a slight declivity at the foot of which, in a spot sheltered from the enemy's balls, he had stationed the carriage, containing a young woman, the companion of his childhood, the being most dear to him on earth. At a few steps distant from the vehicle he now found a company of some thirty stragglers collected around an immense fire, which they were feeding with planks, caisson covers, wheels, and broken carriages. These soldiers were, no doubt, the last comers of that crowd who, from the base of the hill of Studzianka to the fatal river, formed an ocean of heads intermingled with fires and huts,--a living sea, swayed by motions that were almost imperceptible, and giving forth a murmuring sound that rose at times to frightful outbursts. Driven by famine and despair, these poor wretches must have rifled the carriage before de Sucy reached it. The old general and his young wife, whom he had left lying in piles of clothes and wrapped in mantles and pelisses, were now on the snow, crouching before the fire.
One door of the carriage was already torn off.
No sooner did the men about the fire hear the tread of the major's horse than a hoarse cry, the cry of famine, arose,--"A horse! a horse!"
Those voices formed but one voice.