Seeing me, they came up, and to my great surprise I recognised two men of my company, whom I had not seen since the passage of the Bérézina. They were in such a wretched state that I made them follow me to an inn, where I ordered hot coffee to warm them.
They related that on the morning of November 29th, a little before the departure of the regiment from the banks of the Bérézina, they had been ordered on fatigue-duty to bury several men belonging to the regiment, who had been killed the preceding evening, or who had died of exposure. When they had finished they started off, thinking they were following the route the regiment had taken; but, unfortunately, they obeyed the direction of some Poles, who guided them towards their own country. They did not find it out till the following day.
'The end of it was,' they told me, 'that for a whole month we were walking about in an unknown, deserted country, always under deep snow. We were unable to make ourselves understood, not knowing where we were, nor where we were going. Our money was of no use to us, and we could only procure such things as milk or dripping at the cost of our clothes, by parting with our "eagle" buttons, or some handkerchiefs that we had kept by chance. We were not alone in this; there were many others of different regiments going the same way, and like ourselves, not knowing where they were going, for the Poles we had been following had disappeared, and it is only by chance, sergeant, that we have got here, and have had the good luck to meet you.'
I told them how glad I was to see them again; they had been in my company four years. Suddenly one of them exclaimed:
'Why, sergeant, I have something to hand over to you! You remember that when we were leaving Moscow you entrusted me with a parcel? Here it is just as you gave it me; it has never been taken out of my knapsack.'
The parcel consisted of a military overcoat of fine dark-gray cloth that I had had made for me during our stay in Moscow by the Russian tailors whose lives I had saved, and of another article—an inkstand—that I had taken from a table in the Rostopchin Palace, thinking it was of silver (that it was not, however).
The year was beginning well for me. I hoped that it would prove the same for this man. I gave him twenty francs, and then I made haste to get into my new overcoat.
I now had a second delightful surprise. Putting my hands into the pockets of the new coat, I drew out an Indian silk handkerchief, and in one of its corners, tightly knotted, I found a little cardboard box, containing five rings, set with beautiful stones. I thought I had lost this box with my knapsack, and now here it was all ready for a present for Madame Gentil. The finest one was to be for her.
Telling my two soldiers to wait till roll-call to be re-entered in the company and receive a billet, I returned to my own lodging.