BIVOUAC NEAR MIKALEWKA, NOVEMBER 7, 1812.
From a sketch made at the time by an officer of Napoleon's army.
'I have forty gold napoleons in my belt, and seven Russian gold pieces, not counting the five-franc pieces; I would give the whole with all my heart to be with the regiment again. That reminds me,' he said; 'the pieces are not in my belt, but are sewn inside my white service waistcoat, and, as one never knows what may happen, they will belong to you.'
'Well,' I said, 'now for my last will and testament. I have 800 francs in notes and in gold. You may dispose of it all, if it is God's will I should die before finding the regiment.'
While warming myself, I put my hand mechanically into the little canvas bag I carried, and found something hard like a bit of cord and as long as two fingers. On examining it I found it was tobacco. What a discovery for poor Picart! When I gave it to him, he let fall a bit of meat he was eating, and took a quid of tobacco instead, to wait with, he said, while he found his pipe. As it was hardly the time to search for it, he contented himself with his quid, and I with a little cigar which I made à l'Espagnole with a piece of paper.
We had been resting for about two hours, and it was not yet seven o'clock. We had therefore eleven or twelve hours yet to wait before continuing our march.
Picart had been walking a few yards off for a moment, and I was getting uneasy about him, when I heard a rustling in the brushwood in the opposite direction from that he had taken. I took my musket and put myself ready, when Picart appeared.
'It is all right, mon pays—quite right,' he said in a mysterious voice, signing to me to keep silence. Then he told me that two women had just passed along the road, one carrying a bundle and the other a pail. They had stopped to rest for a few minutes, chattering like magpies. 'We will follow them,' he said; 'probably we shall come to a village or some hut where we shall get shelter and greater safety than here, for listen to those confounded dogs barking!'
'But,' I said, 'we shall be sure to find Russians!'