Suddenly he cried aloud, making his voice ring over the snow, “Bivouac fires!” A gush of joy, long unknown to him, filled his heart, bringing with it, from its very intensity, a kind of momentary pain, as the warmth for which he was longing would bring a tingling pain to his half-frozen limbs. “Bivouac fires!” he cried once more, with a glad, weak voice. “I shall see the faces of my comrades; I shall hear their voices. Thank God!”
Hope and joy lent new strength to his weary feet. As he drew nearer to the lights, he saw that the snow was trampled by footsteps and crushed by wheels. And then the thought occurred to him, “If these should be our enemies? If I should find myself in the midst of Russians?” But as the cheerful blaze of the nearest fire grew clearer and more distinct, and he saw figures moving around it, fear and hesitation vanished. He felt nothing but a wild longing to get close to it, which grew every moment more intense. Running, slipping, staggering along as best he could, at last he threw himself on the ground before the fire, in the very midst of the group that surrounded it.
“Eh! what have we got here?” cried some one with an oath. The words were French, so much at least was plain to Henri’s bewildered senses; and at the same time a very savoury odour reaching his nostrils reminded him that he was famishing with hunger.
The next moment he was roughly seized and dragged upon his knees. “What do you want here? You are none of us. Be off with you, and pretty quick too!” cried a fellow dressed in a velvet coat which had once belonged to some Moscow exquisite.
Slowly and stiffly Henri rose to his feet. “Comrades,” he said with a bewildered air, “it is you who are making a mistake. I am one of you—a Frenchman—a private in the Tenth Infantry—”
“Hang the Tenth Infantry! It is every man for himself here. You are not one of our coterie.[39] We cannot feed all the stragglers of the grand army. Begone this instant, or—” A push with the butt end of his musket finished the sentence.
The heartless cruelty of his countrymen filled up the measure of Henri’s cup of suffering. His spirit was broken. With no power, with scarcely even a wish to struggle any longer for his life, he staggered slowly away, intending to lie down in the nearest snow-drift and die.
Some one took a blazing brand out of the fire and flung it after him. “If you want fire, take it!” cried he, and a mocking laugh rang in the ears of Henri. He turned, and said, “Would that I had met this night, instead of you Frenchmen, a company of Russians—or, still better, a pack of wolves!”
“What is all this about?” asked a deep, hoarse voice, and a tall figure rose slowly from the opposite side of the fire.
“It is a straggler, a polisson, who was trying to join our coterie. We have just been sending him about his business,” was the answer.