But meanwhile the last of the retiring French were leaving the city by the Borovitsky Gate, and here, at the very first opportunity, began the stupendous anguish of their terrible retreat. For from the first they marched from ambush to ambush, from disaster to disaster, through miseries of frost and hunger and sleeplessness and unceasing attack in flank and rear. Truly the avenging of Moscow began from her very gates.
Vera Demidof came with the rest of the returning fugitives into Moscow, came—like thousands of others—to find that the house in the Sloboda had been looted and wrecked, though the fire had not reached it. Vera had hurried back to Moscow, however, not from any anxiety as to the family mansion or its contents, she came because she had ascertained from Sasha Maximof that his regiment was to be one of those which should first engage the retreating French beyond the walls of Moscow.
"Just to hurry them up and see them safely off the premises," Sasha had laughingly expressed it but yesterday, paying her a hurried visit at the village to which she had retired on leaving Moscow.
Indeed, as the crowds of Muscovites entered the city at one side, the roar of cannon from the opposite end of the town, beyond the Borovitsky Gate, gave grim evidence that the Frenchmen were not being permitted to march away in peace and impunity.
"If you should be wounded outside Moscow, send me word," Vera had said at parting. She felt depressed and inclined to expect disaster, though she was not one to indulge weakly and without resistance in presentiments; Vera's healthy intelligence was accustomed to look upon such things as foolishness.
"Why do you expect me to get hurt?" Sasha had laughed. "When my time comes I shall die, but I do not think that is yet, Vera. There is something I am determined to achieve before I finish with life—can you guess what it is?"
Vera did not attempt to guess. "You are always getting hurt," she laughed. "Send me word by a soldier if you are clumsy enough to stand in the way of a French bullet." Vera laughed though she spoke with a full heart.
In consequence of this conversation, Sasha actually wrote Vera's address upon a slip of paper which he gave to a trooper in his regiment, bidding him keep an eye upon him and ride back to Moscow quickly, if he should fall, in order to tell the lady named in the written address of what had occurred. When, later in the day, Sasha's regiment received orders to charge from their cover a body of French foot-guards, the trooper to whose care Sasha had entrusted his slip of paper and who rode close at Sasha's stirrup saw a notable sight.
In the mélée he heard a French officer call gaily to the Count Maximof:—
"Hi," he cried, "mon ami, Maximof, here am I, let us finish that old matter".