It was not until long afterwards that the world, piecing together information purposely delayed and details carefully falsified, knew that of the four hundred thousand men who marched triumphantly to the Niemen, only twenty thousand recrossed that river six months later, and of these two-thirds had never seen Moscow.
Rapp, whose bloodshot eyes searched the crowd of faces turned towards him, recognized a number of people. To Mathilde he bowed gravely, and with a kindlier glance turned in his saddle to bow again to Desiree. They hardly heeded him, but with colourless faces turned towards the staff riding behind him.
Most of the faces were strange: others were so altered that the features had to be sought for as in the face of a mummy. Neither Charles nor de Casimir was among the horsemen. One or two of them bowed, as their leader had done, to the two girls.
“That is Captain de Villars,” said Mathilde, “and the other I do not know. Nor that tall man who is bowing now. Who are they?”
Desiree did not answer. None of these men was Charles. Unconsciously holding her two mittened hands at her throat, she searched each face.
They were well placed to see even those who followed on foot. Many of them were not French. It would have been easy to distinguish Charles or de Casimir among the dark-visaged southerners. Desiree was not conscious of the crowd around her. She heard none of the muttered remarks. All her soul was in her eyes.
“Is that all?” she said at length—as the others had said at the entrance to the town.
She found she was standing hand-in-hand with Mathilde, whose face was like marble.
At last, when even the crowd had passed away beneath the Grunes Thor, they turned and walked home in silence.