“To seek a brother,” answered Barlasch, who, like many unprincipled persons, had soon found that a lie is much simpler than an explanation.
But the majority glanced at them stupidly without comment, or with only a shrug of their bowed shoulders. They were going the wrong way. They must be mad. Between Dantzig and Konigsberg they had indeed found a few travellers going eastward—despatch-bearers seeking Murat—spies going northwards to Tilsit, and General Yorck still in treaty with his own conscience—a prominent member of the Tugendbund, wondering, like many others, if there were any virtue left in the world. Others, again, told them that they were officers ordered to take up some new command in the retreating army.
Beyond Konigsberg, however, D'Arragon and Barlasch found themselves alone on their eastward route. Every man's face was set towards the west. This was not an army at all, but an endless procession of tramps. Without food or shelter, with no baggage but what they could carry on their backs, they journeyed as each of us must journey out of this world into that which lies beyond—alone, with no comrade to help them over the rough places or lift them when they fell. For there was only one man of all this rabble who rose to the height of self-sacrifice, and a persistent devotion to duty. And he was coming last of all.
Many had started off in couples—with a faithful friend—only to quarrel at last. For it is a peculiarity of the French that they can only have one friend at a time. Long ago—back beyond the Niemen—all friendships had been dissolved, and discipline had vanished before that. For when Discipline and a Republic are wedded we shall have the millennium. Liberty, they cry: meaning, I may do as I like. Equality: I am better than you. Fraternity: what is yours is mine, if I want it.
So they quarrelled over everything, and fought for a place round the fire that another had lighted. They burnt the houses in which they had passed a night, though they knew that thousands trudging behind them must die for lack of this poor shelter.
At the Beresina they had fought on the bridge like wild animals, and those who had horses trod their comrades underfoot, or pushed them over the parapet. Twelve thousand perished on the banks or in the river; and sixteen thousand were left behind to the mercy of the Cossacks.
At Vilna the people were terrified at the sight of this inhuman rabble, which had commanded their admiration on the outward march. And the commander, with his staff, crept out of the city at night, abandoning sick, wounded, and fighting men.
At Kowno they crowded numbly across the bridge, fighting for precedence, when they might have walked at leisure across the ice. They were no longer men at all, but dumb and driven animals, who fell by the roadside, and were stripped by their comrades before the warmth of life had left their limbs.
“Excuse me, comrade? I thought you were dead,” said one, on being remonstrated with by a dying man. And he went on his way reluctantly, for he knew that in a few minutes another would snatch the booty. But for the most part they were not so scrupulous.
At first D'Arragon, to whom these horrors were new, attempted to help such as appealed to him, but Barlasch laughed at him.