Perplexity was now added to my sorrow, for I knew not what the poor girl wished or meant; but I implored her to tell me how she came to be left thus alone and in illness. In the night when, asleep and weary, she had fallen unseen from a French ambulance cart, some scouting Cossacks had found and carried her off in mocking triumph; but, on finding that the deadly pestilence had seized her, they barbarously flung her into the Bulganak. She had crept ashore, and was making her way to our bivouac, when the progress of her illness became so rapid and destroying that she was reduced to the condition in which Stapylton found her. Such was the short story she told me, in long and painful intervals, her voice being at times so low that I had to place my ear close to her lips.
"And now," she added, with a divine smile, which brought back much of the wonderful beauty of her face, "I am so glad—so happy that I shall die!"
"Why, ma soeur?"
"Lest I should live longer; because, in doing so, I could scarcely fail in some way to offend heaven," replied the poor girl. "I confessed me two days ago—I die in peace, and forgive those Cossaques—mon ami—mon frère, I should say—you will close my eyes—you will see me buried—promise me that you will!"
I could only answer her by my tears; and strange it seemed that all around the thicket where this solemn scene was acting, and when the spirit of this good being was hovering between eternity and time, the thousands of our army, horse, foot, and artillery, with ammunition and stores, were pouring past in the bright morning sunshine, towards the passage of the Bulganak.
All around was instinct with the glitter and bustle of martial life; but within that olive grove was death, sublime humility, and suffering.
"Are you in pain now?" I asked, as this thought occurred to me.
"Oh, no—pain is long since passed away. If I could but live till three in the afternoon, I could then die more than ever happily."
"Why at three?"
"For at that time our Blessed Lord yielded up his soul on Calvary!" said she, with a voice of enthusiasm, while a strange brightness seemed to pass over all her face.