WE CROSS THE BÉRÉZINA
I
The news that the Russians had cut the bridge across the Bérézina came as a thunderclap to the army.
We had believed that we had only to cross that fatal river to find ourselves immediately in a land overflowing with milk and honey. We never thought of the long leagues lying between ourselves and the city of Paris, or remembered that this dreadful Russian winter had but just begun. Food and shelter lay beyond the river, we thought—so little did we know.
Then the news came that the Cossacks of the south had cut the bridge. The men said that we were caught like rats in a trap. Our generals were hourly in consultation. None could declare with truth that he had now any real hope of escaping death or the horrors of a Russian prison.
It was at this crisis of our fate that the good fortune befell me of being of some personal service to the army and to His Majesty.
We had advanced a stage upon the road to the Bérézina, and in the middle of the night of November 20th we arrived at the town of Borisoff. The Emperor's quarters were in a country mansion near the town. I myself, with Léon and Valerie St. Antoine, took refuge in a mean house occupied by the priest of the place, and, having eaten a little black bread and boiled a handful of rice (all the poor fellow could offer us), we lay about his stove to sleep.
For the others this proved easy enough. No sooner had they laid their heads upon the sheepskins which the holy father provided for us, than their deep breathing responded to the measure of their fatigue. For myself, however, there was no such refuge. I could not sleep a wink despite my weariness. Beyond that, strange visions tormented me even when awake. For this, the doom which threatened the remnant of that once great army may have been responsible. I believed that I should never see my country again—and God only knows what that meant to one who had suffered so much.
Such was my condition when I heard someone tapping faintly upon the door of the priest's house, and then a sound of weeping. A common instinct of self-preservation should have made me callous, for those were the days when a man would have denied meat to his own brother—yet, whether it were the hour of the night or the despair of our situation, I know not—but, rising immediately, I took the rushlight in my hand and opened to the unknown.