"We should have crossed," he said; "Gabriel must have gone with the Emperor."
So much I believed to be the truth until about the hour of five o'clock, when to our great astonishment the young pontonnier himself appeared at the hut, and carried that dire intelligence which was all that was needed to consummate our despair.
"I am to blow up the bridge," he said. "It is by the Emperor's orders. We must save the army; the others must perish."
We did not answer him. To such had our mistaken folly led us. It was death or the Russian prison indeed; there could be no alternative.
VI
You will see the nature of the difficulty which now confronted us.
It was almost certain death to venture upon the bridge; the alternative meant that we faced the Cossacks and accepted grace at their hands.
To myself, an old soldier who had served His Majesty so many years, it mattered little now what befell me. So much had I suffered, so bitter had been the days, that any shelter—even that of a prison, in which I could eat and sleep—would have been a welcome harbourage from this march of death.
But for Valerie St. Antoine, she who had carried herself so bravely during the terrible weeks, she who had served France with such valour and loyalty—that she should become the prisoner and the victim of these devils, was indeed the last calamity. What to say to her in the face of the Emperor's order I knew not. The bridge must be destroyed to save His Majesty. Would she deny the necessity of that?
These thoughts were in my mind when I took her aside and questioned her as to the course we should pursue. To my astonishment I found that she herself had already debated the question, and that her mind was made up.