"I am done for," said he, and instantly he fainted.
The success redoubled the fury of those without. Heads were seen at the window again; there was a new and more savage onslaught with the pikes; the door itself began to tremble under the thud of axes. I believed then that we were done for, and I am sure that the others were of my opinion. Let the door fall, and we should be cut to pieces. No hope of plunder animated these savages, but that insensate hatred of the invader by which our poor fellows had suffered so much already. They lusted for our blood, and that alone would satisfy them.
Surely this was a very terrible moment. The blows of the axes seemed to number the moments we had to live. Convinced now that they would not get us by the windows, but that the door must be forced, the wretches had drawn off and concentrated all their fury upon these ancient beams. Happily for us, the man who built the house was himself a child of the wilderness, and his life, no less than ours, may have depended many a time upon the stoutness of his portals. The door withstood the attack, though the very walls shook with the fury of it. We could do nothing but crouch there and wait, hope almost dead, the promise of the day but a mockery. When to this we heard a cry of "Fire!"—for that was a word every French soldier had learned in Moscow—then we understood and believed that it was the end. They were going to burn us out. The cries of the old woman whose house they would have fired moved them not at all. "Fire!" they yelled; and we could hear them running hither and thither—a savage horde mad in its lust for blood.
We had uttered few words until this time; and, as for that, a man could hardly have heard himself speak in the room. Now, however, we knew an instant of respite, and it was then that Valerie proposed that we should open the doors.
"Anything is better than this," she said. "Courage may find the horses—who knows?"
The suggestion was wise, and I fell in with it readily.
"Let Léon go first and do you follow him," said I. "The child shall come with me."
And at that I stooped over my poor Bardot and perceived that he was indeed dead. The prospect of dying out there in the open was less horrible than that of being cooped up in this miserable house, which presently must become a furnace; and who could say what these wretches might do or not do when confronted by soldiers of the Guard? The resolution hardly was taken when we lifted the bolt and threw the great doors wide open. "En avant!" cries Léon, rushing out with his sword flashing. Then he laughed drolly. Not a moujik was to be seen; not a voice to be heard. A sound of approaching sleigh bells alone broke in upon the silence of the night.
IV
Well, we all stood there to listen—our swords in our hands, our ears bent. A miracle had happened, and our enemies were fled. None of us, if it were not the child, understood the reality of the peril we had escaped, or surrendered to that revulsion of feeling natural to the circumstance. Little Joan, however, shed childish tears and was upon her knees giving thanks in an instant. The rest of us looked at her somewhat ashamed; our faith remained shaken. Beyond that, old Bardot was dead. I think we remembered the fact even when our own delivery tempted us to rejoice.