"There is a Colonel St. Antoine with the Second Battalion of the Chasseurs of the Line. Is it possible, mademoiselle, that he is a relative of yours?"
"He is my father," she said, with admirable dignity; and, turning, she hid her face in her hands again, as though the dreadful scene about us could no longer be suffered. Léon waited for no more, but, lifting her upon his horse, he rode straightway from the place.
"Do what you can for these poor women," said he to me. "We will wait for you in the town." And with that he pressed forward and was quickly lost to my view.
I had given him my word, and yet it was worth little. The poor women were beyond all hope, and it remained but to inter them decently. This, with the aid of some sappers, I did anon, and having seen to it that we should know the place again if occasion arose, I also pressed on towards the town.
It was quite dark by this time, and the snow had begun to fall again. I thought myself lucky to overtake my nephew, which I did some third of a mile from the gates of the town. But whether his welcome were as warm as my pleasure I have my doubts. Let me say in all honesty that I believe that Léon was in love with this woman, and would have gone through fire and water for her.
III
There were many terrible nights to be suffered before the remnant of the Grand Army might see Paris again; but none of them to surpass that night when we first made acquaintance with the north wind as Russia knows it.
What the cold was I cannot tell you, but such a rigour I had never known before, nor had any who marched with that stricken company. Already we perceived that if we did not reach the shelter of the town we should never see the day; and the fury of the wind driving us and the snow blinding our eyes, we pressed on headlong.
Had a man doubted the road, the dead, as I have said, would have pointed it out to him. There was not a furlong free from the corpses of those who had been our comrades. Every bush sheltered poor wretches deploring their misery and appealing to God. We saw men staggering as though drunk with wine; others hysterical as women and gone stark mad in their suffering. And all the time the lights of the distant town would appear and disappear, as though mocking our hope and defying us of their promise.
I was sorry for my nephew, who had given his cloak to Valerie; and although she made a pretence of sheltering them both, it was precious little good he got by it. Perhaps, had she not been with him in the saddle, he would never have come to Slawkowo at all. As it was, he bore up bravely and did not cease to encourage her in every way that he could. "But a kilometre more, and we are there," he would say. Or again: "We shall find the Emperor in the city, and there will be food and shelter there." Sometimes he would ask her if she suffered much, and invariably she answered with a woman's courage.