"Oh," says Léon, "is that not Sergeant Bourgogne who is speaking?"
It was a lucky shot, for the door was opened instantly, and there stood our old sergeant before us.
"Why, captain," cried he, "we have reported you for dead!" And then espying me, he added, "The very man we are looking for, major. There is plenty of work for a surgeon to do in this place. Come in, messieurs, and let me bolt the door after you."
Needless to say, we did not ask for a second invitation, but passing at once into the church, we heard the sergeant bolting and locking the heavy door. There the light almost blinded us, and we sank exhausted upon the stone pavement and lay motionless for many minutes.
IV
When we had recovered ourselves a little we were able to get some idea of the strange happenings within the church.
To begin with, I would tell you that it was a building in the Russian fashion, with two domes above its naves and a similar one above the chancel. About the wall there were the icons which the Russians worship, and the organ which we had heard played stood in the western gallery just above the main doors. The building was large, and would have accommodated a thousand people perhaps. There must have been five hundred of our own fellows within when we entered, and they lay about the marble pavement in every conceivable attitude.
Some, I perceived, were already drunk with brandy, of which there was a considerable supply in the church. I learned from Sergeant Bourgogne that the cellars of a neighbouring wine shop had been ransacked before dark fell and many bottles of wine and brandy carried into the church against the bitter night; of food there was none but horseflesh, and despite my nephew's protests, the troopers killed and cut up his own charger directly we entered the building. Soon the whole place was redolent with the smell of roasted flesh, and what with the pungent odour of that and of the burning wood and brandy the atmosphere became almost insupportable.
I should tell you that two great fires had been lighted in the building: one upon the pavement of the chancel, the other below the choir screen, which is a great thing in all their churches.
Unhappily the fire before the altar had been fed chiefly by the beautiful painted panels of this screen, while that in the nave owed its glowing heat to the multitude of chairs which had been broken up and burned upon it. Here all the cooking was done, and it was an odd thing to see men toasting great lumps of horseflesh upon the points of their bayonets and swords, and eating them while they were still hot and dripping from the fire. Such practices, however, went on uninterruptedly; and if anything be said against them, I would remind you of the intolerable night outside and of what these poor fellows had suffered during their march to Slawkowo. For that matter we ourselves were not above sharing in this barbarous hospitality, and even Valerie St. Antoine ate a piece of roasted horseflesh and drank a draught of wine from the flask which Sergeant Bourgogne proffered her.