"You all say that I live well," he protested. "True enough; but, bon camarade, I steal from the Russians."
"What?" cried I. "You are known to them, then?"
He laughed at the idea of treachery.
"Do you not know me better than that, major?" said he, his eyes flashing in the crimson light. "I tell you that I go to the Russian camp and steal what I want. Is it not very simple, and should you not all have thought of it for yourselves?"
I was very much surprised, and began to question him closely. How had he got the password? Was it not a highly dangerous undertaking, and had he not been fortunate to escape with his life?
All this he treated lightly. There was danger, of course, but what is danger to men who are dying of starvation? He admitted that he had a friend among the Russians, but declared very stoutly that such friendship had been of great service both to him and to the Emperor. Finally, he said:
"Come with me, major, and bring your nephew, and we will dine among the Cossacks to-morrow night. Are you prepared to take your chance? Very well. We will start a little before sunset, and we can rejoin the column on the following morning. Come now, and I promise you as good a dinner as you could get in our own Paris this night."
The request astonished me very much, and I thought upon it a little while. Léon had been away inspecting the horses, but when he returned I mentioned the matter to him, and he did not hesitate a moment. Of course we must go. Did it not promise us an adventure, and was not anything better than the starvation we suffered? I think, indeed, he would have leapt from a mountain-top if there had been food at the bottom; and even at my age I could ask myself what perils counted for men who marched daily over the bodies of their comrades to a city of visions.
II
Now this was all very well, but, in truth, the affair was rash enough to have satisfied the most reckless.