The following evening the little band of friends reached Wilna, but without Jaromir, who had expired on the road. Wilna, the first inhabited town the French army had seen since their entrance into Russia, had been looked forward to by the fugitives who escaped from the terrible passage of the Beresina, as a refuge and a resting-place. There they fondly expected shelter from the cold, food for the famishing, bandages and medicine for the wounded and the sick. But their arrival took the Lithuanian capital by surprise. The inhabitants were still without any certain accounts of the disasters of the French, when suddenly they beheld their streets invaded by forty thousand ragged wretches, in whom it was impossible to recognise the remains of those magnificent troops which had passed through with Napoleon in the previous month of July. The very impatience of the men to get into the comfortable quarters they had promised themselves (but which few of them found, for the inhabitants shut their doors, and the commissaries, although their stores were crammed with bread and meat, refused to serve out those much needed provisions without a host of formalities rendered impossible by the general disorganisation) was the destruction of thousands. They all rushed in at one entrance,—the narrow suburb became blocked up with men, horses, and vehicles, and numbers perished of cold and of suffocation. When the survivors got through, their despair was terrible on finding themselves every where repulsed, from hospital and barracks, from the provision-store and the private dwelling. The hospitals and barracks, where there were neither beds or straw, were converted into charnel-houses, heaped with human bodies. “At last,” says Ségur, “the exertions of certain chiefs, such as Eugene and Davoust, the pity of the Lithuanians and the avarice of the Jews, opened places of refuge. Then it was strange to behold the astonishment of these unfortunates on finding themselves at last in inhabited houses. What delicious food a loaf of bread appeared, what inexpressible pleasure did they find in eating it seated, and with what admiration were they struck by the sight of a single weak battalion, still armed and uniformly clothed. They seemed to return from the extremity of the world, so completely had the violence and duration of their sufferings detached them from all their former habits.”
Bianca, her brother and friends, skirt the town to avoid the throng, and get in by an unencumbered entrance. In the streets, however, Rasinski is separated from his three companions, who find shelter in the house of a former servant of Bianca, and there meet with Ludwig’s sister Marie, and the Countess Micielska, a widowed sister of Rasinski, whom we have not had occasion previously to mention, although she is a fine enthusiastic character, and plays no unimportant part in the earlier scenes of the book. On learning, by letters from their brothers, the burning of Moscow and probability of retreat, the two ladies braved the severity of a Lithuanian winter, and left Warsaw for Wilna, where their arrival coincides with that of Napoleon’s disordered cohorts. Their joy at meeting Ludwig and Bernard is greatly overcast by the loss of Jaromir and Boleslaw, and by the absence of Rasinski, whom the two young Germans vainly seek in the crowded town, until at last, overcome with weariness, they retire to rest, dissembling, for his sister’s sake, their uneasiness touching his fate. Scarcely in bed, however, they are aroused by Paul, their host, who calls their attention to groans and lamentations in the street without. Arming themselves, they hurry forth to investigate the cause.
“Paul, bearing a lantern, preceded them to the spot whence the piteous sounds proceeded. It was a narrow lane, running parallel to the city wall, and inhabited entirely by Jews. Just as they turned into it they were challenged by a manly and well-known voice in their rear. ‘Who goes there? What is this disturbance?’
“‘Rasinski!’ exclaimed Ludwig. Paul turned, and, as the light fell upon the face of the new comer, the features of the noble Pole were revealed to his friends.
“‘Rasinski! you here, and alive!’ cried Ludwig, throwing himself into the Count’s arms.”
Here follows, of course, more Rellstab, half a page of tender embraces and gratulations. Then, the groans and lamentations continuing, the friends again move forward.
“The lane was narrow and crooked, so that they could not see far before them. On passing an abrupt bend, they distinguished several figures, which fled noiselessly before them, like night-birds frightened by the sudden light, keeping close in the shadow of the wall.
“‘Who goes there?’ cried Rasinski in Russian. ‘Stand, or I fire!’
“But the shadows flew onwards, grazing the wall, and gliding over the snow. Rasinski rushed after them, stumbled over an object in his path, fell, and, in his fall, his pistol went off. Ludwig and Bernard, close at his heels, would have stopped to help him up—
“‘Forward, forward!’ he cried: ‘follow and catch them.’