"'If this happens on the first day's march, at the gates of Moscow,' observed Rasinski, 'what is to be expected when an enemy threatens these heavy-laden masses? Yonder marauder has saved nothing but his pair of lean horses. The others may think themselves lucky if they save as much from the first feint-attack of half a hundred Cossacks! The fellow now howling and cursing is the luckiest of them all; for he is the first relieved from his useless drudgery. This very day he will have abundant opportunity to laugh and scoff in his turn, perhaps at his spoilers themselves. And before a week is over, he will bless his stars that he has been saved the profitless toil. The difference is merely that he loses to-day what others will lose to-morrow and the day after: of all these thousands not one will ultimately profit by his booty.'
"The prognostications of the experienced soldier were speedily verified. The track of the French army was marked first by abandoned spoils, then by the bodies of the spoilers. Napoleon's soldiers were little accustomed to retreats, and seemed to imagine that, now they had condescended to commence one, the enemy would show his surprise and respect by abstaining from molesting them. Such at least is the only plausible way of explaining the infatuation that loaded with the most cumbersome plunder the multitude of men who, on the 16th September 1812, turned their backs upon the blazing turrets of Moscow. Nothing was too clumsy or heavy to be carried off; but ultimately nothing was found portable enough to be carried through the fatigues and dangers of the winter march. Baggage and superfluous munition-carts were soon left behind, and the horses taken for the artillery; for which purpose, before reaching Smolensko, every second man in the cavalry was deprived of his charger. Although winter had not yet set in, there were frosts every night, and the slippery roads trebled the fatigues of the attenuated and ill-shod horses. After a short time, every means of transport, not monopolised by the guns, was required by the sick, wounded, and weary; and nobody thought of possessing more baggage than he could carry with him. And even the trophies selected in Moscow by Napoleon's order, to throw dust in the eyes of the Parisians,—splendid bronze ornaments from the palaces, outlandish cannon, (the spoils of Russia in her eastern wars,) and the cross of St Ivan, wrenched from the tower of the Kremlin,—were sunk in a lake by the roadside. Soon snow was the sole pillow, and horse-flesh the best nourishment, of the broken and dispirited army.
"At Smolensko, Ludwig and Bernard, when seeking in the storehouses of the depot a supply of shoes for the regiment, suddenly find themselves face to face with their old enemies, Beaucaire and the Baron de St Luces, who have them arrested as spies of Russia. Prevented from communicating with Rasinski, who is suddenly ordered off and compelled to march without them, they undergo a sort of mock examination in the gray of the morning, and are led out of the town to be shot. The place appointed for their execution is a snow-covered hillock, a few hundred yards from the walls, and close to the extremity of a thick pine wood. They are escorted by thirty men, and an escape appears impossible. Nevertheless Bernard, hopeful and energetic, despairs not of accomplishing it, and communicates his intentions to Ludwig.
"Seizing a favourable moment, Bernard suddenly knocked down the two foremost soldiers, sprang from amongst his guards, and shouting to Ludwig to follow, bounded like a roebuck towards the forest. He had cleared the way for Ludwig, who, prepared for the signal, availed himself of the opening, and sped across the snowy field. The soldiers stood astounded. 'Fire!' cried the officer; and a few obeyed the order, but already several were in full pursuit of the fugitives, preventing the others from firing, lest they should shoot their comrades. Seeing this, all threw down their muskets and joined in the chase. Ludwig sought to keep near Bernard, in order not to sever his fate from that of his trusty friend. But the number of their pursuers soon forced them to take different directions. The hunted and the hunters were alike impeded by the snow, which had been blown off the steep side of the hillock, but lay in thick masses on the table-land, and at every step the feet sank deep. Already Ludwig saw the dusky foliage of the pines close before him, already he deemed himself to have escaped his unjust doom, when suddenly he sunk up to the hips, and, by his next movement, up to the breast in the snow, which had drifted into a fissure in the earth. In vain he strained every muscle to extricate himself. In a few seconds his pursuers reached him, grappled him unmercifully, and pulled him out of the hole by his arms and hair.
"Ill treated by the soldiers, driven forward by blows from fists and musket butts, Ludwig was dragged, rather than he walked, to the place appointed for his death. Even the scornful gaze with which Beaucaire received him was insufficient to give him strength to enjoy in the last moments of his life an inward triumph over that contemptible wretch. But he looked anxiously around for Bernard, to see whether he again was the companion of his melancholy lot. He saw him not; he evidently was not yet captured. The hope that his friend had finally effected his escape, comforted Ludwig, although he felt that death, now he was alone to meet it, was harder to endure than when he was sustained by the companionship of the gallant Bernard.
"He was now again at the post, to which two soldiers secured him with musket-slings, his arms behind his back, as though they feared fresh resistance. The sergeant stepped up to him, a handkerchief in his hand.
"'I will bandage your eyes, comrade,' said he, compassionately; 'it is better so.'
"In the first instance Ludwig would have scorned the bandage, but now he let his kind-hearted fellow-soldier have his way. Suddenly it occurred to him that he might make the sergeant the bearer of his last earthly wishes.
"'Comrade,' said he, as the man secured the cloth over his eyes, 'you will not refuse me a last friendly service. So soon as you are able, go to Colonel Rasinski, who commands our regiment; tell him how I died, and beg him to console my sister. And if you outlive this war, and go to her in Warsaw or Dresden, and tell her that'—
"He was interrupted by several musket-shots close at hand.