The two guns were turned at once; the old man, his left arm in a sling, cantered up the street, and I heard him say, in short, quick tones to the young officer as he passed where I lay:
"Tell the Emperor Alexander that I am in Kaya. The battle is won if I am reënforced. Let them not discuss the matter, but send help at once. Napoleon is coming, and in half an hour we will have him upon us with his Guard. I will stand, let it cost what it may. But in God's name do not lose a minute, and the victory is ours!"
The young man set off at a gallop, and at the same moment a voice near me whispered:
"That old wretch is Blücher. Ah, scoundrel! if I only had my gun!"
Turning my head, I saw an old sergeant, withered and thin, with long wrinkles in his cheeks, sitting against the door of the house, supporting himself with his hands on the ground as with a pair of crutches, for a ball had passed through him from side to side. His yellow eyes followed the Prussian general; his hooked nose seemed to droop like the beak of an eagle over his thick mustache, and his look was fierce and proud.
"If I had my musket," he repeated, "I would show you whether the battle is won."
We were the only two living beings among heaps of dead.
I thought that perhaps I should be buried in the morning, with the others in the garden opposite us, and that I would never again see Catharine; the tears ran down my cheeks and I could not help murmuring:
"Now all is indeed ended!"
The sergeant gazed at me and, seeing that I was yet so young, said kindly: