"I lifted him, and carried him on my shoulders like a sack. You can easily imagine that with such a burden I could not keep pace with my comrades. In fact, I soon lost sight of their columns, and could discern nothing around me but the white and silent plain.
"I still walked on, when presently appeared a troop of Cossacks galloping toward me, with furious gesticulations and wild cries.
"The captain was by this time completely insensible, and I resolved, whatever it might cost me, not to abandon him. I laid him down on the ground, and covered him with snow; then I crept beneath a heap of dead bodies, leaving, however, my eyes at liberty.
"Presently the Cossacks came up, and began to strike with their lances right and left, while their horses trampled us under their feet. One of these heavy beasts set his foot upon my right arm, and crushed it.
"My friends, I did not speak, I did not stir; I put my right hand into my mouth to stifle the cry of torture which nearly escaped from me, and in a few minutes the Cossacks had dispersed.
"When the last of them had disappeared, I quitted my refuge, and proceeded to disinter the captain. To my joy he gave some signs of life; I contrived to carry him with my one arm toward a rock which offered a sort of shelter, and then I laid myself by his side, wrapping my cloak round us both.
"The night had closed in, and the snow continued to fall.
"The rear-guard had long since disappeared, and the only sound that broke the stillness of the night was the whistle of a bullet, or the howling of the wolves feasting on the corpses that lay stretched around.
"God knows what thoughts passed through my soul during that dreadful night, which, I felt sure, would be my last upon earth. But I remembered the prayer which my mother had taught me long before, when I was a child at her knee, and bending low, I repeated it with fervor.
"My children, that did me good, and remember always that a sincere and fervent prayer is sure to comfort you. I felt astonishingly calmed when I returned to my place by the captain. But the time passed, and I had fallen into a state of half stupor, when I saw a group of French officers approach. Before I had time to speak to them, their chief, a little man, dressed in a furred pelisse, stepped forward toward me, and said: