Produced by Dagny, and John Bickers
FAREWELL
BY HONORE DE BALZAC
Translated by Ellen Marriage
DEDICATION
To Prince Friedrich von Schwarzenberg
FAREWELL
“Come, Deputy of the Centre, come along! We shall have to mend our pace
if we mean to sit down to dinner when every one else does, and that’s
a fact! Hurry up! Jump, Marquis! That’s it! Well done! You are bounding
over the furrows just like a stag!”
These words were uttered by a sportsman seated much at his ease on the
outskirts of the Foret de l’Isle-Adam; he had just finished a Havana
cigar, which he had smoked while he waited for his companion, who
had evidently been straying about for some time among the forest
undergrowth. Four panting dogs by the speaker’s side likewise watched
the progress of the personage for whose benefit the remarks were made.
To make their sarcastic import fully clear, it should be added that the
second sportsman was both short and stout; his ample girth indicated a
truly magisterial corpulence, and in consequence his progress across
the furrows was by no means easy. He was striding over a vast field
of stubble; the dried corn-stalks underfoot added not a little to the
difficulties of his passage, and to add to his discomforts, the genial
influence of the sun that slanted into his eyes brought great drops of
perspiration into his face. The uppermost thought in his mind being a
strong desire to keep his balance, he lurched to and fro like a coach
jolted over an atrocious road.
It was one of those September days of almost tropical heat that finishes
the work of summer and ripens the grapes. Such heat forebodes a coming
storm; and though as yet there were wide patches of blue between the
dark rain-clouds low down on the horizon, pale golden masses were rising
and scattering with ominous swiftness from west to east, and drawing
a shadowy veil across the sky. The wind was still, save in the upper
regions of the air, so that the weight of the atmosphere seemed to
compress the steamy heat of the earth into the forest glades. The tall
forest trees shut out every breath of air so completely that the little
valley across which the sportsman was making his way was as hot as a
furnace; the silent forest seemed parched with the fiery heat. Birds and
insects were mute; the topmost twigs of the trees swayed with scarcely
perceptible motion. Any one who retains some recollection of the summer
of 1819 must surely compassionate the plight of the hapless supporter
of the ministry who toiled and sweated over the stubble to rejoin his
satirical comrade. That gentleman, as he smoked his cigar, had arrived,
by a process of calculation based on the altitude of the sun, to the
conclusion that it must be about five o’clock.
“Where the devil are we?” asked the stout sportsman. He wiped his brow
as he spoke, and propped himself against a tree in the field opposite
his companion, feeling quite unequal to clearing the broad ditch that
lay between them.
“And you ask that question of _me_!” retorted the other, laughing from
his bed of tall brown grasses on the top of the bank. He flung the end
of his cigar into the ditch, exclaiming, “I swear by Saint Hubert that
no one shall catch me risking myself again in a country that I don’t
know with a magistrate, even if, like you, my dear d’Albon, he happens
to be an old schoolfellow.”
“Why, Philip, have you really forgotten your own language? You surely
must have left your wits behind you in Siberia,” said the stouter of the
two, with a glance half-comic, half-pathetic at the guide-post distant
about a hundred paces from them.
“I understand,” replied the one addressed as Philip. He snatched up his
rifle, suddenly sprang to his feet, made but one jump of it into the
field, and rushed off to the guide-post. “This way, d’Albon, here you
are! left about!” he shouted, gesticulating in the direction of the
highroad. “_To Baillet and l’Isle-Adam!_” he went on; “so if we go along
here, we shall be sure to come upon the cross-road to Cassan.”
“Quite right, Colonel,” said M. d’Albon, putting the cap with which he
had been fanning himself back on his head.
“Then _forward_! highly respected Councillor,” returned Colonel Philip,
whistling to the dogs, that seemed already to obey him rather than the
magistrate their owner.
“Are you aware, my lord Marquis, that two leagues yet remain before
us?” inquired the malicious soldier. “That village down yonder must be
Baillet.”
“Great heavens!” cried the Marquis d’Albon. “Go on to Cassan by all
means, if you like; but if you do, you will go alone. I prefer to wait
here, storm or no storm; you can send a horse for me from the chateau.
You have been making game of me, Sucy. We were to have a nice day’s
sport by ourselves; we were not to go very far from Cassan, and go
over ground that I knew. Pooh! instead of a day’s fun, you have kept me
running like a greyhound since four o’clock this morning, and nothing
but a cup or two of milk by way of breakfast. Oh! if ever you find
yourself in a court of law, I will take care that the day goes against
you if you were in the right a hundred times over.”
The dejected sportsman sat himself down on one of the stumps at the
foot of the guide-post, disencumbered himself of his rifle and empty
game-bag, and heaved a prolonged sigh.
“Oh, France, behold thy Deputies!” laughed Colonel de Sucy. “Poor old
d’Albon; if you had spent six months at the other end of Siberia as I
did...”
He broke off, and his eyes sought the sky, as if the story of his
troubles was a secret between himself and God.
“Come, march!” he added. “If you once sit down, it is all over with
you.”
“I can’t help it, Philip! It is such an old habit in a magistrate! I am
dead beat, upon my honor. If I had only bagged one hare though!”
Two men more different are seldom seen together. The civilian, a man
of forty-two, seemed scarcely more than thirty; while the soldier, at
thirty years of age, looked to be forty at the least. Both wore the red
rosette that proclaimed them to be officers of the Legion of Honor. A
few locks of hair, mingled white and black, like a magpie’s wing,
had strayed from beneath the Colonel’s cap; while thick, fair curls
clustered about the magistrate’s temples. The Colonel was tall, spare,
dried up, but muscular; the lines in his pale face told a tale of
vehement passions or of terrible sorrows; but his comrade’s jolly
countenance beamed with health, and would have done credit to an
Epicurean. Both men were deeply sunburnt. Their high gaiters of brown
leather carried souvenirs of every ditch and swamp that they crossed
that day.
“Come, come,” cried M. de Sucy, “forward! One short hour’s march, and we
shall be at Cassan with a good dinner before us.”
“You never were in love, that is positive,” returned the Councillor,
with a comically piteous expression. “You are as inexorable as Article
304 of the Penal Code!”
Philip de Sucy shuddered violently. Deep lines appeared in his broad
forehead, his face was overcast like the sky above them; but though
his features seemed to contract with the pain of an intolerably bitter
memory, no tears came to his eyes. Like all men of strong character, he
possessed the power of forcing his emotions down into some inner depth,
and, perhaps, like many reserved natures, he shrank from laying bare a
wound too deep for any words of human speech, and winced at the thought
of ridicule from those who do not care to understand. M. d’Albon was one
of those who are keenly sensitive by nature to the distress of others,
who feel at once the pain they have unwillingly given by some blunder.
He respected his friend’s mood, rose to his feet, forgot his weariness,
and followed in silence, thoroughly annoyed with himself for having
touched on a wound that seemed not yet healed.
“Some day I will tell you my story,” Philip said at last, wringing
his friend’s hand, while he acknowledged his dumb repentance with a
heart-rending glance. “To-day I cannot.”
They walked on in silence. As the Colonel’s distress passed off the
Councillor’s fatigue returned. Instinctively, or rather urged by
weariness, his eyes explored the depths of the forest around them; he
looked high and low among the trees, and gazed along the avenues, hoping
to discover some dwelling where he might ask for hospitality. They
reached a place where several roads met; and the Councillor, fancying
that he saw a thin film of smoke rising through the trees, made a stand
and looked sharply about him. He caught a glimpse of the dark green
branches of some firs among the other forest trees, and finally, “A
house! a house!” he shouted. No sailor could have raised a cry of “Land
ahead!” more joyfully than he.
He plunged at once into undergrowth, somewhat of the thickest; and the
Colonel, who had fallen into deep musings, followed him unheedingly.
“I would rather have an omelette here and home-made bread, and a chair
to sit down in, than go further for a sofa, truffles, and Bordeaux wine
at Cassan.”
This outburst of enthusiasm on the Councillor’s part was caused by the
sight of the whitened wall of a house in the distance, standing out in
strong contrast against the brown masses of knotted tree-trunks in the
forest.
“Aha! This used to be a priory, I should say,” the Marquis d’Albon cried
once more, as they stood before a grim old gateway. Through the
grating they could see the house itself standing in the midst of some
considerable extent of park land; from the style of the architecture it
appeared to have been a monastery once upon a time.
“Those knowing rascals of monks knew how to choose a site!”
This last exclamation was caused by the magistrate’s amazement at the
romantic hermitage before his eyes. The house had been built on a spot
half-way up the hillside on the slope below the village of Nerville,
which crowned the summit. A huge circle of great oak-trees, hundreds of
years old, guarded the solitary place from intrusion. There appeared
to be about forty acres of the park. The main building of the monastery
faced the south, and stood in a space of green meadow, picturesquely
intersected by several tiny clear streams, and by larger sheets of water
so disposed as to have a natural effect. Shapely trees with contrasting
foliage grew here and there. Grottos had been ingeniously contrived; and
broad terraced walks, now in ruin, though the steps were broken and
the balustrades eaten through with rust, gave to this sylvan Thebaid a
certain character of its own. The art of man and the picturesqueness of
nature had wrought together to produce a charming effect. Human passions
surely could not cross that boundary of tall oak-trees which shut out
the sounds of the outer world, and screened the fierce heat of the sun
from this forest sanctuary.
“What neglect!” said M. d’Albon to himself, after the first sense of
delight in the melancholy aspect of the ruins in the landscape, which
seemed blighted by a curse.
It was like some haunted spot, shunned of men. The twisted ivy stems
clambered everywhere, hiding everything away beneath a luxuriant green
mantle. Moss and lichens, brown and gray, yellow and red, covered the
trees with fantastic patches of color, grew upon the benches in the
garden, overran the roof and the walls of the house. The window-sashes
were weather-worn and warped with age, the balconies were dropping to
pieces, the terraces in ruins. Here and there the folding shutters hung
by a single hinge. The crazy doors would have given way at the first
attempt to force an entrance.
Out in the orchard the neglected fruit-trees were running to wood, the
rambling branches bore no fruit save the glistening mistletoe berries,
and tall plants were growing in the garden walks. All this forlornness
shed a charm across the picture that wrought on the spectator’s mind
with an influence like that of some enchanting poem, filling his
soul with dreamy fancies. A poet must have lingered there in deep and
melancholy musings, marveling at the harmony of this wilderness, where
decay had a certain grace of its own.
In a moment a few gleams of sunlight struggled through a rift in the
clouds, and a shower of colored light fell over the wild garden. The
brown tiles of the roof glowed in the light, the mosses took bright
hues, strange shadows played over the grass beneath the trees; the dead
autumn tints grew vivid, bright unexpected contrasts were evoked by the
light, every leaf stood out sharply in the clear, thin air. Then all
at once the sunlight died away, and the landscape that seemed to have
spoken grew silent and gloomy again, or rather, it took gray soft tones
like the tenderest hues of autumn dusk.
“It is the palace of the Sleeping Beauty,” the Councillor said to
himself (he had already begun to look at the place from the point of
view of an owner of property). “Whom can the place belong to, I wonder.
He must be a great fool not to live on such a charming little estate!”
Just at that moment, a woman sprang out from under a walnut tree on
the right-hand side of the gateway, and passed before the Councillor as
noiselessly and swiftly as the shadow of a cloud. This apparition struck
him dumb with amazement.
“Hallo, d’Albon, what is the matter?” asked the Colonel.
“I am rubbing my eyes to find out whether I am awake or asleep,”
answered the magistrate, whose countenance was pressed against the
grating in the hope of catching a second glimpse of the ghost.
“In all probability she is under that fig-tree,” he went on, indicating,
for Philip’s benefit, some branches that over-topped the wall on the
left-hand side of the gateway.
“She? Who?”
“Eh! how should I know?” answered M. d’Albon. “A strange-looking woman
sprang up there under my very eyes just now,” he added, in a low voice;
“she looked to me more like a ghost than a living being. She was so
slender, light and shadowy that she might be transparent. Her face was
as white as milk, her hair, her eyes, and her dress were black. She gave
me a glance as she flitted by. I am not easily frightened, but that cold
stony stare of hers froze the blood in my veins.”
“Was she pretty?” inquired Philip.
“I don’t know. I saw nothing but those eyes in her head.”
“The devil take dinner at Cassan!” exclaimed the Colonel; “let us stay
here. I am as eager as a boy to see the inside of this queer place. The
window-sashes are painted red, do you see? There is a red line round
the panels of the doors and the edges of the shutters. It might be the
devil’s own dwelling; perhaps he took it over when the monks went out.
Now, then, let us give chase to the black and white lady; come along!”
cried Philip, with forced gaiety.
He had scarcely finished speaking when the two sportsmen heard a cry as
if some bird had been taken in a snare. They listened. There was a sound
like the murmur of rippling water, as something forced its way through
the bushes; but diligently as they lent their ears, there was no
footfall on the path, the earth kept the secret of the mysterious
woman’s passage, if indeed she had moved from her hiding-place.
“This is very strange!” cried Philip.
Following the wall of the path, the two friends reached before long
a forest road leading to the village of Chauvry; they went along this
track in the direction of the highway to Paris, and reached another
large gateway. Through the railings they had a complete view of
the facade of the mysterious house. From this point of view, the
dilapidation was still more apparent. Huge cracks had riven the walls
of the main body of the house built round three sides of a square.
Evidently the place was allowed to fall to ruin; there were holes in
the roof, broken slates and tiles lay about below. Fallen fruit from the
orchard trees was left to rot on the ground; a cow was grazing over
the bowling-green and trampling the flowers in the garden beds; a goat
browsed on the green grapes and young vine-shoots on the trellis.
“It is all of a piece,” remarked the Colonel. “The neglect is in a
fashion systematic.” He laid his hand on the chain of the bell-pull, but
the bell had lost its clapper. The two friends heard no sound save the
peculiar grating creak of the rusty spring. A little door in the wall
beside the gateway, though ruinous, held good against all their efforts
to force it open.
“Oho! all this is growing very interesting,” Philip said to his
companion.
“If I were not a magistrate,” returned M. d’Albon, “I should think that
the woman in black is a witch.”
The words were scarcely out of his mouth when the cow came up to the
railings and held out her warm damp nose, as if she were glad of human
society. Then a woman, if so indescribable a being could be called a
woman, sprang up from the bushes, and pulled at the cord about the cow’s
neck. From beneath the crimson handkerchief about the woman’s head, fair
matted hair escaped, something as tow hangs about a spindle. She wore
no kerchief at the throat. A coarse black-and-gray striped woolen
petticoat, too short by several inches, left her legs bare. She might
have belonged to some tribe of Redskins in Fenimore Cooper’s novels; for
her neck, arms, and ankles looked as if they had been painted brick-red.
There was no spark of intelligence in her featureless face; her pale,
bluish eyes looked out dull and expressionless from beneath the eyebrows
with one or two straggling white hairs on them. Her teeth were prominent
and uneven, but white as a dog’s.
“Hallo, good woman,” called M. de Sucy.
She came slowly up to the railing, and stared at the two sportsmen with
a contorted smile painful to see.
“Where are we? What is the name of the house yonder? Whom does it belong
to? Who are you? Do you come from hereabouts?”
To these questions, and to a host of others poured out in succession
upon her by the two friends, she made no answer save gurgling sounds
in the throat, more like animal sounds than anything uttered by a human
voice.
“Don’t you see that she is deaf and dumb?” said M. d’Albon.
“_Minorites_!” the peasant woman said at last.
“Ah! she is right. The house looks as though it might once have been a
Minorite convent,” he went on.
Again they plied the peasant woman with questions, but, like a wayward
child, she colored up, fidgeted with her sabot, twisted the rope by
which she held the cow that had fallen to grazing again, stared at the
sportsmen, and scrutinized every article of clothing upon them; she
gibbered, grunted, and clucked, but no articulate word did she utter.
“Your name?” asked Philip, fixing her with his eyes as if he were trying
to bewitch the woman.
“Genevieve,” she answered, with an empty laugh.
“The cow is the most intelligent creature we have seen so far,”
exclaimed the magistrate. “I shall fire a shot, that ought to bring
somebody out.”
D’Albon had just taken up his rifle when the Colonel put out a hand
to stop him, and pointed out the mysterious woman who had aroused such
lively curiosity in them. She seemed to be absorbed in deep thought, as
she went along a green alley some little distance away, so slowly that
the friends had time to take a good look at her. She wore a threadbare
black satin gown, her long hair curled thickly over her forehead, and
fell like a shawl about her shoulders below her waist. Doubtless she was
accustomed to the dishevelment of her locks, for she seldom put back
the hair on either side of her brows; but when she did so, she shook her
head with a sudden jerk that had not to be repeated to shake away
the thick veil from her eyes or forehead. In everything that she
did, moreover, there was a wonderful certainty in the working of the
mechanism, an unerring swiftness and precision, like that of an animal,
well-nigh marvelous in a woman.
The two sportsmen were amazed to see her spring up into an apple-tree
and cling to a bough lightly as a bird. She snatched at the fruit, ate
it, and dropped to the ground with the same supple grace that charms
us in a squirrel. The elasticity of her limbs took all appearance of
awkwardness or effort from her movements. She played about upon the
grass, rolling in it as a young child might have done; then, on a
sudden, she lay still and stretched out her feet and hands, with the
languid natural grace of a kitten dozing in the sun.
There was a threatening growl of thunder far away, and at this she
started up on all fours and listened, like a dog who hears a strange
footstep. One result of this strange attitude was to separate her thick
black hair into two masses, that fell away on either side of her face
and left her shoulders bare; the two witnesses of this singular scene
wondered at the whiteness of the skin that shone like a meadow daisy,
and at the neck that indicated the perfection of the rest of her form.
A wailing cry broke from her; she rose to her feet, and stood upright.
Every successive movement was made so lightly, so gracefully, so easily,
that she seemed to be no human being, but one of Ossian’s maids of the
mist. She went across the grass to one of the pools of water, deftly
shook off her shoe, and seemed to enjoy dipping her foot, white as
marble, in the spring; doubtless it pleased her to make the circling
ripples, and watch them glitter like gems. She knelt down by the brink,
and played there like a child, dabbling her long tresses in the water,
and flinging them loose again to see the water drip from the ends, like
a string of pearls in the sunless light.
“She is mad!” cried the Councillor.
A hoarse cry rang through the air; it came from Genevieve, and seemed
to be meant for the mysterious woman. She rose to her feet in a moment,
flinging back the hair from her face, and then the Colonel and d’Albon
could see her features distinctly. As soon as she saw the two friends
she bounded to the railings with the swiftness of a fawn.
“_Farewell_!” she said in low, musical tones, but they could not
discover the least trace of feeling, the least idea in the sweet sounds
that they had awaited impatiently.
M. d’Albon admired the long lashes, the thick, dark eyebrows, the
dazzling fairness of skin untinged by any trace of red. Only the
delicate blue veins contrasted with that uniform whiteness.
But when the Marquis turned to communicate his surprise at the sight of
so strange an apparition, he saw the Colonel stretched on the grass like
one dead. M. d’Albon fired his gun into the air, shouted for help, and
tried to raise his friend. At the sound of the shot, the strange lady,
who had stood motionless by the gate, fled away, crying out like a
wounded wild creature, circling round and round in the meadow, with
every sign of unspeakable terror.
M. d’Albon heard a carriage rolling along the road to l’Isle-Adam, and
waved his handkerchief to implore help. The carriage immediately came
towards the Minorite convent, and M. d’Albon recognized neighbors, M.
and Mme. de Grandville, who hastened to alight and put their carriage at
his disposal. Colonel de Sucy inhaled the salts which Mme. de Grandville
happened to have with her; he opened his eyes, looked towards the
mysterious figure that still fled wailing through the meadow, and a
faint cry of horror broke from him; he closed his eyes again, with
a dumb gesture of entreaty to his friends to take him away from this
scene. M. and Mme. de Grandville begged the Councillor to make use of
their carriage, adding very obligingly that they themselves would walk.
“Who can the lady be?” inquired the magistrate, looking towards the
strange figure.
“People think that she comes from Moulins,” answered M. de Grandville.
“She is a Comtesse de Vandieres; she is said to be mad; but as she has
only been here for two months, I cannot vouch for the truth of all this
hearsay talk.”
M. d’Albon thanked M. and Mme. de Grandville, and they set out for
Cassan.
“It is she!” cried Philip, coming to himself.
“She? who?” asked d’Albon.
“Stephanie.... Ah! dead and yet living still; still alive, but her mind
is gone! I thought the sight would kill me.”
The prudent magistrate, recognizing the gravity of the crisis through
which his friend was passing, refrained from asking questions or
exciting him further, and grew impatient of the length of the way to the
chateau, for the change wrought in the Colonel’s face alarmed him. He
feared lest the Countess’ terrible disease had communicated itself to
Philip’s brain. When they reached the avenue at l’Isle-Adam, d’Albon
sent the servant for the local doctor, so that the Colonel had scarcely
been laid in bed before the surgeon was beside him.
“If Monsieur le Colonel had not been fasting, the shock must have killed
him,” pronounced the leech. “He was over-tired, and that saved him,” and
with a few directions as to the patient’s treatment, he went to prepare
a composing draught himself. M. de Sucy was better the next morning, but
the doctor had insisted on sitting up all night with him.
“I confess, Monsieur le Marquis,” the surgeon said, “that I feared for
the brain. M. de Sucy has had some very violent shock; he is a man of
strong passions, but, with his temperament, the first shock decides
everything. He will very likely be out of danger to-morrow.”
The doctor was perfectly right. The next day the patient was allowed to
see his friend.
“I want you to do something for me, dear d’Albon,” Philip said, grasping
his friend’s hand. “Hasten at once to the Minorite convent, find out
everything about the lady whom we saw there, and come back as soon as
you can; I shall count the minutes till I see you again.”
M. d’Albon called for his horse, and galloped over to the old monastery.
When he reached the gateway he found some one standing there, a tall,
spare man with a kindly face, who answered in the affirmative when he
was asked if he lived in the ruined house. M. d’Albon explained his
errand.
“Why, then, it must have been you, sir, who fired that unlucky shot! You
all but killed my poor invalid.”
“Eh! I fired into the air!”
“If you had actually hit Madame la Comtesse, you would have done less
harm to her.”
“Well, well, then, we can neither of us complain, for the sight of the
Countess all but killed my friend, M. de Sucy.”
“The Baron de Sucy, is it possible?” cried the doctor, clasping his
hands. “Has he been in Russia? was he in the Beresina?”
“Yes,” answered d’Albon. “He was taken prisoner by the Cossacks and sent
to Siberia. He has not been back in this country a twelvemonth.”
“Come in, monsieur,” said the other, and he led the way to a
drawing-room on the ground-floor. Everything in the room showed signs of
capricious destruction.
Valuable china jars lay in fragments on either side of a clock beneath a
glass shade, which had escaped. The silk hangings about the windows were
torn to rags, while the muslin curtains were untouched.
“You see about you the havoc wrought by a charming being to whom I
have dedicated my life. She is my niece; and though medical science
is powerless in her case, I hope to restore her to reason, though the
method which I am trying is, unluckily, only possible to the wealthy.”
Then, like all who live much alone and daily bear the burden of a heavy
trouble, he fell to talk with the magistrate. This is the story that he
told, set in order, and with the many digressions made by both teller
and hearer omitted.
When, at nine o’clock at night, on the 28th of November 1812, Marshal
Victor abandoned the heights of Studzianka, which he had held through
the day, he left a thousand men behind with instructions to protect,
till the last possible moment, the two pontoon bridges over the Beresina
that still held good. This rear guard was to save if possible an
appalling number of stragglers, so numbed with the cold, that they
obstinately refused to leave the baggage-wagons. The heroism of the
generous band was doomed to fail; for, unluckily, the men who poured
down to the eastern bank of the Beresina found carriages, caissons, and
all kinds of property which the Army had been forced to abandon during
its passage on the 27th and 28th days of November. The poor, half-frozen
wretches, sunk almost to the level of brutes, finding such unhoped-for
riches, bivouacked in the deserted space, laid hands on the military
stores, improvised huts out of the material, lighted fires with anything
that would burn, cut up the carcasses of the horses for food, tore out
the linings of the carriages, wrapped themselves in them, and lay
down to sleep instead of crossing the Beresina in peace under cover of
night--the Beresina that even then had proved, by incredible fatality,
so disastrous to the Army. Such apathy on the part of the poor fellows
can only be understood by those who remember tramping across those vast
deserts of snow, with nothing to quench their thirst but snow, snow for
their bed, snow as far as the horizon on every side, and no food but
snow, a little frozen beetroot, horseflesh, or a handful of meal.
The miserable creatures were dropping down, overcome by hunger, thirst,
weariness, and sleep, when they reached the shores of the Beresina and
found fuel and fire and victuals, countless wagons and tents, a whole
improvised town, in short. The whole village of Studzianka had been
removed piecemeal from the heights of the plain, and the very perils and
miseries of this dangerous and doleful habitation smiled invitingly to
the wayfarers, who beheld no prospect beyond it but the awful Russian
deserts. A huge hospice, in short, was erected for twenty hours of
existence. Only one thought--the thought of rest--appealed to men weary
of life or rejoicing in unlooked-for comfort.
They lay right in the line of fire from the cannon of the Russian
left; but to that vast mass of human creatures, a patch upon the
snow, sometimes dark, sometimes breaking into flame, the indefatigable
grapeshot was but one discomfort the more. For them it was only a storm,
and they paid the less attention to the bolts that fell among them
because there were none to strike down there save dying men, the
wounded, or perhaps the dead. Stragglers came up in little bands at
every moment. These walking corpses instantly separated, and wandered
begging from fire to fire; and meeting, for the most part, with
refusals, banded themselves together again, and took by force what
they could not otherwise obtain. They were deaf to the voices of their
officers prophesying death on the morrow, and spent the energy required
to cross the swamp in building shelters for the night and preparing a
meal that often proved fatal. The coming death no longer seemed an evil,
for it gave them an hour of slumber before it came. Hunger and thirst
and cold--these were evils, but not death.
At last wood and fuel and canvas and shelters failed, and hideous brawls
began between destitute late comers and the rich already in possession
of a lodging. The weaker were driven away, until a few last fugitives
before the Russian advance were obliged to make their bed in the snow,
and lay down to rise no more.
Little by little the mass of half-dead humanity became so dense, so
deaf, so torpid,--or perhaps it should be said so happy--that Marshal
Victor, their heroic defender against twenty thousand Russians under
Wittgenstein, was actually compelled to cut his way by force through
this forest of men, so as to cross the Beresina with the five thousand
heroes whom he was leading to the Emperor. The miserable creatures
preferred to be trampled and crushed to death rather than stir from
their places, and died without a sound, smiling at the dead ashes of
their fires, forgetful of France.
Not before ten o’clock that night did the Duc de Belluno reach the other
side of the river. Before committing his men to the pontoon bridges that
led to Zembin, he left the fate of the rearguard at Studzianka in Eble’s
hands, and to Eble the survivors of the calamities of the Beresina owed
their lives.
About midnight, the great General, followed by a courageous officer,
came out of his little hut by the bridge, and gazed at the spectacle
of this camp between the bank of the Beresina and the Borizof road to
Studzianka. The thunder of the Russian cannonade had ceased. Here
and there faces that had nothing human about them were lighted up by
countless fires that seemed to grow pale in the glare of the snowfields,
and to give no light. Nearly thirty thousand wretches, belonging to
every nation that Napoleon had hurled upon Russia, lay there hazarding
their lives with the indifference of brute beasts.
“We have all these to save,” the General said to his subordinate.
“To-morrow morning the Russians will be in Studzianka. The moment they
come up we shall have to set fire to the bridge; so pluck up heart,
my boy! Make your way out and up yonder through them, and tell General
Fournier that he has barely time to evacuate his post and cut his way
through to the bridge. As soon as you have seen him set out, follow
him down, take some able-bodied men, and set fire to the tents, wagons,
caissons, carriages, anything and everything, without pity, and drive
these fellows on to the bridge. Compel everything that walks on two legs
to take refuge on the other bank. We must set fire to the camp; it
is our last resource. If Berthier had let me burn those d----d wagons
sooner, no lives need have been lost in the river except my poor
pontooners, my fifty heroes, who saved the Army, and will be forgotten.”
The General passed his hand over his forehead and said no more. He felt
that Poland would be his tomb, and foresaw that afterwards no voice
would be raised to speak for the noble fellows who had plunged into the
stream--into the waters of the Beresina!--to drive in the piles for the
bridges. And, indeed, only one of them is living now, or, to be more
accurate, starving, utterly forgotten in a country village![*] The
brave officer had scarcely gone a hundred paces towards Studzianka, when
General Eble roused some of his patient pontooners, and began his work
of mercy by setting fire to the camp on the side nearest the bridge, so
compelling the sleepers to rise and cross the Beresina. Meanwhile the
young aide-de-camp, not without difficulty, reached the one wooden house
yet left standing in Studzianka.
[*] This story can be found in _The Country Parson_.--eBook
preparers.
“So the box is pretty full, is it, messmate?” he said to a man whom he
found outside.
“You will be a knowing fellow if you manage to get inside,” the officer
returned, without turning round or stopping his occupation of hacking at
the woodwork of the house with his sabre.
“Philip, is that you?” cried the aide-de-camp, recognizing the voice of
one of his friends.
“Yes. Aha! is it you, old fellow?” returned M. de Sucy, looking round at
the aide-de-camp, who like himself was not more than twenty-three years
old. “I fancied you were on the other side of this confounded river.
Do you come to bring us sweetmeats for dessert? You will get a warm
welcome,” he added, as he tore away a strip of bark from the wood and
gave it to his horse by way of fodder.
“I am looking for your commandant. General Eble has sent me to tell him
to file off to Zembin. You have only just time to cut your way through
that mass of dead men; as soon as you get through, I am going to set
fire to the place to make them move--”
“You almost make me feel warm! Your news has put me in a fever; I have
two friends to bring through. Ah! but for those marmots, I should have
been dead before now, old fellow. On their account I am taking care
of my horse instead of eating him. But have you a crust about you, for
pity’s sake? It is thirty hours since I have stowed any victuals. I have
been fighting like a madman to keep up a little warmth in my body and
what courage I have left.”
“Poor Philip! I have nothing--not a scrap!--But is your General in
there?”
“Don’t attempt to go in. The barn is full of our wounded. Go up a bit
higher, and you will see a sort of pig-sty to the right--that is where
the General is. Good-bye, my dear fellow. If ever we meet again in a
quadrille in a ballroom in Paris--”
He did not finish the sentence, for the treachery of the northeast wind
that whistled about them froze Major Philip’s lips, and the aide-de-camp
kept moving for fear of being frost-bitten. Silence soon prevailed,
scarcely broken by the groans of the wounded in the barn, or the stifled
sounds made by M. de Sucy’s horse crunching on the frozen bark with
famished eagerness. Philip thrust his sabre into the sheath, caught at
the bridle of the precious animal that he had managed to keep for so
long, and drew her away from the miserable fodder that she was bolting
with apparent relish.
“Come along, Bichette! come along! It lies with you now, my beauty, to
save Stephanie’s life. There, wait a little longer, and they will let us
lie down and die, no doubt;” and Philip, wrapped in a pelisse, to which
doubtless he owed his life and energies, began to run, stamping his feet
on the frozen snow to keep them warm. He was scarce five hundred paces
away before he saw a great fire blazing on the spot where he had left
his carriage that morning with an old soldier to guard it. A dreadful
misgiving seized upon him. Many a man under the influence of a powerful
feeling during the Retreat summoned up energy for his friend’s sake when
he would not have exerted himself to save his own life; so it was with
Philip. He soon neared a hollow, where he had left a carriage sheltered
from the cannonade, a carriage that held a young woman, his playmate in
childhood, dearer to him than any one else on earth.
Some thirty stragglers were sitting round a tremendous blaze, which
they kept up with logs of wood, planks wrenched from the floors of the
caissons, and wheels, and panels from carriage bodies. These had been,
doubtless, among the last to join the sea of fires, huts, and human
faces that filled the great furrow in the land between Studzianka and
the fatal river, a restless living sea of almost imperceptibly moving
figures, that sent up a smothered hum of sound blended with frightful
shrieks. It seemed that hunger and despair had driven these forlorn
creatures to take forcible possession of the carriage, for the old
General and his young wife, whom they had found warmly wrapped in
pelisses and traveling cloaks, were now crouching on the earth beside
the fire, and one of the carriage doors was broken.
As soon as the group of stragglers round the fire heard the footfall
of the Major’s horse, a frenzied yell of hunger went up from them. “A
horse!” they cried. “A horse!”
All the voices went up as one voice.
“Back! back! Look out!” shouted two or three of them, leveling their
muskets at the animal.
“I will pitch you neck and crop into your fire, you blackguards!” cried
Philip, springing in front of the mare. “There are dead horses lying up
yonder; go and look for them!”
“What a rum customer the officer is!--Once, twice, will you get out of
the way?” returned a giant grenadier. “You won’t? All right then, just
as you please.”
A woman’s shriek rang out above the report. Luckily, none of the bullets
hit Philip; but poor Bichette lay in the agony of death. Three of the
men came up and put an end to her with thrusts of the bayonet.
“Cannibals! leave me the rug and my pistols,” cried Philip in
desperation.
“Oh! the pistols if you like; but as for the rug, there is a fellow
yonder who has had nothing to wet his whistle these two days, and is
shivering in his coat of cobwebs, and that’s our General.”
Philips looked up and saw a man with worn-out shoes and a dozen rents in
his trousers; the only covering for his head was a ragged foraging
cap, white with rime. He said no more after that, but snatched up his
pistols.
Five of the men dragged the mare to the fire, and began to cut up the
carcass as dexterously as any journeymen butchers in Paris. The scraps
of meat were distributed and flung upon the coals, and the whole process
was magically swift. Philip went over to the woman who had given the cry
of terror when she recognized his danger, and sat down by her side. She
sat motionless upon a cushion taken from the carriage, warming herself
at the blaze; she said no word, and gazed at him without a smile. He
saw beside her the soldier whom he had left mounting guard over the
carriage; the poor fellow had been wounded; he had been overpowered by
numbers, and forced to surrender to the stragglers who had set upon him,
and, like a dog who defends his master’s dinner till the last moment,
he had taken his share of the spoil, and had made a sort of cloak for
himself out of a sheet. At that particular moment he was busy toasting
a piece of horseflesh, and in his face the major saw a gleeful
anticipation of the coming feast.
The Comte de Vandieres, who seemed to have grown quite childish in the
last few days, sat on a cushion close to his wife, and stared into
the fire. He was only just beginning to shake off his torpor under
the influence of the warmth. He had been no more affected by Philip’s
arrival and danger than by the fight and subsequent pillaging of his
traveling carriage.
At first Sucy caught the young Countess’ hand in his, trying to express
his affection for her, and the pain that it gave him to see her reduced
like this to the last extremity of misery; but he said nothing as he
sat by her side on the thawing heap of snow, he gave himself up to the
pleasure of the sensation of warmth, forgetful of danger, forgetful of
all things else in the world. In spite of himself his face expanded with
an almost fatuous expression of satisfaction, and he waited impatiently
till the scrap of horseflesh that had fallen to his soldier’s share
should be cooked. The smell of charred flesh stimulated his hunger.
Hunger clamored within and silenced his heart, his courage, and his
love. He coolly looked round on the results of the spoliation of his
carriage. Not a man seated round the fire but had shared the booty, the
rugs, cushions, pelisses, dresses,--articles of clothing that belonged
to the Count and Countess or to himself. Philip turned to see if
anything worth taking was left in the berline. He saw by the light of
the flames, gold, and diamonds, and silver lying scattered about; no one
had cared to appropriate the least particle. There was something hideous
in the silence among those human creatures round the fire; none of them
spoke, none of them stirred, save to do such things as each considered
necessary for his own comfort.
It was a grotesque misery. The men’s faces were wrapped and disfigured
with the cold, and plastered over with a layer of mud; you could see
the thickness of the mask by the channel traced down their cheeks by
the tears that ran from their eyes, and their long slovenly-kept beards
added to the hideousness of their appearance. Some were wrapped round in
women’s shawls, others in horse-cloths, dirty blankets, rags stiffened
with melting hoar-frost; here and there a man wore a boot on one foot
and a shoe on the other, in fact, there was not one of them but wore
some ludicrously odd costume. But the men themselves with such matter
for jest about them were gloomy and taciturn.
The silence was unbroken save by the crackling of the wood, the roaring
of the flames, the far-off hum of the camp, and the sound of sabres
hacking at the carcass of the mare. Some of the hungriest of the men
were still cutting tidbits for themselves. A few miserable creatures,
more weary than the others, slept outright; and if they happened to roll
into the fire, no one pulled them back. With cut-and-dried logic their
fellows argued that if they were not dead, a scorching ought to be
sufficient warning to quit and seek out more comfortable quarters. If
the poor wretch woke to find himself on fire, he was burned to death,
and nobody pitied him. Here and there the men exchanged glances, as if
to excuse their indifference by the carelessness of the rest; the thing
happened twice under the Countess’ eyes, and she uttered no sound. When
all the scraps of horseflesh had been broiled upon the coals, they were
devoured with a ravenous greediness that would have been disgusting in
wild beasts.
“And now we have seen thirty infantrymen on one horse for the first
time in our lives!” cried the grenadier who had shot the mare, the one
solitary joke that sustained the Frenchmen’s reputation for wit.
Before long the poor fellows huddled themselves up in their clothes,
and lay down on planks of timber, on anything but the bare snow, and
slept--heedless of the morrow. Major de Sucy having warmed himself and
satisfied his hunger, fought in vain against the drowsiness that weighed
upon his eyes. During this brief struggle he gazed at the sleeping girl
who had turned her face to the fire, so that he could see her closed
eyelids and part of her forehead. She was wrapped round in a furred
pelisse and a coarse horseman’s cloak, her head lay on a blood-stained
cushion; a tall astrakhan cap tied over her head by a handkerchief
knotted under the chin protected her face as much as possible from the
cold, and she had tucked up her feet in the cloak. As she lay curled up
in this fashion, she bore no likeness to any creature.
Was this the lowest of camp-followers? Was this the charming woman, the
pride of her lover’s heart, the queen of many a Parisian ballroom? Alas!
even for the eyes of this most devoted friend, there was no discernible
trace of womanhood in that bundle of rags and linen, and the cold was
mightier than the love in a woman’s heart.
Then for the major the husband and wife came to be like two distant dots
seen through the thick veil that the most irresistible kind of slumber
spread over his eyes. It all seemed to be part of a dream--the leaping
flames, the recumbent figures, the awful cold that lay in wait for them
three paces away from the warmth of the fire that glowed for a little
while. One thought that could not be stifled haunted Philip--“If I go to
sleep, we shall all die; I will not sleep,” he said to himself.
He slept. After an hour’s slumber M. de Sucy was awakened by a hideous
uproar and the sound of an explosion. The remembrance of his duty, of
the danger of his beloved, rushed upon his mind with a sudden shock. He
uttered a cry like the growl of a wild beast. He and his servant stood
upright above the rest. They saw a sea of fire in the darkness, and
against it moving masses of human figures. Flames were devouring the
huts and tents. Despairing shrieks and yelling cries reached their
ears; they saw thousands upon thousands of wild and desperate faces;
and through this inferno a column of soldiers was cutting its way to the
bridge, between the two hedges of dead bodies.
“Our rearguard is in full retreat,” cried the major. “There is no hope
left!”
“I have spared your traveling carriage, Philip,” said a friendly voice.
Sucy turned and saw the young aide-de-camp by the light of the flames.
“Oh, it is all over with us,” he answered. “They have eaten my horse.
And how am I to make this sleepy general and his wife stir a step?”
“Take a brand, Philip, and threaten them.”
“Threaten the Countess?...”
“Good-bye,” cried the aide-de-camp; “I have only just time to get across
that unlucky river, and go I must, there is my mother in France!... What
a night! This herd of wretches would rather lie here in the snow, and
most of them would sooner be burned alive than get up.... It is four
o’clock, Philip! In two hours the Russians will begin to move, and you
will see the Beresina covered with corpses a second time, I can tell
you. You haven’t a horse, and you cannot carry the Countess, so come
along with me,” he went on, taking his friend by the arm.
“My dear fellow, how am I to leave Stephanie?”
Major de Sucy grasped the Countess, set her on her feet, and shook her
roughly; he was in despair. He compelled her to wake, and she stared at
him with dull fixed eyes.
“Stephanie, we must go, or we shall die here!”
For all answer, the Countess tried to sink down again and sleep on the
earth. The aide-de-camp snatched a brand from the fire and shook it in
her face.
“We must save her in spite of herself,” cried Philip, and he carried her
in his arms to the carriage. He came back to entreat his friend to help
him, and the two young men took the old general and put him beside his
wife, without knowing whether he were alive or dead. The major rolled
the men over as they crouched on the earth, took away the plundered
clothing, and heaped it upon the husband and wife, then he flung some of
the broiled fragments of horseflesh into a corner of the carriage.
“Now, what do you mean to do?” asked the aide-de-camp.
“Drag them along!” answered Sucy.
“You are mad!”
“You are right!” exclaimed Philip, folding his arms on his breast.
Suddenly a desperate plan occurred to him.