THE AIDE-DE-CAMP OF ST. PRIEST.
“You would not let your little finger ache
For such as these?
But I would _die_, said he.”
The miserable fugitives who succeeded, at the cost of so much
suffering, in crossing the icy waters of the Beresina, found no
“promised land” on the other side. Better had it been if with one
accord they had laid down their arms on the banks of that fatal river,
and surrendered to the mercy of the enemy. The horrors that awaited
them well-nigh cast into oblivion those they had already passed
through, and filled to absolute overflowing the cup of trembling put
into their hands. Until then the cold had not exceeded that of the
ordinary winter of those regions; but during that terrible month of
December it grew ever more and more intense, until it reached a pitch
of severity almost beyond precedent. A silent, invisible, invincible
enemy, it mowed down the ranks of strong men with a pitiless scythe,
sparing neither the young recruit nor the hardened veteran who had
passed unscathed through all the sufferings of the preceding campaign.
Henri de Talmont was at first only conscious of one definite purpose,
that of keeping his little charge from perishing with cold. If he
could but bring him alive to Vilna, perhaps he might find Madame Leone
there and restore him to her. Seeing that a crowd had gathered about
a carriage which had been overturned, and which they were plundering
of its contents, he joined it in the hope of obtaining some provisions
for the way. With more consideration for Guido’s tastes than for his
own, he seized eagerly upon a small bag of sugar and a box of chocolate
bonbons. He afterwards made use of the chocolate as a bribe to induce
the little one to run along by his side, for he was scarcely strong
enough to carry him. But the poor little fellow was unable to endure
the piercing cold, and cried piteously to be taken up again in his
arms. Weak though he was himself, Henri could not resist the appeal;
but it hastened the inevitable moment when, utterly overcome with
fatigue, he was fain to lie down and rest, even at the risk of rising
again no more.
So many broken and abandoned properties of all kinds strewed the way
that it was not difficult to contrive a sort of shelter for the night.
A disabled gun-carriage and a couple of cloaks served Henri as a tent
for himself and Guido, whom he folded to his breast as warmly as he
could, and both were soon fast asleep.
The intense, biting chill that preceded the dawn awakened Henri. “My
poor little Guido is very cold,” he thought; “I must wrap him up
better;” and he took the coverings from himself to fold them more
closely about his charge. The child did not waken, nor even stir; nor
did any increase of external warmth remove the icy chill from those
little limbs. Henri grew alarmed, and thought at last that he ought
to awaken him and give him some nourishment. But all his efforts were
in vain. That wintry night Christ had called a little child to come
to him from the frozen plain. Gentle was the call and silent the
response,--the young spirit passed away in sleep, without struggle and
without suffering.
Black despair fell upon Henri then. There seemed no use in making any
further struggle for life. All around him were dead or dying; all
whom he had known during the long agony of the retreat from Moscow
had yielded to their doom. Féron was dead--Rougeard was dead, as he
believed--the dying face of many another comrade rose before him--and
now, this child. How was he better than they?
Before he lay down to sleep he had prayed for himself and for
Guido. The little one also had clasped his baby hands and lisped in
his soft Italian a prayer that they might find his mother on the
morrow. But beside that still, fair form--almost as white as the
snow around it, and consecrated with the twofold beauty of childhood
and of death--Henri breathed no prayer. Not then, nor for many days
afterwards. It was no use, he said in his heart.
Still he wandered on--in cold, in hunger, in weariness. Hope was
gone, memory had almost left him; nothing remained but that desperate
clinging to life, which is scarcely more than the instinct of an
animal. The path he had to follow was strewn with the dead bodies of
his comrades; and upon these he sometimes found a little bread, or a
small quantity of wine or spirits. On more than one occasion he warmed
his freezing limbs by crouching beneath the corpse of a fellow-sufferer
in whom the vital spark was only just extinct. He could not have
survived at all but for the sugar and the chocolate that he had
obtained for Guido. These, though he knew it not, afforded precisely
the kind of nutriment best adapted to sustain life under intense
cold.[43]
He was seldom conscious of any sensations but those of the body. He
was always cold, always hungry, always in pain; only sometimes this
never-ceasing, never-ending sense of pain was lightened by a kind of
dull satisfaction, as when he found food, or slept, or felt a little
warmer than usual. Occasionally a comrade would hail him, and inquire
his name and whither he was going. Henri hardly knew what he answered.
Sometimes he would talk incoherently; at other times he would reply
correctly enough--say he was going to Vilna--and in his turn ask
questions about the road. He noticed that some of those whom he met
stared at him vacantly, or with the fierce glare of insanity; when he
spoke they would give him wild and wandering answers, or perhaps even
threaten him with violence. Once a miserable being, looking like a
spectre, stood and gazed at him in silence, until he asked him what he
wanted. “Nothing,” answered he, with a strange, sad smile,--“nothing; I
am a dead man.”[44]
There were moments, perhaps hours, when Henri’s crushed intelligence
seemed to revive, and he regained the power of thought and feeling. But
these seasons were the most terrible of all. His soul was fast bound
in misery and iron. It was hard with despair as the ground beneath
his feet with the frost of winter. If he thought of his mother--he
“would never see her again; and what did it matter? She had never
forgiven--never would forgive him now.” Of Clémence--“she was so good!
She would be very happy in her religion, in her pious books, in her
good works. No doubt she was happy enough even now, though her one
brother was dying miserably of cold and hunger by the side of a Polish
road. Clémence would only say, ‘It is the will of God.’”
The will of God! That was the bitterest thought of all. His will was
inexorable. There was no use in prayer. Henri had tried prayer, and had
not been heard. God did not care for him. He sat on his throne, far
above yonder cold, gray, pitiless wintry sky,--as cold, and yet more
pitiless. This was his hand, his vengeance; by his inscrutable decree
half a million of men were dying in torture, because he was angry with
Napoleon Buonaparte.
Sometimes he thought it was not his will, but only a terrible chance.
Sometimes it seemed easier to believe, with most of his comrades, that
there was no God, no Being who shaped the destinies of the human race.
Practically, at least, there was none for him; none to whom it mattered
whether he lived or died. Then the whole subject would pass from him
and be forgotten in the absorbing interest of his quest for food.
Something to allay the pangs of hunger had to be sought for, very much
as the wild beast seeks for its prey.
How long this dreary life in death continued Henri never knew. But
it had an end at last, like all suffering on this side of the grave.
One day he found himself in what was evidently the melancholy and
abandoned ruin of a once beautiful pleasure-ground. The pitiless frost
had done its part to blight and to destroy; but the yet more pitiless
hand of man had left its deeper traces. A castle, once fit for a royal
residence, but now dismantled and partly burned, completed the picture
of desolation.
All at once, as revealed by a lightning flash, Henri recalled the
past. Could this indeed be Zakret--the splendid summer residence, with
beautiful gardens, which the Czar had purchased just before the war?
Only six months had passed since Henri wandered with genuine pleasure
amidst its shady walks, and admired its magnificent conservatories
filled with rare exotics, its terraces gay with the bloom of a thousand
summer flowers. He even remembered the exasperation he had felt at the
conduct of his fellow-soldiers, who wasted all that wealth of beauty
with reckless, malicious hands, because it belonged to their enemy the
Czar. “He is well avenged,” thought Henri. “We did not dream that he
would have proved himself so strong.”
Another thought came then. Zakret was close to Vilna, the goal for
the present of his weary wanderings. The idea lent his worn frame a
momentary strength; he would get up, and go there immediately. He had
thrown himself upon a seat--some broken masonry belonging to what had
once been a beautiful fountain--but now he rose quickly, and tried to
walk. But the effort proved too much for him; he tottered, slipped upon
the frozen ground, fell, and utterly lost consciousness.
When he recovered from his long and death-like swoon, he found
everything changed around him. Instead of the wintry sky, he saw above
him a lofty vaulted roof. The light was dim, but sufficient to reveal
the scene. The floor was covered, or rather crowded with prostrate
forms; in some places they lay in heaps. He stretched out his hand, and
touched the form nearest him; it was cold as ice, and in his horror
at the thought that he was surrounded by the dead, he uttered a weak,
agonized cry.
Several heads were raised at this, and eyes, bright with fever or dim
with the mists of approaching death, gazed at him in a kind of dull
surprise.
“Where am I?” he asked feebly.
Some one dressed in a ragged French uniform, and carrying a large
pitcher filled with snow, approached the place where he lay. “In
prison,” he said. “They brought you in a while ago with some other sick
men.”
“Are you a warder?” pursued Henri.
“You insult me! Can’t you see my uniform? I am, like yourself, a
prisoner and a Frenchman. But those of us who are still passably strong
are allowed to go down to the court and gather snow for the rest.”
He was prevented from adding more by the clamour of the sick men
around. All who were able to speak begged in piteous accents for a
portion of the snow, holding out cups and other small vessels to
receive it.
Henri was more conscious at the moment of hunger than of thirst. “Is
there any food?” he asked in a faint voice.
A piece of hard biscuit was pushed towards him, and he took it
eagerly. Then half-a-dozen hands were extended, and as many voices
spoke to him--“Take my biscuit, and give me in exchange your next cup
of snow-water.”
Henri ate a little, moistening his biscuit with the snow-water; but
bitter experience had taught him moderation. Then, forgetting that he
was no longer a famished fugitive fighting for the necessaries of life,
he began, from habit, to conceal the remainder about his person.
A harsh, bitter laugh, from the man who brought in the snow, made him
look up. “No need to hide what nobody wants,” said he. “Biscuit is the
only thing we have in plenty here--except death.”
“Can this indeed be Vilna?” Henri asked with a bewildered look.
His informant nodded.
“Then where is the army--the Emperor? How comes it that we are
prisoners?”
“The army?--gone like the snow I brought in just now. The
Emperor?--safe in Paris by this time. If it will be a comfort to you in
your dying moments to know that his Imperial Majesty ‘never was better
in all his life,’ I have the satisfaction of affording it. He announced
the fact in his last bulletin.”
Henri stirred uneasily, and cast a mournful glance around him. All that
met his senses was foul and loathsome in the extreme. The atmosphere
of the place was “at once icy and pestilential;” and the whole, the
sick, the dying, and the dead, lay heaped together promiscuously.
Dead bodies, or mutilated portions of them, were piled together in
the windows, a ghastly defence against the bitter wintry wind; while
every noxious odour, every hideous and revolting sight that accompanies
disease and death, filled the vaults and corridors of the spacious
building, making it one vast and dreary charnel-house.
“This is horrible!” he murmured.
“Nothing could be worse. No beds--no straw even--no fire, no wine, no
medicine--nothing but rations of hard biscuit, and the snow we can find
for ourselves in the court.”
“The Russians, since we are their prisoners, ought to treat us with
more humanity,” said Henri.
“The Russians, my boy, have as much as they can do to take care of
their own sick and wounded. As for us, hundreds of famished wretches
are brought in here every day, until there is no more room in which
to lay them down to die. This building which is now our prison, the
Convent of St. Basil, will soon be our grave. That is one comfort. Our
miseries will be quickly ended. The hospital fever has broken out.”
“Typhus fever?” said Henri with a look of horror.
“Even so; we are dying fast. Every day we have to carry out the dead
bodies, or to throw them from the windows.”
“Are there no physicians?”
“Physicians? What should bring them _here_? It is death to enter
these doors. Not the very Poles themselves, who were so loud in their
acclamations when we came here six months ago--who called us their
brothers, their deliverers--would dare to bring us now so much as a cup
of cold water. Even the guards die who are stationed to watch us. We
shall soon be left unguarded. Then we may go out free if we like--only
none of us will be alive to go.”
Henri covered his face. He was utterly crushed. He seemed no longer to
feel, to care for anything--a numb chill despair lay like a weight of
lead upon his heart.
After what might have been, for aught he knew, a considerable time, he
was aroused from his stupor by the sound of voices, and interested,
in spite of himself, by what reached his ear. Some one was pleading
earnestly with another in the accents of a soft musical tongue, which
at first he took for Italian, like Guido’s, but he soon found that he
could not understand the words spoken. However, the speakers presently
relapsed into French, and then he easily gathered that one of them, a
Spaniard, dying of the cruel hospital fever, was entreating his French
comrade to write for him a letter of farewell to his wife. Evidently
the feelings of the Frenchman were touched. Henri saw him tear a leaf
from a book which he had with him, and write upon it at the dictation
of the Spaniard, and in his language. “Though where is the use?” he
heard him say to one near him in a lower tone. “Poor fellow! there is
none to send it for him.”
By-and-by another pitcher of snow was brought in by Henri’s first
acquaintance, whose name was Pontet.
When with some difficulty he had distributed the coveted refreshment
among its many eager and agonized claimants, he said briefly, as he set
down his pitcher, “I have news.”
Heads were raised and eyes were turned towards him, but for the most
part languidly; suffering had well-nigh killed desire and hope--even
fear was scarcely felt.
“The Emperor is come,” said Pontet. In that word there was a spell
potent enough to arouse the dying. On every side exclamations
arose--“Come back! Retaken the town! Stolen a march upon them all! Ah,
what joy! What a triumph!” and one voice, weak but courageous, raised
the old well-remembered cry, “Vive Napoléon!”
“Hush, you fools!” said Pontet sharply. “Napoleon is far enough away.
Do you think there is no other Emperor in the world? I am speaking of
the Emperor Alexander.”
Bitter was the disappointment, especially to dying hearts. Pontet came
in for sundry curses, feeble but emphatic, and one sick man flung
his cup at him. “How dare you raise our hopes only to dash them so
cruelly?” he cried.
“I had more to tell,” Pontet continued; “but if you care not to listen,
I can spare my breath.”
“Tell us, friend, tell us,” spoke two or three voices together.
“I have made a friend amongst the guards who knows a little French, and
is disposed to be communicative. He says the Czar has appointed General
St. Priest governor and guardian of all the prisoners.”
“St. Priest!--Who is he?”
“A Frenchman in the service of Russia. _Because_ he is a Frenchman this
office has been given him. My comrades, this looks well.”
“Nothing looks well now but the grave,” said the man who cried “Vive
Napoléon.”
“Pontet,” he continued, “I don’t think much of your news. St. Priest
may be a Frenchman, but then he must be a pretty rascal, to fight
against France.”
“Well, we shall see.”
“What is that noise?” asked Henri, as the loud rattling of an iron
chain was heard.
“They are only swinging the great lamp up to its place, where it hangs
from the roof. How early they are lighting it to-night! It will be
daylight in the court for another hour.”
After this Henri fell into a troubled, uneasy sleep. When he awoke,
there was a general stir around him, and a murmur of suppressed
excitement. “What is the matter?” he asked of Pontet, who was sitting
near him, resting his head on his hand.
He looked up to answer the question. “The guards say Monsieur de St.
Priest is coming to visit us.”
“He must be a brave man,” said Henri.
“Ay de mi!” murmured the Spaniard. “If I _dare_ but ask him to send
that letter! Ah, Teresa mia!” Tears stole into his dying eyes as that
beloved face arose before him in its dark, well-remembered beauty; and
once more his little children seemed to climb about his knees, while
the orange-tree beside his cottage door shed its fragrant blossoms over
him.
“Hush!” said those around--“hush! here comes Monsieur le Général.”
St. Priest came slowly, threading his way through the thick ranks of
sick men stretched upon the ground. His look was absorbed and anxious;
some great care seemed to oppress him. Pontet whispered, “See how he is
leaving the work to his aide-de-camp.”
For all observed that the companion of St. Priest paused continually,
and, bending low over the sufferers, spoke in turn to each, patiently
waiting for an answer. Those near him noticed also with surprise that
Frenchmen, Poles, and Germans were addressed with equal fluency, each
in his own tongue.
As he approached, the good-natured Frenchman who had written the
Spaniard’s letter for him whispered, “Try the aide-de-camp. He looks
kind.”
Thus encouraged, the dying man stretched out his worn and fevered hand.
“For the love of God, Monsieur l’Aide de camp,” he prayed in his broken
French, “take this letter and send it for me. It is my last farewell to
my dear wife.”
“That letter shall reach its destination,” was the answer, uttered in a
tone of deep feeling; and stooping over the prostrate form, the speaker
added some gentle words of hope and consolation.
As his tall figure resumed its erect position, the lamplight shone upon
his face, revealing it to Henri. It was a noble, refined, sensitive
face, pale with uttermost horror and loathing at the abominations
around, though the revolt of the shrinking nerves and senses was
crushed down by a strong will, and a look of profound compassion and
sympathy effaced every other expression. Instinctively Henri raised
himself, and, resting on his elbow, gazed at him with a hungry longing
in his heart that to him--even to him also--he would address so much as
a single word. At the same moment the stranger’s pitying eye fell upon
his young, sad, wasted face. “Et toi aussi, pauvre enfant,” he said
with tenderness, bending down once more and touching Henri’s forehead
gently with his hand.
Henri seized the hand in his and pressed it to his lips. “Speak to me
so again,” he cried, “and I verily believe I shall not die, but live!”
His prayer was granted. He was spoken to, or rather spoken _with_,
until St. Priest drew near, and with an anxious air _entreated_, not
commanded, his companion to hasten onwards.
Then Henri covered his face with his thin hands and wept
quietly--almost the first tears he had shed since leaving Moscow. The
gentle shower softened the hard soil of his heart, the flood-gates
were thrown open, the fountains of the great deep were unloosed, and
the shower became a storm. “Mother, mother!” he sobbed piteously, “O
mother!” Wild and passionate was the longing that swept him to see her
face again, hers and his sister’s. He thought of the old days--of his
happy childhood, of the love and tenderness that used to surround him;
and every thought unlocked afresh the source of tears. He wept until he
could weep no more.
Meanwhile, Pontet followed the visitors as far as he could, and then
spoke to the guard at the door. He came back with a beaming countenance
and a manner full of suppressed excitement. “Wonderful news, my
comrades!” he began eagerly. “Guess, if you can, who it is that has
been among us--that we took for the aide-de-camp of M. de St. Priest?”
“It was an angel from heaven,” murmured one poor sufferer, lifting up a
face flushed with fever. “There was light--rest while he was here. Oh,
if he could but have stayed! The darkness is coming back now.”
“He has left the light with _me_,” said the Spaniard. “God must have
sent him here, his messenger, to fulfil my last wish.”
“But his name, his name?” cried the eager Pontet,--“no one has guessed
that yet. Will you try, or shall I tell you? But if I do, you will not
believe me.”
“Tell us, tell us,” cried half-a-score of voices.
“The aide-de-camp of St. Priest was no other than our great enemy--our
conqueror, Alexander, Emperor of Russia!”
His auditors were utterly incredulous. “Have you lost your senses,
Pontet?” they cried; “or have the guards been mocking you and us? Not
a physician, not a nurse even, would enter here were a fortune offered
as a bribe; and do you expect us to believe that the Czar, our enemy,
would risk his life--_for us_?”
“Listen,” answered Pontet; “the guards have told me all. He has spent
the whole day going through the other hospitals;--at last he came here.
M. de St. Priest, knowing well how the deadly hospital fever is raging
amongst us, entreated, implored him not to enter. He would not listen.
Then the general, in a kind of desperation, flung himself before the
door, and, daring his sovereign to his face, told him he should enter
only over his body. The Czar put him gently aside and walked in; and
I tell you, comrades, there is not a nook or corner in all this den
of horrors that he has not thoroughly explored. There was no hiding
anything from him. I take it, things will be altered with us from this
time forth. My friends, if there is any man amongst you happy enough
still to believe in God, let him thank him this night for sending the
Emperor Alexander here.”
When the comments made by others upon this speech had died away, Henri
raised his quivering, tear-stained face and said gently, but with a new
air of courage and firmness, “Pontet, _I_ believe in God; and I thank
him--as you say.” After a pause he added, “Dear comrades, if you will
listen, I should like to tell you how it is with me; for, perhaps, some
other poor lad may even now be struggling and suffering in darkness, as
I have been.”
“Say on,” cried several voices.
“When I was wandering through the snow, in hunger, in misery, in
despair, almost in madness, I lost my faith in God;--perhaps because
I never had the right kind of faith, because I only believed that he
was great and just, without believing that he was _my_ God. I fainted
utterly. I thought either that he was not, or that there was with him
no love, no compassion. I thought his pitiless hand was sweeping us
all from the face of the earth, because he was angry with Napoleon. I
thought he was like the great fire in Moscow, which burned, blazed,
destroyed, unchecked by human efforts, unstayed by human prayers. May
he forgive me! To-night I can believe in his forgiveness and in his
divine compassion. If the man who was our enemy--whose land we tried to
ruin, upon whom we heaped every insult, every injury in our power--can
pity and forgive us, surely the God who made him will not be found less
merciful than he! Surely none but that God could so have softened the
proud heart of the Czar; and perhaps he has done it just to show that
even for those who have sinned deeply, wilfully, like me, there is
forgiveness with Him. Therefore let us hope in the Lord; for with the
Lord there is mercy, and with him is plenteous redemption.”
There were murmurs of assent from the pale lips of many of the
sufferers around him; and Pontet observed, with a thoughtful air, “The
lad speaks well; and perhaps what he says may be true. Who knows?”[45]