The rear-guard of the Grand Army fared worse and worse as the days
and weeks passed, its numbers diminished until there remained but a
straggling remnant which crept into Vilna, only to be chased out again
within a few hours of their arrival there. Louise, in her captain's
epaulettes, was still alive and well, though thin and haggard almost
beyond recognition for want of good food and rest.
At Vilna she came across several officers of Henri d'Estreville's Lancer
regiment, and these she questioned--in terror for their reply--in hopes
of news of her friend, who was not with them.
"D'Estreville?" cried one of them, laughing grimly. "Where is he, you
ask? I should say that depends, for those who believe in a future
existence, upon his past life. Henri was the best of _bons camarades_,
but it may be that good comradeship is a quality which is not highly
valued by those who will make up our accounts!"
"Do you mean," poor Louise murmured, "that he has actually died; did
you see him die, or was he merely wounded? If so, where has he remained?"
"My friend," said the other, "I did not see him struck down; I know
nothing of him. In these days, one thanks God if one is alive at sundown
and not buried by these accursed Russian snows, with a thrice-damned
Cossack bullet to keep one company. There is no time for friendship and
philanthropy and so on."
"He is my dearest friend," Louise murmured; "if only I knew where he had
fallen, I would return."
"_Mon ami_, hell is behind us, in the shape of Platof and Chechakof and
their most damnable Cossacks. You would find it even more impossible to
go backward than forward. Your friend may be alive and well for aught I
know. Can either of you give this gentleman any information?"
"Who is it he wants--one of ours?" asked a second officer who sat by the
stove almost too exhausted to eat the mess of stewed horseflesh which
had been set before him.
Louise mentioned Henri's name.
"I saw him alive in the forest of Gusinof," said the man; "that is where
Platof ambushed us and we got finally separated. He may be a prisoner,
or of course Platof's devils may have cut him to pieces; he would not
be the only one that died in that accursed wood, not by two thousand!
That was the most detestable night I ever spent. Go and look for him
in the forest, my friend, if your affection will carry you to so great
a length. Good Lord! It is a thing David would have refused to do for
Jonathan!" The weary man laughed and filled his mouth with the savoury
horseflesh.
"If you are wise," he added, with his mouth still half full, "you will
get to Paris the best and quickest way you can, and hope that your
friend will find his way there also! _Sapristi_, it is not likely
that either he or you or any of us will get much farther than this.
Listen--is that the Cossacks already? Curse them, I must sleep or go
mad!"
Fagged, dazed, starved, desperate, the unfortunate rear-guard, led
by their indomitable chief, straggled forward. Dogged by hordes of
pitiless Cossacks they contrived eventually to reach the river Niemen,
and to cross into safety, the last survivors of Napoleon's army; their
miserable story is well known and need not be recapitulated.
Louise seemed to bear a charmed life. Though, believing that Henri
d'Estreville was among the large majority of the Grande Armée lying
beneath the snows of Russia, she would gladly have remained, like her
lover, among the ten who stayed behind rather than be the one who
escaped--for of Napoleon's half million of men scarcely a tithe returned
to their homes--yet Louise saw her companions fall around her and never
a bullet touched her or a sword or a spear grazed her.
"You and I are wonders, Prevost," said her colonel. "Are we preserved
for great military careers, think you? _Nom d'un Maréchal_, I think
I could be another Ney if I had the opportunity! _Sapristi_, he is
splendid!"
"As for me, I have done with war," Louise sighed. "My days of fighting
are over."
"Why, you are but a lad--a conscript of 1812; the year is only now
ending and you wear a captain's epaulettes! Nonsense, my son, go home
and rest and dream of glory; you will tell a different tale when you
have recovered."
Then Louise walked one day into her father's salon while the old man,
with Marie, sat and listened as young Havet read out Napoleon's latest
bulletin. The Emperor had been in Paris for some little while, having
deserted his army, and was already busy with his new project of raising
300,000 men, in order to regain the prestige he had undoubtedly lost in
the disastrous Moscow campaign.
"Stop, Havet, who is this that enters without knocking?" exclaimed
old Dupré angrily; his temper had not improved of late, owing to the
reverses of the French arms and the absence of news of Louise, as
to whose safety neither his heart nor his conscience was at rest.
Marie uttered a cry of delight. "Father, it is Louise!" she screamed.
"Louise--sister. Oh, how thin, how worn, how----"
The sisters embraced one another warmly; old Dupré held his daughter to
his heart, endeavouring, after his manner, to suppress every sign of
emotion. His arms came in contact with her epaulettes. "Why," he cried,
"Marie, Havet, see what is here, the epaulettes of an officer; Louise,
you have won promotion--glory--is it not so?"
"I received a commission; what glory can any one claim--on our side--and
such a war! There must be officers, nine in ten were killed; do not talk
of the war, my father; are you well?"
The old man gazed at his daughter in pride and exultation.
"Listen to her modesty--no glory, says she; a little conscript returns
a captain, and no glory! Hola, there, Havet, order food and wine. _Mon
Dieu_, Louise, you have seen adversity, you are thin and in rags,
to-morrow you shall have new uniform!--the Emperor already assembles a
new army to chastise these Cossacks. _Mort de ma vie_, my daughter, you
shall die a marshal, I swear it!"
Louise did not think it necessary to chill the old man's happiness by
telling him that to-morrow she would return to the ordinary costume
of her sex; that she was sick of man's attire and of war and all that
appertained to the profession of arms; that she was, indeed, weary of
life itself and longed to be where Henri d'Estreville was, at rest among
the frozen pine-trees in some snow-covered Russian forest.
The evening proved a painful one for Louise, who did her best, however,
to maintain a cheerful demeanour, while her father--to whom this was,
perhaps, the happiest hour of his life--held forth upon his favourite
theme of glory and honour and a marshal's baton in store for Louise,
and so forth. Young Havet was to take part in the coming war; if
possible he should enlist in Michel Prevost's regiment (the old man
laughed heartily as he pronounced the name!), and perhaps Louise would
do her best to assist him in his military career.
When the trying evening was over and Louise parted with her sister for
the night, Marie took her aside.
"You are depressed, sister, what ails you?" she said. "Oh, I can see
plainly that all is not well. Are you ill in body?"
"I am worn and weary, sister; yes, I am depressed; who would not be,
that has seen the sights that I have seen since Moscow?"
"Ah--ah! You are not so much in love with war as father would have you?"
"In love with war--bah! It is devil's work, Marie, unsuccessful war, at
any rate."
"Tell me, sister, have you seen Henri d'Estreville, is he well?"
Louise flushed and caught at the chair back. "Yes, I have seen him many
times. I know not whether I shall see him again. Who can tell who has
returned and who not? Nine in each ten have remained."
"Oh, sister, and you love him--is it not so?"
"Love--bah! One has other things to think of than love when one is
running in front of the Cossack sabres. Let us talk no more of the war,
sister, nor yet of love; let me thank _le bon Dieu_ that I have done
both with one and the other; I would rest and rest and again rest."
"Poor Louise," said Marie, kissing her; "poor Louise!"
Afterwards she added, speaking of this to her husband, that Louise
must indeed have supped her fill of horrors since even love had been
forgotten in the tumults and terrors of war.
Louise submitted to be presented with a new uniform, which her father
bought for her the very next day. She would rather have donned her
woman's skirt, but for several reasons she consented to figure a while
at least as Michel Prevost. One of these was the distaste she felt in
her present condition of weakness and utter fatigue of mind and body
for any sort of argument or discussion with her father. Another was
an irresistible desire to move among those who had returned from the
war, in order that she might gather any information there might be with
regard to the fate of Henri.
Louise had not altogether despaired of him. Soldiers and officers still
dribbled daily into Paris, emaciated, tattered, half-alive; men who had
somehow lagged, through wounds or illness, and had contrived to escape
the countless dangers which assailed them in their solitary retreat
through a hostile country. Why should not Henri have escaped, like
others? She would allow herself to hope a little; just a very little.
And about a month after her own arrival a wonderful day dawned for her.
Seated at a restaurant close to a table at which sat four officers of
Henri's regiment, Louise suddenly caught the sound of his name.
"That makes seven alive," some one was saying; "one better than we
thought. Certainly no one could have supposed that D'Estreville would
reappear. His has been, I think, the narrowest escape of all. His
trials have depressed even his spirit. Have any of you ever seen Henri
depressed? He will be here, presently, you shall judge for yourselves.
_Sapristi!_ he has left his gaiety with all Ney's guns in the Niemen.
Seven officers out of forty----"
Flushed, giddy, almost swooning for joy, Louise stumbled out of the
restaurant. "I will return immediately," she told the astonished waiter.