Max Pemberton

“ Death no Guardsman fears, but the humiliation of such a death as this might have appalled the stoutest heart; and Léon believed now that they meant to kill him. He drained the heavy goblet of its wine to hide his face from those who watched him so curiously, and when he had set the goblet down there was a smile upon his lips.
"I should like to see it, by all means," he said to the prince. "It is odd that I, a Frenchman, am so ignorant, but, upon my word of honour, I have never met 'Dr. Guillotine' in all my life." ”

“ Above me the great bowl of the sky glowed with the lights of many a bivouac in square or market. It was as though the whole city trembled beneath the footsteps of the thousands who now trampled down her ancient glory and cast her banners to the earth. The blare of bands was to be heard everywhere; the murmur of voices rose and fell like the angry surf that beats upon a shore. Cries of "Vive l'Empereur!" rent the air from time to time, and to them were added the fierce shouting of the rabble or the frenzied screams of those who fled before the glittering bayonets of this mighty host. ”

“ The Emperor was often in personal danger during the retreat from Moscow, but never more so, I think, than after the Battle of Krasnoë.
You must depict us at this time as a rabble rather than an army. There were few regiments save those of the Guard which maintained even a semblance of order. Men fell out at a whim. We had nothing upon either side of us but the frozen steppes and the woods in which the wolves howled. Our own people had burned the villages through which we straggled towards a distant horizon of our salvation. The road itself was black with the bodies of the dying and dead. ”

“ Yet the scene itself was picturesque enough, and under any other circumstances a man might have stopped to marvel at it. The moon now shone full and clear from a cloudless sky; the trees about Liadoui glistened with a thousand diamonds of the frost; the snow beneath our feet was as hard as iron and burnished with a sheen of silver light. Imagine upon this wooden houses with all their windows aglow, dark forms moving here and there, the distant rumble of cannon upon the road, and even the echo of musket shots, and you will see the picture as I saw and remember it. ”

“ Remember that we marched like a beaten army, dejected and without spirit; thousands dying every day as we went: the road across the snows black with the bodies of our comrades who had fallen. Only the spirit which had conquered at Austerlitz and Jena prevented our swift annihilation by the Russian wolves, who barked at us from every thicket. If a man lost his way, the sabres of the Cossacks quickly showed him the road, or the hatchets of the peasantry put an end to his sufferings. ”

“ There was no door other than that which the sentry had guarded. The windows were so many slits in those ramparts of stone. There was not even a water-pipe upon which a man could have got a foothold. We could but stand there and gaze impotently upon that prison which had defied the centuries. It was a torture to me to remember that these impregnable walls answered for the liberty of one so dear to me as my nephew.
VI
I have told you that there had been a glimmer of light shining from a loop-hole in the tower when first we drove up to the place. ”

“ Imagine a great white wooded plain, a sandy road at the heart of it, and upon this road an interminable procession of carts and wagons to carry the baggage of the Grand Army.
Upon either side in the fields go cavalry and infantry, every man's knapsack packed with loot, the commonest troopers sucking the rarest liqueurs from costly bottles, the poorest fellows smoking pipes with bowls of gold and tobacco that only princes should have been able to afford. All was hope and gaiety. Paris lay twelve hundred leagues from us, yet to Paris and our homes we were going. ”

“ Presently, however, I discerned the glimmer of a lamp amidst a copse upon the right-hand side, and the droshky driver indicated with his whip that it was the house which Captain Léon had visited.
An uglier place could not be imagined. The dark groves of stupendous trees, the silent pool, the remote situation of the habitation, affected me strangely. I was convinced by this time that my nephew had fallen into a trap, and that we should be lucky men if we found him alive. Even the imperturbable Bardot could not put a good face upon it. ”

“ I took a pull upon the rein again, and bent my ear towards the wood. A weird sound, like to nothing but the howling of the doomed, broke the silence all about and made its meaning clear. We had lost the Cossacks, but the wolves were on our track; aye, thousands of them—leaping, barking, snarling from their fastnesses, and bending their heads to the chase like hounds that follow a scent. Good God, what a sight that was to see! With what terror the spectacle filled us as we let the maddened horses go and rode again from an enemy more terrible than man! ”

“ We were driven there in the same sledge which had carried us to Elbing, and, being arrived at the conciergerie, were immediately admitted and conducted into a spacious hall, blazing with lights and superb in the richness of its decoration. Here, to our astonishment, Valerie herself received us.
I will not dwell upon the manner of her meeting with Léon, nor upon the amazement with which I beheld her in this situation. No magic of wonderland could have wrought such a change in men's condition as we then experienced when they carried us from the gloom of the prison to this princely mansion. ”

“ None but a man of iron could have remained deaf to the piercing cries which marked the approach of the fire and told us that our task must be impotent. None the less, we worked with a vigour unimaginable, while the heat became choking, and showers of glowing sparks rained down upon us. The very snow was melted far away from the barn by this time; the sky had turned blood red; the branches of the trees were burning. The great door alone stood between our comrades and salvation. ”

“ The screams of the dying upon the bridge, the thunder of the cannon, the moaning of the bullets—all were lesser sounds than that of the crashing ice and the roaring torrent as it threatened to engulf us. What had become of Valerie St. Antoine I knew not. It seemed to me that I had been carried in an instant from human enemies to wage a combat with Nature omnipotent, before which I must perish. ”

“ When they got him to the scaffold he knew that his hour had come, and a great calm possessed him.
"I congratulate the Prince of the Assassins," said he to his Highness. "It is only in such a country as this that the butchers are ennobled." And with that he walked straight towards the executioner and held out his hands.
The man seized him as though he were a sheep. The prince himself began to raise the knife by the rope and to caress its gleaming edge. Surely Léon had but a moment to live. He thought as much, and a passionate desire for life set him trembling. ”

“ All huddled together—wagons driven over living men, cavalry hewing their way with swords, the cries of cantinières, women and children screaming for pity—all, I say, pressed on in that mad quest of shelter which was to be offered to so few.
Soon the river was black with the bodies of the drowned. I saw wretched creatures clinging to the ice-floes or the pontoons of the bridge; some fighting as devils for a foothold upon the narrow way; others too weak to struggle as the strong thrust them aside and the black water enveloped them. Wisely indeed had Valerie insisted upon delay. ”

“ Standing upon a knoll not a hundred paces from the bridge, Mademoiselle Valerie and I were soon enveloped by these pitiful creatures, who ran to and fro like driven sheep, and had lost what little wit they had possessed. It was a dreadful thing to see women of all ages, with the tears streaming down their faces, their hair unkempt and their dress but a tatter of rags, throwing themselves at the feet of officers as helpless as they, and begging instantly to be escorted across the bridge. ”

“ The snow had drifted into vast heaps here, and encircled the trees in great mounds which would have engulfed a wagon. The stillness of it all was that of winter at her zenith. The wind had fallen, and in the distance we heard the howling of wolves. All this prepared us but little for the surprise which overtook us presently, when three mounted Cossacks suddenly appeared in our path and threatened us in guttural tones of which we did not understand a single word.
Of course, we had drawn rein directly the Russians appeared, and for my part I was quite prepared to surrender to them. ”

“ The horrors of the bridge were done with for ever; we were amid our comrades, and yonder beyond the forgotten leagues stood Paris and our homes.
VII
We crossed the bog with safety and reached the first of the low hills on the hither shore. Hardly had we done so when a loud explosion shook the very earth and caused us to wheel about suddenly. Then we saw the bridge fall asunder, and knew that the thousands upon the far bank were doomed to death or the prison. Such a cry as arose from our comrades yonder has never been heard, nor will be again, I believe, in all the story of the world. ”

“ It must have been about three o'clock of the morning by this time.
The hut itself had one window looking over the plain, but was as bare of furniture as any room in a madhouse. Léon's tinder-box revealed a floor of baked earth and a stove which lacked fuel, and this, with a shelf upon which there stood empty jars, was all the ornament this fortress possessed. To us, however, it was more beautiful than any palace, and, taking a drain of brandy from our flasks, we climbed up to the window and looked out over the snows. ”

“ For all these reasons I deemed it wise to do as Bardot directed, and to seek a route of our own. We should find the remnant of the army at Elbing; it would be time enough to think of re-formation when we arrived there.
So behold us crossing those fearsome steppes, Valerie and Léon for our van, the sergeant and myself, with the child between us, talking of a thousand things which were to be done if ever we saw the city of Paris again. We had come by this time to believe that we should do so, and despite the sufferings which we endured our courage remained unshaken. Alas! ”

“ There to the right were the ruins of the barn; behind us the low buildings of the farm; before us the orchard of the house and the white snow-fields beyond it.
Without a word said, and acting upon a common impulse, the assassins—for such I must now call them—led Petrovka towards a beech tree by the roadside, and clamoured loudly for a rope. Such a lust for a woman's death is rare among soldiers, and it needed the tragedy of the night to have provoked it. ”

“ Others were overtaken and cut down by the ruthless swords of the Cossacks. We could not lift a finger to save them—ten would have perished for one who fell had we done so. Our one hope lay in the swiftness of our horses. "En avant!" we cried, and again "En avant!" We must find the army or perish. Ah, what a vain hope and how Fate played with us! For my part I believed that all was over when I first saw the fire in the wood and heard my comrades cry out. The Russians were then but a hundred paces from us—the light that we saw might be anything. God knows, we raced for it—and to discover what? ”

“ There were horsemen approaching the village. My trained ear told me the truth in an instant, and bending it to the glass, I made sure that I was not mistaken. Horsemen, I said, were riding across the frozen snow, either towards Liadoui or to Madame Zchekofsky's dwelling. No sooner was the opinion formed than the cry of a dying man confirmed it. Someone had sabred or bayoneted the sentry at the gate. There is no mistaking that awful cry which a man utters when he realises that he has lived his life and that the steel within him has reached his heart. ”

“ It was then that my horse fell, and rolling heavily in the snow I thought that my end had come. Léon, however, had a flask of brandy in his haversack, and presently I was conscious of a burning sensation in my throat and of a sudden realisation of the truth that I must wake or die. Making a mighty effort of the will, I got upon my feet and struggled on, hardly knowing that Valerie St. Antoine had one of my arms and Léon the other. ”

“ Behold us, then, staggering on, the snow beating upon us pitilessly; the wind howling amid the shells of the ruined houses; the city itself but a mob of maddened troopers fighting for their very lives on every threshold. So evident was it that we should get no shelter anywhere in the vicinity of the gates that we pushed on ultimately as though we would leave Slawkowo by the western road, and then for the first time we were able to breathe freely and to reckon with the situation. ”

“ Dawn had come before the hussars returned with half a battery from Ney's own rearguard. We heard the sound of the horses in the wood, and anon the heavy wheels of the guns crunching over the gravel of the precincts. Then also we heard for the first time a signal from the monastery, the great bell of which began to toll mournfully, as though holding a requiem for the dead. The sound inspired us and brought every man to his feet.
"The birds are caged after all," said I to Léon. "We will now see how they can fly." ”

“ Pell-mell upon it went wagons and cannon and the terrified camp-followers. Horsemen cut their way as though sabreing an enemy; women screamed with terror; the strong were dragged down with the weak; men trampled one another under foot without a thought of mercy. The number of the dead and dying no man might estimate, and over these the living crawled as they could, the Russian shells falling ceaselessly amidst them, and the deadly bullets finding many a billet. ”

“ Hardly had Bardot thrown open the casement when bullets hailed into the room, and the china came crashing down like slates from a penthouse when the wind is high. This was a pretty business, to be sure—the last kind of welcome we had expected when we fell asleep by the fire.
"To the door!" cried I, as the shots rang out. We all were down on our marrow bones in a twinkling, protected by the great wooden doors and the bolt we had drawn. It was plain to me that no bullet would pierce the wood of the door, and that those who were after us must come in by the windows. ”

“ No company of raw recruits could have worked to less purpose—some crying for hatchets, some vainly for water, yet all incapable of rendering any useful aid, and all equally terrified by the spectacle they beheld. Alas! to see those pitiful faces at the window of the barn above; to watch the flames creeping about them; to behold them fall one by one into the deadly furnace behind them; and to know that they were Frenchmen and brethren! Such was the price of the brief respite we had enjoyed; such was the hospitality that the woman Petrovka had shown us. ”