Page:The Czar, A Tale of the Time of the First Napleon.djvu/206

196 Assuredly never again in this world would Henri de Talmont have awakened, had not a sudden thrill of agony called him roughly back to life. He started up to wrestle with a great half-savage wolf-dog, which had fixed its sharp fangs in his arm. Pain and desperation lent him a momentary strength, and clenching his hand, he dealt his antagonist a blow between the eyes that sent it howling away over the snow. Then he picked up Féron's flask, and having thanked in his heart that generous friend, he drank some of its contents, which seemed to infuse new life into his frame.

Thus strengthened, he rose and stood upon his feet. It was midnight. The snow had ceased to fall, and the fierce winds of winter had dropped into utter stillness. Above his head the moon shone forth from a cloudless sky, and a thousand stars glittered with frosty brightness. Not a living thing was in sight, not a tree, not even a stone. Nothing met his gaze but a broad expanse of stainless white, covering the whole horizon like a veil of silver. How desolate it looked, yet how fair and pure! With what bright softness the moonbeams touched the snow! and how calmly the majestic eyes of those sleepless, starry watchers looked down from on high, as though they would say to the toiling, suffering sons of men, "We have seen ten thousand times ten thousand nights like this since the making of the world. We know the secret of the Lord. He means something by every star and every snowflake; and what he means is very good."

"He telleth the number of the stars; he calleth them all by their names." The words flashed unbidden through the mind of Henri. He remembered that in this solitude he was not alone. God was here. He could not turn to God as his friend, and he knew that he could not. Brought up in a religious atmosphere, he was all the more distinctly conscious that he himself was not religious—that he stood outside some sacred enclosure Clémence had entered, that he had not something