Page:The Czar, A Tale of the Time of the First Napleon.djvu/212

202 "Waifs and strays, like yourself. We are gathering together in coteries of a dozen or so, to try and keep one another alive in this horrible desert."

"Little life they would have left in me, but for you, Garde. God bless you for your kindness."

"Thank you, comrade. Blessings do a man as little harm as curses any day. Here, take a pull at my pipe."

"No, thank you. I don't smoke."

"More fool you! That is the way you young conscripts die off, because you never know what is good for you, nor how to keep your souls inside your bodies. Now, when I was in Egypt"—here he stopped suddenly, and a look of emotion passed over his bronzed, weather-beaten features—"ay, Egypt, Italy, Spain,—Lodi, Marengo, Austerlitz, Wagram, Friedland,—why go over all these now? Why recall the past—the glorious past? Why, indeed? Have our eagles floated over all the world to lie buried in a Russian snow-drift! Bah! This confusion is only temporary. You shall soon see the Emperor rise again in his glory, and overwhelm our hounds of enemies with destruction. I tell thee, boy, he is unconquerable. A cloud—a little fleeting cloud—may pass over his star and hide it for a moment, but it will shine out again all the more brightly afterwards."

"But," said Henri sadly, "if he expected us to fight for him, he ought to have fed us."

"My lad," said the Guardsman sternly, laying his hand upon Henri's shoulder, and turning him round away from the fire, "you see that snow?"

"I have seen too much of it," returned Henri. "I think I shall never see anything else."

"Out there you go, to have part or lot with us never more, the first word you speak against the Emperor. With his own hand he gave me these medals, this cross"—touching his breast—"and, moreover, he said to me once when he was