Page:The Czar, A Tale of the Time of the First Napleon.djvu/213

Rh reviewing us, 'Pierre Rougeard, I know you for a brave man. It was you—was it not?—who took that pair of colours at Lodi?'"

"Garde, how were you separated from the rest?"

"You will see to-morrow that I am lame. In a skirmish near Moscow I got a ball in my leg and a sabre cut on my shoulder. We who were wounded were all put into waggons by the Emperor's orders, to be sent on to Smolensko; but those in charge of us, thinking our lives less precious than the plunder they were bringing from Moscow, flung us out by the wayside to die."

"Wretches! May the Emperor punish them as they deserve."

"The Emperor has much more important things to think about. We of the Old Guard do not die easily; what would kill conscripts like you, only hardens us. I contrived to live and to creep along, picking up every day a comrade or two in distress, until we formed the little coterie you see now. I hope to overtake the Old Guard at Smolensko—if not, farther on. All I live for is to rejoin my colours, and to fight once more for the Emperor. But you are almost asleep. Sleep on, my boy; to-night, at least, you shall neither freeze nor starve."

Henri was almost asleep. But he roused himself for a moment or two to breathe a thanksgiving to Almighty God for the help sent him in his need; together with an earnest prayer that he would be pleased to bring him through all dangers again to his native land, to see the face of his mother and of Clémence.

All succeeding generations will ask in half incredulous wonder how it came to pass that a splendid army, numbering over six hundred thousand men, and commanded by perhaps the greatest military genius that ever existed, could fall so suddenly and swiftly into a state of utter disorganization and