Page:The Czar, A Tale of the Time of the First Napleon.djvu/219

Rh practices on pain of the Czar's highest displeasure; and, as the most effectual mode of preventing them, offering the reward of a ducat of gold for every prisoner brought safely to head-quarters.

Henri de Talmont bore in mind Rougeard's parting words, and determined at all hazards to try to reach the Beresina. He was strengthened in his belief that he was drawing near some point of general rendezvous by the constantly increasing crowds. At length, instead of a vast and solitary plain, he found himself traversing a broad high-road, frozen hard, and thronged with a disorderly rabble of soldiers and camp-followers, amongst whom vehicles of all kinds were moving with difficulty. Some of these were baggage-waggons, but the great majority contained women and children connected in various ways with the French army, and endeavouring with it to make their escape from a hostile country. Most pitiable was the fate of those unhappy fugitives.

As Henri stumbled wearily along, the velvet cap of a little child dropped from one of the carriages and fell at his feet. He picked it up and restored it to its owner, a pretty fair-haired boy about four years old.

"Thank you, poor soldier," lisped the child in soft Italian, a language of which Henri had learned a little from his mother.

"I think, Guido, we could make room for the poor soldier here," said the child's mother, a gentle-looking lady with an infant in her arms; "he seems very tired."

Most thankfully did Henri accept the proffered help. He soon ascertained that the lady was an Italian singer who had come to Russia, with the band of professional artists to which she belonged, in the train of the fantastic and pomp-loving King of Naples. These poor children of pleasure, dragged unawares into the midst of a horrible tragedy, seemed like butterflies caught in a thunderstorm. Madame Leone told Henri, with many tears, that her husband had been made prisoner by