Page:The Czar, A Tale of the Time of the First Napleon.djvu/233

Rh "This is horrible!" he murmured.

"Nothing could be worse. No beds—no straw even—no fire, no wine, no medicine—nothing but rations of hard biscuit, and the snow we can find for ourselves in the court."

"The Russians, since we are their prisoners, ought to treat us with more humanity," said Henri.

"The Russians, my boy, have as much as they can do to take care of their own sick and wounded. As for us, hundreds of famished wretches are brought in here every day, until there is no more room in which to lay them down to die. This building which is now our prison, the Convent of St. Basil, will soon be our grave. That is one comfort. Our miseries will be quickly ended. The hospital fever has broken out."

"Typhus fever?" said Henri with a look of horror.

"Even so; we are dying fast. Every day we have to carry out the dead bodies, or to throw them from the windows."

"Are there no physicians?"

"Physicians? What should bring them here? It is death to enter these doors. Not the very Poles themselves, who were so loud in their acclamations when we came here six months ago—who called us their brothers, their deliverers—would dare to bring us now so much as a cup of cold water. Even the guards die who are stationed to watch us. We shall soon be left unguarded. Then we may go out free if we like—only none of us will be alive to go."

Henri covered his face. He was utterly crushed. He seemed no longer to feel, to care for anything—a numb chill despair lay like a weight of lead upon his heart.

After what might have been, for aught he knew, a considerable time, he was aroused from his stupor by the sound of voices, and interested, in spite of himself, by what reached his ear. Some one was pleading earnestly with another in the accents of a soft musical tongue, which at first he took for Italian, like