No sooner had the adjutant said this than the old whiskered officer, with happy face and sparkling eyes, brandished his sabre in the air shouting Vive VEmpereur!’ and commanding his men to follow him, he set spurs to his horse and galloped down to the river. He gave a vicious thrust to lis horse, that floundered under him, and plunged into the water, making for the most rapid part of the current. Hundreds of Uhlans galloped in ifter him. It was cold and dangerous in the middle in the rapid current. The Uhlans clung to one another, falling off their horses. Some of the lorses were drowned, some, too, of the men; the others struggled to swim tcross, some in the saddle, others clinging to their horse’s manes. They ried to swim straight across, and although there was a ford half a verst lway they were proud to be swimming and drowning in the river before he eyes of that man sitting on the log and not even looking at what they vere doing. When the adjutant, on going back, chose a favourable moment ind ventured to call the Emperor’s attention to the devotion of the Poles o his person, the little man in the grey overcoat got up, and summoning 3 erthier, he began walking up and down the bank with him, giving him nstructions, and casting now and then a glance of displeasure at the Irowning Uhlans who had interrupted his thoughts.
It was no new conviction for him that his presence in any quarter of the earth, from Africa to the steppes of Moscow, was enough to impress men and impel them to senseless acts of self-sacrifice. He sent for his horse and rode back to his bivouac.
Forty Uhlans were drowned in the river in spite of the boats sent to their assistance. The majority struggled back to the bank from which they had started. The colonel, with several of his men, swam across the river and with difficulty clambered up the other bank. But as,soon as they clambered out in drenched and streaming clothes they shouted ‘Vive VEm* pereurl’ looking ecstatically at the place where Napoleon had stood, though he was no longer there, and at that moment thought themselves happy.
In the evening between giving two orders—one for hastening the ar- ■ rival of the counterfeit rouble notes that had been prepared for circulation in Russia, and the other for shooting a Saxon who had been caught with a letter containing a report on the disposition of the French army—Napoleon gave a third order for presenting the colonel, who had quite unnecessarily flung himself in the river, the order of the Legion d’Honneur, of which he was himself the head. Quos vult perdere, dementat.
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The Russian Emperor had meanwhile been spending more than a month in Vilna, holding reviews and inspecting manoeuvres. Nothing was in readiness for the war, which all were expecting, though it was to prepare * for it that the Tsar had come from Petersburg. There was no general plan of action. The vacillation between all the plans that were proposed and the inability to fix on any one of them, was more marked than ever after the Tsar had been for a month at headquarters. There was a separate commander-in-chief at the head of each of the three armies; but there was no commander with authority over all of them, and the Tsar did not undertake the duties of such a commander-in-chief himself.
The longer the Tsar stayed at Vilna, the less ready was the Russian . army for the war, which they had grown weary of expecting. Every effort of the men who surrounded the Tsar seemed to be devoted to making their sovereign spend his time pleasantly and forget the impending war.
Many balls and fetes were given by the Polish magnates, by members of the court, and by the Tsar himself; and in the month of June it occurred to one of the Polish generals attached to the Tsar’s staff that all i the generals on the staff should give a dinner and a ball to the Tsar. The suggestion was eagerly taken up. The Tsar gave his consent. The generals on the staff subscribed the necessary funds. The lady who was most likely to please the Tsar’s taste was selected as hostess for the ball. Count Ben- nigsen, who had land in the Vilna province, offered his house in the outskirts for this fete, and the 13th of June was the day fixed f a a ball, a
dinner, with a regatta and fireworks at Zakreta, Count Bennigsen’s suburban house.
On the very day on which Napoleon gave the order to cross the Niemen, and the vanguard of his army crossed the Russian frontier, driving back the Cossacks, Alexander was at the ball given by the generals on his staff at Count Bennigsen’s house.
It w’as a brilliant and festive entertainment. Connoisseurs declared that rarely had so many beauties been gathered together at one place. Countess Bezuhov, who had been among the Russian ladies who had followed the Tsar from Petersburg to Vilna, was at that ball, her heavy, Russian style of beauty—as it is called—overshadowing the more refined Polish ladies. She was much noticed, and the Tsar had deigned to bestow a dance upon her.
