All raised their heads and listened; and out of the copse there stepped ito the bright light of the fire two strangely garbed human figures, linging to one another. These were two Frenchmen, who had been hiding 1 the wood. Hoarsely articulating something in a tongue incomprehen- ble to the soldiers, they approached the fire. One, wearing an officer’s at, was rather the taller, and seemed utterly spent. He tried to sit ■own by the fire, but sank on to the ground. The other, a little, stumpy lan, with a kerchief bound round his cheeks, was stronger. He held his ompanion up, and said something pointing to his mouth. The soldiers urrounded the Frenchmen, laid a coat under the sick man, and brought oth of them porridge and vodka. The exhausted French officer was Ram- alle; the little man bandaged up in the kerchief was his servant, Morel. When Morel had drunk some vodka and eaten a bowl of porridge, he uddenly passed into a state of morbid hilarity, and kept up an incessant abble with the soldiers, who could not understand him. Ramballe refused x>d, and leaning on one elbow by the fire, gazed dumbly with red, acant eyes at the Russian soldiers. At intervals he uttered a prolonged roan and then was mute again. Morel, pointing to his shoulders, gave he soldiers to understand that this was an officer, and that he needed /armth. A Russian officer, who had come up to the fire, sent to ask the olonel whether he would take a French officer into his warm cottage. Vhen they came back and said that the colonel bade them bring the fficer, they told Ramballe to go to him. He got up and tried to walk, >ut staggered, and would have fallen had not a soldier standing near aught him.
‘What? You don’t want to, eh?’ said a soldier addressing Ramballe with jocose wink.
‘Eh, you fool! It’s no time for your fooling. A peasant, a real peasant,’ oices were heard on all sides blaming the jocose soldier. The others sur- ounded Ramballe. Two of them held him up under the arms and carried lim to the cottage. Ramballe put his arms round the soldiers’ necks, and s they lifted him he began wailing plaintively.
‘0 you good fellows! O my kind, kind friends. These are men! O my /rave, kind friends’; and like a child he put his head down on the soldier’s boulder.
Meanwhile Morel was sitting in the best place surrounded by th soldiers.
Morel, a little, thickset Frenchman, with swollen, streaming eyes, wa dressed in a woman’s jacket and had a woman’s kerchief tied over hi forage cap. He was evidently tipsy, and with one arm thrown round th soldier sitting next him, he was singing a French song in a husky, brokei voice. The soldiers simply held their sides as they looked at him.
‘Now then, now then, teach it me; how does it go? I’ll catch it in m time. How was it?’ said the soldier Morel was hugging, who was one o the singers and fond of a joke.
‘Vive Henri Qnatre! Vive ce roi vaillant! . . .’ sang Morel, winking ‘Ce diable a quatre . . .’
‘Vi-va-ri-ka! Viff-se-ru-va-ru! Si-dya-blya-ka! ..repeated the soldier waving his hand and catching the tune correctly.
‘Bravo! Ho-ho-ho-ho! ’ a hoarse guffaw of delight rose on all sides Morel, wrinkling up his face, laughed too.
‘Come, strike up, more, more!’
‘Qui ent le triple talent de boire, de battre, et d'etre un vert galant!
‘That sounds well too. Now, Zaletaev! . . .
‘Kyu,’ Zaletaev articulated with effort. ‘Kyu-yu-yu . . .’ he sang puckering up his lips elaborately; ‘le-trip-ta-la-de-boo-de-ba-ce-detra va-ga-la.’
‘That’s fine! That’s a fine Frenchman, to be sure! oy . . . ho-ho-ho Well, do you want some more to eat?’
‘Give him some porridge; it'll take him some time to satisfy his hunger.
They gave him more porridge, and Morel, laughing, attacked a thirc bowlful. There were gleeful smiles on the faces of all the young soldier; watching him. The old soldiers, considering it beneath their dignity tc show interest in such trifles, lay on the other side of the fire, but now and then one would raise himself on his elbow and glance with a smik at Morel.
‘They are men, too,’ said one, rolling himself up in his coat. ‘Even thf wormwood has its roots.’
‘O Lord! What lots of stars! It’s a sign of frost . . .’ And all sank into silence.
The stars, as though they knew no one would see them now, wen twinkling brightly in the black sky. Flaring up and growing dim again and quivering, they seemed to be busily signalling some joyful mysterj to each other.
X
The French army went on melting away at a regularly increasing rate And the crossing of the Berezina, of which so much has been written was only one of the intermediate stages of the destruction of the army, anc by no means the decisive episode of the campaign. The reason that sc much has been written about Berezina on the French side is that at the
