Adieu Part 4

"Madame! we are saved."

"Saved!" she repeated, sinking down again.

The horses were harnessed as best they could. The major, holding his sabre in his well hand, with his pistols in his belt, gathered up the reins with the other hand and mounted one horse while the grenadier mounted the other. The orderly, whose feet were frozen, was thrown inside the carriage, across the general and the countess. Excited by p.r.i.c.ks from a sabre, the horses drew the carriage rapidly, with a sort of fury, to the plain, where innumerable obstacles awaited it. It was impossible to force a way without danger of crushing the sleeping men, women, and even children, who refused to move when the grenadier awoke them. In vain did Monsieur de Sucy endeavor to find the swathe cut by the rear-guard through the ma.s.s of human beings; it was already obliterated, like the wake of a vessel through the sea. They could only creep along, being often stopped by soldiers who threatened to kill their horses.

"Do you want to reach the bridge?" said the grenadier.

"At the cost of my life--at the cost of the whole world!"

"Then forward, march! you can't make omelets without breaking eggs."

And the grenadier of the guard urged the horses over men and bivouacs with b.l.o.o.d.y wheels and a double line of corpses on either side of them.

We must do him the justice to say that he never spared his breath in shouting in stentorian tones,--

"Look out there, carrion!"

"Poor wretches!" cried the major.

"Pooh! that or the cold, that or the cannon," said the grenadier, prodding the horses, and urging them on.

A catastrophe, which might well have happened to them much sooner, put a stop to their advance. The carriage was overturned.

"I expected it," cried the imperturbable grenadier. "Ho! ho! your man is dead."

"Poor Laurent!" said the major.

"Laurent? Was he in the 5th cha.s.seurs?"

"Yes."

"Then he was my cousin. Oh, well, this dog's life isn't happy enough to waste any joy in grieving for him."

The carriage could not be raised; the horses were taken out with serious and, as it proved, irreparable loss of time. The shock of the overturn was so violent that the young countess, roused from her lethargy, threw off her coverings and rose.

"Philippe, where are we?" she cried in a gentle voice, looking about her.

"Only five hundred feet from the bridge. We are now going to cross the Beresina, Stephanie, and once across I will not torment you any more; you shall sleep; we shall be in safety, and can reach Wilna easily.--G.o.d grant that she may never know what her life has cost!" he thought.

"Philippe! you are wounded!"

"That is nothing."

Too late! the fatal hour had come. The Russian cannon sounded the reveille. Masters of Studzianka, they could sweep the plain, and by daylight the major could see two of their columns moving and forming on the heights. A cry of alarm arose from the mult.i.tude, who started to their feet in an instant. Every man now understood his danger instinctively, and the whole ma.s.s rushed to gain the bridge with the motion of a wave.

The Russians came down with the rapidity of a conflagration. Men, women, children, horses,--all rushed tumultuously to the bridge. Fortunately the major, who was carrying the countess, was still some distance from it. General Eble had just set fire to the supports on the other bank. In spite of the warnings shouted to those who were rushing upon the bridge, not a soul went back. Not only did the bridge go down crowded with human beings, but the impetuosity of that flood of men toward the fatal bank was so furious that a ma.s.s of humanity poured itself violently into the river like an avalanche. Not a cry was heard; the only sound was like the dropping of monstrous stones into the water. Then the Beresina was a ma.s.s of floating corpses.

The retrograde movement of those who now fell back into the plain to escape the death before them was so violent, and their concussion against those who were advancing from the rear so terrible, that numbers were smothered or trampled to death. The Comte and Comtesse de Vandieres owed their lives to their carriage, behind which Philippe forced them, using it as a breastwork. As for the major and the grenadier, they found their safety in their strength. They killed to escape being killed.

This hurricane of human beings, the flux and reflux of living bodies, had the effect of leaving for a few short moments the whole bank of the Beresina deserted. The mult.i.tude were surging to the plain. If a few men rushed to the river, it was less in the hope of reaching the other bank, which to them was France, than to rush from the horrors of Siberia.

Despair proved an aegis to some bold hearts. One officer sprang from ice-cake to ice-cake, and reached the opposite sh.o.r.e. A soldier clambered miraculously over mounds of dead bodies and heaps of ice. The mult.i.tude finally comprehended that the Russians would not put to death a body of twenty thousand men, without arms, torpid, stupid, unable to defend themselves; and each man awaited his fate with horrible resignation. Then the major and the grenadier, the general and his wife, remained almost alone on the river bank, a few steps from the spot where the bridge had been. They stood there, with dry eyes, silent, surrounded by heaps of dead. A few sound soldiers, a few officers to whom the emergency had restored their natural energy, were near them. This group consisted of some fifty men in all. The major noticed at a distance of some two hundred yards the remains of another bridge intended for carriages and destroyed the day before.

"Let us make a raft!" he cried.

He had hardly uttered the words before the whole group rushed to the ruins, and began to pick up iron bolts, and screws, and pieces of wood and ropes, whatever materials they could find that were suitable for the construction of a raft. A score of soldiers and officers, who were armed, formed a guard, commanded by the major, to protect the workers against the desperate attacks which might be expected from the crowd, if their scheme was discovered. The instinct of freedom, strong in all prisoners, inspiring them to miraculous acts, can only be compared with that which now drove to action these unfortunate Frenchmen.

"The Russians! the Russians are coming!" cried the defenders to the workers; and the work went on, the raft increased in length and breadth and depth. Generals, soldiers, colonel, all put their shoulders to the wheel; it was a true image of the building of Noah's ark. The young countess, seated beside her husband, watched the progress of the work with regret that she could not help it; and yet she did a.s.sist in making knots to secure the cordage.

At last the raft was finished. Forty men launched it on the river, a dozen others holding the cords which moored it to the sh.o.r.e. But no sooner had the builders seen their handiwork afloat, than they sprang from the bank with odious selfishness. The major, fearing the fury of this first rush, held back the countess and the general, but too late he saw the whole raft covered, men pressing together like crowds at a theatre.

"Savages!" he cried, "it was I who gave you the idea of that raft. I have saved you, and you deny me a place."

A confused murmur answered him. The men at the edge of the raft, armed with long sticks, pressed with violence against the sh.o.r.e to send off the frail construction with sufficient impetus to force its way through corpses and ice-floes to the other sh.o.r.e.

"Thunder of heaven! I'll sweep you into the water if you don't take the major and his two companions," cried the stalwart grenadier, who swung his sabre, stopped the departure, and forced the men to stand closer in spite of furious outcries.

"I shall fall,"--"I am falling,"--"Push off! push off!--Forward!"

resounded on all sides.

The major looked with haggard eyes at Stephanie, who lifted hers to heaven with a feeling of sublime resignation.

"To die with thee!" she said.

There was something even comical in the position of the men in possession of the raft. Though they were uttering awful groans and imprecations, they dared not resist the grenadier, for in truth they were so closely packed together, that a push to one man might send half of them overboard. This danger was so pressing that a cavalry captain endeavored to get rid of the grenadier; but the latter, seeing the hostile movement of the officer, seized him round the waist and flung him into the water, crying out,--

"Ha! ha! my duck, do you want to drink? Well, then, drink!--Here are two places," he cried. "Come, major, toss me the little woman and follow yourself. Leave that old fossil, who'll be dead by to-morrow."

"Make haste!" cried the voice of all, as one man.

"Come, major, they are grumbling, and they have a right to do so."

The Comte de Vandieres threw off his wrappings and showed himself in his general's uniform.

"Let us save the count," said Philippe.

Stephanie pressed his hand, and throwing herself on his breast, she clasped him tightly.

"Adieu!" she said.

They had understood each other.

The Comte de Vandieres recovered sufficient strength and presence of mind to spring upon the raft, whither Stephanie followed him, after turning a last look to Philippe.

"Major! will you take my place? I don't care a fig for life," cried the grenadier. "I've neither wife nor child nor mother."

"I confide them to your care," said the major, pointing to the count and his wife.

"Then be easy; I'll care for them, as though they were my very eyes."