The story begins with a woman, as it began aforetime when we entered the city.
There had been three days of beautiful weather when we of the Guard rode in fine spirits toward our own country and gave no thought but to the plunder we were carrying out of Russia.
I myself had many a good thing in the wagon, and I remember well a great gold plate set with diamonds, which had been torn from Ivan's Cross when we tried to pull it down from the cathedral in the Kremlin.
The men themselves were loaded with pretty trinkets, and carried furs enough to clothe Paris. The costliest skins—ermine and sable and lion and bear—were used for every conceivable purpose; and it is no wonder that the army was followed by thousands of Jews, waiting to buy these treasures when their owners should be weary of them.
Truly would I say that such a scene as our exit from Moscow was never written before in the story of warfare, nor will ever be written again.
Imagine a great white wooded plain, a sandy road at the heart of it, and upon this road an interminable procession of carts and wagons to carry the baggage of the Grand Army.
Upon either side in the fields go cavalry and infantry, every man's knapsack packed with loot, the commonest troopers sucking the rarest liqueurs from costly bottles, the poorest fellows smoking pipes with bowls of gold and tobacco that only princes should have been able to afford. All was hope and gaiety. Paris lay twelve hundred leagues from us, yet to Paris and our homes we were going. Who shall wonder if the trumpets blew a merry blast and the bands set our feet dancing? Was not the Emperor in our midst, and should we not return in a blaze of glory?
In such content we marched for three days. There was not much discipline observed, and the men were permitted to go pretty well as they pleased, it being always understood that the dreaded Cossacks were on our flank and that any foolhardiness might bring a disaster upon us. This kept the stragglers more or less in touch with the main body of the army; but sometimes we officers would ride away into the woods to see what kind of hospitality we could find at a country house and to enjoy it according to our opportunities.
It was on such an occasion that Léon and I first met Zayde, and came near to losing our lives because of her. I must tell you of this before going on to speak of the other days which followed, when the north wind began to blow and all that wide landscape lay under its veil of the cruel snow.
We had been riding through a shady wood about a mile from the high road to Smolensk. Someone had discovered that there was a famous old monastery in the district noted for its hospitality; and although we expected little from any Russian monk, we were quite able to help ourselves should the opportunity be offered. This quest carried us farther and farther away from our comrades, until at last we appeared to have lost the road altogether, and to be as far away from any monastery as ever we were in all our lives. My own thought was for going back immediately, but the younger head would hear nothing of it, and my nephew protested loudly that I was becoming a coward.
"It is the good living in Moscow that has destroyed your nerve, uncle," said he. "How could we be better off than we are in this place? Soft grass to gallop on, shady trees above, and the sun shining as though it were mid-summer in our own France. We shall come to the monastery presently, and they will give us wine that Adam brewed. There will be plenty of loot to add to our saddle-bags, and perhaps there will be sisters to comfort us. Why should we go back? The road is over there any time we have a fancy to rejoin it."
I retorted by reminding him that the Cossacks were out, and that we might encounter them at any time. More than once I thought that I heard a distant sound of galloping, and I drew rein to call his attention to it. But he would not listen to me, and still riding southwards, as it seemed, he pulled up at length and cried in real astonishment:
"Why, uncle, what did I tell you? Here is Cleopatra herself and her treasures with her, as I am alive!"
I came up to him and saw what had arrested his attention. There was a deep pit before us and in it a Cossack and a woman. The former sprang up at our coming, and drawing a pistol from his belt, he snapped it at Léon's head. Happily the powder did not fire, and seeing that we were two to one, the fellow hurled the weapon at my nephew's horse and immediately bolted for the shelter of the woods.
So we were alone with the lady and her treasure, and this, at a modest estimate, must have been worth half a million of francs.
I have never seen such riches spread in a green wood before, nor am I likely to do so if I live to a hundred years.
Consisting of jewels chiefly, there were other objects there and all precious beyond words.
Great ropes of Eastern pearls, diamonds and emeralds; Indian images in solid gold; the most wonderful robes of ermine and sable; jewelled scabbards that should have come from Damascus—all these lay littered upon the grass by the side of the impassive woman, who now looked at us with the eyes of a child and uttered no word either of protest or of appeal.
Certainly she was a remarkably beautiful creature.
Not more than seventeen years of age, she had hair as golden as the sands of the sea, the white skin of the Circassian and the dark eyes of the Persian beauty.
Her dress was an odd compromise between the East and the West.
She had baggy breeches of blue silk, high riding-boots of Russian leather, a white and gold coat to her waist, and the kepi of the Austrian hussar. Over all she wore a superb cloak of ermine which would have brought a fortune could it have been sold in our own Paris.
Such was the apparition which confronted us in that lonely wood.
Needless to say that we were both greatly moved by it; Léon chiefly, I fear, by the girl's big eyes; I by the wonders of the treasure which lay about her. To go down into the pit and to introduce ourselves was the work of an instant. Léon told her briefly that he was a French officer, and he begged leave to protect her. To this she answered not a word; but I could see that she was not displeased, and presently with a child's laugh she dragged him down beside her.
I know Léon so well, and have seen so many women fall a victim to his pleasing airs that this act did not surprise me as much as it should have done. None the less, I was astonished when presently the girl bade me sit also, and turning to one of the great bags beside her, she produced food and wine and set it before us.
The odd thing was that she could not speak a word of any language with which we tried her.
Of Russian I had learned a few sentences during our stay in Moscow, and German I spoke with some fluency; but neither the one nor the other was the slightest use; nor, need I say, had she any French. Thus we came to signs and mouthing, in which my nephew appeared to be so proficient that he was kissing her within twenty minutes of the encounter and hugging her like a bear before the meal was done.
Well, we finished the meal, and then, pointing to the wood, indicated to the girl that we must go. She had tried to tell us her name, which we made out to be something like Zoida or Zayde, and we asked her as well as we could to accompany us on our road and let us help her with the treasure. The astonishing thing was that she appeared almost indifferent to the existence of the latter, laughing like a child when we pointed to it, and throwing the diamonds about as though they had been pebbles. This angered me, for I saw the worth of the stuff; and presently, speaking in a wrathful tone, I commanded her to pack the things in the box from which they had been taken and to follow us. The new turn appeared to alarm her not a little, and she sat crouching there like a frightened gnome while Léon and I put the things in their cases and began to pack them upon our horses. How they came to be in that remote wood we knew no more than the dead; but it would clearly have been a crime to leave them there, and indeed we had not gone many paces upon the road before the secret of their presence was discovered.
There was at an open glade of the forest a kind of amphitheatre crossed by a road to some southern town.
A wrecked coach stood at the junction, and all about it were the signs of a bloody combat.
I had been riding before the others at this particular moment, and my horse nearly stumbled over the body of an elderly man who had been shot in the head and his brains blown out. Near by lay his coachman, stabbed in many places and quite dead. Of the horses of the coach there was not a trace, and it was now plain to me that the treasure had come from it, and that this elderly man had been escaping southward when the robbers overtook him. Naturally I turned to the girl and began to question her angrily. She merely shook her head and shut her eyes, as though afraid to look upon the corpse. It was to say that she had had no hand in that bloody affair, and so much I could readily believe.
"Good heavens!" said I to Léon, "what an infamy, and more than that, what a mystery!"
He did not agree with me at all. A ready instinct told him what had happened.
"The carriage stuck in the sand yonder," said he. "The servants went for horses to a neighbouring farm. This girl here may have been with them as a servant or she may not. The fellow who murdered them was the one we found with her in the wood. It is as simple as an open book, my dear uncle."
"Then," said I, "we will write the end of the story. Of course we must wait until the others return."
"What?" cried he; "with the night coming down and the Cossacks in the woods! That would be madness indeed, my uncle."
And then he added with a laugh, "The old gentleman is in heaven and is in no need of diamonds. We shall know very well what to do with them when we get in Paris. Let us make haste before we are discovered."
He did not wait for me to reply, but holding the girl close to him on the saddle he trotted on through the wood, and I followed him reluctantly.
We were as rich as Croesus, yet how we were going to get out of the forest, where we should find the army, or what chance we had of carrying our treasure to Paris, I knew no more than the dead.
The way now lay through a wide avenue—one of the most beautiful I had seen in Russia. The grass lay smooth and green, and bore no trace of the relentless summer. We might have been in the precincts of some princely chateau, and we were not at all surprised presently when we came upon a considerable building which had all the air of one of those picturesque monasteries in which Russia abounds. Had we any doubt of this, a great gilt dome with a Greek cross high above it would have settled it; for never have I seen a more beautiful object than this golden ball glistening amid the woods as though its heart were of fire, while a celestial radiance shone all about it. To Léon, however, it merely stood for a place whereat we might get food and drink.
"These monks are very decent fellows," he said; "they know how to entertain strangers. The regiment will bivouac not far from here, and we may just as well stay the night in yonder building as sleep in a mouldy barn. Cheer up, uncle, and think of the good wine you are about to drink. It's the luckiest thing that could have happened to us."
I looked at the girl in his arms and wondered if he spoke truly.
We were now within a quarter of a mile of the building and could see a portcullis and a gate from which men on horseback were riding out. When they approached nearer it was plain that they were the servants of the dead man whose body lay in the woods behind us; and observing this we drew aside behind the trees to let them pass. It was evident that they had told the story of their trouble to the good monks in yonder building; and some of the latter, clad in brown habits with white cords about their waists, were going down to their assistance.
I noticed that the servants were five in number and were all heavily armed. Obviously they must have been men of little sense to have left their master alone with a bandit in such a place and so to have contributed to his death. The same idea occurred to Léon, who did not fail to point out to me the nature of the peril from which he had saved the girl, who now lay trembling in his arms.
"They would have cut her to pieces if we had not come up," said he. "We are doing a work of mercy, mon oncle, in saving her from them. Let us get on to the monastery and tell our own story. Of course we know nothing of any carriage or its owners; we are just officers of the Grand Army, and if we are not treated properly our comrades will see to it. I count it very fortunate that things have turned out so. We shall get an excellent dinner and a good night's rest, and to-morrow we shall be with the regiment again. Could anything be better?"
He seemed well pleased enough, and I did not know what answer to make to him. As for the Eastern woman, common sense said that he would send her about her business in the morning; but not until he had made sure that she could go in safety. These things pertain to war, and it is not possible to disguise them. Léon was just as fifty thousand others who marched at the Emperor's summons, neither better nor worse; and if there be any excuse to be made for him, it is that he had a sentiment towards the sex which was rarely lacking in nobility.
"Let no man consider himself happy until he is dead," said I, imitating the philosopher; and with that I pressed on at his side until we came to the gate of the monastery, and nothing remained but to tell our story to the good monks within. This was easier than might have seemed, for they had no word of our own tongue and we none of theirs. It was a matter of gesture from the beginning, and in this we excelled them without question. But first let me speak of the building we now entered.
The monastery covered some three acres of ground. There were a few tilled fields about it and a considerable courtyard in the Eastern fashion. The chapel was a rude imitation of the Church of St. Ivan at Moscow, and had a similar cross, though of smaller size, upon its gilded dome.
The whole enclosure had been heavily walled about as a protection against any raiding bands of brigands; and there were even ancient cannon upon its battlement. Although lacking a moat, there was a big pool or lake before its main gate, and this was spanned by a primitive bridge with a portcullis beyond it. Here we found the keeper of the gate, a sturdy bearded monk, filthy in aspect if servile in manner. He seemed not a little awed by our uniform and equipment, but when he caught sight of the girl on Léon's saddle, a broad grin animated his features and he no longer delayed to open.
So we rode into a small courtyard and there tethered our horses. The chapel lay to the south of this, and there came to us rude sounds of Gregorian chanting, which is the fashion in their Church, and very melodious when executed by the best singers. Those who now recited the sacred office were not of such a class, and their barbarous voices suggested that we were in Araby rather than in civilised Europe. This, however, did not concern us. Our desire was for food and shelter, and following a monk into a vast refectory we signified our wants to him and commanded him to satisfy them. In his turn he did not appear unwilling to oblige us, and motioning us to sit at the table, he went from the refectory and left us alone.
Now I should tell you that the girl Zayde had entered this monastery with some reluctance, and in spite of Léon's endearments she seemed very ill at ease while we remained there. Léon, on the other hand, had found his best spirit, and was in the mood for any adventure which might come to him. Perhaps the church and the habit suggested the absurdity on which he now set his heart, for, turning to me suddenly, he said:
"How now, my uncle, is not this the very place for a wedding? What would you say if I told you that I was going to marry Zayde? Is she not beautiful enough? Look at her and tell me honestly what you think."
I answered that he was making a fool of himself and bade him be silent. The girl half understood his meaning, I think, for the colour came and went from her pretty face, and she watched him with eyes that plainly acquiesced in any such determination. None the less his words offended me, and I did not wish to hear them repeated. Though these monks were not of my own religion, I respected them, and would not have profaned their holy building. So much Léon must have learned from my looks, for he slapped me gaily upon the shoulder and said that I was not born to be a jester.
"What is marriage, my uncle?" he asked. "A few words gabbled by the priest, and neither the one nor the other caring a pin's point about them. Why should I not marry Zayde? She is young, and, I will wager, well born. I am a bachelor and free to do what I please. What is there to prevent my making her my wife if I choose?"
I rejoined that he had said the same thing of Valerie St. Antoine, and at the mention of her name he flushed and became a little serious.
"Valerie St. Antoine is dead," said he; "why do you remind me of her?"
"Because in my hearing you swore to her to marry no other woman."
"Oh, my dear uncle, how easily one imposes upon you!" And at the same thought he burst out laughing, and catching the girl in his arms, he kissed her as though she were already much more to him than an acquaintance of the roadside.
It was at this point that the monk returned to us, followed by many of his brethren. They were all rugged men, bearded and of evil countenance, and I perceived in a moment that they recognised us for what we were—the enemies and the invaders of their country. Not a sign of hospitality did we detect upon any one countenance in that formidable group. They swarmed about us as though willing enough to do us a mischief if they dared, and so threatening became their manner that we both drew our swords, and Léon a pistol as well.
This put a new complexion on the affair. The most part of them now stood back a little, while their prior, a venerable man with a great gold cross on his breast, held out his hands as though in supplication and addressed us rapidly in the Russian tongue. When he discovered that we could only answer him in monosyllables he made a gesture of despair, and turning to the keeper of the refectory, he gave him an order whose nature was soon apparent. The fellow left the room, but returned anon with three flagons of their native wine and some vast loaves of black bread, which seems to be the only sort procurable in this God-forsaken country. These viands were set upon the table and we were bidden to eat and drink, while the monks stood about and watched us very curiously.
I have told you that all these faces were strangely alike, as is ever the case when men are old and bearded and of the same nationality. One face, however, struck me as familiar. It was that of a young monk who tried to hide himself amid his brethren, but when I would have verified my suspicions, he turned his back upon me and left the room without remark. The others continued to force their meagre hospitalities upon us, offering the wine freely, but keeping it, I observed, from the girl at their side. She, indeed, appeared to beanathema maranathato these holy men. Perhaps it was the first time that a woman had ever sat to bread in their refectory; but however it may have been, it was grotesque to find them afraid so much as to touch the hem of her garment, and as curious about her as though she had been a wild animal in a menagerie.
Their antics made Léon laugh incontinently, and his laughter was shared by the girl, though not as freely as might have been expected from such a lady. To me it seemed that she had become aware suddenly of some peril in the place and was anxious to be gone from it. I observed her pluck Léon by the arm and make an appeal to him of a kind I could but imagine. When he told me in a whisper that she spoke French after all, needless to say I was very much astonished.
"Very well," said I, "she will understand your love-making now."
He agreed that it was so.
"The priests will marry us after dinner," says he, "and we will take her to Smolensk. What an adventure, my uncle! Is not war the father of all adventures, as I have often told you?"
I made some commonplace remark and tried to stay the hand of the monk, who was refilling my glass with very fiery spirit. Truth to tell, this now mounted to my head, as it had mounted to Léon's already, and presently the scene before me became confused and unreal, while the walls were reeling before my eyes and the roof threatening to fall on my head. I detest a drunkard, and this condition occurred to me as very shameful. On the other hand, I had drunk but little of their wine and could not account for my condition; but when I called to the monks for water they proffered me a drink of another kind, and so potent was this that I lost consciousness almost immediately, and must have slept for many hours before I came to my senses again.
It must have been near midnight when this happened, and the moonlight, shining in the glade where I lay, soon showed me that I was alone.
Oddly enough, the monks had carried me to the very place where the carriage had been robbed, and when I got the stiffness out of my limbs and the dizziness out of my head I perceived that this was as we had left it, and the scene unchanged, save that the dead had been carried away. I knew the place to be but a quarter of a mile from the monastery, and wondered why they had carried me so far. But chiefly I began to think of my nephew and the girl, and to speculate upon their fortunes.
It was no light thing to be left there in the forest with the Cossacks all about and my regiment bivouacked God knows where, and a chance of being eaten by wolves into the bargain. On the other hand, I had a great fear for Léon, and was almost ready to believe that they had killed him in the monastery. Certainly such fellows would have done anything for the treasure, and very possibly Léon's head had been stronger than mine and he had contested its possession with them; in which case I did not doubt they had slain him, and the fact that I was alone seemed to warrant the supposition.
Now this was troubling me, and I had a great fear both of the place and of the hour, when I heard a sound of voices in the glade, and presently made out the figures of horsemen moving amid the trees.
At first I took them to be Cossacks, and was about to make off as best I could, when to my great surprise and pleasure I heard Léon himself calling to me. Never was the sound of a voice more welcome.
"Léon!" I cried, and running up to him I found myself surrounded by a squadron of the Red Hussars, in the midst of whom Léon himself was riding his own horse and leading mine by the bridle.
"Well met, my uncle!" says he, in his boyish humour. "And so they have not put the habit on you after all. We have ridden three leagues in quest of you, and here you are at the very door. Well, that is lucky, for time presses, and there is good work to do. What do you say to a little fire to warm our hands on such a night?"
I told him that it would be an excellent thing, though I had then no idea of his meaning. His affection for me was very real, and while his speech made a jest of it, I could see how pleased he was that he had found me in the wood.
"It was that cursed liquor of theirs," says he. "I have never drunk its like. We must have both dropped off like children in a cradle, and then they carried us out. I woke up God knows where, and but for these good fellows I might still be in the same place. Now we are going to teach the holy friars a lesson. Do you realise that they have got the woman and her jewels, and we must burn them out to recover them? Come along, my uncle. Here is an adventure that is only just beginning."
He seemed greatly pleased with himself, and rode jauntily enough, as though the event were greatly to his liking. My own wit had grown a little clearer by this time, and I could acquiesce in his determination to have it out with the monks. After all, they were not of our faith, and they had treated us very scurvily. The girl was no business of theirs, and even if the treasure had been looted, they had neither part nor lot in the affair. It was plainly our duty to teach them a lesson and to recover the property which the fortunes of war had bestowed upon us; and with this in our minds we rode up to the gate of the monastery and beat upon it insistently.
"No more of their liquor for me," says Léon, as he snapped a pistol in the lock of the great gate and then pulled their bell furiously. "We will give them a taste of our vintage and see if it goes to their heads. If it doesn't, I fancy that a prick from the point of a sword may well go somewhere else. Rest assured, dear uncle, we will have our pockets full of diamonds before the day breaks, and the girl upon my saddle-bow. Let us see what kind of a chant these holy men like best. Upon my word, they sleep like dogs after a hunting!"
Truly it was surprising that, after all the hullabaloo we had made, no one opened to us. The great monastery showed no light of any kind whatever. Both doors and windows were heavily barred as though against a ruthless invader, and listen as we might we could hear no sound within. The subterfuge merely angered Léon. He began to understand that even a squadron of hussars is powerless against a barrier of iron, and that for all we could do to the holy men within we might as well have been in Moscow. This, as I say, had not occurred to him before, and he now rode round and round the precincts as though there must be some loophole in the vast wall which defied us, some gate which the carbines of the company could force. We found none, and the men's chagrin was undisguised. They had been promised food and loot if they took the place, and yet they were as far from taking it as any child would have been.
"You will never do it," said I to Léon. "The wolves have gone to ground, and nothing but fire will fetch them out. You should have brought a gun, my boy; that would have made short work of them."
He admitted it, and began to blame himself for his stupidity. The artillery, according to his reckoning, was three leagues from the place; but presently one of the hussars remembered that some of Marshal Ney's guns were with the van of the rearguard and could not be farther than a league from the place.
"We can have them here by dawn," said the fellow, and there being nothing else for it we dispatched half a dozen of them at full gallop to bring a field piece to the place. The gunners, we said, would come readily enough when the story of the loot was told to them. Never had I known one of the Grand Army turn from that, whatever the circumstance.
So the men rode off and left us upon the edge of the lake which bordered the eastern wall of the monastery.
Though the day had been warm enough, the night fell intolerably cold, and we wrapped ourselves in our cloaks, and having tethered the horses, fell to walking round the monastery as though it would yet reveal its secrets. Impossible to believe that a treasure of half a million francs and one of the most beautiful women in Russia were locked up in that gloomy place, and we, Vélites and hussars of the Grand Army, impotent to get one or the other. Yet such was a fact and such the cunning of the monks that neither light was shown to us nor a footstep to be heard in all the hours of our vigil.
Dawn had come before the hussars returned with half a battery from Ney's own rearguard. We heard the sound of the horses in the wood, and anon the heavy wheels of the guns crunching over the gravel of the precincts. Then also we heard for the first time a signal from the monastery, the great bell of which began to toll mournfully, as though holding a requiem for the dead. The sound inspired us and brought every man to his feet.
"The birds are caged after all," said I to Léon. "We will now see how they can fly."
The bridge across the lake was not stout enough to carry a gun; but we quickly had three upon the brink of the water, and at the third discharge we brought down the great door of wood and iron and not a little of the masonry with it. Such a ragout of rusty iron and plaster saints did not disturb us at all; and running triumphantly across the bridge, we entered the monastery, swords drawn, to ferret out the monks.
Let me tell you in a word that we found no human being within the place. From room to room we ran, crying to each other in chapel and refectory and deserted cell, and hearing nothing but our own voices in reply. Such a mystery was beyond any I had known. The monks were here, we said, or else the devil himself had rung their bell. Nay, there were traces of their recent occupation—rude beds just disturbed; a faint fire in a primitive kitchen; the very candles lighted before the icons or images in their chapel. Yet not so much as the girdle of a monk in all the place, and as for the treasure, I do not believe the fiend himself could have found a sou.
Well, there we were, some eighty men gathered in the morning light and looking as foolish as school lads surprised in an orchard.
When our first rage had somewhat calmed, reason began to assert itself, and we said that there must be some passage beneath the lake by which the fathers had gone out. This caused a new quest of a highly diverting kind, for now it was every ferret to find a hole, and never did men work more willingly. To and fro they went like hounds in a thicket. Panels they tried and traps in cellars they lifted. Walls were pierced with our swords and doors were beat down, until the place looked as though it had stood the ravages of a siege. Yet the mockery of it all was that we might as well have hunted diamonds in the Place de la Revolution at Paris. Not a trace of any secret passage did we find, not a hole large enough to pass a dog; and when after hours of labour we came to the conclusion that the mystery was beyond us, a similar hunt in the woods yielded no more profit. Scattering wide about the monastery in enlarging circles, we must have ridden twenty leagues a man before we gathered at sunset to remind each other that the Cossacks might trap us and that we must rejoin the army at all costs. The graver peril guiding us, we rode off reluctantly, and soon the fateful monastery and even the woods about it were lost to our view.
Night had fallen for the second time now, and we had entered a land of great spaces. But more than that, we were traversing an enemy's country, and anon we espied a large body of Cossacks—three thousand as we judged—who plainly had observed us and immediately sat down to the pursuit. This was a turn that we might have looked for, but, in our imprudence, had risked. It was now each for himself and the devil take the laggards. We should be sabred to a man if these assassins rode us down, and, with a cry of "En avant!" we set spurs to our jaded horses and rode wildly across the plain. God alone could tell whether we should find the army or lose it.
It was a race for life with night and the mystery of night all about us.
How to tell you, of that memorable gallop I hardly know. No race at Chantilly ever found horses so tired or riders at such a tension. On we thundered, and on and on. Now we would cry that we were saved; again that all was lost. The dust enveloped us in clouds; the moon magnified the great plain we must cross to the woods beyond. Let us gain them and we might find the army after all. I had said as much when a figure pressed out of the hurly-burly and I knew it for that of a Cossack. He slashed at me with a great scimitar, and slashed again. Then I heard a pistol shot, and seeing the fellow reeling in his saddle, I cut him through the skull to the very marrow. He was but the first of twenty, and so we went riding and slashing and halloaing for a league or more until we had bested their leaders and were alone on the great plain once more. Alas! how brief a respite! We had thousands still to deal with, and they rode after us like devils. No sailors lost upon a black and stormy sea went more blindly than we upon that fateful night. The army had vanished; we believed no longer that we should find it.
Meanwhile, there were always the green devils behind us. I should give no true picture of this affair if I denied that there was another side to it. Some of our men fell and were hacked to pieces where they lay. Others were overtaken and cut down by the ruthless swords of the Cossacks. We could not lift a finger to save them—ten would have perished for one who fell had we done so. Our one hope lay in the swiftness of our horses. "En avant!" we cried, and again "En avant!" We must find the army or perish. Ah, what a vain hope and how Fate played with us! For my part I believed that all was over when I first saw the fire in the wood and heard my comrades cry out. The Russians were then but a hundred paces from us—the light that we saw might be anything. God knows, we raced for it—and to discover what? A priest and a woman—Zayde and the shorn monk, who I never doubted was a Cossack all the time.
There they were—hobnobbing by a fire of logs and greatly startled when they heard the sound of hoofs. Immediately they ran off into the thicket, but not before we had recognised them—my nephew and I. They were hardly gone when a louder cry arose from every Frenchman in the wood; for now, as the very light of heaven itself, the glow of a dozen bivouac fires burst upon our aching eyes, and with one voice we cried: "Vive l'Empereur!" and swore that the army should avenge us.
War teaches us many lessons, but none more useful than that of its accidents. You will have said already that we had found the army and that nothing remained but to ride up to the outposts and raise an alarm.
Let me answer that nothing was farther from the truth. We had neither found the army nor were any of our comrades there to avenge us. When I told this story in the year 1813 in Paris I well remember the laughter it excited. A squadron of hussars saved by a flight of monks! Thus the newspapers referred to it, and such was the naked truth. The monks saved us—the monks from the monastery we had sacked.
Never have I forgotten that moment when this ridiculous turn first became apparent to us. The Cossacks, I say, were at our heels, hope gone from us, all thought of the army abandoned, when we saw the bivouac fires and rode madly up to them. "Vive l'Empereur!" was our cry. Then we learned the truth.
There were a hundred or more monks in the woods: they had kindled the fires which cheered us. The Cossacks, perceiving the fires, and being deceived as we were, waited for no verification of a fact which seemed self-evident. The French army lay encamped in that place—who else would be there in these days of war and of a mighty host upon the march? Do you wonder that the mad devils stopped as though they heard already the roar of our guns, that they wheeled about and were gone as foxes whom the moon has discovered? They would have been madmen to have done anything else. The race had been run and we were the victors. So at least they thought, and so did Fortune smile upon us in that fateful hour.
Be sure we did not linger upon an accident so remarkable. The monks appeared to have no fear of us when we rode by, and the most part of them lay sleeping. We forbore to intrude upon their dreams; and going on at our leisure, we came up with the army at dawn and there recited the details of this amazing adventure.
It remains but to say a word of the bell and the treasure.
I have often discussed it with Léon, and we have come to the conclusion that there must have been monks left in the monastery after the main body had fled, and that they sounded the alarm upon the approach of the hussars. Their situation when we sacked that dismal building must have been parlous indeed, and God alone knew where they hid from us.
As for the treasure, I have since learned that it belonged to a certain Prince Karasin, a Tartar from beyond the Urals. He had been murdered by his servants just as I had supposed, and the woman upon whom he had lavished the treasure must have been a witness of the wickedness. Her subsequent fate I am unable to tell you, but my nephew Léon, with his accustomed gallantry, still swears that she was innocent, and, Valerie St. Antoine excepted, by far the most beautiful thing he ever discovered in that God-forsaken country.
I never thought to see Valerie St. Antoine again after we had left Moscow; but here I was quite wrong, as you shall learn presently, and my next encounter with her was as strange an affair as any I remember during the war.
You will remember that we had marched out of Moscow on the 19th day of October, in the year 1812; but it was the 29th of that month when the snow began to fall.
Hitherto our journey had not been unpleasant and had filled us with few apprehensions. It is true that the Russians were active, and there were not many villages to pillage, so that some murmurings were heard at an early date, and men complained bitterly of the lack of bread. But we were given to understand that all this would be set straight presently, and that we should find untouched supplies at Smolensk, the first big town between Moscow and the frontier. Meanwhile, many carried a little store of provisions in their knapsacks, and the officers were generally well looked after despite the difficulties. We found marching easy in the early days, and even when the rain fell, and the roads became heavy, the wagons were not seriously hampered. All went light-heartedly, thinking of our beloved France and of the triumph we were to celebrate there.
Then came the snow. It began to fall on the evening of the 29th, as I have said, and, save that there was cold rain during the following week, we never saw the green ground again until we came to the valley of the Rhine. Ah, the first of these terrible days—how well I remember it!
Léon and I rode side by side, a great press of horsemen before us; behind us, in a seemingly unbroken line, the carts and wagons of the transport. Upon either side were the hussars and the lancers, thechasseurs à cheval, the Guards from Portugal, the Italians, with Prince Eugène. The Emperor himself was then half a day's march ahead of us, but we expected to come up with him at Slawkowo, and there to enjoy our well-earned rest. We had frost, as you shall hear, but there is no pen that can tell you of what we suffered by the way.
There had been black clouds rolling down from the northward all day, but the snow itself did not burst upon us until the hour of sunset. It came heralded by a distant sound as of thunder upon a far horizon; but this was no thunder that we heard—only a north wind roaring across that interminable plain.
Anon it came upon us with the fury of a southern tempest. Flakes of snow almost as big as a man's hand tumbled out of that leaden sky, were caught by the howling wind, and scattered in a fine powder which cut like steel. Soon everything was obliterated: the summer had finished before our eyes. Where there had been green grass and verdant woods, and even wild flowers by the roadside, there was now nothing but a monstrous sea, with here and there the white woods standing up as so many mighty ships upon a frozen ocean.
The army, marching hitherto in such good spirits, became but specks in this white wilderness. Never had Frenchmen known such cold, and great was the terror with which it inspired them. We saw cloaks flying and heads bent before the blast; we heard the curses of the transport men, the shrill complaints of cantinières; but above all the ceaseless howling of the blast, as though the God of Russia cried a vengeance upon us, and this was the hour of it.
All this was bad enough, but more was to follow when the Cossacks came like so many devils from the darkness.
They wheeled about us, piping a shrill defiance and waving their lances ominously. In our turn we were too sore stricken to attack them, and we rode like cravens, who submitted to fate without lifting a finger. Not until Marshal Ney himself came up with cannon did we drive the scarecrows off, and even then it was but a brief respite, for they were as swift as eagles and as elusive. Many a good fellow had a Russian lance in him that night, and the snow-field for his bed. It was a new page in the story of a triumph we had hoped to celebrate in Paris.
For myself I felt the cold bitterly, and I do not doubt that Léon suffered no less. We had heavy cloaks and we rode good horses; but the frost was beyond anything I have known or could imagine, and presently the trail of the army could be followed by the dead and dying it shed upon the march.
Dreadful was it to see those poor fellows, and to know that we could not help them. There they lay, some already white and still in the death sleep; others moaning for pain of the cold; others, again, imploring their fellows to shoot them for God's sake. All, however, passed on without pity. The wind devoured us; the snow had become a very avalanche.
Now this lasted for an hour, almost until the darkness had set in; but when it ceased we perceived, to our astonishment, a considerable town upon the horizon, and this put new life into us. Spurring our jaded horses, Léon and I galloped on, telling each other that we should certainly find bread and shelter in such a place, and that the rigour of the night could safely be defied there. We had gone, I suppose, about a third of a mile in this way when we came without warning upon a wrecked carriage, and immediately drew rein at the unexpected discovery we made therein.
I have told you that Léon will rarely pass a pretty woman, whatever be her nationality, and when he drew rein at the sight of the wrecked carriage it was a woman's face which arrested him.
"One moment, my uncle," says he; "you really are in a devil of a hurry."
I drew rein with him and walked my horse up to the carriage. It was plainly the equipage of a person of rank—a spacious berline, drawn by four horses, and a brilliant yellow in colour. Of more import was the fact that the coachman sat dead and frozen upon the box, and that the horses had drawn the vehicle over the bank of the road, and there left it poised as a stick upon a conjurer's finger. A minute later and it turned over gently in the snow, and the horses, maddened by the mishap, plunged frantically and went galloping across the plain. At the same moment we heard cries from within the berline, and, dismounting and leaping upon it, we took three women from the coach, of whom but one was alive. She was Valerie St. Antoine, and she recognised us immediately.
"Help, sir, for God's sake!" says she, as Léon caught her in his arms and instantly wrapped his own cloak about her. We did not tell her that the others were beyond help, yet such was the case.
Of the two, one was an elderly and distinguished-looking woman with white hair, and the second as pretty a child of fifteen years of age as I had seen since I left Prussia. Both had perished of want and cold. They were locked in each other's arms, and quite dead when we took them from the carriage.
"Who are these poor people?" I asked Valerie.
She buried her face in her hands.
"The Baroness de Nivois and her granddaughter. They have been five years in Moscow. They were my friends—God help me!"
"But, mademoiselle," said I, "what sent you upon such an errand as this?"
She looked at me, I think, with some amazement at my want of understanding.
"What Frenchwoman remains in Moscow now?" she asked coldly. And then as quickly she turned to Léon and inquired of him where the Emperor would be.
"I must see him immediately," says she; "it was for that I followed the army. Captain Courcelles, will you not help me?"
He replied that nothing would give him greater pleasure.
"You are returning to Paris, mademoiselle?" he asked her.
She said that it was possible.
"But," cried I, "I thought you would never leave Moscow. You told me so yourself."
"Major," she rejoined, "I did not then know that my father was alive, nor that he served the Emperor."
I thought upon it a minute, and then a sudden memory coming to me, I said:
"There is a Colonel St. Antoine with the Second Battalion of the Chasseurs of the Line. Is it possible, mademoiselle, that he is a relative of yours?"
"He is my father," she said, with admirable dignity; and, turning, she hid her face in her hands again, as though the dreadful scene about us could no longer be suffered. Léon waited for no more, but, lifting her upon his horse, he rode straightway from the place.
"Do what you can for these poor women," said he to me. "We will wait for you in the town." And with that he pressed forward and was quickly lost to my view.
I had given him my word, and yet it was worth little. The poor women were beyond all hope, and it remained but to inter them decently. This, with the aid of some sappers, I did anon, and having seen to it that we should know the place again if occasion arose, I also pressed on towards the town.
It was quite dark by this time, and the snow had begun to fall again. I thought myself lucky to overtake my nephew, which I did some third of a mile from the gates of the town. But whether his welcome were as warm as my pleasure I have my doubts. Let me say in all honesty that I believe that Léon was in love with this woman, and would have gone through fire and water for her.