It was an odd situation, I must confess.
The army is well acquainted with more than one such expedition in which His Majesty has figured, and I was not the first officer, by many, who had watched a house wherein he pursued an adventure of this kind.
But here the circumstances were very different.
The girl was not as other women of whom we spoke in merriment. She had come from her apartment in sleep, and was sleeping, I believe, when she entered the chapel. The impulse which drove His Majesty appeared to me to be curiosity rather than love. I have heard that he was somewhat given to omens and the occult sciences, and while pretending to be an absolute disbeliever in them, would nevertheless lend a willing ear to any charlatan who had a tale to tell. Mademoiselle Kyra had forewarned him of certain happenings upon his march to Moscow, so what could be more natural than that he should desire to hear what she had to say of his retreat?
These thoughts were uppermost in my mind when I found myself alone in the room. I could hear no sound whatever from the chapel, not even that of a woman whispering. The house itself had fallen again to a silence quite remarkable. I tried to look from the window of the bedroom, but found it so frosted that not a thing could be seen beyond. The old lady herself had disappeared and gone I knew not whither. Another, perhaps, would have spied upon the Emperor, and even found a pretext for following him into the chapel. This kind of curiosity has never afflicted me, and all that I remembered was the continued peril of our situation.
How if the Cossacks made a sudden dash upon Liadoui and overpowered the sentinels at the gate!
Nothing could be easier than such an assault. We had but two regiments of the grenadiers in the village, and they were worn to death with marching. Indeed, I believed they were already sleeping in any bivouac they could find. The guns were mostly a day's march ahead of us, and we had little artillery in our train. Nothing, I said, could be looked for as surely as a sudden descent of the Cossacks upon any house in which they might imagine the Emperor to be sleeping. So you will understand my sense of responsibility and the keen ear I leant to any sounds from without.
The silence of the night seemed, indeed, almost unnatural. I began to be affrighted by it. What was odd was the length of time His Majesty was closeted in the dark chapel. It is true that I heard the sound of voices when a little while had passed, and that a busy murmur of talk went on at intervals for a full hour. Then for a spell again there was silence, and it was during that interval that I first heard the alarm from without.
There were horsemen approaching the village. My trained ear told me the truth in an instant, and bending it to the glass, I made sure that I was not mistaken. Horsemen, I said, were riding across the frozen snow, either towards Liadoui or to Madame Zchekofsky's dwelling. No sooner was the opinion formed than the cry of a dying man confirmed it. Someone had sabred or bayoneted the sentry at the gate. There is no mistaking that awful cry which a man utters when he realises that he has lived his life and that the steel within him has reached his heart. I knew it too well, and, springing back at the sound, I ran to the chapel doors and beat heavily upon them.
"Your Majesty," I cried, "for God's sake!"
The door was locked, but someone opened it instantly, and there stood Mademoiselle Kyra and the Emperor by her side. She was wide awake now and a look of terror had come upon her pretty face.
"I beg you to go," she said to him.
For answer he stepped out into the bedroom and asked me what was the matter.
"The Cossacks are here," I cried; "they have killed the sentinel. Your Majesty must not delay."
Napoleon Bonaparte was no coward, as all the world knows, and he heard me almost with nonchalance.
"Are you quite sure?" he asked.
I told him that there was no doubt of it.
"Listen for yourself, sire," said I; "they are entering the house."
He shrugged his shoulders and turned to Mademoiselle Kyra.
"Is there a way out by the chapel?" he asked her.
Her affrighted eyes answered him.
"You will have to return by the great staircase," said she; and at that he smiled, for we could hear already the tramp of many feet upon it.
"That is a pity," says he now. "Major Constant must see what they want."
Then, speaking very earnestly to me, he exclaimed: "I count upon your devotion, major; do what you can." And instantly he re-entered the chapel, and I drew the curtain across its doors.
There was now, I suppose, an interval of ten good seconds in which I had an opportunity to think. Two alternatives faced me—I might either draw my sword and meet the men as they entered, or feign fraternity and so try to disarm their suspicions. The latter course occurred to me as the wiser, and without a moment's hesitation I sprang upon the bed and drew the heavy counterpane over my shoulders. The thing was hardly done when the door burst open and some ten men entered the room. They were Cossacks of the Guard, and every man had his sword drawn.
I know little of the Russian tongue, but the few words that I have were sufficient to tell me that the first cry uttered by the leader of the men was for light. This was echoed down the stairs, and presently there came a sergeant with a lantern and another behind him with a wax candle in his hand.
I had not moved during the interval, and I lay still yet a little while. The fellows began to peer about immediately, and of course they soon discovered me upon the bed. Then, truly, I thought that I had not a minute to live. There were the barbarians, savage as it seemed in the lust of blood. There was I as helpless as a bullock at the slaughter. They had but to cut and thrust, and the story of Surgeon-Major Constant would have been written for all time. You may imagine how my heart beat while I waited to feel the prick of the steel and wondered how death in such a shape would come.
To a man so placed delay is but an agony anew. I could have prayed that they would strike swiftly, and when they did not strike I laughed aloud like a woman grown hysterical.
God in heaven, how I laughed! Sitting up in the bed and watching that ring of steel, no hyena in the wilderness uttered such sounds as I. The best joke that was ever told could never have moved me as that perilous situation. Not for my life, not even for the life of His Majesty, was I acting thus; nay, if a man had offered me ten thousand golden pieces to have recovered my serenity, the money would have been lost for ever.
Well, the effect upon the Cossacks was amazing. I have never had a doubt that the first of the band had already raised his sabre to thrust me through when this weird fit overtook me. The wonder of it held his hand and left him powerless. He stood there looking at me as though he had come suddenly upon a madman. Possibly I laughed, as men will at times, with an air which is infectious, compelling others to take up the catch, and certainly depriving them of their anger. Be that as it may, there were fellows laughing in that bedroom before I had done, and anon the whole company roared aloud with me. Such a thing was like a sudden vision of life to a man whom death had held by both hands. In a twinkling I had got my courage back, and what was but an ailment had become a stratagem. If laughter could save the Emperor, then was I the man. Soon I began to sing the "Ram, ram, ram, ram, plan, tire-lire ram plan," and shouted it with all my lungs and danced a step before them. They in their turn clapped me on the back with their sabres and cried for drink.
"You will find it in the salle à manger," said I, speaking to one of them in French, and then, opening my mouth and making the sign of a man drinking, I caught the fellow by the arm and dragged him down the stairs. The others followed like sheep that would go into a fold. We were all drinking about the table in less than no time, and an hour had not run before the whole troop of them were as drunk as sailors at Toulon.
I say they were drunk, but a man must have been in Russia to know how very drunk they were.
This was no mere rollicking, no shouting of songs or bawling of catches, but right-down deep drinking, and upon that a stupor which bore a very good likeness to death. I watched them tumbling to the floor one by one, and, spurning their bodies aside with my foot, I remembered His Majesty and went back to him. He was still standing at the stairs head where I had left him, and Mademoiselle Kyra was still by his side.
"Well," says he; and I told him at a breath.
"There's an end of this until daybreak," said I. "Your Majesty can go now."
He did not speak, leaving it to the girl, who went slowly to the window and, opening it a little way, looked out across the field of snow. Then she shut the casement quickly and came back to us.
"They are watching the house," she said quietly. "It is as I thought. They know your Majesty is here, and are waiting for you."
"Then let them find me instead," said I immediately, and, stepping up to the Emperor, I begged the loan of his cloak and cocked hat. "You will find mine a little large, but they will serve, sire," said I. "If I draw off the troop, well and good. If not, your Majesty may yet find a way."
He looked at me in his own way, as one whom danger amused rather than dismayed.
"I will send a regiment of hussars to bring you back," he exclaimed, pinching my ear as he was wont to do when pleased. Then he handed me his cloak and cocked hat and I donned them as though the joke were entirely to my liking. For all that, I knew very well what I was doing, and I would not have valued my life at a lira's purchase when I left him at the stairs head and went down.
Mademoiselle stood by his side then, and they were deep in talk. I might have said that I was forgotten already, and that may have been true enough. Men have died for Napoleon Bonaparte, knowing well that their very names would be unremembered when the sun rose again. Others will imitate them, for such is the spirit his gifts of kingship have inspired.
*****
It was the dead of night when I went out, and not a sign of the old hag. I believed then that she had betrayed us, and had I met her that would have been the last hour she had lived. But, as I say, she had clean vanished, and the only lackey visible was dead asleep by the stove in the hall. Very softly now I pushed open the outer doors and looked about me. The spectacle was wonderfully beautiful, but as menacing as it was glorious. A great full moon shone down upon a scene that should have stood in a magic land. Earth and sky alike were aglow with the entrancing lights of winter made magnificent. The cold was intense beyond belief: the frost made a diamond of every pebble the foot crushed. And upon it all was the stillness of God's death.... the silence of a land which an Eastern winter had shrouded.
Thus for the beauty of the scene. The menace was no less remarkable. There, frosted already, were the corpses of the sentinels the Russians had murdered. To reach the open I must step over the prone figures of brother Frenchmen and look into their staring eyes. The shudder was still upon me when I heard a cry of savage triumph, and knew that the Cossacks were upon me. The troop which Mademoiselle Kyra had seen from the window rode out of the shadows even as I crossed the threshold. They fell upon me as wolves upon a carcass, and no fowl was trussed as surely while a man could have counted twenty.
Imagine the exultation of these men, who believed that they had captured the greatest of Frenchmen, living or dead, and were carrying him to their general.
The first transports passed, their sense of prudence returned to them, and with it a deference which should have won laughter from a log! The Emperor of the French a prisoner in their hands! Heaven above me, how they bowed and capered! What antics they cut! Never had a man such slaves at his feet. I was set upon a horse immediately, and had a guard at the head and tail of him. The officer saluted until his arm must have been weary. He had caught the Emperor—what a night!
Our way lay over the snows to the Cossack camp upon the far side. Behind me there shone the lights of the house I had quitted, bright stars beyond a frozen sea. I knew that the next hour would find me in the Russian general's tent, and that my shrift must be short. What mattered the regiment of hussars the Emperor was to send? My body would be frozen on the snows before they could ride out.
Upon this there fell an apathy difficult to understand.
We had suffered so much during those terrible days—hunger and thirst, and blood and wounds—that any man might have opened his arms to death as to a friend. And here was the end of it for me. What mattered it? In a vision, I beheld the lights of my own France, the home which sheltered all dear to me, the land towards which my eyes had been lifted these many weeks. Never again might I look upon that smiling country. Night and the unknown were my portion. There would be few to remember my name to-morrow.
From such thoughts a reality most absurd awoke me.
I have set down this narrative of events as I lived and knew them, and have kept nothing from you, that you may judge of things, not as we look for them, but as an unromantic destiny determines that they shall be.
I say that I awoke with a start, believing myself to be upon a horse and at the very threshold of the Russian camp. Depict my astonishment when, opening my eyes, I beheld again madame's salle à manger, the tables spread with meat and drink, the forms of the intoxicated Russians on the floor all about me, and above them the red coats of our own Hussars of the Guard! For an instant I believed that the witch in ermine had cast a spell upon me, and that this was but a vision of her enchantment. Then the merry laughter of my own comrades disillusioned me and I staggered, dizzy and dumbfounded, to my feet.
"Name of a dog," I cried to them, "and what does this mean?"
They answered me with a merriment which became a shout.
"It means that the liquor was very good and that you got very drunk," says their captain, clapping me on the shoulder ... and at him I stared all bewildered.
"Drunk!" I cried. "You say that I was drunk!"
"Undoubtedly.... His Majesty told us to take care of you...."
"Then he is not here?" I exclaimed in wonder.
"He is already six leagues on the road to Wilna," was the answer. A child might have put me over at that. I clapped my hands to my fevered brow and began to believe them. Drunk I had been ... but by drink had I saved the Emperor's life.
And I had done him an injustice in my dream. He has not forgotten, as I knew full well.
You will see how it all happened, and will need no further words from me.
Taking the Cossacks down to madame's salle à manger to keep them from the Emperor, I also had been overpowered by their cursed liquor, and had fallen under the table with the rest of them. There I dreamed of Russian camps, and France, and death, and all the nonsense of it, and there I awoke to find our own Red Hussars in possession of the dwelling. How they laughed at me! Yet what music their laughter proved to be!
As to old Madame Zchekofsky, I veritably believe that she played a double part that night with all a woman's cunning. Desiring the Emperor's friendship, she encouraged his belief in her daughter's power of prophecy, at the same time trying to keep in with the Russians by informing them of our presence in the house at a moment when she believed we would already have left it. Thus her anxiety and that disquiet I had observed with such misgiving.
I saw her in Paris in the memorable year 1815, and her daughter was with her. Naturally my nephew Léon desired to know so mysterious a personage, and I fancy she found his gifts of prophecy not less considerable than her own. This, however, was long after the terrible weeks when so many thousands of brave Frenchmen left their bones upon the snows of Russia because the Emperor had willed it.
The Emperor was often in personal danger during the retreat from Moscow, but never more so, I think, than after the Battle of Krasnoë.
You must depict us at this time as a rabble rather than an army. There were few regiments save those of the Guard which maintained even a semblance of order. Men fell out at a whim. We had nothing upon either side of us but the frozen steppes and the woods in which the wolves howled. Our own people had burned the villages through which we straggled towards a distant horizon of our salvation. The road itself was black with the bodies of the dying and dead. I shall not dwell upon such pitiful scenes, but recall only those which seem to me of interest to my fellow countrymen.
Often have I been asked how the Emperor carried himself during these days, and that is a question which I have made some attempt already to answer.
Chiefly he walked with the grenadiers. There were occasions when he entered his famous travelling carriage, and passed some hours in it; but no one was more ready than he to share the hardships of the journey, and certainly none faced peril with a greater sang-froid. How it came about that His Majesty escaped disaster, I cannot tell you. There were many occasions when a little courage upon the part of the Cossacks would have destroyed the hope of France for ever. So often were we who guarded him but a palsied band of nondescripts, that I wonder to this day at that hesitation which allowed the greatest of our soldiers to slip through Russian hands.
Let me give you an instance to show what I mean.
It was the morning of November 25th. We had passed a forlorn village some miles beyond Krasnoë. The column was headed by a bevy of generals, few of whom were mounted. Behind them there marched a miserable company of officers, all dragging themselves along painfully, and not a few of them having their feet frozen, and wrapped in rugs or bits of sheepskin. The Emperor himself marched in the midst of the cavalry of the Guard. He went on foot, and carried a baton. His cloak was large and lined with fur, and upon his head he wore a dark red velvet cap with a trimming of black fox. Prince Murat walked on his right-hand side, and on his left Prince Eugène, while behind him came the Marshals Berthier, Ney, Mortier, and Lefebvre, with others whose regiments had been almost annihilated in the recent battles.
Behind these again were the officers and non-commissioned officers of the Guard. There were seven or eight hundred of them walking in perfect silence, and carrying the eagles of their different regiments. The scene itself was an open plain glistening with frost, and often broken by those dismal clumps of pines with which we were so familiar. A village lay ahead of us, a ravine and a river upon our right hand. We knew that the Cossacks were sheltered by the distant woods, and that any moment might bring them down upon us. And yet we went as stolidly as men who are marching from a field of victory.
Is it to be wondered at that the Russians were perplexed by these tactics, and that even the boldest of them had no heart for a venture which would have destroyed the hope of France in a twinkling?
This is not to tell you that they did not attack us. Hardly had we come up to the outskirts of the village when we perceived a battery drawn up by the river and another before the very gates of the hamlet. We had no guns with us at the moment, and we stood there like sheep while the Russians pounded us and their shells decimated our tottering ranks. Lame and helpless and weary, weakened by hunger and the perils of the march, who would have said that so pitiful a force could have withstood the assault even of five thousand brave men? Yet, as I say, they were content to pound us with their artillery, and although we saw great masses of their cavalry about the village, never once did they charge us as we expected them to do.
Presently our own guns came up, and we were able to meet the enemy on better terms. Marshal Ney now put himself at the head of the chasseurs, and boldly charged the Cossacks to the left of the village. His troops suffered severely in this onset, and when he returned to us the frozen plain was dotted with the writhing forms of our countrymen who had been shot down. These poor fellows had suffered so much during recent days that for the most part they died without a struggle. Such as survived were left to the mercy of the Russians, for we were in no position to help them, and we had to suffer the mortifying spectacle of seeing the wounded stripped bare and left upon the snows by the fiends who came out of the woods.
I thought surely that His Majesty was lost this day, and when I saw him standing in the very path of the shells, surrounded by no more than forty Fusiliers of the Guard, it seemed indeed to me that the end had come. The Cossacks had but to charge and their booty would have been sure. That they did not do so must be set down to those motives of prudence which animated their General Kutusoff to the end. He knew that the Grand Army was perishing before his eyes, and that the elements would do what the Russians themselves had left undone. When he retired that day we must have lost at least three thousand men, who were left in the hands of his butchers.
But the Emperor was saved by such cowardice, and he slept that night in the village which Kutusoff's guns had failed to hold.
The morning broke clear and sunny, but hardly were we upon the road when the north wind began to blow and our sufferings to recommence. The Russians had drawn off for the time being, and we neither saw them nor heard their guns. The troops themselves, no longer fearing an attack, marched in that disorder of which I have spoken. Hardly a regiment could have been distinguished even by one familiar with our army. We were but scattered groups of malcontents, and every man thought only of his own safety.
I had not seen my nephew Léon during the battle, and was very glad to re-discover him not far from the bivouac. He was marching with other officers of the Vélites when I came up, and I perceived at once that he had made a captive. The latter might, at the first glance, have been taken for a lad of seventeen, clad in stout riding-breeches, and wearing a tunic of rich fur.
The bright eyes of the prisoner and the cheerful manner evidently won upon my comrades, and I was not very much astonished to discover presently that the prisoner was of the other sex, and to hear that she had been caught in the village that very morning, and herself had volunteered to show us the road to the Bérézina.
Such things happened almost every day while we were in Russia, and for a native woman to adopt the garb of a soldier was by no means an uncommon thing. The only difference in this case was that the girl herself appeared to be well born, and beyond the station where such monkey tricks would be looked for. It occurred to me at once that she might have been sent out to betray us, and I spoke of it to Léon before he had gone a league.
"Where did you find her?" I asked him.
He parried the question, as a young man would when he has found a companion to his liking.
"She came out of the last house in the village just as we were marching past. I wish I could understand their cursed lingo, mon oncle. I think she comes from a place called Druobona, but am not very sure. In either case, it does not matter," he added carelessly, "for I do not suppose she will go back there when we have done with her."
This was said with a laugh which I did not like to hear, and I rebuked him sharply for his levity.
"The girl is well born," said I, "and this is neither the place nor the time to think of such things. Why do you allow her to go upon such an errand at all? Are there not other guides?"
He looked at me slyly.
"None so pretty, mon oncle; and besides, a man can always make a woman understand. She will get us very well to the Bérézina, and there we shall send her back with a present."
"Of horseflesh," said I; and then: "The whole thing is nonsense, and you are likely to pay a high price for her company. Remember what I am saying."
He promised to do so, but immediately linked his arm in hers and began to sing one of our old marching songs. We must have gone another league before he told me that her home was in a village some few miles to the south of the route the army was taking, but really upon the old main road to the Bérézina.
"You and I will give them the slip at dusk," said he, "and take our luck again. I will wager the girl's honesty against a hundred crowns. We can stop the night at her father's house and get food. Do not look so displeased, mon oncle. We will take twenty of our fellows to see that the Cossacks do not cut our throats, and we shall be half a day's march on the road to the river before the army has left the next bivouac."
I did not like the idea of it, but when a man is making love to a pretty woman, and she has asked him to her house, there is an end of the argument.
Petrovka, for such the men would call the girl, certainly disarmed suspicion by her frank airs and the merry laughter which lighted up her eyes. She made a handsome boy enough, and it was good to see her dancing across the snow which so many trod with difficulty, and to hear the cheering words of encouragement she bestowed upon all who lagged behind.
The men had come to believe that she was quite a mascot, and soon we must have had a hundred and fifty of the Guard about our party. This was unexpected and not in accord with friend Léon's plan. I believe it had been his secret hope that he and I should go alone to her father's house, but when the sun began to sink upon the horizon, and we left the main road for one which branched towards the south, the whole company followed us immediately. Vain to tell them that our errand was private. The time had passed when officers could have their will in such matters as this; and so it befell that exactly a hundred and fifty men set out to share Petrovka's hospitality, and were determined to enjoy it whatever the difficulties.
We went marching and singing, and utterly regardless of any perils that might await us upon the road.
For that matter, we saw no Cossacks, and even our old friends the wolves were silent.
The country itself had become less monotonous, and we soon found ourselves in a deep ravine, whose rugged cliffs were capped by the frozen pines.
Here there was a wonderful suggestion of remoteness and solitude; but it occurred to me, nevertheless, that it might be the very spot for an ambush, and I insisted upon a halt until our vedettes had made their reports. We even sent a man up to the heights above to be quite sure that the Cossacks were not camped in the thickets. When these had reported that no living thing moved in all that drear place, we followed Petrovka again and began to think of supper.
She had told us that it was just three leagues from the high road to her father's house, but we must have marched at least five before we came, without warning, upon a miserable village, the outstanding feature of which was the low and straggling farmhouse with a mighty barn at the southern end of it. Of a seigneur's habitation there was no sign whatever, and I found it difficult to believe that Petrovka's father could inhabit such a shabby dwelling as that to which she now led us. When we asked her if it were indeed her home, she, to our great astonishment, answered us in French, and replied that it was not.
"My father lives many, many leagues from here," she said, and laughed at the words. "This is the house of the moujik Serges. He was one of my father's servants, and he will feed you, my lords." And this she said with so pretty a grace that our anger was mollified in a moment.
"Why did you pretend not to speak French?" I asked her next.
She shook her head and said that she did not know.
"You make me laugh so much when you talk Russian," she said. I believe that to have been true.
Nevertheless, I was not easy. We had come upon a false errand, and it remained to be seen what was the end of it.
"Let every man look to his powder," said I to Léon, as we entered the precincts of the farm. "The devil and a woman are never far apart; mind that we have not caught the pair of them."
He retorted that it did not very much matter either way. Whatever befell us at the farm could be no worse than the peril of the high road and of such a bitter night as this.
Not only was it black and dark by this time, but the north wind blew intolerably, and our very bones seemed shrunken.
You will imagine, therefore, that the baying of the hounds about the farm was as music to us; and you can depict us beating heavily upon the farmer's door, while Petrovka cried aloud in Russian that we were friends.
This settled the matter, and an old and grizzled peasant appeared immediately, and stood bowing on the threshold. I disliked the look of him from the first, and shall always remember the hawk-like eyes which he turned upon our company. Yet what had we to fear from the handful of serfs who now gathered about him—we, a hundred and fifty men of the Guard, with our muskets in our hands?
And was there not Petrovka, with her laughing eyes—Petrovka, who told the old man that he would be paid for all that we had—Petrovka, who petted him and pulled his long beard as though she loved every hair of it. She stood as our hostage, and she knew it—the pretty little girl.
Well, we soon discovered that the kitchen of the farm would accommodate no more than the officers of the company, and it behoved the others to seek the shelter of the barn. This they did with a very good grace, for it was a substantial edifice, with a monstrous fireplace at one end and a well-stacked granary at the other. Soon there were flames roaring up the ancient chimney, a babel of talk, and the going to and fro of men who saw themselves supping handsomely for the first time for many a day. We, meanwhile, were ensconced in the farmer's kitchen, with nearly the half of an ox roasting in his gigantic oven and an aroma of well-warmed wine which did one good to smell.
The evening promised to be the most comfortable we had enjoyed since we left Moscow—so little did we foresee what lay beyond our present content.
There were a good many bedrooms in the farmer's house, and some of these were very properly given up to the officers.
I shared a room with Léon, whose window immediately overlooked the barn wherein our men were still enjoying the unexpected carousal.
Mademoiselle Petrovka, in her turn, said that she would sleep with the girls of the house, and the last I saw of her before retiring was at the moment when Master Léon blew out the candle for the purpose of wishing her good-night. Escaping from his embrace, she climbed the narrow staircase and shut the door at the head of it upon us, while we, amazed to discover beds, made haste to enjoy so unexpected a luxury.
Never before in my life, I swear, did I know the meaning of good blankets as I learned it that bitter night, when the north wind swept the dismal plain and the pines were swaying in a dirge of death. For that matter, I do not think that my nephew and myself could wholly appreciate the reality of our good fortune, and I lay for some time beneath the heavySteppdeckewondering if we had not dreamt the whole of it. Such warmth and comfort were not to be imagined, and we found it almost impossible to believe that thousands of our comrades were then shivering and suffering upon the great high road, and many of them, I doubt not, falling to the terrible sleep from which no day should wake them.
We, on the contrary, might have been the children of this hospitable house. Well fed and warmed by wine, we fell into so profound a sleep anon that nothing but the terrible tragedy which ensued could have wakened us. Alas! that it was so very terrible! I hardly know how to tell you of it.
Some say that it was nearly four in the morning when the first alarm arose. I cannot be sure about so trivial a circumstance, nor is it of any interest. In my sleep it seemed to me that men were shouting about the house, while a great flame of crimson light burned my eyes and forbade me to open them. A man has the same sensation when he tries to look at the sun at noon, and it may be answered that he is a fool to do anything of the kind. So, in my own case, I did not open my eyes for a long time, and not until Léon's strong hand dragged me from the bed did I understand what was happening.
"Wake up, mon oncle!" says he in a sharper voice than ordinary. "Don't you see that the place is afire?"
It was a word to arouse any man, and I staggered up when I heard it, rubbing my eyes and trying to understand him.
"How?" cried I. "The farm afire? Why, then, did you not wake me before?"
"I have been trying to do so for the last five minutes, but you sleep like a Gascon, mon oncle. Get your clothes on and follow me. There will not be a man of them alive if we don't make haste."
With this he ran down the stairs, and left me groping in the fitful light for my tunic and the heavy sable coat which I had brought out of Russia.
It was clear by this time that the fire had begun in the barn which harboured so many of our men, and that it had not yet reached the buildings we occupied. For all that, it promised to be a terrible conflagration, and my ears were assailed already by the woeful screams of the wretched company, themselves waking to the peril. What kept the poor fellows in the barn, I knew no more than the dead. I could see two great doors opening upon the yard, and they were wide enough to let a wagon go through. Yet no one unbarred them, and all the time flames and smoke were pouring from the thatch above, and the shrieks of the imprisoned growing louder. This perplexed me beyond words, and it was not until I had shaken the heavy sleep from my eyes that the thought of treachery occurred to me, and I began to understand much that had happened.
The monster of a farmer who had lured us here—he had done it, I said, and God knows, if I had had my hand about his throat at the moment, I would have strangled the life out of him.
Well, I bounded down the stairs at the thought, and found myself immediately amid my brother officers, who were striving like madmen to set their compatriots free. Unable to hear a word that was spoken, I nevertheless understood by their gestures that the main gates of the barn had been bolted and barred, and that, until they could be unlocked, the only chance for our fellows was the narrow window at the southern end. For this I now made, Léon at my side, and others as ready to risk their lives in the face of such a disaster.
Let me tell you that the roar of the conflagration was like that of a sea beating angrily upon a barren shore. Commingled with it were the sounds of rending woodwork and the screams of men already burning in the flames; while all was made worse by the intolerable north wind which swept about the building and howled dismally beneath the frozen eaves.
This paralysed the faculties, so that even the bravest found his limbs benumbed and his brain bewildered. No company of raw recruits could have worked to less purpose—some crying for hatchets, some vainly for water, yet all incapable of rendering any useful aid, and all equally terrified by the spectacle they beheld. Alas! to see those pitiful faces at the window of the barn above; to watch the flames creeping about them; to behold them fall one by one into the deadly furnace behind them; and to know that they were Frenchmen and brethren! Such was the price of the brief respite we had enjoyed; such was the hospitality that the woman Petrovka had shown us.
Someone got a ladder about this time, and others found axes in the wood-house of the farm. I was among the latter, and I remember with what fury our little party attacked the great front gates and tried to force an entrance. Could we but burst the bolt, our comrades were free in a twinkling; and you may imagine how we went at it—the blows which we struck, and the curses we uttered.
Minute by minute now the flames were creeping toward this end of the barn. We had no need of lanterns; the snow was blood-red, and the very wood stood out as though the sun were setting and the night not yet begun. Had we any longer a doubt that treachery had fired the barn, the disappearance of the Russians themselves would have clenched the argument. Not a peasant did we see, not a man or woman of those who had served us last night and welcomed us with such smiling faces. The whole farm had become a desert, and, be sure, that of them all Petrovka had been the first to go.
Such was my opinion for a long time, and it endured until, to my great astonishment, I perceived her at Léon's side, and saw that he was in close talk with her. Good God! that a man could have argued with such a woman when his comrades were perishing—that he did not strike her down where she stood! Any other but Léon would have done so; yet, when was the day that a woman's eyes could not win him?
All this went through my head in a flash as I hewed at the giant doors and called upon my comrades to redouble their efforts. The shrieks within the building were now most dreadful to hear. None but a man of iron could have remained deaf to the piercing cries which marked the approach of the fire and told us that our task must be impotent. None the less, we worked with a vigour unimaginable, while the heat became choking, and showers of glowing sparks rained down upon us. The very snow was melted far away from the barn by this time; the sky had turned blood red; the branches of the trees were burning. The great door alone stood between our comrades and salvation.
In the end we beat this in, and an aperture was made. Through that we dragged some thirty men and carried them quickly to the farm. Poor fellows, they were terribly burned, and their flesh fell from their bones as we lifted them. What lay beyond in that holocaust I did not dare to inquire. The barn was now but a roaring furnace; the cries had ceased; the moaning of the fire and the night wind alone remained.
I have told you that we laid our stricken comrades in the farmhouse and there did what we could for them. So great was their need that the immediate necessity of relieving it put everything else into the shade, and it was not until we had dressed their wounds and done our best to make them comfortable that I so much as remembered the woman Petrovka. Perhaps I should not have thought of her even then but for the fact that a sudden clamour discovered her in the room, and, turning about, I witnessed a violent altercation between her and one of the sick, who raised himself up from the mattress where they had laid him, and cried out that she had fired the barn.
"The she-devil!" he yelled in his frenzy. "I saw her do it, comrades; I swear she was the woman!"
Such an accusation naturally arrested the attention of everyone in the room. Léon himself had gone out again with others to prevent the fire from spreading to the neighbouring buildings, and there was no one there but myself who knew anything of Petrovka. The effect of the accusation upon the sick and the hale was almost magical. They did not ask for the man's proof, nor seek to question him, but, seizing the girl by the arm, they would have struck her down there and then had I not intervened.
"Come, come," said I; "we must do nothing in haste," for though I had been willing enough an hour ago to have acted upon an impulse, the heat of passion had passed and a sense of justice prevailed.
If this girl had indeed fired the barn, I would not lift a hand to save her; but we had only the chasseur's word for it, and he was already far gone in delirium. So it seemed to me that we owed her at least the formality of a trial, and, rushing in before those who held her, I commanded them to hear me.
"Gentlemen," said I, "this woman is a Russian and well born. It is difficult to believe that she would have done so foul a thing. If she be guilty she must pay the penalty, but let us hear her first. You will all admit the justice of that. Let her be tried and put to the proof, but do not do anything of which you may repent to-morrow."
They heard me with impatience. The child herself clung to me, frantic with terror, her eyes imploring me and her body trembling with fear. Her words were almost incoherent, but nevertheless they denied the truth of the charge vehemently and implored me for God's sake to save her. So much I do not believe I could have done but for Léon, who entered the room at the moment, and, perceiving the situation, leaped towards her, drawing his sword as he did so.
"By the God in heaven," cried he, "I will cut down any man who lays a finger on her." And it needed but a glance at him to see that he meant every word of it.
Such determination was not without its effect. There were both officers and troopers in the room, but I was the senior in command, and I never lost sight of the fact for a moment.
"Gentlemen," said I, "name three of you to act with me as judges in this matter, and I promise you satisfaction. If the woman be guilty she shall be hanged. Come now—is not this a proper course to take? Some of you will have daughters of your own. Do not forget them at such a moment as this."
They assented to the proposition, though I could see that they were far from being appeased. There was a hurried consultation among them, and then the intimation that they had chosen Captains Legard and Fournier, of the fusiliers, and Major Duhesne, of thechasseurs à cheval, to act with my nephew and myself. The major stood as spokesman for the others, and first addressed the company.
"It must be here in this room, gentlemen," he said; "the witness cannot be moved; we will try the woman here." And that was a claim none could contest.
I shall never forget the scene which now ensued, nor the grim drama we played in that mean farmhouse during the next ten minutes. All about us were the tumbled mattresses and the stricken forms of the men who had been scorched by the flames. Common rushlights and miserable lanterns afforded the only illumination that we had. The trial was held about the stove, whereby there lay the sick man who had denounced Petrovka. She herself was set in a circle amid her judges, while the man was commanded by me to repeat the accusation he had made. He did so with a restraint which astonished me when I remembered his sufferings. Raising himself up in bed, he turned his haggard eyes upon the woman and told us what he knew.
"I was asleep in the little loft of the barn," he said; "then I heard a sound of someone moving in the straw about me. Thinking it was one of our men, I asked him what he did there; but there was no answer, and for a little while nobody stirred. Presently I heard a crackling sound and smelt fire, and at that I looked up and saw the thatch was ablaze. Then there came light in the place, and I saw the woman. She was creeping down the ladder, but I recognised her all the same. She stands there, messieurs, and she knows that it is true."
A deep cry of anger escaped the auditors when the man had done. Obviously he did not lie, and his evidence staggered even me. Petrovka herself heard him with a wonder no art could have aped, and her very attitude was an appeal to reason where I was concerned.
Upon my comrades its effect was far otherwise. There were shouts of "à mort!" from every quarter of the room. Some said, "Let her speak!" others were for not hearing her at all. My loud word of command alone saved her from the imminence of death.
"Gentlemen," said I, "this story is all very well, but it is possible that this man may be mistaken. What confirmation have you of the story? Let the girl speak for herself; I see she is ready."
I turned to Petrovka, and was astonished at her new demeanour. She appeared to have recovered her composure altogether. Her face was pale but wonderfully beautiful. She had removed her cap, and her almost golden hair fell upon her shoulders in a disorder pretty to see. Looking from one to the other of us, she declared her innocence.
"Frenchmen," she said, "I was never in the loft of the barn at all. My father is a Russian noble—do we stoop to such crimes as this? I am a woman, and I have a woman's heart; why do you accuse me of such wickedness?"
It was a proud defiance, but it availed her nothing. No one believed her, and all in the room, save Léon and myself, desired her death. In vain I put it to them that some other woman from the farm might have done the deed. They would hear nothing, and presently they began to cry "Vote—vote!" and instantly the others held up their hands and proclaimed her guilty.
Now this was a terrible moment for me, and not the less terrible to my nephew. Hurriedly we drew apart and began to ask each other what could be done. It was plain that we had the whole company against us, and at the best we could but hope to temporise. The one thing to do was to save the child from a vengeance which certainly would not be tempered by mercy, and in the hope of this I now addressed myself to the other judges.
"The girl is well born, as you can see," said I; "it is idle to suppose she has done such a thing. Beware that you do not pay heavily for your haste. We shall overtake the army in the morning, and the matter can be referred to head-quarters. You would be much wiser to let it go there. Do you desire the girl's death? I cannot believe it, gentlemen."
It was all unavailing.
"We have judged her," said the major, "and she is plainly guilty. My determination is to hang her without ceremony, and that," he said, turning to his companions, "is the vote of the majority."
Now Léon had listened to this moment without protest, but these words were too much for him. Catching Petrovka suddenly by the arm, he drew her close to him, and whipped his sword from his scabbard as one who would brook no denial.
"By God," said he, "you shall do nothing of the kind!"
It was a brave deed, and would to God it could have saved her. Unhappily such heroism as this is well enough in a story, but of little avail when the realities of life are at stake. There were twenty men atop of my nephew before another word could be uttered, and dragging Petrovka from his arms, they carried her triumphantly from the room.
She did not utter a single cry. I thought there was a smile upon her face, but it was the look of a woman who knows how to suffer.