adman--just to keep a
little warmth and courage in me."

"Poor Philippe, I have nothing--nothing! But where's your general,--in
this house?"

"No, don't go there; the place is full of wounded. Go up the street;
you'll find on your left a sort of pig-pen; the general is there.
Good-bye, old fellow. If we ever dance a trenis on a Paris floor--"

He did not end his sentence; the north wind blew at that moment with
such ferocity that the aide-de-camp hurried on to escape being frozen,
and the lips of Major de Sucy stiffened. Silence reigned, broken only
by the moans which came from the house, and the dull sound made by the
major's horse as it chewed in a fury of hunger the icy bark of the trees
with which the house was built. Monsieur de Sucy replaced his sabre in
its scabbard, took the bridle of the precious horse he had hitherto been
able to preserve, and led it, in spite of the animal's resistance, from
the wretched fodder it appeared to think excellent.

"We'll start, Bichette, we'll start! There's none but you, my beauty,
who can save Stephanie. Ha! by and bye you and I may be able to
rest--and die," he added.

Philippe, wrapped in a fur pelisse, to which he owed his preservation
and his energy, began to run, striking his feet hard upon the frozen
snow to keep them warm. Scarcely had he gone a few hundred yards from
the village than he saw a blaze in the direction of the place where,
since morning, he had left his carriage in charge of his former orderly,
an old soldier. Horrible anxiety laid hold of him. Like all others who
were controlled during this fatal retreat by some powerful sentiment, he
found a strength to save his friends which he could not have put forth
to save himself.

Presently he reached a slight declivity at the foot of which, in a
spot sheltered from the enemy's balls, he had stationed the carriage,
containing a young woman, the companion of his childhood, the being most
dear to him on earth. At a few steps distant from the vehicle he now
found a company of some thirty stragglers collected around an immense
fire, which they were feeding with planks, caisson covers, wheels, and
broken carriages. These soldiers were, no doubt, the last comers of that
crowd who, from the base of the hill of Studzianka to the fatal river,
formed an ocean of heads intermingled with fires and huts,--a living
sea, swayed by motions that were almost imperceptible, and giving forth
a murmuring sound that rose at times