he blows of the sabre given to what remained of Bichette in search
of her tenderest morsels. A few miserable creatures, perhaps more weary
than the rest, were sleeping; when one of their number rolled into the
fire no one attempted to help him out. These stern logicians argued that
if he were not dead his burns would warn him to find a safer place. If
the poor wretch waked in the flames and perished, no one cared. Two or
three soldiers looked at each other to justify their own indifference by
that of others. Twice this scene had taken place before the eyes of the
countess, who said nothing. When the various pieces of Bichette, placed
here and there upon the embers, were sufficiently broiled, each man
satisfied his hunger with the gluttony that disgusts us when we see it
in animals.

"This is the first time I ever saw thirty infantrymen on one horse,"
cried the grenadier who had shot the mare.

It was the only jest made that night which proved the national
character.

Soon the great number of these poor soldiers wrapped themselves in what
they could find and lay down on planks, or whatever would keep them from
contact with the snow, and slept, heedless of the morrow. When the major
was warm, and his hunger appeased, an invincible desire to sleep weighed
down his eyelids. During the short moment of his struggle against that
desire he looked at the young woman, who had turned her face to the
fire and was now asleep, leaving her closed eyes and a portion of her
forehead exposed to sight. She was wrapped in a furred pelisse and a
heavy dragoon's cloak; her head rested on a pillow stained with blood;
an astrakhan hood, kept in place by a handkerchief knotted round her
neck, preserved her face from the cold as much as possible. Her feet
were wrapped in the cloak. Thus rolled into a bundle, as it were, she
looked like nothing at all. Was she the last of the "vivandieres"?
Was she a charming woman, the glory of a lover, the queen of Parisian
salons? Alas! even the eye of her most devoted friend could trace no
sign of anything feminine in that mass of rags and tatters. Love had
succumbed to cold in the heart of a woman!

Through the thick veils of irresistible sleep, the major soon saw the
husband and wife as mere points or formless objects. The flames of the
fire, those outstretched figures, the relentless cold, waiting, not
three feet distant from that fugitive heat, became all a dream. One
importunate thought terrified Phi