ebony crop on Colonel Feraud's head, coarse and
crinkly like a cap of horsehair, showed many silver threads about the
temples. A detestable warfare of ambushes and inglorious surprises had
not improved his temper. The beaklike curve of his nose was unpleasantly
set off by deep folds on each side of his mouth. The round orbits of his
eyes radiated fine wrinkles. More than ever he recalled an irritable
and staring fowl--something like a cross between a parrot and an owl.
He still manifested an outspoken dislike for "intriguing fellows." He
seized every opportunity to state that he did not pick up his rank in
the anterooms of marshals.

The unlucky persons, civil or military, who, with an intention of being
pleasant, begged Colonel Feraud to tell them how he came by that very
apparent scar on the forehead, were astonished to find themselves
snubbed in various ways, some of which were simply rude and others
mysteriously sardonic. Young officers were warned kindly by their more
experienced comrades not to stare openly at the colonel's scar. But,
indeed, an officer need have been very young in his profession not
to have heard the legendary tale of that duel originating in some
mysterious, unforgivable offence.

III

The retreat from Moscow submerged all private feelings in a sea of
disaster and misery. Colonels without regiments, D'Hubert and Feraud
carried the musket in the ranks of the sacred battalion--a battalion
recruited from officers of all arms who had no longer any troops to
lead.

In that battalion promoted colonels did duty as sergeants; the generals
captained the companies; a marshal of France, Prince of the Empire,
commanded the whole. All had provided themselves with muskets picked
up on the road, and cartridges taken from the dead. In the general
destruction of the bonds of discipline and duty holding together the
companies, the battalions, the regiments, the brigades and divisions
of an armed host, this body of men put their pride in preserving some
semblance of order and formation. The only stragglers were those who
fell out to give up to the frost their exhausted souls. They plodded on
doggedly, stumbling over the corpses of men, the carcasses of horses,
the fragments of gun-carriages, covered by the white winding-sheet of
the great disaster. Their passage did not disturb the mortal silence of
the plains, shining with a livid light under a sky the colour of ashes.
Whirlwinds of snow ran along the