Ah, what an evil dream of the night it seems! Blood and ice. Ice and
blood. Fierce faces with snow upon the whiskers. Blue hands held out
for succour. And across the great white plain the one long black line
of moving figures, trudging, trudging, a hundred miles, another hundred,
and still always the same white plain. Sometimes there were fir-woods
to limit it, sometimes it stretched away to the cold blue sky, but the
black line stumbled on and on. Those weary, ragged, starving men, the
spirit frozen out of them, looked neither to right nor left, but with
sunken faces and rounded backs trailed onward and ever onward, making
for France as wounded beasts make for their lair. There was no speaking,
and you could scarce hear the shuffle of feet in the snow. Once only I
heard them laugh. It was outside Wilna, when an aide-de-camp rode up to
the head of that dreadful column and asked if that were the Grand Army.
All who were within hearing looked round, and when they saw those broken
men, those ruined regiments, those fur-capped skeletons who were once
the Guard, they laughed, and the laugh crackled down the column like a
feu de joie. I have heard many a groan and cry and scream in my life,
but nothing so terrible as the laugh of the Grand Army.

But why was it that these helpless men were not destroyed by the
Russians? Why was it that they were not speared by the Cossacks or
herded into droves, and driven as prisoners into the heart of Russia? On
every side as you watched the black snake winding over the snow you
saw also dark, moving shadows which came and went like cloud drifts on
either flank and behind. They were the Cossacks, who hung round us like
wolves round the flock.

But the reason why they did not ride in upon us was that all the ice of
Russia could not cool the hot hearts of some of our soldiers. To the end
there were always those who were ready to throw themselves between these
savages and their prey. One man above all rose greater as the danger
thickened, and won a higher name amid disaster than he had done when he
led our van to victory. To him I drink this glass--to Ney, the red-maned
Lion, glaring back over his shoulder at the enemy who feared to tread
too closely on his heels. I can see him now, his broad white face
convulsed with fury, his light blue eyes sparkling like flints, his
great voice roaring and crashing amid the roll of the musketry. His
glazed and featherless cocked hat was the ensign upon wh