the weather would change, the ground would freeze,
how welcome would be the altered conditions. But the half snow, the
half rain, still beat down upon them. Their poor beasts were almost
exhausted. They broke the ice of the Grand Morin river to get water
for the horses and themselves, and, not daring to kindle a fire, for
they were approaching the country occupied by Bluecher, they made a
scanty meal from their haversacks.

They had found the farmhouses and chateaux deserted, evidences of hasty
flight and plunder on every side. The Cossacks had swept through the
land beyond the town. The people who could had fled to Sezanne, or had
gone westward hurriedly, to escape the raiders. In the ruined villages
and farms they came across many dead bodies of old women, old men and
children, with here and there a younger woman whose awful fate filled
the old soldier and the young alike with grim and passionate rage.

"Yonder," said Marteau, gloomily pointing westward through the
darkness, "lies Aumenier and my father's house."

"And mine," added Bullet-Stopper.

There was no need to express the thought further, to dilate upon it.
It had been the Emperor's maxim that war should support war. His
armies had lived off the country. The enemy had taken a leaf out of
his own book. Even the stupid could not fight forever against Napoleon
without learning something. The allies ate up the land, ravaged it,
turned it into a desert--_lex talionis_!

Marteau's father still lived, with his younger sister. Old
Bullet-Stopper was alone in the world but for his friends. What had
happened in that little village yonder? What was going on in the great
chateau, so long closed, now finally abandoned by the proud royalist
family which had owned it and had owned Marteau and old Bullet-Stopper,
and all the rest of the villagers, for that matter, for eight hundred
years, or until the revolution had set them free?

Plunged in those gloomy thoughts the young officer involuntarily took a
step in the direction of that village.

"On the Emperor's service," said the grenadier sternly, catching his
young comrade by the arm. "Later," he continued, "we may go."

"You're right," said Marteau. "Let us move on."

Whether it was because the roads really were in a worse condition
because of that fact that they ran through marshy country, or whether
it was because the men were worn out and their horses more so, they
made the slowest progress of t