nce, Prince of the Empire,
commanded the whole. All had provided themselves with muskets picked
up on the road, and with 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 its 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, and their passage did not disturb the mortal silence of the plains,
shining with the livid light of snows under a sky the colour of
ashes. Whirlwinds ran along the fields, broke against the dark column,
enveloped it in a turmoil of flying icicles, and subsided, disclosing it
creeping on its tragic way without the swing and rhythm of the military
pace. It struggled onwards, the men exchanging neither words nor looks;
whole ranks marched touching elbow, day after day and never raising
their eyes from the ground, as if lost in despairing reflections. In the
dumb, black forests of pines the cracking of overloaded branches was the
only sound they heard. Often from daybreak to dusk no one spoke in the
whole column. It was like a macabre march of struggling corpses towards
a distant grave. Only an alarm of Cossacks could restore to their eyes a
semblance of martial resolution. The battalion faced about and deployed,
or formed square under the endless fluttering of snowflakes. A cloud of
horsemen with fur caps on their heads, levelled long lances, and yelled
"Hurrah! Hurrah!" around their menacing immobility whence, with muffled
detonations, hundreds of dark red flames darted through the air thick
with falling snow. In a very few moments the horsemen would disappear,
as if carried off yelling in the gale, and the sacred battalion standing
still, alone in the blizzard, heard only the howling of the wind, whose
blasts searched their very hearts. Then, with a cry or two of "Vive
l'Empereur!" it would resume its march, leaving behind a few lifeless
bodies lying huddled up, tiny black specks on the white immensity of the
snows.

Though often marching in the ranks, or skirmishing in the woods side
by side, the two officers ignored each other; this not so much from
inimical intention as from a very real indifference. All their store of
moral energy was expended in resisting the terrific enmity of nature and
the crushing sense o