c their
fellows argued that if they were not dead, a scorching ought to be
sufficient warning to quit and seek out more comfortable quarters. If
the poor wretch woke to find himself on fire, he was burned to death,
and nobody pitied him. Here and there the men exchanged glances, as if
to excuse their indifference by the carelessness of the rest; the thing
happened twice under the Countess' eyes, and she uttered no sound. When
all the scraps of horseflesh had been broiled upon the coals, they were
devoured with a ravenous greediness that would have been disgusting in
wild beasts.

"And now we have seen thirty infantrymen on one horse for the first
time in our lives!" cried the grenadier who had shot the mare, the one
solitary joke that sustained the Frenchmen's reputation for wit.

Before long the poor fellows huddled themselves up in their clothes,
and lay down on planks of timber, on anything but the bare snow, and
slept--heedless of the morrow. Major de Sucy having warmed himself and
satisfied his hunger, fought in vain against the drowsiness that weighed
upon his eyes. During this brief struggle he gazed at the sleeping girl
who had turned her face to the fire, so that he could see her closed
eyelids and part of her forehead. She was wrapped round in a furred
pelisse and a coarse horseman's cloak, her head lay on a blood-stained
cushion; a tall astrakhan cap tied over her head by a handkerchief
knotted under the chin protected her face as much as possible from the
cold, and she had tucked up her feet in the cloak. As she lay curled up
in this fashion, she bore no likeness to any creature.

Was this the lowest of camp-followers? Was this the charming woman, the
pride of her lover's heart, the queen of many a Parisian ballroom? Alas!
even for the eyes of this most devoted friend, there was no discernible
trace of womanhood in that bundle of rags and linen, and the cold was
mightier than the love in a woman's heart.

Then for the major the husband and wife came to be like two distant dots
seen through the thick veil that the most irresistible kind of slumber
spread over his eyes. It all seemed to be part of a dream--the leaping
flames, the recumbent figures, the awful cold that lay in wait for them
three paces away from the warmth of the fire that glowed for a little
while. One thought that could not be stifled haunted Philip--"If I go to
sleep, we shall all die; I will not sleep," he said to himself.

He slept. Af