The Czar: A Tale of the Time of the First Napoleon/Chapter 22

by Deborah Alcock

CHAPTER XXII.

THE AIDE-DE-CAMP OF ST. PRIEST.

"You would not let your little finger ache
  For such as these?
                   But I would die, said" he.

THE miserable fugitives who succeeded, at the cost of so much suffering, in crossing the icy waters of the Beresina, found no "promised land" on the other side. Better had it been if with one accord they had laid down their arms on the banks of that fatal river, and surrendered to the mercy of the enemy. The horrors that awaited them well-nigh cast into oblivion those they had already passed through, and filled to absolute overflowing the cup of trembling put into their hands. Until then the cold had not exceeded that of the ordinary winter of those regions; but during that terrible month of December it grew ever more and more intense, until it reached a pitch of severity almost beyond precedent. A silent, invisible, invincible enemy, it mowed down the ranks of strong men with a pitiless scythe, sparing neither the young recruit nor the hardened veteran who had passed unscathed through all the sufferings of the preceding campaign.

Henri de Talmont was at first only conscious of one definite purpose, that of keeping his little charge from perishing with cold. If he could but bring him alive to Vilna, perhaps he might find Madame Leone there and restore him to her. Seeing that a crowd had gathered about a carriage which had been overturned, and which they were plundering of its contents, he joined it in the hope of obtaining some provisions for the way. With more consideration for Guido's tastes than for his own, he seized eagerly upon a small bag of sugar and a box of chocolate bonbons. He afterwards made use of the chocolate as a bribe to induce the little one to run along by his side, for he was scarcely strong enough to carry him. But the poor little fellow was unable to endure the piercing cold, and cried piteously to be taken up again in his arms. Weak though he was himself, Henri could not resist the appeal; but it hastened the inevitable moment when, utterly overcome with fatigue, he was fain to lie down and rest, even at the risk of rising again no more.

So many broken and abandoned properties of all kinds strewed the way that it was not difficult to contrive a sort of shelter for the night. A disabled gun-carriage and a couple of cloaks served Henri as a tent for himself and Guido, whom he folded to his breast as warmly as he could, and both were soon fast asleep.

The intense, biting chill that preceded the dawn awakened Henri. "My poor little Guido is very cold," he thought; "I must wrap him up better;" and he took the coverings from himself to fold them more closely about his charge. The child did not waken, nor even stir; nor did any increase of external warmth remove the icy chill from those little limbs. Henri grew alarmed, and thought at last that he ought to awaken him and give him some nourishment. But all his efforts were in vain. That wintry night Christ had called a little child to come to him from the frozen plain. Gentle was the call and silent the response,—the young spirit passed away in sleep, without struggle and without suffering.

Black despair fell upon Henri then. There seemed no use in making any further struggle for life. All around him were dead or dying; all whom he had known during the long agony of the retreat from Moscow had yielded to their doom. Féron was dead—Rougeard was dead, as he believed—the dying face of many another comrade rose before him—and now, this child. How was he better than they?

Before he lay down to sleep he had prayed for himself and for Guido. The little one also had clasped his baby hands and lisped in his soft Italian a prayer that they might find his mother on the morrow. But beside that still, fair form—almost as white as the snow around it, and consecrated with the twofold beauty of childhood and of death—Henri breathed no prayer. Not then, nor for many days afterwards. It was no use, he said in his heart.

Still he wandered on—in cold, in hunger, in weariness. Hope was gone, memory had almost left him; nothing remained but that desperate clinging to life, which is scarcely more than the instinct of an animal. The path he had to follow was strewn with the dead bodies of his comrades; and upon these he sometimes found a little bread, or a small quantity of wine or spirits. On more than one occasion he warmed his freezing limbs by crouching beneath the corpse of a fellow-sufferer in whom the vital spark was only just extinct. He could not have survived at all but for the sugar and the chocolate that he had obtained for Guido. These, though he knew it not, afforded precisely the kind of nutriment best adapted to sustain life under intense cold.^[1]

He was seldom conscious of any sensations but those of the body. He was always cold, always hungry, always in pain; only sometimes this never-ceasing, never-ending sense of pain was lightened by a kind of dull satisfaction, as when he found food, or slept, or felt a little warmer than usual. Occasionally a comrade would hail him, and inquire his name and whither he was going. Henri hardly knew what he answered. Sometimes he would talk incoherently; at other times he would reply correctly enough—say he was going to Vilna—and in his turn ask questions about the road. He noticed that some of those whom he met stared at him vacantly, or with the fierce glare of insanity; when he spoke they would give him wild and wandering answers, or perhaps even threaten him with violence. Once a miserable being, looking like a spectre, stood and gazed at him in silence, until he asked him what he wanted. "Nothing," answered he, with a strange, sad smile,—"nothing; I am a dead man."^[2]

There were moments, perhaps hours, when Henri's crushed intelligence seemed to revive, and he regained the power of thought and feeling. But these seasons were the most terrible of all. His soul was fast bound in misery and iron. It was hard with despair as the ground beneath his feet with the frost of winter. If he thought of his mother—he "would never see her again; and what did it matter? She had never forgiven—never would forgive him now." Of Clémence—"she was so good! She would be very happy in her religion, in her pious books, in her good works. No doubt she was happy enough even now, though her one brother was dying miserably of cold and hunger by the side of a Polish road. Clémence would only say, 'It is the will of God.'"

The will of God! That was the bitterest thought of all. His will was inexorable. There was no use in prayer. Henri had tried prayer, and had not been heard. God did not care for him. He sat on his throne, far above yonder cold, gray, pitiless wintry sky,—as cold, and yet more pitiless. This was his hand, his vengeance; by his inscrutable decree half a million of men were dying in torture, because he was angry with Napoleon Buonaparte.

Sometimes he thought it was not his will, but only a terrible chance. Sometimes it seemed easier to believe, with most of his comrades, that there was no God, no Being who shaped the destinies of the human race. Practically, at least, there was none for him; none to whom it mattered whether he lived or died. Then the whole subject would pass from him and be forgotten in the absorbing interest of his quest for food. Something to allay the pangs of hunger had to be sought for, very much as the wild beast seeks for its prey.

How long this dreary life in death continued Henri never knew. But it had an end at last, like all suffering on this side of the grave. One day he found himself in what was evidently the melancholy and abandoned ruin of a once beautiful pleasure-ground. The pitiless frost had done its part to blight and to destroy; but the yet more pitiless hand of man had left its deeper traces. A castle, once fit for a royal residence, but now dismantled and partly burned, completed the picture of desolation.

All at once, as revealed by a lightning flash, Henri recalled the past. Could this indeed be Zakret—the splendid summer residence, with beautiful gardens, which the Czar had purchased just before the war? Only six months had passed since Henri wandered with genuine pleasure amidst its shady walks, and admired its magnificent conservatories filled with rare exotics, its terraces gay with the bloom of a thousand summer flowers. He even remembered the exasperation he had felt at the conduct of his fellow-soldiers, who wasted all that wealth of beauty with reckless, malicious hands, because it belonged to their enemy the Czar. "He is well avenged," thought Henri. "We did not dream that he would have proved himself so strong."

Another thought came then. Zakret was close to Vilna, the goal for the present of his weary wanderings. The idea lent his worn frame a momentary strength; he would get up, and go there immediately. He had thrown himself upon a seat—some broken masonry belonging to what had once been a beautiful fountain—but now he rose quickly, and tried to walk. But the effort proved too much for him; he tottered, slipped upon the frozen ground, fell, and utterly lost consciousness.

When he recovered from his long and deathlike swoon, he found everything changed around him. Instead of the wintry sky, he saw above him a lofty vaulted roof. The light was dim, but sufficient to reveal the scene. The floor was covered, or rather crowded with prostrate forms; in some places they lay in heaps. He stretched out his hand, and touched the form nearest him; it was cold as ice, and in his horror at the thought that he was surrounded by the dead, he uttered a weak, agonized cry.

Several heads were raised at this, and eyes, bright with fever or dim with the mists of approaching death, gazed at him in a kind of dull surprise.

"Where am I?" he asked feebly.

Some one dressed in a ragged French uniform, and carrying a large pitcher filled with snow, approached the place where he lay. "In prison," he said. "They brought you in a while ago with some other sick men."

"Are you a warder?" pursued Henri.

"You insult me! Can't you see my uniform? I am, like yourself, a prisoner and a Frenchman. But those of us who are still passably strong are allowed to go down to the court and gather snow for the rest."

He was prevented from adding more by the clamour of the sick men around. All who were able to speak begged in piteous accents for a portion of the snow, holding out cups and other small vessels to receive it.

Henri was more conscious at the moment of hunger than of thirst. "Is there any food?" he asked in a faint voice.

A piece of hard biscuit was pushed towards him, and he took it eagerly. Then half-a-dozen hands were extended, and as many voices spoke to him—"Take my biscuit, and give me in exchange your next cup of snow-water."

Henri ate a little, moistening his biscuit with the snow-water; but bitter experience had taught him moderation. Then, forgetting that he was no longer a famished fugitive fighting for the necessaries of life, he began, from habit, to conceal the remainder about his person.

A harsh, bitter laugh, from the man who brought in the snow, made him look up. "No need to hide what nobody wants," said he. "Biscuit is the only thing we have in plenty here—except death."

"Can this indeed be Vilna?" Henri asked with a bewildered look.

His informant nodded.

"Then where is the army—the Emperor? How comes it that we are prisoners?"

"The army?—gone like the snow I brought in just now. The Emperor?—safe in Paris by this time. If it will be a comfort to you in your dying moments to know that his Imperial Majesty 'never was better in all his life,' I have the satisfaction of affording it. He announced the fact in his last bulletin."

Henri stirred uneasily, and cast a mournful glance around him. All that met his senses was foul and loathsome in the extreme. The atmosphere of the place was "at once icy and pestilential;" and the whole, the sick, the dying, and the dead, lay heaped together promiscuously. Dead bodies, or mutilated portions of them, were piled together in the windows, a ghastly defence against the bitter wintry wind; while every noxious odour, every hideous and revolting sight that accompanies disease and death, filled the vaults and corridors of the spacious building, making it one vast and dreary charnel-house.

"This is horrible!" he murmured.

"Nothing could be worse. No beds—no straw even—no fire, no wine, no medicine—nothing but rations of hard biscuit, and the snow we can find for ourselves in the court."

"The Russians, since we are their prisoners, ought to treat us with more humanity," said Henri.

"The Russians, my boy, have as much as they can do to take care of their own sick and wounded. As for us, hundreds of famished wretches are brought in here every day, until there is no more room in which to lay them down to die. This building which is now our prison, the Convent of St. Basil, will soon be our grave. That is one comfort. Our miseries will be quickly ended. The hospital fever has broken out."

"Typhus fever?" said Henri with a look of horror.

"Even so; we are dying fast. Every day we have to carry out the dead bodies, or to throw them from the windows."

"Are there no physicians?"

"Physicians? What should bring them here? It is death to enter these doors. Not the very Poles themselves, who were so loud in their acclamations when we came here six months ago—who called us their brothers, their deliverers—would dare to bring us now so much as a cup of cold water. Even the guards die who are stationed to watch us. We shall soon be left unguarded. Then we may go out free if we like—only none of us will be alive to go."

Henri covered his face. He was utterly crushed. He seemed no longer to feel, to care for anything—a numb chill despair lay like a weight of lead upon his heart.

After what might have been, for aught he knew, a considerable time, he was aroused from his stupor by the sound of voices, and interested, in spite of himself, by what reached his ear. Some one was pleading earnestly with another in the accents of a soft musical tongue, which at first he took for Italian, like Guido's, but he soon found that he could not understand the words spoken. However, the speakers presently relapsed into French, and then he easily gathered that one of them, a Spaniard, dying of the cruel hospital fever, was entreating his French comrade to write for him a letter of farewell to his wife. Evidently the feelings of the Frenchman were touched. Henri saw him tear a leaf from a book which he had with him, and write upon it at the dictation of the Spaniard, and in his language. "Though where is the use?" he heard him say to one near him in a lower tone. "Poor fellow! there is none to send it for him."

By-and-by another pitcher of snow was brought in by Henri's first acquaintance, whose name was Pontet.

When with some difficulty he had distributed the coveted refreshment among its many eager and agonized claimants, he said briefly, as he set down his pitcher, "I have news."

Heads were raised and eyes were turned towards him, but for the most part languidly; suffering had well-nigh killed desire and hope—even fear was scarcely felt.

"The Emperor is come," said Pontet. In that word there was a spell potent enough to arouse the dying. On every side exclamations arose—"Come back! Retaken the town! Stolen a march upon them all! Ah, what joy! What a triumph!" and one voice, weak but courageous, raised the old well-remembered cry, "Vive Napoléon!"

"Hush, you fools!" said Pontet sharply. "Napoleon is far enough away. Do you think there is no other Emperor in the world? I am speaking of the Emperor Alexander."

Bitter was the disappointment, especially to dying hearts. Pontet came in for sundry curses, feeble but emphatic, and one sick man flung his cup at him. "How dare you raise our hopes only to dash them so cruelly?" he cried.

"I had more to tell," Pontet continued; "but if you care not to listen, I can spare my breath."

"Tell us, friend, tell us," spoke two or three voices together.

"I have made a friend amongst the guards who knows a little French, and is disposed to be communicative. He says the Czar has appointed General St. Priest governor and guardian of all the prisoners."

"St. Priest!—Who is he?"

"A Frenchman in the service of Russia. Because he is a Frenchman this office has been given him. My comrades, this looks well."

"Nothing looks well now but the grave," said the man who cried "Vive Napoléon."

"Pontet," he continued, "I don't think much of your news. St. Priest may be a Frenchman, but then he must be a pretty rascal, to fight against France."

"Well, we shall see."

"What is that noise?" asked Henri, as the loud rattling of an iron chain was heard.

"They are only swinging the great lamp up to its place, where it hangs from the roof. How early they are lighting it to-night! It will be daylight in the court for another hour."

After this Henri fell into a troubled, uneasy sleep. When he awoke, there was a general stir around him, and a murmur of suppressed excitement. "What is the matter?" he asked of Pontet, who was sitting near him, resting his head on his hand.

He looked up to answer the question. "The guards say Monsieur de St. Priest is coming to visit us."

"He must be a brave man," said Henri.

"Ay de mi!" murmured the Spaniard. "If I dare but ask him to send that letter! Ah, Teresa mia!" Tears stole into his dying eyes as that beloved face arose before him in its dark, well-remembered beauty; and once more his little children seemed to climb about his knees, while the orange-tree beside his cottage door shed its fragrant blossoms over him.

"Hush!" said those around—"hush! here comes Monsieur le Général."

St. Priest came slowly, threading his way through the thick ranks of sick men stretched upon the ground. His look was absorbed and anxious; some great care seemed to oppress him. Pontet whispered, "See how he is leaving the work to his aide-de-camp."

For all observed that the companion of St. Priest paused continually, and, bending low over the sufferers, spoke in turn to each, patiently waiting for an answer. Those near him noticed also with surprise that Frenchmen, Poles, and Germans were addressed with equal fluency, each in his own tongue.

As he approached, the good-natured Frenchman who had written the Spaniard's letter for him whispered, "Try the aide-de-camp. He looks kind."

Thus encouraged, the dying man stretched out his worn and fevered hand. "For the love of God, Monsieur l'Aide de camp," he prayed in his broken French, "take this letter and send it for me. It is my last farewell to my dear wife."

"That letter shall reach its destination," was the answer, uttered in a tone of deep feeling; and stooping over the prostrate form, the speaker added some gentle words of hope and consolation.

As his tall figure resumed its erect position, the lamplight shone upon his face, revealing it to Henri. It was a noble, refined, sensitive face, pale with uttermost horror and loathing at the abominations around, though the revolt of the shrinking nerves and senses was crushed down by a strong will, and a look of profound compassion and sympathy effaced every other expression. Instinctively Henri raised himself, and, resting on his elbow, gazed at him with a hungry longing in his heart that to him—even to him also—he would address so much as a single word. At the same moment the stranger's pitying eye fell upon his young, sad, wasted face. "Et toi aussi, pauvre enfant," he said with tenderness, bending down once more and touching Henri's forehead gently with his hand.

Henri seized the hand in his and pressed it to his lips. "Speak to me so again," he cried, "and I verily believe I shall not die, but live!"

His prayer was granted. He was spoken to, or rather spoken with, until St. Priest drew near, and with an anxious air entreated, not commanded, his companion to hasten onwards.

Then Henri covered his face with his thin hands and wept quietly—almost the first tears he had shed since leaving Moscow. The gentle shower softened the hard soil of his heart, the flood-gates were thrown open, the fountains of the great deep were unloosed, and the shower became a storm. "Mother, mother!" he sobbed piteously, "O mother!" Wild and passionate was the longing that swept him to see her face again, hers and his sister's. He thought of the old days—of his happy childhood, of the love and tenderness that used to surround him; and every thought unlocked afresh the source of tears. He wept until he could weep no more.

Meanwhile, Pontet followed the visitors as far as he could, and then spoke to the guard at the door. He came back with a beaming countenance and a manner full of suppressed excitement. "Wonderful news, my comrades!" he began eagerly. "Guess, if you can, who it is that has been among us—that we took for the aide-de-camp of M. de St. Priest?"

"It was an angel from heaven," murmured one poor sufferer, lifting up a face flushed with fever. "There was light—rest while he was here. Oh, if he could but have stayed! The darkness is coming back now."

"He has left the light with me," said the Spaniard. "God must have sent him here, his messenger, to fulfil my last wish."

"But his name, his name?" cried the eager Pontet,—"no one has guessed that yet. Will you try, or shall I tell you? But if I do, you will not believe me."

"Tell us, tell us," cried half-a-score of voices.

"The aide-de-camp of St. Priest was no other than our great enemy—our conqueror, Alexander, Emperor of Russia!"

His auditors were utterly incredulous. "Have you lost your senses, Pontet?" they cried; "or have the guards been mocking you and us? Not a physician, not a nurse even, would enter here were a fortune offered as a bribe; and do you expect us to believe that the Czar, our enemy, would risk his life—for us?"

"Listen," answered Pontet; "the guards have told me all. He has spent the whole day going through the other hospitals;—at last he came here. M. de St. Priest, knowing well how the deadly hospital fever is raging amongst us, entreated, implored him not to enter. He would not listen. Then the general, in a kind of desperation, flung himself before the door, and, daring his sovereign to his face, told him he should enter only over his body. The Czar put him gently aside and walked in; and I tell you, comrades, there is not a nook or corner in all this den of horrors that he has not thoroughly explored. There was no hiding anything from him. I take it, things will be altered with us from this time forth. My friends, if there is any man amongst you happy enough still to believe in God, let him thank him this night for sending the Emperor Alexander here."

When the comments made by others upon this speech had died away, Henri raised his quivering, tear-stained face and said gently, but with a new air of courage and firmness, "Pontet, I believe in God; and I thank him—as you say." After a pause he added, "Dear comrades, if you will listen, I should like to tell you how it is with me; for, perhaps, some other poor lad may even now be struggling and suffering in darkness, as I have been."

"Say on," cried several voices.

"When I was wandering through the snow, in hunger, in misery, in despair, almost in madness, I lost my faith in God;—perhaps because I never had the right kind of faith, because I only believed that he was great and just, without believing that he was my God. I fainted utterly. I thought either that he was not, or that there was with him no love, no compassion. I thought his pitiless hand was sweeping us all from the face of the earth, because he was angry with Napoleon. I thought he was like the great fire in Moscow, which burned, blazed, destroyed, unchecked by human efforts, unstayed by human prayers. May he forgive me! To-night I can believe in his forgiveness and in his divine compassion. If the man who was our enemy—whose land we tried to ruin, upon whom we heaped every insult, every injury in our power—can pity and forgive us, surely the God who made him will not be found less merciful than he! Surely none but that God could so have softened the proud heart of the Czar; and perhaps he has done it just to show that even for those who have sinned deeply, wilfully, like me, there is forgiveness with Him. Therefore let us hope in the Lord; for with the Lord there is mercy, and with him is plenteous redemption."

There were murmurs of assent from the pale lips of many of the sufferers around him; and Pontet observed, with a thoughtful air, "The lad speaks well; and perhaps what he says may be true. Who knows?"^[3]

1. The survivors in this terrible calamity were usually those who "happened to have about them a little sugar or coffee."
2. A fact.
3. All that is told in this and the succeeding chapter about the ministrations of Alexander to the French prisoners is strictly and circumstantially true. Sir Archibald Alison, who well observes that Alexander terminated "a campaign of unexampled danger and glory by deeds of unprecedented mercy," had the details from the Emperor's own physicians, Wylie and Crichton, his assistants in the noble work. There are many other sources of information from which interesting anecdotes may be gleaned. The story of the dying Spaniard is one of these. Alexander not only took care to forward his letter, but sought out all the other Spanish prisoners, clothed them, and sent them home at his own expense. He described his visit to the Convent of St. Basil to a friend in these words:—"I was there in the evening: a single lamp illumined those profound vaults, beneath which piles of corpses had been heaped almost as high as the walls. I cannot express the horror with which I was penetrated when amongst the dead bodies I saw creatures moving who were yet alive." On his way to Vilna, he took up in his own sledge starving French soldiers whom he met with, and brought them to those whom he could trust to take care of them, leaving money to supply their wants.