despised by all because the lightning strikes so few; the balls struck
only here and there, the dying, the sick, the dead sometimes!
Stragglers arrived in groups continually; but once here those
perambulating corpses separated; each begged for himself a place near
a fire; repulsed repeatedly, they met again, to obtain by force the
hospitality already refused to them. Deaf to the voice of some of
their officers, who warned them of probable destruction on the morrow,
they spent the amount of courage necessary to cross the river in
building that asylum of a night, in making one meal that they
themselves doomed to be their last. The death that awaited them they
considered no evil, provided they could have that one night's sleep.
They thought nothing evil but hunger, thirst, and cold. When there was
no more wood or food or fire, horrible struggles took place between
fresh-comers and the rich who possessed a shelter. The weakest
succumbed.

At last there came a moment when a number, pursued by the Russians,
found only snow on which to bivouac, and these lay down to rise no
more. Insensibly this mass of almost annihilated beings became so
compact, so deaf, so torpid, so happy perhaps, that Marechal Victor,
who had been their heroic defender by holding twenty thousand Russians
under Wittgenstein at bay, was forced to open a passage by main force
through this forest of men in order to cross the Beresina with five
thousand gallant fellows whom he was taking to the emperor. The
unfortunate malingerers allowed themselves to be crushed rather than
stir; they perished in silence, smiling at their extinguished fires,
without a thought of France.

It was not until ten o'clock that night that Marechal Victor reached
the bank of the river. Before crossing the bridge which led to Zembin,