Philippe kept silence as he looked at the man, whose boots were worn
out, his trousers torn in a dozen places, while nothing but a ragged
fatigue-cap covered with ice was on his head. He hastened, however, to
take his pistols. Five men dragged the mare to the fire, and cut her
up with the dexterity of a Parisian butcher. The pieces were instantly
seized and flung upon the embers.

The major went up to the young woman, who had uttered a cry on
recognizing him. He found her motionless, seated on a cushion beside
the fire. She looked at him silently, without smiling. Philippe then
saw the soldier to whom he had confided the carriage; the man was
wounded. Overcome by numbers, he had been forced to yield to the
malingerers who attacked him; and, like the dog who defended to the
last possible moment his master's dinner, he had taken his share of
the booty, and was now sitting beside the fire, wrapped in a white
sheet by way of cloak, and turning carefully on the embers a slice of
the mare. Philippe saw upon his face the joy these preparations gave
him. The Comte de Vandieres, who, for the last few days, had fallen
into a state of second childhood, was seated on a cushion beside his
wife, looking fixedly at the fire, which was beginning to thaw his
torpid limbs. He had shown no emotion of any kind, either at
Philippe's danger, or at the fight which ended in the pillage of the
carriage and their expulsion from it.

At first de Sucy took the hand of the young countess, as if to show
her his affection, and the grief he felt at seeing her reduced to such
utter misery; then he grew silent; seated beside her on a heap of snow
which was turning into a rivulet as it melted, he yielded himself up
to the happiness of being warm, forgetting their peril, forgetting all
things. His face assumed, in spite of himself, an expression of almost