he were not dead his burns would warn him to find a safer place. If
the poor wretch waked in the flames and perished, no one cared. Two or
three soldiers looked at each other to justify their own indifference
by that of others. Twice this scene had taken place before the eyes of
the countess, who said nothing. When the various pieces of Bichette,
placed here and there upon the embers, were sufficiently broiled, each
man satisfied his hunger with the gluttony that disgusts us when we
see it in animals.

"This is the first time I ever saw thirty infantrymen on one horse,"
cried the grenadier who had shot the mare.

It was the only jest made that night which proved the national
character.

Soon the great number of these poor soldiers wrapped themselves in
what they could find and lay down on planks, or whatever would keep
them from contact with the snow, and slept, heedless of the morrow.
When the major was warm, and his hunger appeased, an invincible desire
to sleep weighed down his eyelids. During the short moment of his
struggle against that desire he looked at the young woman, who had
turned her face to the fire and was now asleep, leaving her closed
eyes and a portion of her forehead exposed to sight. She was wrapped
in a furred pelisse and a heavy dragoon's cloak; her head rested on a
pillow stained with blood; an astrakhan hood, kept in place by a
handkerchief knotted round her neck, preserved her face from the cold
as much as possible. Her feet were wrapped in the cloak. Thus rolled
into a bundle, as it were, she looked like nothing at all. Was she the
last of the "vivandieres"? Was she a charming woman, the glory of a
lover, the queen of Parisian salons? Alas! even the eye of her most