required to cross the swamp in building shelters for the night and
preparing a meal that often proved fatal. The coming death no longer
seemed an evil, for it gave them an hour of slumber before it came.
Hunger and thirst and cold--these were evils, but not death.

At last wood and fuel and canvas and shelters failed, and hideous
brawls began between destitute late comers and the rich already in
possession of a lodging. The weaker were driven away, until a few last
fugitives before the Russian advance were obliged to make their bed in
the snow, and lay down to rise no more.

Little by little the mass of half-dead humanity became so dense, so
deaf, so torpid,--or perhaps it should be said so happy--that Marshal
Victor, their heroic defender against twenty thousand Russians under
Wittgenstein, was actually compelled to cut his way by force through
this forest of men, so as to cross the Beresina with the five thousand
heroes whom he was leading to the Emperor. The miserable creatures
preferred to be trampled and crushed to death rather than stir from
their places, and died without a sound, smiling at the dead ashes of
their fires, forgetful of France.

Not before ten o'clock that night did the Duc de Belluno reach the
other side of the river. Before committing his men to the pontoon
bridges that led to Zembin, he left the fate of the rearguard at
Studzianka in Eble's hands, and to Eble the survivors of the
calamities of the Beresina owed their lives.

About midnight, the great General, followed by a courageous officer,
came out of his little hut by the bridge, and gazed at the spectacle
of this camp between the bank of the Beresina and the Borizof road to