his courage, and his love. He coolly looked round on the results of
the spoliation of his carriage. Not a man seated round the fire but
had shared the booty, the rugs, cushions, pelisses, dresses,--articles
of clothing that belonged to the Count and Countess or to himself.
Philip turned to see if anything worth taking was left in the berline.
He saw by the light of the flames, gold, and diamonds, and silver
lying scattered about; no one had cared to appropriate the least
particle. There was something hideous in the silence among those human
creatures round the fire; none of them spoke, none of them stirred,
save to do such things as each considered necessary for his own
comfort.

It was a grotesque misery. The men's faces were wrapped and disfigured
with the cold, and plastered over with a layer of mud; you could see
the thickness of the mask by the channel traced down their cheeks by
the tears that ran from their eyes, and their long slovenly-kept
beards added to the hideousness of their appearance. Some were wrapped
round in women's shawls, others in horse-cloths, dirty blankets, rags
stiffened with melting hoar-frost; here and there a man wore a boot on
one foot and a shoe on the other, in fact, there was not one of them
but wore some ludicrously odd costume. But the men themselves with
such matter for jest about them were gloomy and taciturn.

The silence was unbroken save by the crackling of the wood, the
roaring of the flames, the far-off hum of the camp, and the sound of
sabres hacking at the carcass of the mare. Some of the hungriest of
the men were still cutting tidbits for themselves. A few miserable
creatures, more weary than the others, slept outright; and if they
happened to roll into the fire, no one pulled them back. With
cut-and-dried logic their fellows argued that if they were not dead, a