scorching ought to be sufficient warning to quit and seek out more
comfortable quarters. If the poor wretch woke to find himself on fire,
he was burned to death, and nobody pitied him. Here and there the men
exchanged glances, as if to excuse their indifference by the
carelessness of the rest; the thing happened twice under the Countess'
eyes, and she uttered no sound. When all the scraps of horseflesh had
been broiled upon the coals, they were devoured with a ravenous
greediness that would have been disgusting in wild beasts.

"And now we have seen thirty infantrymen on one horse for the first
time in our lives!" cried the grenadier who had shot the mare, the one
solitary joke that sustained the Frenchmen's reputation for wit.

Before long the poor fellows huddled themselves up in their clothes,
and lay down on planks of timber, on anything but the bare snow, and
slept--heedless of the morrow. Major de Sucy having warmed himself and
satisfied his hunger, fought in vain against the drowsiness that
weighed upon his eyes. During this brief struggle he gazed at the
sleeping girl who had turned her face to the fire, so that he could
see her closed eyelids and part of her forehead. She was wrapped round
in a furred pelisse and a coarse horseman's cloak, her head lay on a
blood-stained cushion; a tall astrakhan cap tied over her head by a
handkerchief knotted under the chin protected her face as much as
possible from the cold, and she had tucked up her feet in the cloak.
As she lay curled up in this fashion, she bore no likeness to any
creature.

Was this the lowest of camp-followers? Was this the charming woman,
the pride of her lover's heart, the queen of many a Parisian ballroom?
Alas! even for the eyes of this most devoted friend, there was no