across the knees of the general and the Countess; his feet were
frozen. Urged on by blows from the flat of the sabre, the horses
dragged the carriage at a mad gallop down to the plain, where endless
difficulties awaited them. Before long it became almost impossible to
advance without crushing sleeping men, women, and even children at
every step, all of whom declined to stir when the grenadier awakened
them. In vain M. de Sucy looked for the track that the rearguard had
cut through this dense crowd of human beings; there was no more sign
of their passage than the wake of a ship in the sea. The horses could
only move at a foot-pace, and were stopped most frequently by
soldiers, who threatened to kill them.

"Do you mean to get there?" asked the grenadier.

"Yes, if it costs every drop of blood in my body! if it costs the
whole world!" the major answered.

"Forward, then! . . . You can't have the omelette without breaking
eggs." And the grenadier of the Garde urged on the horses over the
prostrate bodies, and upset the bivouacs; the blood-stained wheels
ploughing that field of faces left a double furrow of dead. But in
justice it should be said that he never ceased to thunder out his
warning cry, "Carrion! look out!"

"Poor wretches!" exclaimed the major.

"Bah! That way, or the cold, or the cannon!" said the grenadier,
goading on the horses with the point of his sword.

Then came the catastrophe, which must have happened sooner but for