"There are no Cossacks here," says Léon, "and there is not much advantage got by company. We have a little food and brandy, and may as well keep it to ourselves. Come on, mon oncle. Let us try to believe that the spires of Notre Dame are to be seen from yonder road, and all the rest will be easy."
He had grown very thin these later days, my poor Léon, and was but a spectre of his former self. I thought of the dashing officer who had cut so brave a figure in Moscow, and heaved a sigh at all that had befallen us since. The word "woman" came no longer to his lips, as formerly, and I believe he would have bartered the whole sex for a loaf of bread and a bottle of good French wine. Who would have had the heart to remind him how many thousand leagues we were from that Paris for which he longed so ardently?
"Imagine what you please," said I, "but throw in a comfortable farmhouse and a stove to sleep by, and I am your man. It is going to snow again, nephew, and a man may as well be in the Arctic wastes as upon this barren plain. We were wrong to leave the others; there is safety in numbers, and God knows what is about to befall us. Ah, my dear nephew, what would I not give for such a bed and such a supper as we had at the farm at Druobona!"
He sighed at the memory both of little Petrovka and of that night of adventure.
We had now approached the woods, and presently we found ourselves in the depths of a forest which must have been rarely trodden by man. The snow had drifted into vast heaps here, and encircled the trees in great mounds which would have engulfed a wagon. The stillness of it all was that of winter at her zenith. The wind had fallen, and in the distance we heard the howling of wolves. All this prepared us but little for the surprise which overtook us presently, when three mounted Cossacks suddenly appeared in our path and threatened us in guttural tones of which we did not understand a single word.
Of course, we had drawn rein directly the Russians appeared, and for my part I was quite prepared to surrender to them. These roving bands rarely numbered less than a squadron, and it was idle to believe that two armed men could oppose a hundred. The alternatives were death on the spot, or that intolerable suffering in a Russian prison of which we had heard such evil reports. I whispered as much to Léon, but got nothing from him but a guffaw in return.