Thus for the beauty of the scene. The menace was no less remarkable. There, frosted already, were the corpses of the sentinels the Russians had murdered. To reach the open I must step over the prone figures of brother Frenchmen and look into their staring eyes. The shudder was still upon me when I heard a cry of savage triumph, and knew that the Cossacks were upon me. The troop which Mademoiselle Kyra had seen from the window rode out of the shadows even as I crossed the threshold. They fell upon me as wolves upon a carcass, and no fowl was trussed as surely while a man could have counted twenty.
Imagine the exultation of these men, who believed that they had captured the greatest of Frenchmen, living or dead, and were carrying him to their general.
The first transports passed, their sense of prudence returned to them, and with it a deference which should have won laughter from a log! The Emperor of the French a prisoner in their hands! Heaven above me, how they bowed and capered! What antics they cut! Never had a man such slaves at his feet. I was set upon a horse immediately, and had a guard at the head and tail of him. The officer saluted until his arm must have been weary. He had caught the Emperor--what a night!
Our way lay over the snows to the Cossack camp upon the far side. Behind me there shone the lights of the house I had quitted, bright stars beyond a frozen sea. I knew that the next hour would find me in the Russian general's tent, and that my shrift must be short. What mattered the regiment of hussars the Emperor was to send? My body would be frozen on the snows before they could ride out.
Upon this there fell an apathy difficult to understand.
We had suffered so much during those terrible days--hunger and thirst, and blood and wounds--that any man might have opened his arms to death as to a friend. And here was the end of it for me. What mattered it? In a vision, I beheld the lights of my own France, the home which sheltered all dear to me, the land towards which my eyes had been lifted these many weeks. Never again might I look upon that smiling country. Night and the unknown were my portion. There would be few to remember my name to-morrow.
From such thoughts a reality most absurd awoke me.