sacred, that never--no, never since man lived
on earth--has there been such a mixed up hodgepodge of army, wagons,
and artillery, in the midst of such snows, and under such a pitiless
sky! It was so cold that if you touched the barrel of your gun you
burned your hand.

It was there that Gondrin--who is now present with us--behaved so well.
He is the only one now living of the pontooners who went down into the
water that day and built the bridge on which we crossed the river. The
Russians still had some respect for the Grand Army, on account of its
past victories; but it was Gondrin and the pontooners who saved us, and
[pointing at Gondrin, who was looking at him with the fixed attention
peculiar to the deaf] Gondrin is a finished soldier and a soldier of
honor, who is worthy of your highest esteem.

I saw the Emperor that day, standing motionless near the bridge, and
never feeling the cold at all. Was that natural, do you think? He was
watching the destruction of his treasure, his friends, his old Egyptian
soldiers. It was the end of everything. Women, wagons, cannon--all were
being destroyed, demolished, ruined, wrecked! A few of the bravest
guarded the eagles; because the eagles, you understand, stood for
France, for you, for the civil and military honor that had to be kept
unstained and that was not to be humbled by the cold.

We hardly ever got warm except near the Emperor. When he was in danger,
we all ran to him--although we were so nearly frozen that we would not
have held out a hand to our dearest friend. They say that he used to
weep at night over his poor family of soldiers. Nobody but he and
Frenchmen could ever have pulled out of there. We did pull out, but it
was with loss--terrible loss. Our allies ate up all of our provisions,
and then began the treachery which the Red Man had foretold.

The blatherskites in Paris, who had kept quiet since the formation of
the Imperial Guard, thought that the Guard had finally perished. So they
got up a conspiracy and hoodwinked the Prefect of Police into an attempt
to overthrow the Emperor. He heard of this and it worried him. When he
left us he said: "Good-by, boys. Guard the posts. I will come back to
you."

After he had gone, things went from bad to worse. The generals lost
their heads; and the marshals quarreled with one another and did all
sorts of foolish things, as was natural. Napoleon, who was good to
everybody, had fed them on gold until they had become a