the right and to the left, where the
women, children, and old men were wandering about in groups, half
naked, one carrying a miserable old mattress, another with a few pieces
of furniture on his cart, while the snow was falling from the sky, and
the cannon roared in the distance, and the Cossacks were flying about
like the wind with kitchen utensils and even old clocks hanging to
their saddles, shouting hurrah!

Furious battles were raging, singly, or one against ten, in which the
desperate peasants joined also with their scythes. At night the
Emperor might be seen sitting astride his chair, with his chin resting
in his folded hands on the back, before a little fire with his generals
around him. This was the way he slept and dreamed. He must have had
terrible reflections after the days of Marengo, Austerlitz, and Wagram.

To fight the enemy, to suffer hunger and cold and fatigue, to march and
countermarch, Zebede said, were nothing, but to hear the women and
children weeping and groaning in French in the midst of their ruined
homes, to know you could not help them, and that the more enemies you
killed, the more would you have; that you must retreat, always retreat,
in spite of victories, in spite of courage, in spite of everything!
"that is what breaks your heart, Mr. Goulden."

In listening and looking at him we had lost all inclination to drink,
and Father Goulden, with his great head bent down as if thinking, said
in a low voice:

"Yes, that is what glory costs, it is not enough to lose our liberty,
not enough to lose the rights gained at such a cost, we must be
pillaged, sacked, burned, cut to pieces by Cossacks, we must see what
has not been seen for centuries, a horde of brigands making law for
us--but go on, we are listening, tell us all."

Catherine, seeing how sad we were, filled the glasses.

"Come," said she, "to the health of Mr. Goulden and Father Zebede. All
these misfortunes are past and will never return."

We drank, and Zebede related how it had been necessary to fill up the
battalion again, on the route to Soissons, with the soldiers of the
16th light infantry, and how they arrived at Meaux where the plague was
raging, although it was winter, in the hospital of Piete, in
consequence of the great numbers of wounded who could not be cared for.

That was horrible, but the worst of all was when he described their
arrival at Paris, at the Barriere de Charenton: the Empress, King
Joseph, the Ki