to undergo. The hideous barbarities
that were perpetrated by the peasants upon the French who fell into
their hands, filled him with burning indignation, and at times placed
his life in serious danger when he endeavoured to interfere on their
behalf. He always started on his rides in the morning with his
saddle-bag stored with provisions, and a small keg of spirits fastened
behind him, and these were divided during the day among the unfortunate
men, Russians and French alike, who, wounded or exhausted, had sunk by
the way.

[Illustration: THE LAST OF A VETERAN OF NAPOLEON'S GRANDE ARMEE.]

Innumerable were the appeals made to him daily to end their sufferings
with a pistol-ball; and, although he could not bring himself to give
them the relief they craved, on several occasions, when he saw that the
case was altogether beyond hope, and that but a few hours of mortal
agony remained, he yielded to their entreaties, handed them one of his
pistols, and walked a few paces away, until the sharp report told him
that their sufferings were over.

The horrors of the hospitals at Wilna and other places affected him even
more than the scenes of carnage that he had witnessed at Borodino. At
Wilna the Earl of Tyrconnel was seized with a fever and died, and Frank
lay for some time ill, and would probably have succumbed had not Sir
Robert obtained a lodging for him at the house of a landed resident,
three or four miles from the infected city. He was, in a sense, thankful
for the illness, because it spared him the sight of the last agony of
the broken remains of Napoleon's army. Quiet and rest soon did their
work. The breakdown was the result more of over-fatigue, and of the
horrors of which he was so continually a witness, than of actual fever.
Frank, therefore, rapidly recovered, and declared after a fortnight that
he could again sit on his horse.

The general, however, would not hear of this.

"I shall be leaving for St. Petersburg myself in a few days," he said,
"and we will travel together by post. You will be sorry to hear that
to-day Kutusow has been decorated with the great order of St. George.
The Emperor himself begged me not to be present. He called me into his
cabinet and confessed to me that it would be too humiliating to him were
I to be there. He acknowledged that he felt by decorating this man with
the great Order he was committing a trespass upon the institution; but
he had no choice. It was a cruel necessity to whi