o heave in great waves, like those that roll round Cape Horn,
they were asking still if any man had seen Charles Darragon.

"Where are you going, comrades?" a hundred men had paused to ask them.

"To seek a brother," answered Barlasch, who, like many unprincipled
persons, had soon found that a lie is much simpler than an explanation.

But the majority glanced at them stupidly without comment, or with only
a shrug of their bowed shoulders. They were going the wrong way. They
must be mad. Between Dantzig and Konigsberg they had indeed found a few
travellers going eastward--despatch-bearers seeking Murat--spies going
northwards to Tilsit, and General Yorck still in treaty with his own
conscience--a prominent member of the Tugendbund, wondering, like many
others, if there were any virtue left in the world. Others, again, told
them that they were officers ordered to take up some new command in the
retreating army.

Beyond Konigsberg, however, D'Arragon and Barlasch found themselves
alone on their eastward route. Every man's face was set towards the
west. This was not an army at all, but an endless procession of tramps.
Without food or shelter, with no baggage but what they could carry on
their backs, they journeyed as each of us must journey out of this world
into that which lies beyond--alone, with no comrade to help them over
the rough places or lift them when they fell. For there was only one
man of all this rabble who rose to the height of self-sacrifice, and a
persistent devotion to duty. And he was coming last of all.

Many had started off in couples--with a faithful friend--only to quarrel
at last. For it is a peculiarity of the French that they can only have
one friend at a time. Long ago--back beyond the Niemen--all friendships
had been dissolved, and discipline had vanished before that. For when
Discipline and a Republic are wedded we shall have the millennium.
Liberty, they cry: meaning, I may do as I like. Equality: I am better
than you. Fraternity: what is yours is mine, if I want it.

So they quarrelled over everything, and fought for a place round the
fire that another had lighted. They burnt the houses in which they had
passed a night, though they knew that thousands trudging behind them
must die for lack of this poor shelter.

At the Beresina they had fought on the bridge like wild animals, and
those who had horses trod their comrades underfoot, or pushed them over
the parapet. Twelve thousand perished