ors, who were without medical
stores; no meat, no vegetables, no spirits, no forage.

No wonder the Dantzigers laughed. Rapp, who had to rely on Southerners
to obey his orders--Italians, Africans, a few Frenchmen, men little used
to cold and the hardships of a Northern winter--Rapp let them laugh. He
was a medium-sized man, with a bullet-head and a round chubby face, a
small nose, round eyes, and, if you please, side-whiskers.

Never for a moment did he admit that things looked black. He lit
enormous bonfires, melted the frozen earth, and built the fortifications
that had been planned.

"I took counsel," he said, long afterwards, "with two engineer officers
whose devotion equalled their brilliancy--Colonel Richemont and General
Campredon."

Soldiers might for all time study with advantage the acts of such
obscure and almost forgotten men as these. For, through them, Napoleon
was now teaching the world that a fortified place might be made stronger
than any had hitherto suspected. That he should turn round and teach,
on the other hand, that a city usually considered impregnable could
be taken without great loss of life, was only characteristic of his
splendid genius, which, like a towering tree, grew and grew until it
fell.

The days were very short now, and it was dark when the sappers--whose
business it was to keep the ice moving in the river at that spot where
the Government building-yard abuts the river front to-day--were roused
from their meditations by a shout on the farther bank.

They pushed their clumsy boat through the ice, and soon perceived
against the snowy distance the outline of a man wrapped, swaddled,
disguised in the heaped-up clothing so familiar to Eastern Europe at
this time. The joke of seeing a grave artilleryman clad in a lady's
ermine cloak had long since lost its savour for those who dwelt near the
Moscow road.

"Ah! comrade," said one of the boatmen, an Italian who spoke French and
had learnt his seamanship on the Mediterranean, by whose waters he would
never idle again. "Ah! you are from Moscow?"

"And you, countryman?" replied the new-comer, with a non-committing
readiness, as he stumbled over the gunwale.

"And you--an old man?" remarked the Italian, with the easy frankness of
Piedmont.

By way of reply, the new-comer held out one hand roughly swathed in
cloth, and shook it from side to side slowly, taking exception to such
personal matters on a short acquaintance.

"A week ago