ion, pushed on toward the goal with fury, regardless of
the imprecations of rage and despair, uttered by their companions or
their officers, whom they had thus sacrificed.

But on the other hand, how many noble instances of devotion! and why are
time and space denied me to relate them? There were seen soldiers, and
even officers, harnessing themselves to sledges, to snatch from that
fatal bank their sick or wounded comrades. Farther off, and out of reach
of the crowd, were seen soldiers motionless, watching over their dying
officers, who had entrusted themselves to their care; the latter in vain
conjured them to think of nothing but their own preservation, they
refused, and, sooner than abandon their leaders, were contented to wait
the approach of slavery or death.

Above the first passage, while the young Lauriston threw himself into
the river, in order to execute the orders of his sovereign more
promptly, a little boat, carrying a mother and her two children, was
overset and sunk under the ice; an artilleryman, who was struggling like
the others on the bridge to open a passage for himself, saw the
accident; all at once, forgetting himself, he threw himself into the
river, and by great exertion, succeeded in saving one of the three
victims. It was the youngest of the two children; the poor little thing
kept calling for its mother with cries of despair, and the brave
artilleryman was heard telling it, "not to cry; that he had not
preserved it from the water merely to desert it on the bank; that it
should want for nothing; that he would be its father, and its family."

The night of the 28th added to all these calamities. Its darkness was
insufficient to conceal its victims from the artillery of the Russians.
Amidst the snow, which covered every thing, the course of the river, the
thorough black mass of men, horses, carriages, and the noise proceeding
from them, were sufficient to enable the enemy's artillerymen, to direct
their fire.

About nine o'clock at night there was a still farther increase of
desolation, when Victor began his retreat, and his divisions came and
opened themselves a horrible breach through these unhappy wretches, whom
they had till then been protecting. A rear-guard, however, having been
left at Studzianka, the multitude, benumbed with cold, or too anxious to
preserve their baggage, refused to avail themselves of the last night
for passing to the opposite side. In vain were the carriages set fire