ed by a heap
of dead bodies. There were collected men of all classes, of all ranks,
of all ages; ministers, generals, administrators. Among them was
remarked an elderly nobleman of the times long passed, when light and
brilliant graces held sovereign sway. This general officer of sixty was
seen sitting on the snow-covered trunk of a tree, occupying himself with
unruffled gaiety every morning with the details of his toilette; in the
midst of the hurricane, he had his hair elegantly dressed, and powdered
with the greatest care, amusing himself in this manner with all the
calamities, and with the fury of the combined elements which assailed
him.

Near him were officers of the scientific corps still finding subjects of
discussion. Imbued with the spirit of an age, which a few discoveries
have encouraged to find explanations for every thing, the latter, amidst
the acute sufferings which were inflicted upon them by the north wind,
were endeavouring to ascertain the cause of its constant direction.
According to them, since his departure for the antarctic pole, the sun,
by warming the southern hemisphere, converted all its emanations into
vapour, elevated them, and left on the surface of that zone a vacuum,
into which the vapours of our hemisphere, which were lower, on account
of being less rarefied, rushed with violence. From one to another, and
from a similar cause, the Russian pole, completely surcharged with
vapours which it had emanated, received, and cooled since the last
spring, greedily followed that direction. It discharged itself from it
by an impetuous and icy current, which swept the Russian territory quite
bare, and stiffened or destroyed every thing which it encountered in its
passage.

Several others of these officers remarked with curious attention the
regular hexagonal crystallization of each of the flakes of snow which
covered their garments.

The phenomenon of parhelias, or simultaneous appearances of several
images of the sun, reflected to their eyes by means of icicles suspended
in the atmosphere, was also the subject of their observations, and
occurred several times to divert them from their sufferings.

CHAP. XI.

On the 29th the Emperor quitted the banks of the Berezina, pushing on
before him the crowd of disbanded soldiers, and marching with the ninth
corps, which was already disorganized. The day before, the second and
the ninth corps, and Dombrowski's division presented a total of fourte