and isolated them, by concentrating every man's
feelings completely in himself. Far from exhausting themselves in
provocations or complaints, they marched along silently, exerting all
their efforts against a hostile atmosphere, and diverted from every
other idea by a state of continual action and suffering. Their physical
wants absorbed their whole moral strength; they thus lived mechanically
in their sensations, continuing in their duty from recollection, from
the impressions which they had received in better times, and in no
slight degree from that sense of honour and love of glory which had been
inspired by twenty years of victory, and the warmth of which still
survived and struggled within them.

The authority of the commanders also remained complete and respected,
because it had always been eminently paternal, and because the dangers,
the triumphs, and the calamities had always been shared in common. It
was an unhappy family, the head of which was perhaps the most to be
pitied. The Emperor and the grand army, therefore, preserved towards
each other a melancholy and noble silence; they were both too proud to
utter complaints, and too experienced not to feel the inutility of them.

Meantime, however, Napoleon had entered precipitately into his last
imperial head-quarters; he there finished his final instructions, as
well as the 29th and last bulletin of his expiring army. Precautions
were taken in his inner apartment, that nothing of what was about to
take place there should transpire until the following day.

But the presentiment of a last misfortune seized his officers; all of
them would have wished to follow him. Their hearts yearned after France,
to be once more in the bosom of their families, and to flee from this
horrible climate; but not one of them ventured to express a wish of the
kind; duty and honour restrained them.

While they affected a tranquillity which they were far from tasting, the
night and the moment which the Emperor had fixed for declaring his
resolution to the commanders of the army arrived. All the marshals were
summoned. As they successively entered, he took each of them aside in
private, and first of all gained their approbation of his plan, of some
by his arguments, and of others by confidential effusions.

Thus it was, that on perceiving Davoust, he ran forward to meet him, and
asked him why it was that he never saw him, and if he had entirely
deserted him? And upon Davoust's reply th