eir veins, like water in the current of rivulets,
congealed their heart, and then flew back to their head; these dying men
then staggered as if they had been intoxicated. From their eyes, which
were reddened and inflamed by the continual aspect of the snow, by the
want of sleep, and the smoke of bivouacs, there flowed real tears of
blood; their bosom heaved heavy sighs; they looked at heaven, at us, and
at the earth, with an eye dismayed, fixed and wild; it expressed their
farewell, and perhaps their reproaches to the barbarous nature which
tortured them. They were not long before they fell upon their knees, and
then upon their hands; their heads still wavered for a few minutes
alternately to the right and left, and from their open mouth some
agonizing sounds escaped; at last it fell in its turn upon the snow,
which it reddened immediately with livid blood; and their sufferings
were at an end.

Their comrades passed by them without moving a step out of their way,
for fear of prolonging their journey, or even turning their head, for
their beards and their hair were stiffened with the ice, and every
moment was a pain. They did not even pity them; for, in short, what had
they lost by dying? what had they left behind them? They suffered so
much; they were still so far from France; so much divested of feelings
of country by the surrounding aspect, and by misery; that every dear
illusion was broken, and hope almost destroyed. The greater number,
therefore, were become careless of dying, from necessity, from the habit
of seeing it, and from fashion, sometimes even treating it
contemptuously; but more frequently, on seeing these unfortunates
stretched out, and immediately stiffened, contenting themselves with the
thought that they had no more wishes, that they were at rest, that their
sufferings were terminated! And, in fact, death, in a situation quiet,
certain, and uniform, may be always a strange event, a frightful
contrast, a terrible revolution; but in this tumult and violent and
continual movement of a life of constant action, danger, and suffering,
it appeared nothing more than a transition, a slight change, an
additional removal, and which excited little alarm.

Such, were the last _days_ of the grand army. Its last _nights_ were
still more frightful; those whom they surprised marching together, far
from every habitation, halted on the borders of the woods; there they
lighted their fires, before which they remained the