mmense cloud descended upon it in large
flakes of snow. It seemed as if the very sky was falling, and joining
the earth and our enemies to complete our destruction. All objects
changed their appearance, and became confounded, and not to be
recognised again; we proceeded, without knowing where we were, without
perceiving the point to which we were bound; every thing was transformed
into an obstacle. While the soldier was struggling with the tempest of
wind and snow, the flakes, driven by the storm, lodged and accumulated
in every hollow; their surfaces concealed unknown abysses, which
perfidiously opened beneath our feet. There the men were engulphed, and
the weakest, resigning themselves to their fate, found a grave in these
snow-pits.

Those who followed turned aside, but the storm drove into their faces
both the snow that was descending from the sky, and that which it raised
from the ground: it seemed bent on opposing their progress. The Russian
winter, under this new form, attacked them on all sides: it penetrated
through their light garments and their torn shoes and boots. Their wet
clothes froze upon their bodies; an icy envelope encased them and
stiffened all their limbs. A keen and violent wind interrupted
respiration: it seized their breath at the moment when they exhaled it,
and converted it into icicles, which hung from their beards all round
their mouths.

The unfortunate creatures still crawled on, shivering, till the snow,
gathering like balls under their feet, or the fragment of some broken
article, a branch of a tree, or the body of one of their comrades,
caused them to stumble and fall. There they groaned in vain; the snow
soon covered them; slight hillocks marked the spot where they lay: such
was their only grave! The road was studded with these undulations, like
a cemetery: the most intrepid and the most indifferent were affected;
they passed on quickly with averted looks. But before them, around them,
there was nothing but snow: this immense and dreary uniformity extended
farther than the eye could reach; the imagination was astounded; it was
like a vast winding-sheet which Nature had thrown over the army. The
only objects not enveloped by it, were some gloomy pines, trees of the
tombs, with their funeral verdure, the motionless aspect of their
gigantic black trunks and their dismal look, which completed the doleful
appearance of a general mourning, and of an army dying amidst a nature
already dead.