his wife and child. Some expressed the belief that he had died of
his wounds, but others declared that he must have been murdered by the
wagon-drivers, who, scoundrels though they were, had possessed
sufficient humanity to spare the woman and child.

As in a dream, Madame Ladoinski had heard the conversation of the
officers, and suddenly she grasped the meaning of what they had said.

'My husband! my husband!' she cried, wildly. 'Where is he?'

The officers, distressed at her grief, told her that when the wagon
arrived at Smolensk, she and her boy were the only people in it. Of
her husband they had seen or heard nothing, and the wagon-drivers had
disappeared soon after reaching the city. They endeavoured to cheer
her, however, by assuring her that he was, no doubt, not far away, and
would soon return to her. But she, remembering what they had said when
they believed her to be unconscious, was not calmed by their
well-intentioned words.

Two days passed, and nothing was seen or heard of Captain Ladoinski,
although the officers who had taken an interest in his wife made every
effort to obtain news of him. They were in their own minds convinced
that he was dead, but in order that a searching enquiry might be made,
they obtained for her an interview with two of the most powerful of
Napoleon's officers--the King of Naples and Prince Eugene Beauharnais,
Viceroy of Italy. These officers listened quietly to the story of her
husband's disappearance, and having expressed their sympathy with her,
an aide-de-camp was summoned and ordered to make immediate enquiries
among the wagon-drivers as to the fate of Captain Ladoinski. The
aide-de-camp answered respectfully that he and several of his brother
officers had already closely questioned every wagon-driver they could
find, and that the men had sworn that Captain Ladoinski had died during
the night of cold and of his wounds, and that his body had been thrown
out into the snow. Madame Ladoinski, they declared, was insensible
from cold when her husband died.

Clasping her boy, Madame Ladoinski burst into tears. For a few minutes
she sat sobbing bitterly, but then, in the midst of her grief, she
remembered that she was encroaching on the time of the officers before
her. Controlling her tears as well as she was able, she asked for a
safe-conduct for herself and child. As a Frenchwoman and the widow of
a Polish rebel she would receive, she reminded her hearers, no mercy i