ADIEU

To Prince Frédéric Schwarzenberg

“COME along now, deputy, representative of the people and the Centrist Party, forward! We’ll have to do better than this if we want to sit down to dinner along with the others. Lift your feet! Jump, marquis! There, that’s the stuff. You leap those ruts like a veritable stag!”

These words were spoken by a hunter sitting lazily at the edge of the forest of L’Isle-Adam, savoring the last puffs of a Havana cigar as he awaited his companion, who must have lost his bearings in the dense woods a good while before. Four panting dogs waited beside the speaker, their eyes trained, like his, on the gentleman thus addressed. In order to fully grasp the sting of these regular harangues, we must understand that the other hunter was a short, corpulent man, whose prominent belly betokened a girth of truly ministerial dimensions. It was thus with some difficulty that he trudged through the furrows of a vast, newly harvested field, his progress greatly hampered by the stubble; to compound his miseries, the solar rays obliquely striking his face bathed it in a copious flow of sweat. Preoccupied by the urgent imperative of keeping upright, he bent now forward, now back, imitating the jolts and shudders of a carriage on a particularly rough road. It was one of those September days whose blazing, equatorial heat brings the grapes of the vineyards to full ripeness. A coming storm could be sensed in the air. Although several wide bands of azure still separated the enormous dark clouds on the horizon, pale golden billows could be seen advancing at an ominous speed, drawing a light curtain of gray underneath them, west to east. Only in the upper reaches did the wind exert its force; below, the atmospheric pressure held the earth’s vapors confined in the lowlands. Deprived of air by the ranks of tall trees that surrounded it, the little valley that the hunter was now crossing was as hot as a furnace. Burning and silent, the forest seemed thirsty. The birds and insects did not make a sound; the treetops scarcely swayed. Those who harbor some memory of the summer of 1819 will thus surely sympathize with the poor ministerial deputy as he toiled to join his mocking companion, who was studying the position of the sun as he smoked and had gauged the time at somewhere near five in the evening.

“Where the devil are we?” asked the fat hunter, wiping his forehead and leaning on a tree in the field, almost face-to-face with his companion, for the moment not feeling up to the challenge of jumping the broad trench that separated them.

“You’re asking me?” laughed the other, now lying stretched out in the tall yellow grasses that crowned the embankment. He tossed his cigar stub into the ditch, crying, “By Saint Hubert, I swear, I will never again venture into parts unknown with a magistrate, not even one such as you, my dear d’Albon, my old school friend!”

“But Philippe, have you forgotten how to read French? Perhaps you left your mind back in Siberia,” the fat man retorted, casting a comically pained glance at a signpost some hundred paces away.

“Message received!” answered Philippe, who picked up his rifle, leapt to his feet, and bounded into the field toward the signpost. “This way, d’Albon, this way! About-face, left,” he shouted to his companion, pointing toward a broad, paved lane. “Baillet–L’Isle-Adam road,” he read. “Which means that the Cassan road must be this way, since it surely turns off from the L’Isle-Adam road.”

“Just so, mon colonel,” said Monsieur d’Albon, giving up fanning himself with his cap and placing it on his head.

“Onward, then, my honorable councillor,” answered Colonel Philippe, whistling to the dogs, which already seemed to obey him more eagerly than they did their owner, the magistrate. “I do hope you realize, monsieur le marquis,” he said tauntingly, “we still have more than two leagues to cover! That village off there must be Baillet.”

“Good God!” cried the Marquis d’Albon. “Go on to Cassan if you like, but you’ll go alone. I’d sooner wait here, storm or no storm. You can send a horse out to me from the château. See here, Sucy, that was a cruel trick you played on me. We were supposed to be going out for a nice little hunt, sticking close by Cassan, rooting about on grounds I know well. But no! No such pleasure for us! Instead you’ve had me sprinting like a greyhound since four in the morning, with only a couple of cups of milk for breakfast! Oh, should you ever have a case to bring up before the court, I’ll make quite sure you lose, even if you’re in the right a hundred times over!”

Dejected, he sat down on one of the milestones at the foot of the signpost, took off his rifle, his empty game bag, and let out a long sigh.

“Oh France! Behold thy deputies!” hooted Colonel de Sucy. “My poor d’Albon, if like me you’d spent six years in the remotest depths of Siberia . . .”

He left his sentence there and raised his eyes heavenward, as if his sorrows were a secret known only to God and himself.

“Come now! Walk!” he added. “If you go on sitting there, you’re done for.”

“What do you expect, Philippe? It’s such an old habit for a judge! Word of honor, I can’t manage another step! If at least I’d killed a hare!”

The two hunters’ appearance presented a rather remarkable contrast. Aged forty-two years, the good deputy could easily have passed for thirty; the soldier, aged thirty, seemed at least forty. Both wore the red rosette of the Officer of the Legion of Honor. The locks of hair peeking out from beneath the colonel’s cap were a mingling of black and white, like the wing of a magpie; fine blond curls graced the magistrate’s temples. The one was tall, slender, taut, and the wrinkles of his pale face betrayed great passions or terrible woes; jovial as an Epicurean, the other’s countenance radiated robust good health. Both were deeply tanned by the sun, and the stains on their long leather gaiters attested to every ditch, every marsh they had traversed.

“Come along now,” cried Monsieur de Sucy. “Onward! One short hour’s walk and we’ll be in Cassan, with a fine dinner before us.”

“I’ll wager you’ve never been in love,” answered the councillor, his tone humorously plaintive. “You’re as pitiless as Article 304 of the Penal Code!”

With this, Philippe de Sucy gave a violent start; his broad forehead furrowed, and his face turned as dark as the sky. Although the memory of some unspeakable anguish contorted his features, he did not shed a tear. Like all men of great strength, he was able to still his emotions, to choke them back into the depths of his heart; perhaps, like many of pure character, he found it somehow indecent to reveal a grief whose depth was beyond human expression, and which might well be mocked by those who cannot be bothered to understand it. Monsieur d’Albon was graced with the kind of sensitive soul that divines others’ sorrows and feels intensely all the upset a slip of the tongue can unwittingly cause. He did not trouble his friend’s silence but stood up, his weariness forgotten, and followed him wordlessly, pained to have touched a wound that must not yet have healed.

“One day, my friend,” said Philippe, clasping his hand and thanking him for his mute remorse with a heartrending gaze, “one day I shall tell you my story. Today, I couldn’t possibly.”

They walked on in silence. Once the colonel’s desolation seemed to subside, the councillor rediscovered his own fatigue. With the instinct—or rather the longing—of a desperate man, his gaze probed the depths of the forest; he questioned the treetops, interrogated the broad avenues, in hopes of discovering some sort of dwelling where he might seek hospitality. Arriving at an intersection, he thought he spotted a wisp of smoke rising through the trees. He stopped, looked more closely, and made out several dark green boughs of pine amid a dense, tangled thicket.

“A house! A house!” he cried, joyous as the sailor who shouts out “Land ho!”

And in a burst of alacrity he dashed through a dense thicket, while the colonel followed mechanically after, lost in a deep reverie.

“Better an omelet here, and some plain homemade bread, and a crude chair, than all the divans and truffles and Bordeaux in Cassan.”

These words were a cry of delight, wrested from the councillor by the sight of a wall in the distance, off-white amid the brown of the forest’s gnarled trunks.

“Ah! Ah! Why it looks like some ancient priory!” the Marquis d’Albon cried out again on encountering a venerable iron fence, through which, in the midst of a large private park, he saw a building of monastic design. “Oh, those clever monks! Those scoundrels knew just where to build!”

This second outburst expressed the magistrate’s astonishment at the poetic hermitage he now found before him. The house sat halfway up a slope, on the backside of the mount at whose summit stands the village of Nerville. Forming a vast circle around the residence, the lofty, aged oaks of the forest created an atmosphere of deepest seclusion. The main building, once home to the monks, faced south. The park might have covered some forty arpents. The house adjoined a green meadow, prettily crisscrossed by several limpid streams and dotted with ponds, whose pleasing arrangement betrayed no trace of artifice. Green trees stood here and there, their forms graceful, their foliage varied. Cunningly contrived grottos, vast terraces with crumbling staircases and rusting handrails, everything colluded to make this wild Thebaid a place like no other, an elegant union of artistry’s creations and nature’s most picturesque effects. Human passions seemed bound to find peace beneath those tall trees, which defended that retreat against the clamors of the world, just as they tempered the sun’s withering heat.

“What a shambles!” said Monsieur d’Albon to himself, admiring the somber cast these ruins gave their surroundings, which seemed to have been visited with some sort of malediction. It had the air of a cursed place, abandoned by men. Everywhere ivy had splayed out its tortuous tendons and rich green mantles. Brown, greenish, yellow, or red mosses daubed the trees, benches, roofs, and stones with their romantic tints. The worm-eaten window frames had been scoured by rain and rutted by age; the balconies were broken, the terraces dilapidated. Some of the shutters were held by one single hinge. The ill-fitting doors seemed no obstacle for an intruder. Burdened by glistening clumps of mistletoe, the branches of the neglected fruit trees stretched into the distance, offering no harvest. Tall grasses grew in the walkways. These signs of decay produced a deeply poetic effect and inspired meditative thoughts in the onlooker’s soul. A poet would have lingered there, lost in prolonged melancholy, musing on that disorder so rich in harmonies, that destruction in no way devoid of grace. Just then, several shafts of sunlight burst through the crevasses in the clouds, illuminating this half-wild scene with streaks of a thousand varied colors. The brown roof tiles glinted, the moss shone, fantastic shadows played over the fields, beneath the trees; the dulled colors awoke, arresting contrasts contended, the green boughs stood out darkly in the light. Suddenly the sun dimmed again. The landscape, which seemed to have spoken, now fell silent and once more turned somber, or rather muted, like the most muted hue of an autumn dusk.

“It’s Sleeping Beauty’s castle,” the councillor whispered, now seeing this house only through a proprietor’s eyes. “Who on earth might this place belong to? Only a fool would choose not to live in such a fine spot.”

All at once a woman shot from beneath a walnut tree to the right of the iron fence and raced silently past the councillor’s eyes, fleet as the shadow of a cloud. This apparition left him speechless with surprise.

“Why, d’Albon, what’s the matter?” the colonel asked.

“I’m rubbing my eyes to see if I’m sleeping or awake,” the magistrate answered, pressing close to the fence, hoping for another glimpse of the wraith.

“She must be under that fig tree,” he said, pointing to the branches overhanging the wall, to the left of the fence.

“‘She’? Who?”

“How should I know?” Monsieur d’Albon shot back. “A very strange woman just appeared right here before me,” he said softly. “She seemed to belong more to the shadows than the world of the living. She was so slight, so wispy, so vaporous—she must be transparent. Her face was white as milk. Her hair, her eyes, her clothing, all black. She looked at me as she passed by, and I’m not a fearful man by nature, but that cold, still gaze of hers froze the very blood in my veins.”

“Was she pretty?” asked Philippe.

“I don’t know. Her eyes were all I could see of her face.”

“The devil take our dinner in Cassan,” cried the colonel, “let’s stay right here. I’ve a childish urge to take a closer look at this curious property. Do you see those red-painted window frames, those red lines on the moldings of the shutters and doors? Does this not seem the house of the devil? Perhaps he inherited it from the monks. Come, after the black-and-white woman! Forward!” cried Philippe with forced gaiety.

Just then the two hunters heard a cry, rather like the shriek of a mouse caught in a trap. They stood still and listened. The leaves of a few overgrown bushes rustled in the silence, like the hiss of a rushing wave, but although they strained to detect some further sound, the earth remained silent, guarding the secret of the stranger’s footsteps, assuming that she had indeed walked on her way.

“Now that’s very odd,” cried Philippe, following the walls that surrounded the park.

Soon the two friends arrived at a forest path that led to the village of Chauvry. Following it toward the Paris road, they arrived at a large gate and beheld the mysterious dwelling’s main façade. On this side, the disarray was complete. Huge cracks wandered over the walls of the house, whose three sections were built at right angles. The damaged roofs, the fallen tiles and slate shingles heaped on the ground, everything suggested utter neglect. A few pieces of fruit had dropped from the trees and lay rotting on the ground, uncollected. A cow grazed on the lawn, trampling the flower beds, while a goat plucked the shoots and green fruits from a grapevine.

“Here all is harmony, and disorder itself is in a sense ordered,” said the colonel, pulling the chain of a bell, but the bell had no clapper.

The hunters heard only the oddly piercing squeak of a rusted spring. Decrepit though it was, the little door in the wall beside the gate resisted all their efforts to open it.

“Oh! Oh! This is all becoming very strange,” the colonel said to his companion.

“If I weren’t a judge,” answered Monsieur d’Albon, “I’d say that woman in black was a witch.”

He had just spoken these words when the cow ambled to the gate and raised its warm muzzle, as if eager to look upon human beings. Suddenly a woman, if such could be called the indefinable creature that had risen to its feet from beneath a clump of bushes, gave a tug on the cow’s rope. This woman wore a red handkerchief on her head; from beneath it strayed locks of blond hair that looked rather like the tow on a distaff. She wore no fichu over her breast. Several inches too short, a black-and-gray striped skirt of coarse wool left her legs exposed. She might almost have belonged to one of the redskin tribes celebrated by Cooper, for her bare legs, neck, and arms seemed to have been painted the color of brick. No spark of intelligence animated her flat face. Her bluish eyes held neither expression nor warmth. A few sparse white hairs served as her eyebrows. Between her twisted lips several teeth could be seen, crooked and irregular, but white as a dog’s.

“Ho there! Woman!” cried Monsieur de Sucy.

She drifted toward the gate, staring simplemindedly at the two hunters, having forced a shy smile upon catching sight of them.

“Where are we? What is this house? Whose is it? Who are you? Are you from this place?”

These questions, and a host of others put to her in quick succession, met only with guttural growls, more animal than human.

“She’s deaf and dumb, can’t you see?” said the magistrate.

“Bons-Hommes!” cried the peasant girl.

“Oh! She’s right. This might well be the old Bons-Hommes monastery,” said Monsieur d’Albon.

The questions resumed. But the peasant girl blushed like a backward child, played with her wooden shoe, twisted the cow’s rope (the animal had gone back to grazing), stared at the two hunters, inspected every element of their dress; she yelped, she growled, she clucked, but she did not speak.

“What’s your name?” said Philippe, staring into her eyes as if to place her under his power.

“Geneviève,” she answered, with a mindless laugh.

“So far the cow is the most intelligent creature we’ve met,” said the magistrate. “I’ll fire my rifle—no doubt that will bring someone.”

But the colonel brusquely stayed d’Albon’s hand as he reached for his weapon. Pointing into the distance, he showed his friend that woman in black who had so piqued their curiosity. She was meandering along a garden path, as if lost in deep meditation, giving the two friends a moment to study her more closely. She was dressed in a threadbare gown of black satin. Her long hair fell in curls over her forehead, about her shoulders, past her waist, taking the place of a shawl. No doubt long used to this dishevelment, she rarely troubled to shake the hair from her temples, but when she did, she tossed her head so sharply that no second attempt was required to whisk that thick veil away from her forehead or eyes. Like an animal’s, her movements showed remarkable physical confidence, so quick and precise as to seem almost miraculous for a woman. The two hunters looked on astonished as she leapt onto the branch of an apple tree and perched there, light as any bird. She plucked a few fruits, ate them, then dropped to the ground with that fluid ease we find so wondrous in squirrels. Her limbs had an elasticity that spared her every move even the appearance of discomfort or effort. She played on the grass, rolled head over heels like a child, then suddenly threw out her feet and hands and lay on the lawn, as languorous, graceful, and uninhibited as a young cat asleep in the sun. Hearing a distant rumble of thunder, she quickly rolled over and rose onto all fours, with the prodigious agility of a dog hearing a stranger’s approach. Owing to this unusual position, her black hair suddenly fell into two wide swaths that hung swinging from either side of her head, granting the two spectators of that singular scene a vision of shoulders so white that the skin glowed like daisies of the meadow, and a neck whose perfection hinted at a body of a most exquisite form.

She let out a grating cry and rose to her feet. So nimbly, so smoothly did each movement follow upon the last that she seemed less a human creature than one of those daughters of the sky celebrated in the poems of Ossian. She strolled toward a pool of water, delicately shook one leg to throw off her shoe, and dipped in her alabaster white foot with visible delight, no doubt marveling at the gemlike undulations it made. Then she knelt at the edge of the basin and, like a child, played at immersing her long tresses and then briskly raised her head to watch the water drip off, drop by drop, like strings of pearls shot through by the sun.

“That woman is mad,” cried the councillor.

Geneviève gave a loud, throaty shout, evidently addressed to the madwoman, who sat bolt upright, pushing the hair back from her cheeks. With this, the colonel and d’Albon caught a clear glimpse of her features; spotting the two friends, she bounded to the fence, agile and swift as a doe.

“Adieu!” she said, in a voice both sweet and harmonious, but that melody, so eagerly awaited by the hunters, seemed to contain no trace of sentiment and no trace of thought.

Monsieur d’Albon gazed admiringly on her long lashes, her thick black eyebrows, her glowing white skin unmarred by any tinge of red. A few delicate blue veins alone contrasted with her paleness. When the councillor turned toward his friend to voice his astonishment at the sight of this singular woman, he found him lying flat on the grass, as if lifeless. Monsieur d’Albon fired his rifle in the air to call for aid, shouting “Help! Help!” as he tried desperately to rouse the colonel. At the sound of the gunshot, the woman suddenly ran off fast as an arrow, shrieking in fright like a wounded animal and racing in circles over the meadow, giving every sign of profound terror. Hearing a calèche rattling down the L’Isle-Adam road, Monsieur d’Albon waved his handkerchief to beseech the sightseers’ assistance. The calèche turned immediately toward Bons-Hommes, and within it Monsieur d’Albon spied the faces of Monsieur and Madame de Grandville, his neighbors. They hurried out of the carriage and offered it to the magistrate. By chance, Madame de Grandville had with her a bottle of smelling salts, which was administered to Monsieur de Sucy. The moment he opened his eyes, the colonel looked toward the meadow, where the strange woman was endlessly running and shouting, and he let out a cry both indistinct and eloquent in its expression of horror, then he closed his eyes once again, gesturing to his friend as if begging to be hurried away from this sight. Monsieur and Madame de Grandville urged the councillor to take their calèche, obligingly offering to continue their excursion on foot.

“Who is this woman?” asked the magistrate, pointing at the stranger.

“She’s thought to come from Moulins,” answered Monsieur de Grandville. “She calls herself the Comtesse de Vandières. Word has it she’s mad, but as she’s been here only two months, I cannot vouch for the truth of those rumors.”

Thanking Monsieur and Madame de Grandville, d’Albon started off for Cassan.

“It’s her,” cried Philippe, recovering his senses.

“Who?” asked d’Albon.

“Stéphanie. Ah! Dead and living, living and mad! I thought it would be the end of me.”

Understanding all the gravity of the crisis afflicting his friend, the prudent magistrate questioned him no further and took pains not to upset him. He was anxious to arrive at the château, for the change he could see in Colonel Philippe made him fear that the countess might have contaminated him with her terrible illness. On reaching avenue de L’Isle-Adam, d’Albon sent the footman ahead to summon the village doctor; thus, when the colonel was laid in his bed, the surgeon was already at his side.

“Had the colonel’s stomach not been nearly empty,” he said, “he would surely have died. It was his depletion that saved him.”

Once he had dictated the immediate measures to be taken, the doctor left to prepare a sedative potion. The next morning Monsieur de Sucy’s condition had improved, but the doctor insisted on watching over him personally.

“I will admit, monsieur le marquis,” said the doctor to Monsieur d’Albon, “my first fear was a brain lesion. Monsieur de Sucy has had a terrible shock, and he is a man of strong passions, but with him it’s the first blow that decides everything. Tomorrow he may well be out of danger.”

The doctor was not mistaken, and the next day he permitted the magistrate to see his friend.

“My dear d’Albon,” said Philippe, pressing his hand, “I want a favor from you! Hurry straight to Bons-Hommes, find out all you can about that woman, and then come back quick as you can! I’ll be counting the minutes.”

Monsieur d’Albon leapt onto a horse and galloped to the former abbey. As he drew near, he saw a tall, thin man standing before the fence, a man of amenable mien, who answered in the affirmative when the magistrate asked if this ruined house was his home. Monsieur d’Albon revealed the motive of his visit.

“Was it you, then, monsieur,” cried the stranger, “who fired that cursed shot? You very nearly killed my poor patient.”

“See here, monsieur, I fired in the air.”

“You would have done less harm to the countess if you’d hit her.”

“In that case we’re even, for the sight of your countess nearly killed my friend, Monsieur de Sucy.”

“Would that be the Baron Philippe de Sucy?” cried the doctor, joining his hands. “Was he in Russia, at the crossing of the Berezina?”

“That’s right,” d’Albon answered. “He was captured by the Cossacks and taken to Siberia. He returned to us some eleven months ago.”

“Come in, monsieur,” said the stranger, showing the magistrate into a salon on the ground floor of his house. Some destructive force had been at work in this room, but in a capricious and unpredictable manner. Precious porcelain vases sat in pieces beside a clock whose glass dome remained intact. The silk curtains over the windows were torn, the double muslin drapes untouched.

“You see here,” he said to Monsieur d’Albon as they entered, “the ravages wrought by the charming creature to whom I have devoted my existence. She is my niece; despite the impotence of my art, I hope one day to restore her to reason by means of a method that, alas, only the rich can afford.”

Then, rambling like all those who live solitary lives, preyed on by an irremediable sorrow, he recounted the following adventure, whose relation has here been adapted and stripped of the many digressions interjected by the narrator and the councillor.

* * *

When, toward nine in the evening, he withdrew from the heights of Studyanka, which he had defended all through that day of November 28, 1812, Marshal Victor left behind some thousand men whose charge was to protect one of the two surviving bridges over the Berezina as long as humanly possible. This rear guard had fought valiantly to save a vast crowd of stragglers, who, numb with cold, had gathered around the retreating army’s abandoned equipment and refused to go on. In the end, the heroism of those devoted troops would prove useless. By a stroke of misfortune, the soldiers who poured onto the banks of the Berezina found a massive array of coaches, caissons, and materiel left behind by the army as it crossed the river on November 27 and 28. Inheritors of riches beyond their wildest dreams, wits dulled by the cold, these wretches settled into the unoccupied campsites, broke up the equipment to build huts, made fire with whatever was at hand, butchered the horses for food, stripped the carriages of their felt or canvas for blankets, and slept; slept, rather than pressing on, rather than tranquilly crossing the Berezina under cover of darkness—that same Berezina that an unimaginable twist of fate had already rendered so deadly for the armed forces of France. These pitiable soldiers’ apathy can only be understood by those who remember traversing those vast deserts of snow, with no other drink than snow, no other bed than snow, no other prospect than a horizon of snow, no other food than snow, except for a few frozen beets, a few handfuls of flour, perhaps a bit of horsemeat. Dying of hunger, of thirst, of sleeplessness and exhaustion, the wretches had happened onto a riverbank where they found wood, fires, food, countless abandoned vehicles, campsites, in short an entire improvised city. The village of Studyanka had been wholly dismantled, divided, transported from the heights down to the plain. However dolente and perilous that city, its miseries and dangers could not have seemed more welcoming to people who saw before them only the fearsome wastelands of Russia. In short, it was an enormous sanctuary, in existence for not yet twenty hours. Whether by weariness of life or delight in an unhoped-for comfort, that mass of men was impermeable to any thought other than rest. To be sure, the artillery of the Russians’ left flank fired relentlessly on that horde, which appeared as a massive blot in the snow, here black, there aglow with flames, but to the numbed multitudes those implacable cannonballs seemed only one more inconvenience to be borne. It was like a thunderstorm whose bolts inspired only derision, for wherever they fell their victims would already be ailing or dying, if not already dead. At every moment, fresh packs of stragglers appeared. These walking corpses scattered at once, staggering from bonfire to bonfire, begging for a place to rest; then, having generally been turned away, they joined up again to obtain by brute force the hospitality they’d been refused a moment before. Deaf to the voices of a small number of officers who predicted that the coming day would be their last, they exhausted their courage and energy—the very courage and energy they would need to cross over the river—in the fabrication of a shelter for the night, in the confection of an often deadly meal. The death that awaited them no longer seemed so terrible a horror; at least it would allow them an hour of sleep. The word horror they reserved for their hunger, for their thirst, for the cold. When there was no more wood to be found, no more fire, nor canvas, nor shelter, fierce clashes erupted between the empty-handed newcomers and those so wealthy as to enjoy some manner of hearth. The weakest perished. At length the moment came when a group of men fleeing the Russians found nothing but snow for their campsite, and there they lay down, never to rise again. Gradually this mass of half-annihilated beings grew so dense, so deaf, and so dulled—or perhaps so happy—that Marshal Victor, Duke de Bellune, he who had so heroically defended them in battle against Wittgenstein’s twenty thousand Russian troops, had no choice but to force his way through that human forest in order to cross the Berezina with the five thousand warriors he was bringing to the emperor. Rather than make way, the dejected masses allowed themselves to be crushed, and they died in silence, smiling at their extinguished fires, never thinking of France.

Not until ten o’clock in the evening did the Duke de Bellune find himself on the opposite bank. Before starting over the bridges and on toward Zembin, he had entrusted the fate of the rear guard of Studyanka to Éblé, that savior of all those who survived the calamities of the Berezina. Toward midnight, the great general, with a particularly courageous officer at his side, left the little riverside hut that served as his shelter and contemplated the spectacle of the enormous encampment that covered every inch of ground from the Berezina to the Borisov–Studyanka road. The Russians’ cannon had ceased their roar; on that expanse of snow, countless scattered fires, paling and seeming to cast no light, illuminated faces with nothing human about them. Some thirty thousand wretches from all the varied nations whose forces Napoleon had thrown at Russia were gathered on the riverbank, at great risk to their lives, brutishly unconcerned for their fate.

“So many to be saved,” said the general to the officer. “Tomorrow morning the Russians will be the masters of Studyanka. We’ve no choice but to set fire to the bridge as soon as we catch sight of them. And so, my friend, summon your courage! Find your way up to the heights, and tell General Fournier he has no time to lose: He must vacate his position at once, drive through these crowds, and cross the bridge. Once he’s set off, follow close behind him. Find a few able men to assist you and set fire to the campsites, the equipment, the caissons, the coaches, everything! No pity! Herd all these men onto the bridge! Leave everything with two legs no choice but to take shelter on the opposite bank. Fire is now our only hope. Oh, if Berthier had allowed me to destroy that damned gear, this river would have swallowed up no one but my poor pontoniers, those fifty heroes who saved the army and who will be forgotten by all!”

The general put his hand to his brow and stood silent. He sensed that Poland would be his grave, and that no voice would ever be raised in support of those glorious men who willingly leapt into the waters—the waters of the Berezina!—to sink trestles for the bridges. Today only one of their number is still living, or more precisely languishing, in a provincial village, unknown! The aide-de-camp set off. That devoted officer had scarcely taken a hundred paces toward Studyanka when General Éblé roused a few of his ailing pontoniers and started off on his mission of mercy, setting fire to the campsites around the bridge, forcing the crowd of sleeping soldiers to rise and cross the Berezina. In the meantime, after considerable struggles, the young aide-de-camp had arrived at the one wooden house still standing in Studyanka.

“Is this hut so full, then, comrade?” he said to a man standing outside.

“You’re a hard man if you can get in here,” the officer answered, never turning around, still hacking at the house’s wooden wall with his sword.

“Is that you, Philippe?” said the aide-de-camp, recognizing a comrade by the sound of his voice.

“Yes. Ah! It’s you, my friend,” answered Monsieur de Sucy, looking at the aide-de-camp, only twenty-three years old, like himself. “I thought surely you’d be across that accursed river by now. Have you come to bring us cakes and jam for our dessert? I can promise you a warm welcome,” he added, pulling away a strip of bark and giving it to his horse, by way of fodder.

“I’m looking for your commander. On behalf of General Éblé, I must tell him to make for Zembin fast as he can! You have just enough time to plow your way through that crowd of living corpses. And then I’m to set them on fire, so they’ll get up and walk.”

“You’re almost making me warm! I’m sweating already. Listen, I have two friends I must save. Ah, without those two dormice, my friend, I’d be a dead man at this moment! It’s for their sake that I’m looking after my horse rather than eating it. For pity’s sake, do you have a crust of bread? It’s been thirty hours since I last had something in my belly, and I’ve fought like a madman to keep up what little warmth and courage I have left.”

“Poor Philippe! I have nothing, nothing. But is your general here?”

“Don’t try to get in! This barn’s for our wounded. Go a little farther uphill. On your right, you’ll come upon a sort of pigsty, that’s where you’ll find the general. Adieu, my good fellow. If we ever again dance la trénis on a Paris floor . . .”

There was no way to finish this sentence: The wind was blowing so viciously that the aide-de-camp had to walk in order not to freeze, and Major Philippe’s lips were too cold for words. Soon silence reigned, broken only by groans from the house and the muffled sound of Monsieur de Sucy’s starving, enraged horse, chewing the frozen bark of the trees from which the house was built. The major resheathed his cutlass, briskly took up the reins of the precious animal whose life he had managed to safeguard, and despite its resistance tugged it away from the wretched food it was downing so desperately.

“Off we go, Bichette! Off we go. Only you can save Stéphanie now, my beauty. Come on! We’ll rest later—or more likely die.”

Wrapped in a pelisse to which he owed his continued existence and hardiness, Philippe set off at a run, stomping the packed snow to warm his feet. After no more than a hundred paces the major caught sight of a well-fed fire at the spot where, that morning, he’d left his coach in the care of an old trooper. A dreadful foreboding flooded over him. Like all those driven by an overpowering emotion amid this debacle, he found within himself the strength to rescue his friends, a strength he would never have had to save himself. Soon he was within a few paces of a sheltered hollow, well protected from the cannonballs, where he had left a young woman, his childhood companion and his most precious belonging!

A few paces from the carriage, some thirty stragglers huddled around an enormous blaze, diligently stoking it with planks, boxes from the caissons, carriage wheels, and side panels. No doubt these soldiers were the latest newcomers to the crowd that filled the broad plain from Studyanka to the fateful river with a sort of sea of heads, fires, and huts, a living ocean stirred by vague currents, from which rose a vague hum, sometimes punctuated by fearsome shouts. Possessed by hunger and despair, the wretches had likely ransacked his carriage. The aged general and young woman they’d found inside, sleeping on bundles of baggage, wrapped in overcoats and pelisses, now sat slumped by the fire. One door of the carriage was broken. On hearing the horse and the major approaching, the mob let out a shout, a cry of rage inspired by hunger.

“A horse! A horse!”

Their many voices were one.

“Get away! Look out!” cried two or three soldiers, training their weapons on the horse.

Philippe leapt down and stood before his mare, saying, “Brigands! I’ll toss you into that fire of yours, every last man of you. There are dead horses up the hill! Go and get them.”

“Oh, the officer’s quite a clown, isn’t he!” a giant of a grenadier shouted back. “One . . . two . . . will you get out of the way? No? Very well, suit yourself.”

A woman’s cry rang out over the gunshot. Happily, Philippe was not hit, but Bichette sank to the ground, locked in a frantic struggle with death; three men rushed forward and finished her off with their bayonets.

“Cannibals! Let me at least take the blanket and my pistols,” said Philippe, dismayed.

“You can have the pistols all right,” answered the grenadier. “As for the blanket, this soldier’s had nothing in his gut for two days, and he’s standing here shivering in his miserable rags. He’s our general . . .”

Philippe made no reply as he gazed on a man in worn shoes and a pair of trousers with holes in ten places, a forlorn, rime-crusted forage cap on his head. He quickly took up his pistols. Five men dragged the mare nearer the fire and set about cutting it up, deft as any Paris butcher’s boy. With miraculous speed, the pieces of meat were removed and dropped onto the embers. The major went to join the woman who had shrieked in despair on recognizing him. He found her sitting dully on a carriage cushion, warming herself; she stared at him in silence, never smiling. Not far away, Philippe spied the soldier he’d ordered to guard the carriage; the poor man was wounded. Outnumbered, he had yielded to the stragglers assailing him, but like a dog that has defended his master’s dinner to the end, he’d taken his share of the spoils and fashioned himself a sort of shawl from a white sheet. At the moment he was busy turning over a piece of the mare, and on his face the major saw unmingled joy at the feast to come. The Count de Vandières, whose mind had three days before slipped into a sort of second infancy, sat on a cushion near his wife and stared at the flames, their warmth beginning to dispel his torpor. Philippe’s arrival, the danger he’d faced, all this had left no impression on him, no more than the altercation that preceded the pillaging of the carriage. Sucy clasped the young countess’s hand, as if to convey his affection and his sorrow at seeing her reduced to these depths of misery, but he said nothing as he sat down on a nearby snow mound, now melting and trickling, and surrendered to the pleasure of warmth, forgetting all peril, forgetting everything. In spite of himself, an expression of almost mindless joy fell over his face, and he waited eagerly for his allotted strip of horsemeat to be done roasting. The aroma of that charred flesh inflamed his hunger, and his hunger silenced his heart, his courage, and his love. Without anger, he contemplated the fruits of his carriage’s despoliation. The men around the bonfire had shared among them the blankets, cushions, pelisses, gowns, everything that belonged to the count, the countess, and the major. Philippe turned around to see if there was anything more to be found in the chest. By the light of the flames, he saw the gold, diamonds, and silverware strewn on the ground, of interest to no one. To a man, every living soul that chance had brought to this fireside sat enveloped in an appalling silence, doing only what he thought necessary for his own well-being. There was something grotesque about such destitution. Haggard with cold, every face was caked with a layer of mud, rutted from eye to jaw by falling tears, making the thickness of that mask plain to see. The soldiers were disfigured further by long matted beards. Some of the men were wrapped in women’s shawls; others wore horses’ shabracks, soiled blankets, rags dusted with melting hoarfrost; some had one foot in a boot and the other in a shoe—in short, there was no one whose garb did not exhibit some quaint peculiarity. Amid these many causes for amusement, they remained serious and somber. The silence was troubled only by the crackling of the wood, the hiss of the flames, the distant murmur of the camp, and the saber blows inflicted on Bichette by the hungriest of the men in their eagerness to remove the choicest morsels. The weariest slept, and if one happened to roll into the fire, no one bothered to pull him to safety. If he wasn’t dead, reasoned these inflexible logicians, a good burn would surely spur him to find a more suitable spot. If the wretch awoke in the fire and died, no one pitied him. A few of the soldiers looked at each other, each as if justifying his own unconcern by the other’s indifference. Twice the young countess witnessed this sight and said nothing. Finally the pieces of meat on the embers were cooked, and everyone sated his own hunger, with the ravenousness that we find repellent in animals.

“Thirty infantrymen on one horse! There’s a first time for everything!” cried the grenadier who had shot the mare.

Such was the one quip that expressed the native wit of the French.

Soon most of these pitiful soldiers bundled themselves up in whatever they were wearing, lay down on planks or anything else that might shield them from the snow, and slept, caring little for tomorrow. Once the major was warm and his hunger appeased, his eyelids grew heavy with an invincible need for rest. He gazed at the young woman all through the ensuing brief contest with slumber. She slept with her face turned to the fire, showing her closed eyes and a part of her forehead; she was wrapped in a lined pelisse and a thick dragoon’s greatcoat, her head on a bloodstained pillow; an astrakhan hat, secured by a handkerchief knotted under her chin, protected her face from the cold so far as it could; she’d tucked her feet beneath the coat. Curled on the ground as she was, she truly looked like nothing at all. Was she the last of the camp followers? Was she that magnificent woman, a lover’s pride and joy, the queen of the Parisian balls? Alas! Not even the eye of her most devoted friend could find any lingering trace of femininity in that pile of drapes and rags. Love had succumbed to the cold, in the heart of a woman. Through the thick veils that the most irresistible of all sleeps was pulling over the major’s eyes, he saw the husband and wife only as two shapeless spots. The flames of the bonfire, those prostrate human figures, that terrible cold raging three steps away from a tenuous warmth, everything was a dream. An unwelcome thought intruded into Philippe’s tormented mind. “If I sleep we’ll all die; I don’t want to sleep,” he told himself. He was sleeping. An hour later he was awakened by a terrible clamor and an explosion. The thought of his duty and of his lover’s danger fell leadenly on his heart once again. He let out a shout, like a lion’s roar. He and his adjutant were the only ones up. Before them they saw a sea of flame raging through a horde of men in the shadow of the night, devouring the campsites and huts; they heard shrieks of despair, howls; they spied thousands of defeated bodies and furious faces. At the heart of that hell, between two ranks of corpses, a column of soldiers was forcing its way toward the bridge.

“That’s the rear guard retreating,” cried the major. “Now there’s no hope.”

“I’ve spared your carriage, Philippe,” said a friendly voice.

Turning around, Sucy recognized the young aide-de-camp by the light of the fire.

“Ah! It’s no good,” answered the major. “They’ve eaten my horse. And in any case, how am I supposed to get that addle-headed general and his wife up and walking?”

“Pick up a burning brand, Philippe, and threaten them!”

“Threaten the countess!”

“Adieu!” cried the aide-de-camp. “I only just have the time to cross that cursed river, and I must! I have a mother back in France! What a night! These wretches would rather stay here in the snow; most of them would sooner burn than stand up. It’s four in the morning, Philippe! In two hours, the Russians will be stirring. I promise you, you’ll see the Berezina clogged with corpses once again. Philippe, think of yourself! You have no horse, and you can’t carry the countess. There’s no other way, can’t you see? Come with me!” he said, taking him by the arm.

“But my friend, the thought of abandoning Stéphanie!”

The major clasped the countess in his arms and pulled her to her feet, shaking her with a desperate violence to force her awake; she looked at him with a fixed, deadened stare.

“We must walk, Stéphanie, or we’ll die here.”

The countess’s only response was to try to drop back to the ground and return to her slumbers. The aide-de-camp snatched up a burning brand and waved it in Stéphanie’s face.

“We’ll save her in spite of herself!” cried Philippe, picking up the countess and placing her in the coach.

He came back and beseeched his friend’s aid. The two of them lifted the old general, unsure if he was dead or alive, and set him down beside his wife. One by one, the major approached all those asleep on the ground and rolled them over with his foot, relieving them of what they had pillaged; he piled the clothes atop the two spouses and threw a few roasted strips of his mare into a corner of the carriage.

“What are you planning to do?” asked the aide-de-camp.

“Pull them,” said the major.

“You’re mad!”

“I am indeed!” cried Philippe, crossing his arms over his chest.

All at once a desperate idea seemed to come to him.

“Here, you,” he said, grasping his adjutant’s good arm, “I’m leaving her in your care for an hour! Mark this well: You must die before you allow anyone to come near this carriage.”

The major picked up the countess’s diamonds with one hand; with the other he drew his saber and began to rain furious blows down on the sleepers who looked to him most intrepid. He succeeded in waking the gigantic grenadier and two other men of indeterminate rank.

“We’re done for,” he told them.

“I’m aware of that,” answered the grenadier. “All the same to me.”

“Well then, since we’re dead either way, is it not better to give up one’s life for a beautiful woman and just possibly see France again?”

“I’d rather sleep,” said one man, curling up in the snow. “And if you trouble me again, Major, you’ll find my saber in your gut!”

“What’s the plan, officer?” the grenadier asked. “This man is drunk! He’s a Parisian—likes his comforts, you know!”

“Brave grenadier, this is yours,” cried the major, showing him a diamond necklace, “if you will follow me and be prepared to fight like a madman. The Russians are ten minutes away on foot; they have horses; we’re going to make for their forward battery and help ourselves to a couple.”

“But what about the sentinels, Major?”

“One of us three—” he began, then broke off and looked at the aide-de-camp. “You’re coming, Hippolyte, aren’t you?”

Hippolyte nodded.

“One of us,” the major went on, “will deal with the sentinel. But for all we know those damned Russians are sleeping too.”

“Ho, Major, you’ve got grit! But you’ll take me along in your berline?” said the grenadier.

“Yes, if you don’t meet your maker up there. Should by any chance I perish, Hippolyte and you, grenadier, promise you’ll give your all to keep the countess safe.”

“Agreed!” cried the grenadier.

They started toward the Russian lines, toward the batteries that had so relentlessly pummeled the hopeless, supine masses on the riverbank. A few moments later, the galloping hooves of two horses resounded over the snow, and the reawakened battery fired several volleys that passed over the sleepers’ heads; the horses’ steps rang out as furiously as blacksmiths pounding iron. The devoted aide-de-camp had not survived. The sturdy grenadier was safe and sound. Philippe had taken a bayonet in one shoulder while defending his friend; nevertheless, he clutched the horse’s mane, and his legs squeezed the animal like a powerful vise.

“God be praised!” cried the major, finding his carriage just where he’d left it, and his adjutant standing tranquilly beside it.

“If you’re a just man, officer, you’ll see to it I get the Cross of Honor. We did some nice work up there, didn’t we? Showed them a thing or two!”

“We haven’t done anything yet! Let’s hitch up the horses. Take these ropes.”

“It’s not enough.”

“Well then, grenadier, give that crowd of layabouts a good going-over, and help yourself to their shawls, their linens—”

“Say, this joker’s dead!” cried the grenadier, divesting the first one he came to. “Well, what do you know, they’re all dead!”

“All of them?”

“Every one! Looks like that horsemeat didn’t agree with them—that or the generous helping of snow on the side!”

These words sent a shiver through Philippe. The cold was twice as bitter as before.

“God! To think of losing a woman I’ve saved twenty times over . . .” The major shook the countess by her shoulders, crying, “Stéphanie! Stéphanie!”

The young woman opened her eyes.

“Madame! We’re saved.”

“Saved,” she repeated, falling back.

They hitched up the horses as best they could. Holding his saber in his good hand and the reins in the other, his pistols at his sides, the major climbed onto the first horse, the grenadier onto the second. His feet frozen stiff, the old adjutant had been heaved crosswise into the carriage atop the general and the countess. Spurred on by the saber, the horses hurtled forward, speeding the carriage down onto the plain, where difficulties without number awaited the major. Soon there was no way to go on without crushing the men, women, even children asleep on the ground. The grenadier did what he could to rouse them, but they stubbornly refused to move. Monsieur de Sucy searched in vain for the path that the rear guard had cleared: It had vanished like a ship’s wake on the water. They advanced at a crawl, continually halted by soldiers threatening to kill the horses.

“Do you want to get through?” asked the grenadier.

“If it costs me every drop of blood in my body, if it costs me the whole world,” answered the major.

“Then forward! You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs!”

And the grenadier of the guard spurred the horses over the slumbering bodies, bloodied the wheels, toppled the huts, left two furrows of corpses in that field of heads. Let it nonetheless be said that he never failed to cry out, in a thundering voice, “Out of the way, you moldering bastards!”

“These poor people!” cried the major.

“Bah! It’s this or the cold, this or the cannon!” said the grenadier, urging the horses ever on, pricking them with the point of his saber.

A calamity that should have befallen them long before, which they had thus far been spared only by miraculous good fortune, now put a sudden halt to their progress. The carriage tipped over.

“I had an idea this would happen!” cried the imperturbable grenadier. “Oh! Oh! Our friend is dead.”

“Poor Laurent,” said the major.

“Laurent! From the Fifth Cavalry?”

“Yes.”

“He’s my cousin. Ah well! Not much fun in this life at the moment. I don’t imagine he’ll miss it.”

Only after an interminable, irreparable delay was the carriage righted and the horses untangled. Awakened and wrenched from her torpor by the violent jolt, the young countess had thrown off her wraps and stood up.

“Philippe, where are we?” she whispered, looking around her.

“Five hundred paces from the bridge. We’re heading over the Berezina. And then, once we reach the other side, Stéphanie, I’ll torment you no longer, I’ll let you sleep, we’ll be safe, we can go on untroubled to Vilnius. May God grant that you never know the price paid for your life!”

“You’re wounded!”

“It’s nothing.”

The hour of the catastrophe had sounded. Daybreak was announced by the Russians’ guns. Masters of Studyanka, they unleashed a withering fire over the plain; in the first light of morning, the major spied their columns advancing, positioning themselves on the heights. A cry of alarm erupted from the multitudes; a moment later they’d all leapt to their feet. Instinctively sensing their peril, they hurtled toward the bridge like a mighty wave. The Russians poured down from the heights, fast as a brush fire. Men, women, children, horses, everything bolted onto the bridge. Happily, the major and the countess were still at some distance from the riverbank. General Éblé had just set fire to the trestles on the opposite side. The cries of warning addressed to those now packed onto that life raft fell on deaf ears; no one would turn back. Not only did the bridge give way under their weight; in their frantic race toward the murderous riverbank, a great mass of humanity poured into the Berezina like an avalanche. No shriek could be heard, only a dull sound like a stone falling into water, and a moment later, the river was clotted with corpses. So fierce was the backlash created by those retreating onto the plain in hopes of escaping that death, and so violent their collision with those still advancing, that many were asphyxiated on the spot. The Count and Countess de Vandières owed their life to the carriage. After trampling and breaking so many dying bodies, the horses were soon crushed to death in their turn, overrun by the human cyclone sweeping over the bank. The major and the grenadier survived purely by main force. They killed so as not to be killed. This hurricane of human faces, this surge of bodies animated by one single movement left the bank of the Berezina deserted for a few moments. The herd had poured back onto the plain. If some threw themselves into the river from the bank, it was less in hopes of reaching the other side, which for them meant France, than simply of fleeing the Siberian wastelands. For a few particularly audacious souls, desperation became a guardian angel. An officer reached the other bank by leaping from one lump of ice to the next; a soldier crawled miraculously over floating corpses. In the end, the vast crowd realized that the Russians would not kill twenty thousand unarmed men, numb with cold, their senses dulled, who made no attempt to defend themselves, and with a horrible resignation settled down to await their fate. The major, the grenadier, the old general, and his wife were thus left alone, just steps away from what had once been a bridge. These four stood silent and dry-eyed amid a field of dead bodies, in the company of a few able soldiers, a few officers whose fighting spirit had been revived by the circumstances, numbering perhaps fifty. Two hundred paces away, the major descried what was left of the carriage bridge, swallowed by the river two days before.

“We’ll build a raft!” he cried.

No sooner had those words been spoken than everyone sped off as one toward the ruined bridge. A mob set about gathering iron clamps, hunting for pieces of wood, for ropes, for everything required to construct a raft. Under the major’s command, some twenty armed soldiers and officers stood guard, protecting the workers against any attack the crowd might launch on realizing their intentions. An imprisoned man’s yearning for freedom can sometimes energize him and inspire him to miraculous feats, but that is as nothing next to the need compelling these pitiable Frenchmen to act.

“The Russians! The Russians are on their way!” the guards warned the workers.

And the wood creaked and groaned, the vessel grew wider, higher, deeper. Generals, soldiers, colonels, everyone helped to transport wheels, iron bars, ropes, and planks, bowing under their weight: It was a living image of the building of Noah’s ark. Beside her husband, the young countess gazed on this spectacle, regretting her inability to take part in the labors; nevertheless, she helped to tie knots to strengthen the rigging. Finally the raft was finished. Forty men heaved it into the water, a dozen soldiers holding the ropes that moored it to the bank. Seeing their craft afloat on the Berezina, the builders immediately leapt aboard, a loathsome spirit of self-interest animating them all. The major had foreseen that the first surge would be violent, and so clasped Stéphanie and the general by the hand to hold them back, but a shiver ran through him when he saw the vessel packed from one end to the other, the passengers pressed together like spectators on the parterre of a theater.

“Savages!” he cried. “It was I who gave you the idea of building a raft; I saved your lives, and you refuse to leave room for me.”

A muddled tumult of voices was the only response. By means of long poles braced against the riverbank, a group of men on the raft were preparing to cast off with one mighty thrust, hoping to propel it straight toward the other bank, cutting through the corpses and floating ice.

“By thunder! I’ll toss you overboard right enough, if you don’t make way for the major and his two friends,” cried the grenadier, raising his saber to halt the launch, and—braving awful bellows of fury—forcing those on board to further close ranks.

“I’m going to fall! I’m falling!” came the cries of his companions. “Push off! Forward!”

The major looked dry-eyed at his mistress, who gazed toward the heavens in sublime resignation.

“Better to die with you!” she said.

There was something comical in the situation of the raft’s passengers. Rage though they might, none dared disobey the grenadier, for they were pressed together so tightly that to jostle one would be to topple them all. Faced with this threat, a captain resolved to be rid of the troublesome soldier. Sensing the officer’s hostile intentions, the grenadier seized him and flung him into the water, saying, “Ah! Ah, ducky, so you want a drink? Be my guest! Room for two more!” he cried. “Come along, Major, toss that little woman this way and get yourself over here! Leave the dotard where he is, he’ll be dead by tomorrow.”

“Hurry!” roared a voice composed of a hundred voices.

“Come along now, Major! These people are getting itchy, and I don’t believe you can blame them.”

The Comte de Vandières threw off his coverings and stood on the bank, displaying his general’s uniform.

“We must save the count,” said Philippe.

Stéphanie squeezed her lover’s hand, threw herself on his neck, and embraced him with a fearsome intensity.

“Adieu!” she said.

They had understood each other perfectly. The Comte de Vandières found the strength and presence of mind to leap onto the craft. Stéphanie followed, after casting Philippe one last glance.

“Major, would you like my place?” shouted the grenadier. “Life’s nothing to me. I’ve neither wife nor child nor mother.”

“I’m leaving these two in your care,” cried the major, pointing toward the count and his wife.

“Don’t you worry, I’ll look after them like my own flesh and blood.”

Philippe stood still, watching. The raft was propelled toward the opposite bank with such force that when it touched ground a mighty shudder ran through it from one end to the other. The count tumbled into the river; as he fell, a sheet of ice sheared off his head and launched it far into the distance, like a cannonball.

“What did I tell you, Major?” cried the grenadier.

“Adieu!” cried a woman.

Philippe de Sucy fell to his knees, frozen with horror, defeated by the cold, by regret, by exhaustion.

* * *

“My poor niece’s mind was destroyed,” added the doctor after a moment of silence. “Ah! monsieur,” he went on, clasping d’Albon’s hand, “how cruel life has been to that fragile woman, so young and so delicate! Separated by an appalling misfortune from the grenadier, a man by the name of Fleuriot, for two years she had no choice but to follow after the army, a plaything for a bunch of ruffians. As I understand it, she had no shoes to wear, only the most meager dress, went for months with no one caring for her or feeding her; now sheltered in a charity house, now chased away like an animal. God alone knows what miseries that poor woman nevertheless survived. She was locked up with the mad folk in a small German town, and meanwhile her family, thinking her dead, was dividing her legacy. In 1816 Grenadier Fleuriot recognized her in a Strasbourg inn, not long after she’d escaped from her prison. The local peasants told him the countess had been living in the forest for an entire month, that they’d tracked her like an animal, hoping to capture her, but in vain. I was then staying a few leagues from Strasbourg. Hearing tell of a wild girl, I was curious to discover the truth of these ridiculous tales. What a shock when I found the countess before me! Fleuriot told me all he knew of that terrible story. I brought the poor man back to the Auvergne with my niece, and there I had the misfortune of losing him. He had a kind of power over Madame de Vandières. He alone could persuade her to dress. Only rarely, in the beginning, did she utter that word Adieu!, which constitutes the whole of her language. Fleuriot did all he could to reawaken her mind, but he failed, and succeeded only in making her speak that sad word a little more often. The grenadier had a gift for distracting her, for occupying her with play, and through him, I hoped, but . . .”

For a moment Stéphanie’s uncle sat silent.

“Here,” he resumed, “she found another creature, whose company seems to suit her: An idiot peasant girl, who, ugly and backward as she is, was once in love with a mason. This mason wanted to marry her, for she owns a bit of land. For a year, poor Geneviève was the happiest woman there had ever been on the face of this earth. She looked after herself, and on Sundays went off to dance with Dallot; she knew love; there was a place in her heart and her mind for emotion. But Dallot had second thoughts. He found a girl still possessed of her wits, and of more land than Geneviève, and so he left her. The poor thing lost what little intelligence love had inspired in her, and now she can only herd cows or gather hay. She and my niece are, in a sense, bound together by the invisible chain of their shared fate and by the sentiment that was the cause of their madness. Come and see for yourself,” said Stéphanie’s uncle, leading the Marquis d’Albon to the window.

And the magistrate did indeed see the pretty countess sitting on the ground between Geneviève’s legs. Armed with a huge tortoiseshell comb, the peasant girl was devoting all her attention to untangling Stéphanie’s long black hair. The countess sat patiently, now and then letting out a stifled cry whose tone betrayed a purely instinctual pleasure. Monsieur d’Albon shivered as he contemplated the countess’s unguarded pose, her animal carelessness, the signs of an utter absence of soul.

“Philippe! Philippe!” he cried. “Yesterday’s sorrows are as nothing. Is there no hope, then?”

The old doctor looked heavenward.

“Adieu, monsieur,” said Monsieur d’Albon, pressing the old man’s hand. “My friend is waiting. You shall meet him soon.”

“So it truly is her,” cried Sucy after the Marquis d’Albon had spoken a few words. “Ah, I still had my doubts!” he added, tears falling from his dark eyes, usually so severe.

“It is indeed the Countess de Vandières,” rejoined the magistrate.

The colonel leapt out of bed and threw on some clothes.

“Now hold on, Philippe!” said the magistrate, aghast. “Are you out of your mind?”

“But I’m not ill anymore,” the colonel answered, plainly. “This news has vanquished all my miseries. What ailment could possibly hope to compete with thoughts of Stéphanie? I’m off to Bons-Hommes, I’ll see her, I’ll talk to her, I’ll cure her! She’s a free woman. And joy will be ours, or there is no such thing as Providence. Do you really believe that poor woman can hear my voice and not recover her reason?”

“She’s already seen you and not recognized you,” the magistrate gently replied, noting his friend’s overly high hopes and eager to sow a few salutary doubts.

The colonel winced slightly on hearing those words, but soon his smile returned, and he brushed them aside with a quick wave. No one dared stand in his way. A few hours later he had settled into the former priory with the doctor and the Comtesse de Vandières.

“Where is she?” he cried as he entered.

“Shh!” answered Stéphanie’s uncle. “She’s asleep. Look, here she is.”

Philippe saw the poor madwoman huddled on a bench in the sun. Her head was shaded from the heat by a forest of unkempt hair draped over her face; her arms hung elegantly groundward; her body had a doe’s delicate grace; her feet were effortlessly tucked beneath her; her breast rose at regular intervals; her skin displayed that porcelain whiteness for which we admire the limpid faces of children. Motionless beside her, Geneviève held a small branch that Stéphanie must have snapped from the very top of a poplar, and she gently waved it over her dozing friend to chase off the flies and cool the air. The peasant girl looked at Monsieur Fanjat and the colonel; then, like an animal recognizing its master, she slowly turned back to the countess and went on watching over her, never showing the slightest sign of surprise or intelligence. It was a stifling hot day. The stone bench seemed to sparkle, and from the meadow rose those mischievous vapors that flutter and shimmer like gold dust over grass, but Geneviève seemed oblivious to the consuming heat. The colonel violently clasped the doctor’s hands. Tears rolled down the soldier’s virile cheeks and fell into the grass at Stéphanie’s feet.

“Monsieur,” said the uncle, “for two years my heart has broken every day. Soon you will be exactly like me. You may not weep, but you will feel your grief all the same.”

“You’ve looked after her,” said the colonel, equal parts gratitude and jealousy in his eyes.

These two men understood each other. Again clasping hands, they stood motionless, contemplating the wonderful tranquillity that sleep had draped over the charming creature before them. Now and then Stéphanie sighed, and that sigh, which had every appearance of sensibility, left the poor colonel trembling with joy.

“Alas,” Monsieur Fanjat said gently, “do not be fooled, monsieur. You see her now as full of reason as she will ever be.”

Those who have spent hours looking on in delight as a loved one lies slumbering, someone whose eyes will smile at them on awakening, must surely understand the sweet, terrible emotion that now gripped the colonel. Here that sleep was an illusion; her awakening would be a death, and the most horrible of all deaths. Suddenly a young goat came bounding to the bench and sniffed at Stéphanie. Roused by the sound, she lightly rose to her feet, inspiring no alarm in the impulsive animal, but on spotting Philippe she fled to the cover of an elderberry hedge, her four-legged companion at her heels; then she threw out the small birdlike cry that the colonel had heard near the fence when the countess first appeared to d’Albon. Finally she climbed into a laburnum tree, perched among its green boughs, and peered at the “stranger” as intently as the forest’s most curious nightingale.

“Adieu, adieu, adieu!” she said, her tone unmarked by any trace of intelligence.

It was the indifference of a bird whistling its song.

“She doesn’t know me!” cried the colonel, despairing. “Stéphanie! It’s Philippe, your Philippe, Philippe.”

And the poor soldier strode toward the tree. When he was three paces away, the countess shot him a glance as if to challenge him, though with a sort of fright in her eyes; then, in one leap, she fled from the laburnum to a locust tree, and from there to a Norway spruce, where she swung from branch to branch with an incredible agility.

“Don’t chase after her,” Monsieur Fanjat told the colonel. “You would create an aversion that may well become insurmountable. I’ll help you to make yourself known to her and to tame her. Come to this bench. Pay the poor creature no mind, and you’ll soon find her creeping your way, ever so slowly, to examine you.”

“For her of all people not to recognize me, to flee me!” the colonel repeated, sitting down with his back against a tree whose boughs shaded a rustic bench, and he bowed his head over his breast. The doctor said nothing. Soon the countess nimbly climbed down from her spruce tree, flitting this way and that like a will-o’-the-wisp, sometimes swaying with the undulations of the wind-tossed boughs. On each branch she paused to peer at the stranger, but at last, seeing him so still, she dropped onto the grass, stood, and slowly stole toward him through the meadow. She stopped at a tree some ten feet from the bench, and Monsieur Fanjat quietly said to the colonel, “Carefully reach into my right-hand pocket and take out a few lumps of sugar. Show them to her, and she’ll come to you. For you, I will gladly forgo the pleasure of giving her these sweets myself. She loves sugar with a passion; you’ll soon have her approaching you and recognizing you without the slightest hesitation.”

“When she was a woman,” Philippe answered sadly, “she had no taste for sweets.”

The colonel clasped the lump of sugar between his right thumb and index finger and proffered it to Stéphanie, who once again let out her savage cry, bounding eagerly toward Philippe, then stopped, thwarted by the instinctive fear he aroused in her. Again and again, she looked at the sugar and then looked away, like those poor dogs whose masters forbid them to touch a morsel of food until, after a drawn-out recitation, the last letter of the alphabet has been spoken. Finally animal passion triumphed over fear; Stéphanie leapt toward Philippe, timidly put out her brown hand to seize her quarry, touched her lover’s fingers, clutched the sugar, and vanished into a thicket. This devastating spectacle left the colonel deeply forlorn. He dissolved into tears and fled into the drawing room.

“Is love then less courageous than friendship?” Monsieur Fanjat asked him. “Monsieur le baron, I have hope. My poor niece’s condition was once far more dire than this.”

“Is such a thing possible?” Philippe cried.

“She went about naked.”

The colonel made a gesture of horror and paled; thinking he glimpsed certain disturbing symptoms in that pallor, the doctor came and took his pulse, and found him in the grips of a violent fever. At his unyielding insistence, the colonel was put to bed, while the doctor prepared a mild dose of opium to ensure him a restful sleep.

Some eight days went by, the Baron de Sucy continually tortured by fits of mortal anguish; soon his eyes had no tears left to shed. So often shattered, his soul could not inure itself to the spectacle of the countess’s madness, but he made his peace, so to speak, with this cruel state of affairs and found moments of relief in his sorrow. His heroism knew no bounds. He found the courage to tame Stéphanie with offers of sweetmeats; he devoted so much thought to this ritual, he so skillfully calibrated each modest new step toward the conquest of his mistress’s instinct—the last lingering shred of her intelligence—that she was soon more at home here than ever before. Every morning, on rising, the colonel hurried down to the garden, and if, after a long search for the countess, he could not guess in what tree she was gently swaying, or in what corner she had nestled to play with a bird, or on what roof she was perched, he had only to whistle the well-known air “Partant pour la Syrie,” to which the memory of an episode from their love affair was attached. Immediately Stéphanie came running, light as a fawn. She had grown used to the sight of the colonel, and he no longer frightened her; soon she took to sitting on his knees, encircling him with her lithe, slender arm. In this position, so dear to lovers, Philippe slowly offered the greedy countess a few sweets. Sometimes, when she had eaten them all, she searched through his pockets, her gestures as mechanically purposeful as a monkey’s. Once she was satisfied that there was nothing more to be had, she looked at Philippe with an empty gaze, devoid of thought or recognition, and began to play with him; she tried to take off his boots to see his foot, she ripped his gloves, donned his hat; but she passively allowed him to run his hands through her hair, let him take her in his arms, and received ardent kisses without pleasure. When his tears flowed, she stared at him in silence; the whistling of “Partant pour la Syrie” she understood perfectly, but he could not make her speak her own name: Stéphanie. In all these heartbreaking endeavors, Philippe was buoyed by a hope that never deserted him. If, on a beautiful fall morning, he saw the countess peacefully sitting on a bench beneath a yellowing poplar, the pitiable lover lay down at her feet and gazed into her eyes as long as she would allow it, hoping to spy in them some new glimmer of lucidity; sometimes he fell prey to illusion and believed he had glimpsed a vibrancy in their hard, immobile gleam, a softening, a liveliness, and he cried out: “Stéphanie! Stéphanie! You can hear me, you can see me!” But she listened to the sound of that voice as she would to a noise, to the wind rustling the leaves, to the lowing of the cow on whose back she liked to clamber; and the colonel wrung his hands in despair, a despair whose sting never waned. His sorrow only grew with the passage of time and these pointless, repeated attempts. One evening, beneath a tranquil sky, in the silence and calm of that bucolic haven, the doctor glanced at the couple and saw the baron loading a pistol. The old physician understood that Philippe had given up hope; instantly the blood drained from his face, leaving him light-headed and weak, and if he succeeded in overcoming that impairment it was because he preferred his niece mad and living to dead. He came running.

“What are you doing?” he said.

“This one is for me,” the colonel answered, pointing to the loaded pistol beside him on the bench. “And this one for her,” he concluded, stuffing the wadding into the barrel of the weapon in his hand.

The countess was stretched out on the ground, playing with the bullets.

“Then you don’t know,” the doctor calmly replied, hiding his horror, “that last night while she was sleeping I heard her say ‘Philippe!’”

“She spoke my name!” cried the baron, dropping his pistol. Stéphanie snatched it up at once, but he wrenched it from her hands, picked up the weapon from the bench, and ran off.

“Poor dear child!” the doctor cried, relieved at the success of his fabrication. He pressed the madwoman to his bosom and went on: “He would have killed you, the selfish brute! Because he is suffering, he wants to see you dead. He doesn’t know how to love you for yourself, my child! But we forgive him, don’t we? He’s irrational. And you? You’re only mad. No, God alone may call you to His side. We think you unhappy because you no longer join in our sorrows, fools that we are! But,” he said, pulling her onto his knees, “you’re happy, nothing upsets you; you live life like a bird, like a deer.”

She pounced on a young blackbird that was hopping nearby on the ground, clasped it in her hands with a little cry of pleasure, smothered it, gazed at its dead body, and left it at the foot of a tree without another thought.

At first light the next day, the colonel came down to the garden, searching for Stéphanie, believing in happiness; failing to find her, he whistled. When his mistress appeared, he took her by the arm, and walking together for the first time, they made for a bower of yellowing trees, their leaves falling in the light breeze of morning. The colonel sat down, and Stéphanie settled unprompted onto his knees. Philippe was trembling with delight.

“My love,” he said to her, fervently kissing the countess’s hands, “I am Philippe.”

She looked at him curiously.

“Come,” he added, pressing her to him. “Do you feel my heart beating? All this time, it has beaten only for you. I still love you. Philippe isn’t dead, he’s right here, beneath you. You are my Stéphanie, and I am your Philippe.”

“Adieu,” she said, “adieu.”

The colonel quivered, for he believed he could see his joy spreading to his mistress. His heartfelt cry, born of a surge of hope, that last desperate bid of an undying love, a delirious passion, was reawakening his lover’s reason.

“Ah! Stéphanie, we will be happy.”

She let out a shriek of pleasure, and her eyes revealed a faint flicker of awareness.

“She recognizes me! Stéphanie!”

The colonel felt his heart swell, his eyes grow moist. But just then he saw that the countess was showing him a piece of sugar she’d discovered in his pocket as he spoke. He had taken for human thought what was only the faint glimmer of reason that a monkey’s cunning implies. Philippe fainted. Monsieur Fanjat found the countess sitting on the colonel’s still body. She was chewing her sugar, voicing her delight with coos that any visitor would have admired if, when she still had her reason, she had merrily attempted to imitate her parakeet or her cat.

“Ah! My friend,” cried Philippe, recovering his senses, “I die every day, every moment! I’m too much in love with her! If in her madness she retained some small trace of her womanhood, I could bear it. But to see her still a savage, devoid even of modesty, to see her—”

“You were hoping for madness as we see it at the opera,” the doctor said sharply. “Is your loving devotion subject to preconditions, then? What, monsieur! For you I have forgone the sad pleasure of feeding my niece, to you I have left the joy of playing with her, I have kept for myself only the most burdensome tasks. I watch over her while you sleep, I . . . Come, monsieur, abandon your hopes for her. Leave this sad hermitage. I have learned to live with that dear little creature; I understand her madness, I foresee her every move, I share her secrets. One day you shall thank me.”

The colonel left Bons-Hommes, to return only once. The doctor was distraught to have inflicted such grief on his guest, whom he was coming to love no less than his niece. If only one of the two lovers was to be pitied, it was surely Philippe: Was he not bearing the burden of a horrific sorrow all alone? The doctor made inquiries and learned that the poor colonel had retired to a property he owned close by Saint-Germain. Placing his faith in a dream, the baron had conceived a plan to restore the countess’s reason. Unbeknownst to the doctor, he spent the rest of the fall making ready for that ambitious undertaking. A small river flowed through his grounds; in the winter it flooded a broad marsh that bore some resemblance to the wetlands of the Berezina’s right bank. The nearby hilltop village of Satout completed the backdrop for that grim decor, like Studyanka looming over the floodplain. The colonel assembled a crew of workers to dig a canal that would stand in for the insatiable river where France’s greatest treasures, Napoleon and his army, were lost. Relying on his memories, Philippe created a copy of the riverbank where General Éblé had constructed his bridges. He sank trestles, then burned them in such a way as to evoke the blackened, ravaged beams that told the stragglers the road to France was now closed to them forever. The colonel brought in a load of debris, similar to the fragments with which his companions in sorrow had built their raft. To complete the illusion on which he had founded his last hope, he lay waste to his gardens. He ordered enough tattered uniforms and costumes to clothe several hundred peasants. He erected huts, campsites, batteries, then incinerated them. In short, he omitted nothing that might re-create that most horrible of all scenes, and he succeeded admirably. In the first days of December, when the snow had covered the ground in a thick mantle of white, he recognized the Berezina. Several of his comrades-in-arms, too, instantly recognized the scene of their past miseries, so chillingly lifelike was this counterfeit Russia. Monsieur de Sucy would not speak a word of this tragic re-creation, which was much discussed in certain Parisian circles at the time and diagnosed as a symptom of eccentricity.

One day in early January 1820, the colonel climbed into a carriage not unlike the one that had conveyed Monsieur and Madame de Vandières from Moscow to Studyanka, and set off for the forest of L’Isle-Adam. It was drawn by horses matching those he’d risked his life to snatch from the ranks of the Russians. He wore the filthy, incongruous clothing, the arms, the headgear that were his on November 29, 1812. He had gone as far as to grow out his beard and hair, and to avoid washing his face, so that this horrible likeness might be complete.

“I understand what you’re thinking,” cried Monsieur Fanjat, as the colonel climbed out of the carriage. “Don’t let her see you, if you want your plan to succeed. This evening I’ll give my niece a small dose of opium. While she sleeps, we’ll dress her just as she was in Studyanka, and we’ll place her in the carriage. I’ll follow you in a berline.”

At two in the morning, the young countess was carried to the vehicle, laid on cushions, and wrapped in a rough blanket. Several peasants stood by to provide light for this curious abduction. Suddenly a sharp cry pierced the night’s silence. Philippe and the doctor turned to see Geneviève emerging half naked from the ground-floor room where she slept.

“Adieu, adieu, it’s all over, adieu,” she cried, weeping bitter tears.

“Why Geneviève, what is it?” said Monsieur Fanjat.

Geneviève shook her head despairingly, raised her arms to the heavens, gazed at the carriage, let out a long moan, displayed a profound terror, and silently withdrew to her room.

“This bodes well,” cheered the colonel. “The girl is sorry to be losing her friend. Perhaps she can see that Stéphanie will recover her reason.”

“May God grant it,” said Monsieur Fanjat, who seemed deeply affected by this incident.

In his studies of madness, he had more than once read of cases of prophecy and second sight among the mentally afflicted, a phenomenon that may also, travelers tell, be found among the savage tribes.

Just as the colonel had planned it, Stéphanie was sent on her way across the simulated Berezina floodplain toward nine in the morning and was awakened by the detonation of a small mortar shell some hundred paces from her carriage. This was a signal. A thousand peasants burst into a terrible roar, like the desperate howl that erupted, to the Russians’ terror, when through their own fault twenty thousand stragglers saw themselves bound over to death or slavery. Hearing that cannon and that clamor, the countess leapt from the carriage, raced crazed with panic through the snow, caught sight of the burned camps, the fateful raft being launched into the icy Berezina. Major Philippe was there, swinging his saber to hold back the crowd. Madame de Vandières let out a scream that chilled every soul and ran straight to the colonel, whose heart was hammering in his chest. Lost in thought, she looked vaguely around her at this strange tableau. For a moment, brief as a flash of lightning, her eyes took on the clarity without intelligence that we admire in a bird’s shining eye; then she passed her hand over her forehead, staring intently before her as if in deep meditation, contemplating this living memory, this past life here translated before her. Suddenly she turned her head toward Philippe, and she saw him. Dread silence had fallen over the crowd. The colonel breathed heavily, not daring to speak; the doctor was weeping. A hint of color appeared on Stéphanie’s beautiful face, then, from one tint to the next, she finally regained the radiance of a girl glowing with freshness and youth. Soon her face was colored a fine crimson. Animated by an ardent intelligence, life and happiness spread over her like a burgeoning fire, one flame touching off the next. A convulsive tremor ran from her feet to her heart. And then these varied phenomena, having instantaneously burst into life, were joined in a sort of common bond when a celestial ray, a living flame, lit Stéphanie’s eyes. She was living, she was thinking! She shivered, perhaps in terror! God himself unbound that dead tongue a second time, and once more poured his fire into that extinguished soul. Her will came flooding back in an electric torrent, energizing that body from which it had so long been absent.

“Stéphanie!” cried the colonel.

“Oh! It’s Philippe,” said the poor countess.

She fell into the colonel’s trembling arms, and the crowd looked on awestruck as the two lovers embraced. Stéphanie melted into tears. But all at once her tears went dry; she stiffened, as if struck by lightning, and said, weakly, “Adieu, Philippe. I love you. Adieu!”

“Oh! She’s dead,” cried the colonel, loosening his grasp.

The old doctor caught his niece’s lifeless body, embraced her as a young man might have done, carried her some distance away, and sat down with her on a pile of wood. He looked at the countess, laying a weak, convulsively trembling hand on her heart. It beat no longer.

“It’s true, then,” he said staring now at the unmoving colonel, now at Stéphanie’s face, over which death was spreading its resplendent beauty, its fleeting glow, the promise, perhaps, of a glorious future. “Yes, she is dead.”

“Ah! That smile,” cried Philippe, “just look at that smile! Can it be?”

“She’s already gone cold,” answered Monsieur Fanjat.

Monsieur de Sucy strode a few steps away, freeing himself from that terrible sight, but he stopped to whistle the tune that the madwoman knew so well. Not seeing his mistress come running, he staggered off like a drunken man, still whistling, but never once turning back.

In society, General Philippe de Sucy passed for a most amiable man, and above all a very merry one. Not a few days ago, a lady complimented him on his good humor and irrepressible temperament.

“Ah! Madame,” he answered, “I pay for my pleasantries very dearly, in the evening, when I find myself alone.”

“Are you ever alone?”

“No,” he answered with a smile.

Had some shrewd observer of human nature seen the Comte de Sucy’s expression at that moment, he might well have shivered.

“Why do you not marry?” continued the lady, who had several daughters at boarding school. “You’re rich, you have a title, a noble ancestry of long date; you have talent, a fine future ahead of you, everything smiles on you.”

“Yes,” he answered, “but there is one smile that’s killing me.”

The next day the lady was shocked to learn that Monsieur de Sucy had blown out his brains in the night. This extraordinary event was widely and diversely discussed in society; everyone sought to uncover the cause. Depending on the tastes of the inquirer it was gambling, or love, or ambition, or secret dishonors that explained this catastrophe, the last scene of a drama begun in 1812. Two men alone, a magistrate and an elderly doctor, knew that the Comte de Sucy was one of those strong men to whom God has granted the sad power to emerge each day triumphant from a horrible battle with a secret monster. Let God take His mighty hand from them, if only for a moment, and they succumb.

Paris, March 1830
Translated by Jordan Stump