It was there that Gondrin—­who is now present with us—­behaved so well.  He is the only one now living of the pontooners who went down into the water that day and built the bridge on which we crossed the river.  The Russians still had some respect for the Grand Army, on account of its past victories; but it was Gondrin and the pontooners who saved us, and [pointing at Gondrin, who was looking at him with the fixed attention peculiar to the deaf] Gondrin is a finished soldier and a soldier of honor, who is worthy of your highest esteem.

I saw the Emperor that day, standing motionless near the bridge, and never feeling the cold at all.  Was that natural, do you think?  He was watching the destruction of his treasure, his friends, his old Egyptian soldiers.  It was the end of everything.  Women, wagons, cannon—­all were being destroyed, demolished, ruined, wrecked!  A few of the bravest guarded the eagles; because the eagles, you understand, stood for France, for you, for the civil and military honor that had to be kept unstained and that was not to be humbled by the cold.

We hardly ever got warm except near the Emperor.  When he was in danger, we all ran to him—­although we were so nearly frozen that we would not have held out a hand to our dearest friend.  They say that he used to weep at night over his poor family of soldiers.  Nobody but he and Frenchmen could ever have pulled out of there.  We did pull out, but it was with loss—­terrible loss.  Our allies ate up all of our provisions, and then began the treachery which the Red Man had foretold.

The blatherskites in Paris, who had kept quiet since the formation of the Imperial Guard, thought that the Guard had finally perished.  So they got up a conspiracy and hoodwinked the Prefect of Police into an attempt to overthrow the Emperor.  He heard of this and it worried him.  When he left us he said:  “Good-by, boys.  Guard the posts.  I will come back to you.”

After he had gone, things went from bad to worse.  The generals lost their heads; and the marshals quarreled with one another and did all sorts of foolish things, as was natural.  Napoleon, who was good to everybody, had fed them on gold until they had become as fat as pigs, and they didn’t want to do any more marching.  This led to trouble, because many of them remained idle in forts behind the army that was driving us back to France, and didn’t even try to relieve us by attacking the enemy in the rear.

The Emperor finally returned, bringing with him a lot of splendid recruits whom he had drilled into regular war-dogs, ready to set their teeth into anything.  He brought also a bourgeois guard of honor, a fine troop, which melted away in battle like butter on a hot gridiron.  In spite of the bold front that we put on, everything went against us; although the army performed feats of wonderful courage.  Then came regular battles of mountains—­nations against nations—­at Dresden, Lutzen, and