After the colonel’s departure the doctor kept himself informed about him; he learned that the miserable man was living on an estate near Saint-Germain.  In truth, the baron, on the faith of a dream, had formed a project which he believed would yet restore the mind of his darling.  Unknown to the doctor, he spent the rest of the autumn in preparing for his enterprise.  A little river flowed through his park and inundated during the winter the marshes on either side of it, giving it some resemblance to the Beresina.  The village of Satout, on the heights above, closed in, like Studzianka, the scene of horror.  The colonel collected workmen to deepen the banks, and by the help of his memory, he copied in his park the shore where General Eble destroyed the bridge.  He planted piles, and made buttresses and burned them, leaving their charred and blackened ruins, standing in the water from shore to shore.  Then he gathered fragments of all kinds, like those of which the raft was built.  He ordered dilapidated uniforms and clothing of every grade, and hired hundreds of peasants to wear them; he erected huts and cabins for the purpose of burning them.  In short, he forgot nothing that might recall that most awful of all scenes, and he succeeded.

Toward the last of December, when the snow had covered with its thick, white mantle all his imitative preparations, he recognized the Beresina.  This false Russia was so terribly truthful, that several of his army comrades recognized the scene of their past misery at once.  Monsieur de Sucy took care to keep secret the motive for this tragic imitation, which was talked of in several Parisian circles as a proof of insanity.

Early in January, 1820, the colonel drove in a carriage, the very counterpart of the one in which he had driven the Comte and Comtesse de Vandieres from Moscow to Studzianka.  The horses, too, were like those he had gone, at the peril of his life, to fetch from the Russian outposts.  He himself wore the soiled fantastic clothing, the same weapons, as on the 29th of November, 1812.  He had let his beard grow, also his hair, which was tangled and matted, and his face was neglected, so that nothing might be wanting to represent the awful truth.

“I can guess your purpose,” cried Monsieur Fanjat, when he saw the colonel getting out of the carriage.  “If you want to succeed, do not let my niece see you in that equipage.  To-night I will give her opium.  During her sleep, we will dress her as she was at Studzianka, and place her in the carriage.  I will follow you in another vehicle.”

About two in the morning, the sleeping countess was placed in the carriage and wrapped in heavy coverings.  A few peasants with torches lighted up this strange abduction.  Suddenly, a piercing cry broke the silence of the night.  Philippe and the doctor turned, and saw Genevieve coming half-naked from the ground-floor room in which she slept.

“Adieu, adieu! all is over, adieu!” she cried, weeping hot tears.