He did not end his sentence; the north wind blew at that moment with such ferocity that the aide-de-camp hurried on to escape being frozen, and the lips of Major de Sucy stiffened.  Silence reigned, broken only by the moans which came from the house, and the dull sound made by the major’s horse as it chewed in a fury of hunger the icy bark of the trees with which the house was built.  Monsieur de Sucy replaced his sabre in its scabbard, took the bridle of the precious horse he had hitherto been able to preserve, and led it, in spite of the animal’s resistance, from the wretched fodder it appeared to think excellent.

“We’ll start, Bichette, we’ll start!  There’s none but you, my beauty, who can save Stephanie.  Ha! by and bye you and I may be able to rest —­and die,” he added.

Philippe, wrapped in a fur pelisse, to which he owed his preservation and his energy, began to run, striking his feet hard upon the frozen snow to keep them warm.  Scarcely had he gone a few hundred yards from the village than he saw a blaze in the direction of the place where, since morning, he had left his carriage in charge of his former orderly, an old soldier.  Horrible anxiety laid hold of him.  Like all others who were controlled during this fatal retreat by some powerful sentiment, he found a strength to save his friends which he could not have put forth to save himself.

Presently he reached a slight declivity at the foot of which, in a spot sheltered from the enemy’s balls, he had stationed the carriage, containing a young woman, the companion of his childhood, the being most dear to him on earth.  At a few steps distant from the vehicle he now found a company of some thirty stragglers collected around an immense fire, which they were feeding with planks, caisson covers, wheels, and broken carriages.  These soldiers were, no doubt, the last comers of that crowd who, from the base of the hill of Studzianka to the fatal river, formed an ocean of heads intermingled with fires and huts,—­a living sea, swayed by motions that were almost imperceptible, and giving forth a murmuring sound that rose at times to frightful outbursts.  Driven by famine and despair, these poor wretches must have rifled the carriage before de Sucy reached it.  The old general and his young wife, whom he had left lying in piles of clothes and wrapped in mantles and pelisses, were now on the snow, crouching before the fire.  One door of the carriage was already torn off.

No sooner did the men about the fire hear the tread of the major’s horse than a hoarse cry, the cry of famine, arose,—­

“A horse! a horse!”

Those voices formed but one voice.

“Back! back! look out for yourself!” cried two or three soldiers, aiming at the mare.  Philippe threw himself before his animal, crying out,—­

“You villains!  I’ll throw you into your own fire.  There are plenty of dead horses up there.  Go and fetch them.”