“’It is all over; my poor devils of fellows will never be able to do it.’

“We had eaten nothing since the day before, and the whole day long we remained hidden in a barn, and huddled close together, so as not to feel the cold so much; we did not venture to speak or even move, and we slept by fits and starts, like one sleeps when one is worn out with fatigue.

“It was dark by five o’clock; that wan darkness caused by the snow, and I shook my men.  Some of them would not get up; they were almost incapable oi moving or of standing upright, and their joints were stiff from the cold and want of motion.

“In front of us, there was a large expanse of flat, bare country; the snow was still falling like a curtain, in large, white flakes, which concealed everything under a heavy, thick, frozen mantle, a mattress of ice.  One might have thought that it was the end of the world.

“‘Come, my lads, let us start.’

“They looked at the thick, white dust which was coming down, and they seemed to think:  ’We have had enough of this; we may just as well die here!’ Then I took out my revolver, and said: 

“‘I will shoot the first man who flinches.’  And so they set off, but very slowly, like men whose legs were of very little use to them, and I sent four of them three hundred yards ahead, to scout, and the others followed pell-mell, walking at random and without any order.  I put the strongest in the rear, with orders to quicken the pace of the sluggards with the points of their bayonets... in the back.

“The snow seemed as if it were going to bury us alive; it powdered our kepis[15] and cloaks without melting, and made phantoms of us, a species of specters of dead soldiers, who were very tired, and I said to myself:  ‘We shall never get out of this, except by a miracle.’

[Footnote 15:  Forage Caps.]

“Sometimes we had to stop for a few minutes, on account of those who could not follow us, and then we heard nothing except the falling snow, that vague, almost indiscernible sound which all those flakes make, as they come down together.  Some of the men shook themselves, but others did not move, and so I gave the order to set off again; they shouldered their rifles, and with weary feet we set out, when suddenly the scouts fell back.  Something had alarmed them; they had heard voices in front of them, and so I sent six men and a sergeant on ahead, and waited.

“All at once a shrill cry, a woman’s cry, pierced through the heavy silence of the snow, and in a few minutes they brought back two prisoners, an old man and a girl, and I questioned them in a low voice.  They were escaping from the Prussians, who had occupied their house during the evening, and who had got drunk, The father had become alarmed on his daughter’s account, and, without even telling their servants, they had made their escape into the darkness.  I saw immediately that they belonged to the upper classes, and, as I should have done in any case, I invited them to come with us, and we started off together, and as the old man knew the road, he acted as our guide.