“The skin of their hands froze to the butt ends of their muskets, for it was freezing hard that night.  I frequently saw a little soldier take off his shoes in order to walk barefoot, as his shoes hurt his weary feet; and at every step he left a track of blood.  Then, after some time, he would sit down in a field for a few minutes’ rest, and he never got up again.  Every man who sat down was a dead man.

“Should we have left behind us those poor, exhausted soldiers, who fondly counted on being able to start afresh as soon as they had somewhat refreshed their stiffened legs?  But scarcely had they ceased to move, and to make their almost frozen blood circulate in their veins, than an unconquerable torpor congealed them, nailed them to the ground, closed their eyes, and paralyzed in one second this overworked human mechanism.  And they gradually sank down, their foreheads on their knees, without, however, falling over, for their loins and their limbs became as hard and immovable as wood, impossible to bend or to stand upright.

“And the rest of us, more robust, kept straggling on, chilled to the marrow, advancing by a kind of inertia through the night, through the snow, through that cold and deadly country, crushed by pain, by defeat, by despair, above all overcome by the abominable sensation of abandonment, of the end, of death, of nothingness.

“I saw two gendarmes holding by the arm a curious-looking little man, old, beardless, of truly surprising aspect.

“They were looking for an officer, believing that they had caught a spy.  The word ‘spy’ at once spread through the midst of the stragglers, and they gathered in a group round the prisoner.  A voice exclaimed:  ’He must be shot!’ And all these soldiers who were falling from utter prostration, only holding themselves on their feet by leaning on their guns, felt all of a sudden that thrill of furious and bestial anger which urges on a mob to massacre.

“I wanted to speak.  I was at that time in command of a battalion; but they no longer recognized the authority of their commanding officers; they would even have shot me.

“One of the gendarmes said:  ’He has been following us for the three last days.  He has been asking information from every one about the artillery.’”

I took it on myself to question this person.

“What are you doing?  What do you want?  Why are you accompanying the army?”

“He stammered out some words in some unintelligible dialect.  He was, indeed, a strange being, with narrow shoulders, a sly look, and such an agitated air in my presence that I really no longer doubted that he was a spy.  He seemed very aged and feeble.  He kept looking at me from under his eyes with a humble, stupid, crafty air.

“The men all round us exclaimed.

“‘To the wall!  To the wall!’

“I said to the gendarmes: 

“‘Will you be responsible for the prisoner?’