“The unhappy P.,” continues Labaume, “still succeeded in keeping up with us, sharing with servile fidelity in our sorrows and privations. The story of this unfortunate girl is worth narrating. Whether she had lost herself, or whether her romantic spirit prompted her to seek for adventure, I do not know, but she was found secreted in the crypt of the Cathedral of St. Michael. They brought her to one of the French generals, who took her under his protection. He afterwards pretended to be in love with her, and made her his mistress under promise of marriage. With the true heroism of virtue she suffered every misery and privation. She was about to become a mother, and was proud of her condition and of her fidelity in following her husband. But when the man on whose promises she relied learned that the army was not to stay at Smolensk, he resolved to sever a tie which he had never regarded otherwise than as a pastime. This black-hearted scoundrel, whose bosom was closed to every sentiment of pity, announced to the innocent girl, under some plausible pretext, that they must part. The unhappy creature uttered a cry of despair. She declared that having sacrificed her home and her good name for one whom she already regarded as her lawful husband, she looked upon it as her duty to follow him to the world’s end—that neither fatigue nor danger should deter her in her resolution to cling to the man she loved. “The general, unmoved by her fidelity, curtly repeated that they must part—in the first place because circumstances rendered it impossible to maintain women on the march; and secondly, because he was already married; in short, she had best return to Moscow, where no doubt a handsome sweetheart awaited her. The wretched girl was stricken dumb with despair at this announcement. Pale as death, paler than when they found her among the vaults of the Cathedral in the Kremlin, she was unable for many minutes to open her lips. Then she began to weep and moan, and, overwhelmed with grief, she fell into a swoon, of which her betrayer availed himself—not to escape a trying farewell, but to fly from the Russians whose cries were drawing nearer and nearer.” [Illustration: _French Fugitives._] “The scarcity of fodder for the horses,” says René Bourgeois, “was appalling. Handfuls of decaying straw, the broken and trampled remnants of former bivouacs, or thatch torn from the roofs of what few huts remained, furnished all their provender, and they perished in the camp by thousands. The sheets of ice that covered the roads gave them their _coup de grâce_—in a short time the cavalry was a thing of the past, and dismounted horsemen swelled the ranks of the pedestrians. The regiments became hopelessly mixed up, order and discipline were no longer maintained. The soldiers took no notice of their officers, and the officers took no thought for the soldiers, every one plodded along at his own sweet will.