At last the raft was finished. Forty men launched it on the river, a dozen others holding the cords which moored it to the shore. But no sooner had the builders seen their handiwork afloat, than they sprang from the bank with odious selfishness. The major, fearing the fury of this first rush, held back the countess and the general, but too late he saw the whole raft covered, men pressing together like crowds at a theatre. “Savages!” he cried, “it was I who gave you the idea of that raft. I have saved you, and you deny me a place.” A confused murmur answered him. The men at the edge of the raft, armed with long sticks, pressed with violence against the shore to send off the frail construction with sufficient impetus to force its way through corpses and ice-floes to the other shore. “Thunder of heaven! I’ll sweep you into the water if you don’t take the major and his two companions,” cried the stalwart grenadier, who swung his sabre, stopped the departure, and forced the men to stand closer in spite of furious outcries. “I shall fall,”--“I am falling,”--“Push off! push off!--Forward!” resounded on all sides. The major looked with haggard eyes at Stephanie, who lifted hers to heaven with a feeling of sublime resignation. “To die with thee!” she said. There was something even comical in the position of the men in possession of the raft. Though they were uttering awful groans and imprecations, they dared not resist the grenadier, for in truth they were so closely packed together, that a push to one man might send half of them overboard. This danger was so pressing that a cavalry captain endeavored to get rid of the grenadier; but the latter, seeing the hostile movement of the officer, seized him round the waist and flung him into the water, crying out,-- “Ha! ha! my duck, do you want to drink? Well, then, drink!--Here are two places,” he cried. “Come, major, toss me the little woman and follow yourself. Leave that old fossil, who’ll be dead by to-morrow.” “Make haste!” cried the voice of all, as one man. “Come, major, they are grumbling, and they have a right to do so.” The Comte de Vandieres threw off his wrappings and showed himself in his general’s uniform. “Let us save the count,” said Philippe. Stephanie pressed his hand, and throwing herself on his breast, she clasped him tightly. “Adieu!” she said. They had understood each other. The Comte de Vandieres recovered sufficient strength and presence of mind to spring upon the raft, whither Stephanie followed him, after turning a last look to Philippe. “Major! will you take my place? I don’t care a fig for life,” cried the grenadier. “I’ve neither wife nor child nor mother.” “I confide them to your care,” said the major, pointing to the count and his wife. “Then be easy; I’ll care for them, as though they were my very eyes.”