contrived to escape, and that he and his guide would do their utmost to keep up with us. Soon afterwards they were found dead and stripped upon the road.” Bad as the state of things already was, it became worse after the passage of the Beresina; for the cold, abated for a while, resumed all its severity, and heavy snow almost stifled the scanty fires kindled by the unhappy fugitives. “I myself was at the end of my resources. I had but a horse left; my last portmanteau had been lost at the Beresina; I had nothing but what I stood in, and we were still fifty leagues from Wilna, eighty from the Niemen; but, amidst so many misfortunes, I took little account of my personal sufferings and privations. Like us, Marshal Ney had lost everything; his aides-de-camp were dying of hunger, and I gratefully remember that more than once they shared with me the scanty food they managed to procure.” On the 29th November, during a brief halt of the 3d corps, a confused stream of stragglers poured by, all of whom had to tell of a miraculous escape at the Beresina. “I remarked an Italian officer, who scarcely breathed, borne by two soldiers, and accompanied by his wife. Greatly touched by this woman’s grief, and by the care she lavished on her husband, I yielded her my place at a fire the men had lighted. It needed all the illusion of her affection to blind her to the inutility of her care. Her husband had ceased to live, and still she called and spoke to him; until at last, no longer able to doubt her misfortune, she fell fainting upon his corpse.” “There would be no end to the task,” continues M. de Fezensac, “if one attempted to relate all the horrible, affecting, and often incredible anecdotes that signalised that terrible time. A general, exhausted with fatigue, had fallen upon the road. A passing soldier began to pull off his boots; the general, raising himself with difficulty, begged him to wait till he was dead before stripping him. ‘General,’ replied the soldier, ‘I would willingly do so; but another would take them; I may as well have the benefit.’ And he continued to take off the boots. “One soldier was being plundered by another; he entreated to be allowed to die in peace. ‘Pardon me, comrade,’ was the reply, ‘I thought you were dead;’ and he passed on. For the consolation of humanity, a few traits of sublime devotion contrasted with the innumerable ones of egotism and insensibility. That of a drummer of the 7th regiment of light infantry has been particularly cited. His wife, sutler to the regiment, fell ill at the beginning of the retreat. The drummer brought her to Smolensko in her cart. At Smolensko the horse died; then the husband harnessed himself to the cart, and dragged his wife to Wilna. At that town she was too ill to go any farther, and her husband remained prisoner with her.