Upon one of the coldest days of February 1853, I left Paris by the Orleans Railway. The weather was extremely severe, the frozen snow lay thick in the streets, the asphalt of the boulevards was slippery as glass, sledges scoured the Champs Elysées and Bois de Boulogne. An icy wind whistled round the train as we quitted the shelter of the station, and I regretted, as I buttoned myself to the chin, and shrank into my corner, that the carriage was not full, instead of having but one occupant besides myself. Opposite to me sat a hale man of about sixty-five, with a quick bright eye, an intelligent, good-humoured countenance—somewhat weather-beaten—and the red rosette of the Legion of Honour in his button-hole. During the first half-hour he pored over a letter, whose contents, judging from the animated expression of his physiognomy, interested him strongly. He seemed scarcely aware of my presence. At last he put up the letter, and then for the first time looked me in the face. I had been but a few days out of a sick-bed, and was sensitive to the cold, and doubtless my appearance was chilly and woebegone enough, for I detected a slight approach to a smile at the corners of the stranger’s mouth. To one or two commonplace remarks he replied courteously but laconically, like a man who is neither unsociable nor averse to conversation, but who prefers his own thoughts to that bald talk with which travellers sometimes weary each other rather than sit silent. So our dialogue soon dropped. The cold increased, my feet were benumbed, and I stamped them on the floor of the carriage to revive the circulation. My companion observed my proceedings with a comical look, as if he thought me a very tender traveller. “This carriage must be badly closed,” I remarked. “It is bitter cold to the feet.” “For that discomfort I have little pity,” replied the Frenchman. “A ride on the railway is soon over, and a good fire or a brisk walk is a quick and easy remedy. Mine is a different case. For forty years I have never known warm feet.” “For forty years?” I repeated, thinking I had misunderstood him. “Yes, sir, forty years; since the winter of 1812—the winter of the Russian campaign.” “You were in that terrible campaign?” I inquired, in a tone of interest and curiosity. My companion, previously taciturn, suddenly became communicative. “All through it, sir,” he replied; “from the Niemen to the Kremlin, and back again. It was my first campaign, and was near being my last. I was in others afterwards; in Germany in 1813, when the combined Germans and Russians drove us before them, for want of the brave fellows we had left in Muscovy’s snows; in France in 1814, when the Emperor made his gallant struggle against overwhelming forces; and at the closing scene in Flanders: but not all those three campaigns put together, nor, as I believe, all that this century has witnessed, can match the horrors of that dreadful winter in Russia.”