“Innumerable. There was a sergeant of dragoons, a former comrade of my servant’s, who, for many days, marched beside me and Paul. He received a severe wound. There were some vehicles still with us at that time, and we got him a place in one of them, and made him as comfortable as we could. The following night we stopped at a town. In the morning, as we were about to march, the Cossacks came down. There was great confusion; several baggage-carts were captured in the street, and some of the wounded were abandoned in the houses where they had passed the night. Amongst these was Sergeant Fritz. Not many houses in the town were still in good condition—most of them had been burned and knocked to pieces by the soldiers. The house in which Fritz lay had still its doors and windows, and was one of the most comfortable in the place, on which account it had been converted into a temporary hospital. Well, the Russians came in, brought their wounded, and turned out our poor fellows to make room for them. Some, who could not move quickly enough, were brutally pitched through a low window into a garden behind the house, there to perish miserably. Fritz was one of these. Only just able to crawl, he made his way round the garden, seeking egress. He reached a gate communicating with another garden. It was locked, and pain and weakness forbade his climbing over. He sat close to the gate, propped against it, and looking wistfully through the bars at the windows of a house, and at the cheerful glow of a fire, when he was perceived by a young girl. She came out and opened the gate, and helped him into the house. Her father was a German clockmaker, long settled in Russia, and Fritz, a Swiss, spoke German well. The kind people put him to bed, hid his uniform, and tended him like a son. When, in the following spring, his health was restored, and he would have left them, the German proposed to him to remain and assist him in his trade. He accepted the offer, married the German’s daughter, and remained in Russia until his father-in-law’s death, when he was taken with a longing to revisit his native mountains, and returned to Switzerland with his wife and family. I met him since at Paris, and he told me his story. But although his escape was narrow, and romantic enough, there must have been others much more remarkable. Most of the prisoners made by the Russians, and who survived severe cold and harsh treatment, were sent to Moscow, to labour at rebuilding the city. When the fine season came, some of them managed to escape, and to make their way, in various disguises, and through countless adventures, back to their own country.” I have set down but the most striking portions of our conversation—or rather, of the doctor’s narrative, since I did little but listen; and occasionally, by a question or remark, direct his communicativeness into the channel I wished it to take. We were now near Orleans.