"_Mon ami_, hell is behind us, in the shape of Platof and Chechakof and their most damnable Cossacks. You would find it even more impossible to go backward than forward. Your friend may be alive and well for aught I know. Can either of you give this gentleman any information?" "Who is it he wants--one of ours?" asked a second officer who sat by the stove almost too exhausted to eat the mess of stewed horseflesh which had been set before him. Louise mentioned Henri's name. "I saw him alive in the forest of Gusinof," said the man; "that is where Platof ambushed us and we got finally separated. He may be a prisoner, or of course Platof's devils may have cut him to pieces; he would not be the only one that died in that accursed wood, not by two thousand! That was the most detestable night I ever spent. Go and look for him in the forest, my friend, if your affection will carry you to so great a length. Good Lord! It is a thing David would have refused to do for Jonathan!" The weary man laughed and filled his mouth with the savoury horseflesh. "If you are wise," he added, with his mouth still half full, "you will get to Paris the best and quickest way you can, and hope that your friend will find his way there also! _Sapristi_, it is not likely that either he or you or any of us will get much farther than this. Listen--is that the Cossacks already? Curse them, I must sleep or go mad!" Fagged, dazed, starved, desperate, the unfortunate rear-guard, led by their indomitable chief, straggled forward. Dogged by hordes of pitiless Cossacks they contrived eventually to reach the river Niemen, and to cross into safety, the last survivors of Napoleon's army; their miserable story is well known and need not be recapitulated. Louise seemed to bear a charmed life. Though, believing that Henri d'Estreville was among the large majority of the Grande Armée lying beneath the snows of Russia, she would gladly have remained, like her lover, among the ten who stayed behind rather than be the one who escaped--for of Napoleon's half million of men scarcely a tithe returned to their homes--yet Louise saw her companions fall around her and never a bullet touched her or a sword or a spear grazed her. "You and I are wonders, Prevost," said her colonel. "Are we preserved for great military careers, think you? _Nom d'un Maréchal_, I think I could be another Ney if I had the opportunity! _Sapristi_, he is splendid!" "As for me, I have done with war," Louise sighed. "My days of fighting are over." "Why, you are but a lad--a conscript of 1812; the year is only now ending and you wear a captain's epaulettes! Nonsense, my son, go home and rest and dream of glory; you will tell a different tale when you have recovered."