Thus strengthened, he rose and stood upon his feet. It was midnight. The snow had ceased to fall, and the fierce winds of winter had dropped into utter stillness. Above his head the moon shone forth from a cloudless sky, and a thousand stars glittered with frosty brightness. Not a living thing was in sight, not a tree, not even a stone. Nothing met his gaze but a broad expanse of stainless white, covering the whole horizon like a veil of silver. How desolate it looked, yet how fair and pure! With what bright softness the moonbeams touched the snow! and how calmly the majestic eyes of those sleepless, starry watchers looked down from on high, as though they would say to the toiling, suffering sons of men, “We have seen ten thousand times ten thousand nights like this since the making of the world. We know the secret of the Lord. He means something by every star and every snowflake; and what he means is very good.” “He telleth the number of the stars; he calleth them all by their names.” The words flashed unbidden through the mind of Henri. He remembered that in this solitude he was not alone. God was here. He could not turn to God as his friend, and he _knew_ that he could not. Brought up in a religious atmosphere, he was all the more distinctly conscious that he himself was not religious--that he stood outside some sacred enclosure Clémence had entered, that he had not something which she had. But had it been a stranger or an enemy whose presence he felt amidst that immense, dreary, aching solitude, still he would have flung himself at his feet and implored his help and pity. Surely he might cast himself upon the God who counted the shining host above his head; surely that God would look down with pity on the creature his hand had made, who was “wandering in dumb dismay” over the untrodden snow. If He would only bring him home, and let him see his mother’s face again, and ask her forgiveness before he died! He knelt down and prayed; if indeed the words were not a cry of agony rather than a prayer. But they were breathed into the ear of One who heareth the young ravens when they cry and the beasts of the forest when they seek their food. As he rose, he noticed some bright thing glistening in the moonlight near the spot where he had been lying. He took it up, and found that it was a tin case containing preserved meat. No doubt it had belonged to the general of division, and had fallen out of his carriage as he passed. But to Henri it seemed the beginning of an answer to his prayer. He ate a portion of the meat, reserving the rest for future use, and drank a little more vodka. Thus a degree of animation was restored to his exhausted system. “Even yet,” he thought, “I may rejoin my companions.”