“More fool you! That is the way you young conscripts die off, because you never know what is good for you, nor how to keep your souls inside your bodies. Now, when I was in Egypt”--here he stopped suddenly, and a look of emotion passed over his bronzed, weather-beaten features--“ay, Egypt, Italy, Spain,--Lodi, Marengo, Austerlitz, Wagram, Friedland,--why go over all these now? Why recall the past--the glorious past? Why, indeed? Have our eagles floated over all the world to lie buried in a Russian snow-drift! Bah! This confusion is only temporary. You shall soon see the Emperor rise again in his glory, and overwhelm our hounds of enemies with destruction. I tell thee, boy, he is unconquerable. A cloud--a little fleeting cloud--may pass over his star and hide it for a moment, but it will shine out again all the more brightly afterwards.” “But,” said Henri sadly, “if he expected us to fight for him, he ought to have fed us.” “My lad,” said the Guardsman sternly, laying his hand upon Henri’s shoulder, and turning him round away from the fire, “you see that snow?” “I have seen too much of it,” returned Henri. “I think I shall never see anything else.” “Out there you go, to have part or lot with us never more, the first word you speak against the Emperor. With his own hand he gave me these medals, this cross”--touching his breast--“and, moreover, he said to me once when he was reviewing us, ‘Pierre Rougeard, I know you for a brave man. It was you--was it not?--who took that pair of colours at Lodi?’” “Garde, how were you separated from the rest?” “You will see to-morrow that I am lame. In a skirmish near Moscow I got a ball in my leg and a sabre cut on my shoulder. We who were wounded were all put into waggons by the Emperor’s orders, to be sent on to Smolensko; but those in charge of us, thinking our lives less precious than the plunder they were bringing from Moscow, flung us out by the wayside to die.”[40] “Wretches! May the Emperor punish them as they deserve.” “The Emperor has much more important things to think about. We of the Old Guard do not die easily; what would kill conscripts like you, only hardens us. I contrived to live and to creep along, picking up every day a comrade or two in distress, until we formed the little coterie you see now. I hope to overtake the Old Guard at Smolensko--if not, farther on. All I live for is to rejoin my colours, and to fight once more for the Emperor. But you are almost asleep. Sleep on, my boy; to-night, at least, you shall neither freeze nor starve.” Henri _was_ almost asleep. But he roused himself for a moment or two to breathe a thanksgiving to Almighty God for the help sent him in his need; together with an earnest prayer that he would be pleased to bring him through all dangers again to his native land, to see the face of his mother and of Clémence.