He was prevented from adding more by the clamour of the sick men around. All who were able to speak begged in piteous accents for a portion of the snow, holding out cups and other small vessels to receive it. Henri was more conscious at the moment of hunger than of thirst. “Is there any food?” he asked in a faint voice. A piece of hard biscuit was pushed towards him, and he took it eagerly. Then half-a-dozen hands were extended, and as many voices spoke to him--“Take my biscuit, and give me in exchange your next cup of snow-water.” Henri ate a little, moistening his biscuit with the snow-water; but bitter experience had taught him moderation. Then, forgetting that he was no longer a famished fugitive fighting for the necessaries of life, he began, from habit, to conceal the remainder about his person. A harsh, bitter laugh, from the man who brought in the snow, made him look up. “No need to hide what nobody wants,” said he. “Biscuit is the only thing we have in plenty here--except death.” “Can this indeed be Vilna?” Henri asked with a bewildered look. His informant nodded. “Then where is the army--the Emperor? How comes it that we are prisoners?” “The army?--gone like the snow I brought in just now. The Emperor?--safe in Paris by this time. If it will be a comfort to you in your dying moments to know that his Imperial Majesty ‘never was better in all his life,’ I have the satisfaction of affording it. He announced the fact in his last bulletin.” Henri stirred uneasily, and cast a mournful glance around him. All that met his senses was foul and loathsome in the extreme. The atmosphere of the place was “at once icy and pestilential;” and the whole, the sick, the dying, and the dead, lay heaped together promiscuously. Dead bodies, or mutilated portions of them, were piled together in the windows, a ghastly defence against the bitter wintry wind; while every noxious odour, every hideous and revolting sight that accompanies disease and death, filled the vaults and corridors of the spacious building, making it one vast and dreary charnel-house. “This is horrible!” he murmured. “Nothing could be worse. No beds--no straw even--no fire, no wine, no medicine--nothing but rations of hard biscuit, and the snow we can find for ourselves in the court.” “The Russians, since we are their prisoners, ought to treat us with more humanity,” said Henri. “The Russians, my boy, have as much as they can do to take care of their own sick and wounded. As for us, hundreds of famished wretches are brought in here every day, until there is no more room in which to lay them down to die. This building which is now our prison, the Convent of St. Basil, will soon be our grave. That is one comfort. Our miseries will be quickly ended. The hospital fever has broken out.” “Typhus fever?” said Henri with a look of horror. “Even so; we are dying fast. Every day we have to carry out the dead bodies, or to throw them from the windows.” “Are there no physicians?”