His auditors were utterly incredulous. “Have you lost your senses, Pontet?” they cried; “or have the guards been mocking you and us? Not a physician, not a nurse even, would enter here were a fortune offered as a bribe; and do you expect us to believe that the Czar, our enemy, would risk his life--_for us_?” “Listen,” answered Pontet; “the guards have told me all. He has spent the whole day going through the other hospitals;--at last he came here. M. de St. Priest, knowing well how the deadly hospital fever is raging amongst us, entreated, implored him not to enter. He would not listen. Then the general, in a kind of desperation, flung himself before the door, and, daring his sovereign to his face, told him he should enter only over his body. The Czar put him gently aside and walked in; and I tell you, comrades, there is not a nook or corner in all this den of horrors that he has not thoroughly explored. There was no hiding anything from him. I take it, things will be altered with us from this time forth. My friends, if there is any man amongst you happy enough still to believe in God, let him thank him this night for sending the Emperor Alexander here.” When the comments made by others upon this speech had died away, Henri raised his quivering, tear-stained face and said gently, but with a new air of courage and firmness, “Pontet, _I_ believe in God; and I thank him--as you say.” After a pause he added, “Dear comrades, if you will listen, I should like to tell you how it is with me; for, perhaps, some other poor lad may even now be struggling and suffering in darkness, as I have been.” “Say on,” cried several voices. “When I was wandering through the snow, in hunger, in misery, in despair, almost in madness, I lost my faith in God;--perhaps because I never had the right kind of faith, because I only believed that he was great and just, without believing that he was _my_ God. I fainted utterly. I thought either that he was not, or that there was with him no love, no compassion. I thought his pitiless hand was sweeping us all from the face of the earth, because he was angry with Napoleon. I thought he was like the great fire in Moscow, which burned, blazed, destroyed, unchecked by human efforts, unstayed by human prayers. May he forgive me! To-night I can believe in his forgiveness and in his divine compassion. If the man who was our enemy--whose land we tried to ruin, upon whom we heaped every insult, every injury in our power--can pity and forgive us, surely the God who made him will not be found less merciful than he! Surely none but that God could so have softened the proud heart of the Czar; and perhaps he has done it just to show that even for those who have sinned deeply, wilfully, like me, there is forgiveness with Him. Therefore let us hope in the Lord; for with the Lord there is mercy, and with him is plenteous redemption.”