The Marquis made his way up the ascent to where his regiment bivouacked. His progress was slow; the sky became darker and lower as he ascended, and his way was marked by the frozen dead and the unconscious dying. He turned a point of rock to see the figure of Georges d’Espagnac standing at the edge of a little precipice fanning some glimmering sticks into a flame. Then the snow began; suddenly a few flakes, then a dense storm that blended heaven and earth in one whirl of white and cold. CHAPTER VI ON THE HEIGHTS The snow fell without a break for three days; on the morning of the fourth it ceased a little, and by the time M. de Belleisle had reached Chiesch stopped. The army had now been a week on the road, and the Maréchal hoped by a forced march to reach Eger, on the borders of Bavaria, with those who remained of the thirty thousand men who had marched out of Prague. The famous _régiment du roi_, reduced to half their number, had fallen out of the vanguard, and stumbled along as best they might through the rocky ravines and high mounting roads. There was no longer any order in the army; the retreat had been one horror of death; men fell every moment, and were quickly buried in the silent snow; the wretched refugees died by the hundred. The waste of life was appalling; M. de Vauvenargues felt sick and delirious from the constant spectacle of this helpless agony; men dropped to right and left of him, he passed them at every step on the route; two of his fellow-officers had died the same night; it was like a shrieking nightmare to the Marquis to have to leave them, carrion in the snow; and now the strength of young Georges d’Espagnac began to fail; both had long ago lost their horses; M. de Biron himself was walking; there was indeed scarcely an animal left in the army; gun carriages and wagons had been abandoned all along the route as the mules died. As the sombre evening obscured the awful sights along the line of march, the thing that the Marquis had been dreading for the last two days happened: Georges d’Espagnac lurched and fell insensible by his side. M. de Biron looked over his shoulder. “Poor child,” he murmured; then, to the Marquis, “It is death to stop; you can do no good. Come on.” But M. de Vauvenargues shook his head and drew the wasted young figure out of the ghastly march.