• I'm not very well, Mr. Gatepath,' she said.
Maud,' I whispered hurriedly, for the pavement was crowded,

I
* what's the matter? You are looking awfully ill.'

'I am ill,' she said.

The precise accounts of her extravagance, to which I have alluded, recurred to my mind, and the rough explanation of folly which had hitherto satisfied me appeared now to be imperfect. Feminine folly does not disagree with its votaries so powerfully as to kill them in twelve months. Mrs. Tantifer's trouble was evidently due to something much more subtle, and I was inclined now to set down both waste of money and of health to the same disturbing cause.

Mrs. Tantifer,' I said, 'you're a married woman, and I am perhaps a meddling old fool. Snub me if I am impertinent, but please answer my question. Can I help you in any way?'

? She looked at me strangely out of her dreadful hollow eyes. 'I don't know,' she murmured, 'I must think. Don't ask me now. Perhaps—' and she turned into a shop and was gone.

The next morning by the first post I received the following letter :

DEAR MR. GATEPATH,I think that there must be a God after all. I have no father and no brothers, and the need for the disinterested services of a man were pressing me to death when you met me to-day. Old friend, you can help me. Please be at Mrs. McGrath's tennis party to-morrow afternoon.

'Yours expectantly, MauD TANTIFER.' Mrs. Tantifer plainly regarded me as a friend who was too old to be dangerous, a view which was not entirely agreeable to my feelings. My offer, made under an emotional impulse, had been seriously accepted, and there was no course left me but to play gracefully the part of a middle-aged knight errant.

Poor Mrs. McGrath was convinced by my assured air of welcome that she had inadvertently sent me a card. "So good of you,' I murmured over her hand, 'not to forget us old fellows.'

Maud Tantifer took an early opportunity to lead me into a remote corner of the McGraths' splendid garden. She was looking less ghastly than on the previous day, and I plainly read hope in her eyes.

'Dear Mr. Gatepath,' she said, ' how can I thank you enough ?' * Don't thank me at all. I have done nothing as yet.'

and men had sought shelter for the night, took fire, and many of the inmates perished. The men in question affirmed that they had seen some Croat soldiers pull a roasted body from the fire, cut it up and devour it. I believe,' adds Bourgogne, that this happened more than once in the course of this disastrous campaign, though I did not see it.' Elsewhere he, or one of his friends, refers almost with equanimity to the possibility of being compelled to resort to this horrible expedient for sustaining life.

Smolensk, which they reached on November 9, though the former passage of the army had left it little more than a mass of blackened ruins, was eagerly hailed as a haven of temporary rest; some indeed had cherished a vain hope that they might wait there till spring. Here a little flour and some biscuit was served out, of which the famished men ate with such avidity that many became ill. Discipline was almost entirely relaxed, and an organised system of pillage was set up within the army. A band of thieves, French, German, Italian, would combine to march together, well in advance of the main body. On reaching the assigned halting-place, they would separate, and on the arrival of the army at nightfall, would emerge from their hiding-places and prowl round the bivouacs, picking up a horse here, some baggage there, and so forth. Bourgogne, sallying out one night at Smolensk in search of a comrade, lost his way, and rolled down a bank into a cellar which was tenanted by one of these gangs.

I was still dazed with my fall, and had not picked myself up, when an individual rose at the far erd of the cellar, and set light to some straw to get a better view of me. Catching sight of the Imperial Eagle on my shako, he called out in a jeering tone, 'Aha! Imperial Guard! Out you go!' and the rest took up the cry. I begged them, as chance had thrown me among them, to let me stay till morning. But the one who had first risen, and who seemed the leader, having at his side a broadsword which he took care to display with some affectation, repeated that I was to go out, and that at once; the rest joining in the chorus. A German made as though to lay hands on me, but with a push in the chest I sent him sprawling over some others who were still lying down, and laid my hand on the hilt of my sabre, for my musket had remained behind when I rolled down. The man with the sword applauded the spill I gave the fellow who wanted to turn me out, telling him that it was no business of a cabbageheaded German to lay hands on a Frenchman.

Encouraged by this approbation, Bourgogne pleaded once more for a night's hospitality, his request being seconded by one of two women who were with the gang. This was again refused, on the avowed ground that his presence might interfere with their plans for marauding; but he was allowed to stay and warm

a

himself for half an hour. Presently, however, the woman who had stood his friend advised him to make his escape while he could, and he went out. He recovered his musket, which he had dropped in his fall; but, being unable in the darkness to find his way up the bank, he was forced to wait till one of the gang came out. The man made no objection to guiding him past some ruined houses to a flight of steps, by which the road along the ramparts could be regained, but, on reaching it, made him take several turns, under pretext of showing him his way, so as to puzzle him as to the locality of the den from which he had escaped. He did return, however, with some friends next morning; but the birds had flown,' and all they found was some empty trunks and Bourgogne's German assailant of the previous night dead drunk.

His adventures for that night did not end with his escape from the den of thieves. As, with a frost-bitten foot, he made his way painfully through the snow, stumbling now over a deserted gun-carriage, now over a corpse, once stopping just in time to avoid a fall from the top of the ramparts into the Dnieper, which flowed in a turbid, icy stream at their foot, he became, or fancied he became, aware of music like the notes of an organ floating in the air. Just then a heavier fall than usual, over the body of a dead dragoon, caused him to utter a cry of pain. It was answered by a shout at no great distance; and, making his way towards the sound, Bourgogne found to his joy that it proceeded from a friend of his-one Beloque, a sergeant in the same corps-keeping guard over two sick men, who, unable to go further, were awaiting the bearers for whom he had sent. To him he recounted the adventure of the cellar. But,' he adds, 'I did not dare to say anything about the music, lest he should say I was ill.' The pair walked up and down, their conversation broken at times by the death-rattle from one or another of the sick men, when suddenly the aërial music began to sound again, this time appearing to be much nearer at hand. Beloque said, in a whisper, lest the dying men should overhear-a curious touch of the courtesy which a Frenchman, if he has time to think, seldom forgets-'It is very like the music of the dead. All is dead around us, and I have a presentiment that in a few days I shall be dead too. Well, God's will be done. But one might die with less suffering. Look at those poor fellows.' 'I made no answer,' says the narrator, but my thought was the same as his.'

•

For a while they listened in silence, disturbed only by the laboured breathing of one of the sick men. The sounds seemed to proceed from overhead. Presently they ceased, and with a plaintive cry the other man drew his last breath. The bearers came up, and the survivor was taken away. Bourgogne and his friend went with the party; but the former soon left them, and went in quest of another comrade. At once the mysterious music began again, and, following it, he arrived at a building all lighted up. This proved to be a church. Climbing over the low churchyard wall, and crossing some ground, which seemed strangely uneven till he perceived that it was strewn with corpses lying under a covering of snow, the sergeant reached the doorway. The door was open, and volumes of smoke issued from it. The interior was also thick with smoke, amid which men were singing and playing the organ; but this presently cleared as the flame of the fire burnt up; and one of the singers recognised Bourgogne, and greeted him. They turned out to be men of his own company, all more or less drunk. Some of them, being on fatigue duty, had seen two Jews emerging from a cellar. Marking the spot, they had returned, found some brandy and some food, as well as some fur pelisses. Having noted the church as a convenient shelter, they were making a night of it,' with the aid of their plunder. Some bandsmen had got into the organ-loft, and it was their performances on the instrument that had caused the melodious sounds whereby Bourgogne and his friend had been so sorely perplexed. Others had torn down the woodwork to make a fire, using, among other materials, some of the stairs to the organ-loft, whereby one of the unlucky bandsmen, waking from a drunken sleep by the organ, and attempting to descend, got a fall which incapacitated him from marching for some time. Probably he never came home.' The whole scene is one of the grimmest, not to say gruesomest, Hogarthian humour.

"

Krasnoi was the next stage after Smolensk. Here the Russian army barred the passage, and some sharp fighting ensued, in which poor Beloque's forebodings as to his own fate were verified. Ultimately the Russians gave way so far as to allow the fugitives to enter the town, but remained closely in touch with them. The Guard, which had started 35,000 strong, was by this time, though it had been less engaged than any other corps, dwindled to 7,000 or 8,000. At Orcza, Ney, who had been covering the

retreat, rejoined, with two or three thousand men, all that were left to represent the 70,000 originally under his command.

The action at Krasnoi, though technically a victory for the French-opimus fallere et effugere est triumphus '-achieved the demoralisation of their army. “Till then,' says Bourgogne, 'I had been pretty cheerful and superior to all the weight of our miseries. The more of danger and trouble, I thought, the more of honour and glory. My comrades were astounded at my patience. But after Krasnoi, and the loss of many friends'—the sentence remains incomplete, as though the veteran's pen had faltered before the mere remembrance of that terrible time. From that time, stragglers arriving at a bivouac after dark would call out the name not of their regiment but of their army corps; and sometimes, in order to find even their corps, or what remained of it, they were forced to wander about half the night. One day, about this time, the fragments of the Guard regiments were suddenly ordered to form square.

At that moment the Emperor came by, with Murat and Eugène. He took up his position in the centre of the grenadiers and chasseurs, and then made them an allocation with reference to the situation, informing them that the Russians were awaiting us at the passage of the Beresina, and had sworn that not a man of us should recross it. Then, drawing his sword, and raising his voice, he exclaimed : · Let us on our side swear to die with arms in our hands rather than not see France again.' The oath was taken straightway. In other words, . If the Russians think that by shooting you they will prevent me getting back to France, they are much mistaken.' When the Beresina was reached a few days later, and the bridges had been thrown across, Napoleon, with a strong escort, crossed at his ease. This was on November 27; and so well had he kept in advance of the throng, that no one crossed the bridge all that night, and even at seven o'clock on the following morning, when Bourgogne himself crossed, he had the bridge all to himself. During the past four or five days, having in the confusion lost sight of his regiment, or the handful of comrades who still represented it among what had been

Hier la Grande Armée, et maintenant troupeau, he had made his way as best he could, partly alone, partly in company with an old friend belonging, like himself, to the Guard, who had also lost his way, and upon whom by great good fortune he had lighted. This man, Picart by name, and a Picard by origin, was a cheery soul; and his companionship was the salvation of