Sometimes there were fir-woods to limit it,
sometimes it stretched away to the cold blue sky, but the black
line stumbled on and on. Those weary, ragged, starving men, the
spirit frozen out of them, looked neither to right nor left, but
with sunken faces and rounded backs trailed onward and ever
onward, making for France as wounded beasts make for their lair.
There was no speaking, and you could scarce hear the shuffle of
feet in the snow. Once only I heard them laugh. It was outside
Wilna, when an aide-de-camp rode up to the head of that dreadful
column and asked if that were the Grand Army. All who were
within hearing looked round, and when they saw those broken men,
those ruined regiments, those fur-capped skeletons who were once
the Guard, they laughed, and the laugh crackled down the column
like a feu de joie. I have heard many a groan and cry and scream
in my life, but nothing so terrible as the laugh of the Grand
Army.
But why was it that these helpless men were not destroyed by the
Russians? Why was it that they were not speared by the Cossacks
or herded into droves, and driven as prisoners into the heart of
Russia? On every side as you watched the black snake winding
over the snow you saw also dark, moving shadows which came and
went like cloud drifts on either flank and behind.
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