"It will wait until marching time," said Louise; "especially if you will give me food meanwhile."
"There is food to-day, and you shall share it; also there is a drink called _kvass_, which I think the devil invented for the confusion of human stomachs; you shall taste it and suffer pain, as I have done; what matter! we are brought into the world to suffer and to enjoy. To-morrow we may starve; but one day we shall reach Paris!"
At daybreak the village was astir. Marshal Ney himself rode out in the midst of his guards and Louise was brought before him, for she had refused to tell her tale except to his ears.
"I may as well have the advantage of my luck, if any advantage there be!" she had told herself.
"You are in luck, _mon brave_," he said. "What is your name?"
"Good; you are a sergeant, I see; call yourself a lieutenant; do you know this place the fellow referred to--the place of ambush?"
"I was myself ambushed there yesterday with my regiment, Excellence; it is well adapted for a surprise."
"Good; you shall be guide; the surprise this time shall be to the Cossacks and your friends with the pitchforks. If you guide us cleverly you shall call yourself captain, though, _entre nous_, I think most of us are more likely to need our titles for paradise than for Paris!"
On this occasion the Cossacks were caught napping and Louise came out of her adventure with the epaulettes of a captain, which Ney bestowed upon her with his own hands.
The rear-guard of the Grand Army fared worse and worse as the days and weeks passed, its numbers diminished until there remained but a straggling remnant which crept into Vilna, only to be chased out again within a few hours of their arrival there. Louise, in her captain's epaulettes, was still alive and well, though thin and haggard almost beyond recognition for want of good food and rest.
At Vilna she came across several officers of Henri d'Estreville's Lancer regiment, and these she questioned--in terror for their reply--in hopes of news of her friend, who was not with them.
"D'Estreville?" cried one of them, laughing grimly. "Where is he, you ask? I should say that depends, for those who believe in a future existence, upon his past life. Henri was the best of _bons camarades_, but it may be that good comradeship is a quality which is not highly valued by those who will make up our accounts!"