"I will speak to General Roguet at dawn," said I. "You shall find a place for him in the house. God alone knows whether any of us will be here to help you then; it depends upon his fellows. If there is no ford discovered in the next twenty-four hours, the river is shut to us, and the army is lost. You, monsieur, know that as well as I."
He assented, looking at me with grave eyes.
"Major," he said very solemnly, "there is a ford. My son discovered it this day."
"Good God!" said I. "You are speaking the truth?"
"Then the Emperor knows. You have told him, monsieur?"
"Swear by Almighty God that you will not desert us, and I will name the place to you," he said.
I knew not what to say to him--the dilemma was beyond all words. If I pledged myself to these people, then truly must I be a prisoner in Russia. If I did not pledge myself, the army was lost.
"But," I cried, "there is my regiment--my duty, Monsieur d'Izambert."
"Go," she said to Léon, pointing to the door; "let the Emperor know. I will stay with these people."
Here was an astonishing turn, and one little looked for.
The idea of this dashing girl, clad in her hussar uniform, yet womanly beyond compare, the idea of her becoming the guardian of the sick man at first astounded and then delighted Monsieur d'Izambert. Helpless and infirm himself, the companion of a mere child caught in the toils of suffering, he responded warmly to such a pledge and thanked her most graciously.
The boy himself had now sunk into a kind of coma, and there were moments when I thought he was dead. Meanwhile, Léon did not return, and we waited in the silence of the night for the alarm which must presently attend the momentous tidings. When it came, it was as though the whole army woke upon the dawn of a feast-day. Bugles blared; a babel of voices arose in the street; the wagons of the engineers went through at a gallop; lights appeared in every house. Anon you heard men calling the news from door to door. A ford had been discovered; the army would cross the Bérézina this day.
So they said, and such was my own belief. The young _pontonnier_ had given the clearest directions to old Monsieur d'Izambert before the fever overtook him, and these, marked upon his map, had gone to head-quarters. Nothing remained to be done that our engineers could not do. They would bridge the shallow stream, and the remnant of the six hundred thousand would pass over. I reflected that I should not be among them. The promise that Valerie had given bound me no less than her. Impossible to leave her here in this God-forsaken hamlet, with a sick man for her charge and a veteran of threescore years for her bodyguard. She had pledged herself to stay, and I must stand by her. It seemed to me, then, that our liberty, if not our lives, depended upon the youth, who lay alternately burning with fever and shivering with cold upon the boards at our feet. His death would have set us free. I say it with truth that neither she nor I desired freedom at such a price.