"And the baggage?" suggested another.
"And the treasure of Moscow?" whispered a Jew with cunning eyes, who
had hidden behind his neighbour when Rapp glanced in his direction.
Emerging on the bridge, the General glanced at the old Mottlau. A
crowd was collected on it. The citizens no longer used the bridges
but crossed without fear where they pleased, and heavy sleighs
passed up and down as on a high-road. Rapp saw it, made a grimace,
and, turning in his saddle, spoke to his neighbour, an engineer
officer, who was to make an immortal name and die in Dantzig.
The Mottlau was one of the chief defences of the city, but instead
of a river the Governor found a high-road!
Rapp alone seemed to look about him with the air of one who knew his
whereabouts. In the straggling trail of men behind him, not one in
a hundred looked for a friendly face. Some stared in front of them
with lifeless eyes, while others, with a little spirit plucked up at
the end of a weary march, glanced up at the gabled houses with the
interest called forth by the first sight of a new city.
It was not until long afterwards that the world, piecing together
information purposely delayed and details carefully falsified, knew
that of the four hundred thousand men who marched triumphantly to
the Niemen, only twenty thousand recrossed that river six months
later, and of these two-thirds had never seen Moscow.
Rapp, whose bloodshot eyes searched the crowd of faces turned
towards him, recognized a number of people.
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