But for the most part they were not so scrupulous.
At first D'Arragon, to whom these horrors were new, attempted to
help such as appealed to him, but Barlasch laughed at him.
"Yes," he said. "Take the medallion, and promise to send it to his
mother. Holy Heaven--they all have medallions, and they all have
mothers. Every Frenchman remembers his mother--when it is too late.
I will get a cart. By to-morrow we shall fill it with keepsakes.
And here is another. He is hungry. So am I, comrade. I come from
Moscow--bah!"
And so they fought their way through the stream. They could have
journeyed by a quicker route--D'Arragon could have steered a course
across the frozen plain as over a sea--but Charles must necessarily
be in this stream. He might be by the wayside. Any one of these
pitiable objects, half blind, frost-bitten, with one limb or another
swinging useless, like a snapped branch, wrapped to the eyes in
filthy furs--inhuman, horrible--any one of these might be Desiree's
husband.
They never missed a chance of hearing news. Barlasch interrupted
the last message of a dying man to inquire whether he had ever heard
of Prince Eugene. It was startling to learn how little they knew.
The majority of them were quite ignorant of French, and had scarcely
heard the name of the commander of their division. Many spoke in a
language which even Barlasch could not identify.
"His talk is like a coffee-mill," he explained to D'Arragon, "and I
do not know to what regiment he belonged.
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