He was a medium-sized man, with a bullet-head and a
round chubby face, a small nose, round eyes, and, if you please,
side-whiskers.
Never for a moment did he admit that things looked black. He lit
enormous bonfires, melted the frozen earth, and built the
fortifications that had been planned.
"I took counsel," he said, long afterwards, "with two engineer
officers whose devotion equalled their brilliancy--Colonel Richemont
and General Campredon."
Soldiers might for all time study with advantage the acts of such
obscure and almost forgotten men as these. For, through them,
Napoleon was now teaching the world that a fortified place might be
made stronger than any had hitherto suspected. That he should turn
round and teach, on the other hand, that a city usually considered
impregnable could be taken without great loss of life, was only
characteristic of his splendid genius, which, like a towering tree,
grew and grew until it fell.
The days were very short now, and it was dark when the sappers--
whose business it was to keep the ice moving in the river at that
spot where the Government building-yard abuts the river front to-
day--were roused from their meditations by a shout on the farther
bank.
They pushed their clumsy boat through the ice, and soon perceived
against the snowy distance the outline of a man wrapped, swaddled,
disguised in the heaped-up clothing so familiar to Eastern Europe at
this time.
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