One of the Six Hundred: A Novel
proceedings so novel; while some of the younger laughed covertly at the
terror and bewilderment of the worthy couple, who, however, ate heartily
of dainties to which they were all unused, after their first alarm
subsided. The Muscovite general, who sat between them, at the head of
the table, with a kind smile on his handsome face--for handsome it was,
though his hair was now thin and grey--asked Michel many questions about
his family and household affairs--how the mill prospered and flour sold
in the market.
Then Michel, who scarcely ventured to raise his eyes from the order,
with the cross batons and crown of St. Andrew of Russia, which sparkled
on the general's breast, told him that he was the eldest son of his
father, who had been a miller at the same mill years and years ago, even
when Frederick V. of Denmark, married to the Princess Louisa of Great
Britain, was a boy.
"The eldest son, say you, Michel?"
"Yes, herr general," replied the miller, smoothing down his white hair
nervously.
"Then you had, at least, a brother?"
"Yes, herr general; poor Karl. He disappeared."
"How?"
"Some said he became a soldier, others that he was spirited away by the
fairies," said Gretchen.
"Many a prayer my good wife and I have said for Karl, though it is so
long since he was lost; and in his memory we have named our only son
Karl, too."
On hearing this, the Russian general became greatly moved, and, seeing
that the astonishment of his officers at the interest he took in these
humble rustics could no longer be repressed, he rose, and taking Michel
and his wife by the hand--"Gentlemen," said he, "you know me but as a
soldier of fortune, and have often been curious to learn who I am, whose
breast the Emperor has covered with stars and orders, and whence I came.
This village is my native place. In yonder crumbling mill by the wooden
bridge I was born. This is my brother Michel, and Gretchen, his wife!
I am Karl Baur, son of old Karl, the miller of Husum. Here was I
_bairn_ ere I relinquished my miller's dusty coat to become a soldier.
Oh, brother Michel, who then could have _spaed_[*] the present?" he
added, in their old native dialect, as he embraced the wondering pair.
[*] Foretold.
"I was supposed to have been stolen on St. John's night by the
golden-haired Stillevolk of the marshes, or the cranky old red-capped
Trolds, who dwelt among the green holms; but it was not so. I became a
hussar under Duke Karl Peter of Gottorp, and have risen to be what thou
seest--general of cavalry under our father the Emperor! So drink a deep
becker of our Danish beer, brother Michel; drink to the old times of our
boyhood, and fear not. I know our patrimony is but one of the poor
_Bauerhafen_, which are divided according to the number of ploughs; but
to-morrow thy _hufe_ shall be a _Freihufen_, Michel, free of all
burdens, even to the duke's bailiff or the King of Denmark."
Next day the general dined at the old mill, where he sat upon the same
hard stool he had used in boyhood, supping his Schleswig _groute_ with a
horn spoon from a wooden platter. In memory of the olden time, he placed
a marble cross above his parent's grave. Three days after the trumpets
were heard, and the army marched from Schleswig to return no more; but
the general--the same General Bauer who served under Suwarrow in the
famous campaigns of Italy--made a plentiful provision for his poor
relatives, and sent the miller's only son, his namesake, Karl, to Court
for his education, Karl rose to a high place in the household of the
Czar, and it was his son, Karlovitch Bauer, who prepared so specious a
trap for our advanced guard on the Bulganak--a trap happily rendered
useless by the skill and foresight of our leader, the good and brave
Lord Raglan.
*CHAPTER XXXVI.*
Let me go! The day is breaking,
Morning bursts upon mine eye,
Death this mortal frame is shaking;
But the soul can never die!
Let me go! The day-star beaming,
Gilds the radiant realms above;
Full its glory on me streaming
Lights me to the land of love!
LAYS OF THE PIOUS MINSTRELS.
Wrapped in my cloak and blanket, I had fallen into an uneasy slumber,
close by a fragment of ruined wall, the boundary, perhaps, of a deserted
Tartar garden, when I was roused by Sergeant Stapylton of my troop.
"I beg pardon, sir, for disturbing you," said he, in an apologetic way;
"but as I was returning from the river side with water for some of the
wounded horses, I passed a Frenchwoman, as I take her to be, dying to
all appearance, and thought, as she can't be left where she is, that if
you would come and speak to her----"
"Of course," said I, springing up; "where is she?"
"Near a grove of olive trees--just a pistol-shot or so beyond our
advanced sentries. You can pass me to the front, sir, as your guide."
Leaving the sleeping group of my brother officers, I accompanied
Stapylton, with stiffened joints and chattering teeth. The morning was
yet dark, but a red streak of light above the hilly ground that rose
between our left flank and the Perekop road, showed where the dawn was
about to break. All was still around me. Save the occasional neigh of
a horse, scarcely a sound broke the silence of that place, where so many
thousands of our soldiers were sleeping, or dozing as men may do, after
reflecting that the night which was passing away might be their last in
the land of the living, and that the coming day must find them face to
face with danger, and--death! On the chill breeze of the September
morning, I could hear the rush of the Bulganak over its stony bed,
between which and our bivouac could be traced the line of our cavalry
vedettes, seated, cloaked, in their saddles, with carbine on thigh, and
the advanced sentinels, muffled in their great coats, standing
motionless, with "ordered arms," and their faces turned to the
southward, where all knew the enemy lay. Passing through the Light
Brigade, where each man slept beside his horse, I stumbled over a
sleeper, in whom I recognized a medical officer, and asked him to
accompany us, which he did readily; and, guided by Stapylton, we
proceeded towards the grove of olive trees.
As we quitted the bivouac, the medical officer said--"You perceive that
vapour which is rising so steadily from the ground?"
"Yes," said I, with an irrepressible shudder; "I saw enough of it at
Varna."
"You are right," he continued, in a low and impressive voice; "that
pale, blue, fetid vapour is the cholera mist--always a bad sign. We
shall have many cases on our lists ere sunset to-morrow, and Heaven
knows they are full enough already. Nearly all the women and children
of my regiment were buried on the roadside yesterday. A sick
Frenchwoman, I think you said, sergeant?" he observed, recurring to the
business in hand.
"Yes, sir," replied Stapylton, saluting.
"Strange! What should bring her here? The French are at present far
away on our right, and in the rear. I presume you have heard of what
took place this evening, Captain Norcliff?"
"Where?"
"At head-quarters."
"The little post-house on the Bulganak, where Lord Raglan passes the
night?"
"Exactly. Marshal St. Arnaud, attended by Colonel Trochier, of the
imperial army, rode up there to concert the plan of an attack to-morrow.
So, whatever it is, our part in the play of to-morrow is already
assigned us; and now, sergeant, your Frenchwoman."
"Is here, sir, to speak for herself, if she can, poor thing."
Close by the grove of olive trees, with a coarse blanket spread over
her, lay the woman of whom Stapylton had spoken.
"Cholera!" said the surgeon, as he turned down the blanket, and knelt
beside her; "cholera, and in the last stages, too. No pulse can be felt,
the extremities cold and rigid, the face ghastly, the strength
exhausted. I can be of no use here," he added to me, in a low voice.
"A little time and all will be over."
From my hunting flask he poured a little brandy between the lips of the
sufferer, who proved to be a _soeur de charite_, by her white coif and
black serge dress; and, on drawing nearer, imagine what were my
sensations on recognising, through the twilight of the coming day, the
pale and convulsed features of Sister Archange--of Mademoiselle de
Chaverondier! An exclamation of sorrow and astonishment burst from me.
All the memory of her kindness when I lay sick in the house of the
Armenian merchant at Varna; all her singleness of heart; all her purity
and self-devotion; all the memory of her story, and of her own happy
home amid the mountains of Beaujolais, and how and why she had devoted
herself to Heaven and acts of charity; all her simple belief in magic
and miracles, with her child-like love and piety; her regard for her
brother Claude, the gallant officer of Canrobert's regiment, his wife,
Cecile Montalle, and the cruel Lucrece, whose revenge wrought all their
sorrow--all the memory of these things, I say, rushed upon me like a
flood, as I stood, bewildered, by the side of the dying girl--dying like
an outcast in that wild and savage place--and they deeply moved me. To
leave her to die thus, untended and uncared for, was impossible. Yet
what was to be done? How was I to succour her? Already the trumpets of
the cavalry, and the ringing bugles of the infantry, were sounding the
"rouse" and the "assembly," and the army was getting rapidly under
arms--all the more rapidly that there were no tents to strike and no
baggage to pack. Each man fell into the ranks on the ground where he
had slept; the cavalry were mounting, the artillery were tracing their
horses and limbering up, and long ere the Bay of Kalamita glittered in
the rising sun, the whole British army was on the move towards the Alma.
My friend the surgeon, finding that he could do no more--that he had,
perhaps, patients enough elsewhere--suggested, ere he departed, that she
might be put into one of the _kabitkas_ of the ambulance corps; but, as
he assured me that she could not live above an hour, I despatched
Stapylton to explain the matter to Colonel Beverley; and in a few
minutes he returned with Pitblado, Lanty O'Regan, my groom, and four
other lancers and our horses, and with permission for me "to look after
my sick friend; but, at all risks, not to be ten minutes' march behind
the rear guard, as General Bosquet's division was already advancing
rapidly on our right flank, and the French sister might be more properly
handed over to her own people."
We lifted her into the olive thicket, out of the way of the passing
troops; for already our advanced guard, under Lord Cardigan--"Prince
Albert's Own," with their blue jackets and scarlet pelisses covered with
glittering lace, and the 13th Light Dragoons--were once more splashing
through the Bulganak, laughing and joking merrily, as if it were a fox
that was to break cover in the Lincolnshire fens, and not the hordes of
the southern and western Russias that were before them. By means of
three barrel-hoops and a horse-sheet, we improvised something like that
which the French term a day-tent, to hide her and her sufferings. Then
the idea occurred to me as to what I could do if she survived beyond the
time allotted to us by the colonel. Could I leave her in that wild
place to die alone, and to lie unburied, save by the wolves and birds of
prey? Alas! a very brief time now resolved all my doubts and fears. A
little way apart from us, a silent and sympathetic group, my seven
lancers stood, each by his horse's head, leaning on his lance, and
awaiting me. If they conversed, it was in half whispers, for they
sincerely pitied the girl, those French sisters of charity being the