"JUST take a look in here before you go, my dear English friend, at No. 45; it is a curious case; and presently over our wine in the balcony I will tell you the story," said Dr. Frochot, the famous mad doctor of Berlin, to me, with professional sang-froid. The doctor, as he spoke, slid aside the little round piece of brass that hid a glazed aperture in the wall, and then took an elaborate pinch of snuff, while I looked through it into the cell of No. 45. It was a small, bare room, with no furniture but a trestle-bed, one chair, and a small triangular table. At this table sat a tall, thin, gray-haired man, with a vacant, care-worn face, who was busy counting a heap of those round, prismatic pieces of glass that are used as ornaments to chandeliers. Having counted them some twenty times over, he proceeded to breathe on each of them, and then, one by one, to rub them, and hold them to the light. Suddenly he rose, drew himself to his full length, struck his forehead, as if he was in pain there, or as if some momentary flash of reason had lighted up his mind, then gave a loud shriek, and fell in a swoon upon the floor.

I replaced the brass slide with an involuntary sigh. "He has swooned; should he not have help, Dr. Frochot?" said I to my friend the mad doctor.

"No; he is often so," replied the imperturbable doctor; "he will be better when he comes to. We never visit patients but at regular hours. If we were always visiting patients, what time should we poor doctors have for ourselves ?"

Some ten minutes later, the doctor and myself were seated in the balcony of one of the pleasantest houses in Berlin, watching the little heart-shaped leaves of the lime-trees waver and flutter in the street below, as we smoked our segars and sipped our Hochheimer. It was a quiet street in the suburbs, and that part of the house where the patients were confined was far away from us, and separated from

the quarter that the doctor inhabited by a large garden, and thus no groan or shriek could reach us. A pale, fat man, a recovered patient, waited on us, and the children from time to time ran out to us, laughing and shouting, from the inner rooms. As it began to get dusk, and the air grew cooler, and the first star sparkled over the General Graufenclau's house opposite, the doctor, planting one foot on the upper ledge of the balcony, and resting the other on a china garden-seat, began his story:

You must know, my dear English friend, that in 1812-that is to say, exactly eighteen years ago-I, then a mere lad, accompanied the French army to Russia. I was surgeon in Devout's corps, and was often in the Emperor's tent. No. 45-then a well-known astronomer in Berlin-was also with the Grand Army, having been expressly commanded by Napoleon to make observations on the climate of Russia, and to record its variations. His name was Krautzer, and he was well known at that time in Berlin as an acute observer of great industry and sagacity, but of an envious and avaricious spirit, that had led him to waste much time in alchemic pursuits, which he had finally abandoned in disgust, only to give himself altogether up to place-hunting and money-making. We knew each other by sight, and I frequently saw him both during the advance and the retreat. The story I tell you is partly from my own knowledge, and partly from the mouths of his intimate friends, many of whom were acquaintances of mine.

was

But let me delay for a moment, my dear English friend, to recall the glories of that vast army of three hundred thousand men that crossed into Russia. Only yesterday an old country woman brought to see me, who had beheld that army pass her cottage. She described Napoleon as sitting on her small table, alternately consulting his maps, and cutting huge slices from a loaf that lay on the

table. All his marshals were round him, and all day the troops moved past the doorway in dusty columns. The country girls were peeping in at the window, to catch a glimpse of the Emperor. "Why do you look at me?" he said goodnaturedly to one of the prettiest, chucking her under the chin as he spoke. "I am a poor little fellow. Look at these fine tall fellows" (pointing to Davout and Murat.) The old woman who told me this had a head that kept nodding with the palsy; and it took one years back to fancy her young, graceful, and pretty. But that little story recalled to my mind how our army looked when we arrived at Gjat, just before the affair at Borodino.

We all know what happened then. The Emperor rose at three in the morning, called for a glass of punch, sent Rapp for the reports, and transacted business with Berthier till five; then mounted on horseback, and ordered the drums to beat and the trumpets to sound. "It is the enthusiasm of Austerlitz," he said as he rode forward, and the troops began to cheer. We lost ten thousand men, the Russians fifteen thousand. But a few days after, the Russians retreated, and we advanced straight on Moscow.

I daresay you have read a dozen times about this famous battle, but I can not resist-pardon an old soldier-briefly reminding you of its chief points. The Russians were in a strong position, strengthened by field works; their right flank rested on an intrenched wood; a brook running through a deep ravine covered their right wing; from the village of Borodino the left extended to Lemonskoie, another village, protected by ravines and thickets in front, secured by redoubts and batteries; while in the center, on an elevation, rose a double battery, that commanded the whole line.

Davout wanted to turn their left, but Napoleon thought the plan too dangerous. Poniatowski therefore attacked their right and center; while Ney tried to storm the redoubt in the center; and Prince Eu gene broke into Lemonskoie. If Napoleon had brought up his reserve of the Young Guard, the Russian retreat would have been a rout; and if Davout had got in their rear, Kutusow would have been unable to have retreated on the capital.

Ma foi! those peasants in the gray frocks, encouraged by their bearded priests, with their painted images, fought

like Turks, and would take or give no quarter. With nearly twenty thousand men wounded, and thirty generals horsde-combat, you may imagine that I had a busy time of it the day after the battle. I was the chief doctor in the great convent of Kolotskoi, where our wounded. were brought. We had no lint or anything, and our hussars had to scour the country for linen and beds. I was up to my waist in legs and arms; and at night, when I went out to take a breath of fresh air, as tired as any butcher on market-day, the groans from that great building rose as from a dying giant.

On the night of the 11th, Napoleon being uncertain whether the Russians had taken the road to Moscow or Kalouga, was informed by Jewish spies that Kutusow had really fallen back on the capital. The next morning we were to advance on Krymskoie. We were all in high spirits; even the poor wounded cheered faintly when I reported the news in the hospital.

That same night as I was walking round the bivouac fires, just to observe how the soldiers took the news, I came upon a singular group near a clump of firs, at the east end of the convent garden. There was Krautzer, whom I knew perfectly by sight, and a Jew spy, tormenting an old Russian peasant, who knelt before them. They had each got a lighted brand, and were, I suppose, going to torture him into some sort of confession. Two or three soldiers, in their bear-skin caps and gray greatcoats, were leaning on their muskets, and laughing as they watched them. The Jew was a lean, haggard man, with a dry, thin, wrinkled face, and withered eyes, that looked like dried currants. As he stood there in his greasy caftan and dirty boots, drawn over his trousers, I thought he might have passed muster for the very spirit of Avarice himself.

"Burn his beard off, great sir!" I heard him say to Krautzer; "I tell you he knows all about the Rostopchin Palace."

"And the celebrated Rostopchin jewels ?" said Krutzer eagerly.

"Yes, every thing. He was steward's man to the prince, and knows all the family secrets. Then he held his torch close to the eyes of the wretched peasant, who shrank into a heap, and screamed for mercy.

"Burn his fingers off!" cried the Jew.

are kept in a malachite cabinet, under the floor of the third bedroom to the right, on the third story, as you go up the grand staircase."

"He's lying," said the Jew; " my great sir, burn his toes off-do burn his toes off."

I was just going to interfere, and had indeed spoken to Krautzer apart, much to his indignation, when an old soldier came up, and striking the Jew with the buttend of his musket, told him with an oath not to ill-treat the Russian.

"We owe them a turn," he said, "and we'll singe them with our cannon; but once prisoners, brave men should be merciful. Now, then, old Muscovite, run for your life, and no Jew or savant shall hurt you while I've a cartridge left. I've got an old father home in Auvergne just your age. Go, mon enfant."

The old Russian did not probably understand a word the old moustache said to him, but he saw that Krautzer and the Jew were restrained by some one or other, and he saw the wood to which the grenadier pointed. That was enough. In a moment, he blundered through the fire, and ran off as hard as his old legs could carry him; and as I returned to the hospital, hearing the soldiers' laughter, I looked back, and saw the Jew, nose on ground, stealing like a blood-hound on the track of the old Russian. But I thought no more of it. Hard work drove all other thoughts out of mind, and I had my large family, my twenty thousand men to look after.

At sunrise on the 14th of September, the vanguard reached a hill called the Mount of Salvation, and where the pilgrims kneel and pray before entering the holy city.

"Moscow Moscow !" cried a hundred thousand voices. The steeples and gilt domes shone in the sun; the huge triangular Kremlin, half palace, half citadel, rose above the trees.

As I stood among the crowd, I heard two harsh voices at my elbow. One said: "Where where is it?" The other replied: "That is the Rostopchin Palace there among the trees, to the left of the Kremlin, by the Kolomna Gate. All will soon be ours now."

I looked round; it was Krautzer and that carrion-crow of a Jew. They were

"Monsieur Krautzer," I said, "have you not heard that Marshal Mortier has forbidden all pillage ?"

"I suppose we may take keepsakes," he replied. "But to what do you refer ?" "I was thinking," I replied, "of the malachite cabinet in the Rostopchin Palace."

"A peasant's lie," said Krautzer, pale with anger and confusion, as he spurred on his horse, and joined the vanguard. That man had but one thought now. The beast of a Jew ran by his stirrup. How or where he had picked up this man, or what common interest brought them together, I never could learn.

Presently the news came that the two hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants of Moscow had left the city. It was ours. No one was left in Moscow but beggars and thieves, and we entered the city soon after noon.

While others sought the Kremlin or the bazaars, the churches or the cafés, I employed myself in selecting a fit place for the wounded to winter in. When I had made my arrangements, under the guidance of a Cossack officer, a prisoner, I stopped at a great gateway, next door to our new quarters, and asked to what palace that led.

"That is the Rostopchin Palace, Frenchman," said the prisoner, "and contains furniture worth half a million of rubles, all left for your Corsican's plunderers."

"We are no thieves," I said, "Marshal Mortier, the new governor of Moscow, is ordered, on pain of death, to prevent all pillage."

"Ha!" says he, "look there; they have begun already."

I looked up to where he pointed; there were two men tearing down some shutters, and thrusting their heads out of a window on the third story. I looked; it was Krautzer and that accursed Jew. They were evidently in full cry after those Rostopchin diamonds.

"Take charge of this officer," I said to the picket of grenadiers that accompanied me, "and wait below. I have business here."

"Another of Marshal Mortier's robbers," muttered the Cossack; but I did not deign a reply.

I leaped through the shattered door, and in a moment was up the staircase.

That moment a gun was discharged, and a bullet shivered the balustrade that my hand rested upon. I drew my sword, and ran into a room on the third story where the door was open.

I stumbled over a still smoking musket. There, in the half-lit room, with light streaming through the broken shutters, were Krautzer and the Jew, bending over a hole in the floor, from whence they had removed two layers of cedar planks and much plaster and fresh earth. There between them, was the malachite cabinetthe forced-off lid carefully replaced.

I was in a furious rage at the attempted assassination. "I don't know which of you it was who shot at me," said I, "but one of you it was. If it was this cursed, Jew-who already I know to be a spy and half suspect to be a murderer-I will kill him on the spot. If you, Monsieur Krautzer, I shall report you to Marshal Mortier."

"I know what you want," said Krautzer sullenly, looking up. "Don't swagger. You want your share; well, then, here take it ;" and so saying, he threw oft the lid of the malachite cabinet with a hideous grin of triumph. It was empty; its velvet-lined recesses still bore the impress of tiaras, carcanets, chains, and bracelets. "You see we were too late; other men had the fruit and left the shell for us. As for the shot, we took you for a stray Russian, and being here alone, feared violence. For that shot, a thousand pardons, my dear doctor; but pray, keep this casket as a small remembrance of Moscow."

I left the room with a curse, dashing the malachite box to pieces with a kick of my foot, and saw no more of Krautzer and his Jew for many a day, although I heard a rumor, that he had undertaken, for several thousand rubles, to convey back to France a Russian lady of rank, whose husband had been taken prisoner at Wilna, and sent to the Temple. I never knew a man so transformed by a lust for wealth as that Krautzer-fame, science, honor had all been sacrificed to that moloch.

That night, our ruin began-the Russians fired Moscow, the flames first breaking out in the coachmakers' warehouses. From that moment, the Emperor knew it was all over with him. The fatal retreat soon after began.

Every day matters grew worse and

worse. When one morning, on 6th November, at Dorogobuj, the first snow-flakes fell large as half-crowns, the Russian prisoners smiled bitterly, for they knew well what was coming. From that day, it grew worse and worse - thicker and thicker; and the Cossacks skimmed round us like Arabs round a plague struck caravan. As Segur says grandly in his great work: "In this vast wreck, the army, like a great ship tossed by a tremendous tempest, threw into that vast weltering sea of ice and snow all that could impede its progress." First, plunder, guns, arms, powder, shot; then the wounded, the women, the sick, sutlers, prisoners, standards. At the convent of Kolotskoi, it went to my heart to find thousands of my poor wounded dead, and the rest, whom we could not move, crowding to the door, lame and bandaged, stretching out their arms, and praying us to take them with us. There was no ford but some wagons or guns were abandoned at it; no storm of Cossacks but swept off some miserable stragglers; no bivouac fire lit but in the morning some of our wretched soldiers were found dead, with their feet halfburned off, and their hair frozen to the ground.

Pounded corn and horse-flesh had gradually been superseded by birch-bark and saw-dust loaves. The Emperor gave orders to destroy one-half the wagons, so as to use the horses and draught oxen to help forward the artillery. Many of the cavalry, by the time we reached Studzianka

and many even of the Sacred Squadron, the five hundred officers who formed the bodyguard of the Emperor-were dismounted. Some of our men had their bleeding feet bandaged with rags, to replace their worn-out shoes. There were generals wrapped in women's pelisses. All discipline was rapidly going.

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During the retreat, I had frequent glimpses of Krautzer, who was always followed by that carrion-crow of a Jew. The day we left Moscow, I had seen him riding beside the sumptuous carriage that contained the Russian lady of rank whom he had undertaken to convey to Paris. day or two later, when we halted at the lake of Semelin, to throw into it the ancient armor, cannon, the great cross of Ivan, and other trophies of Moscow, the carriage had disappeared, and Krautzer and his charge were both mounted on horses. There was no sun visible, and

the thick fog had suddenly changed into a heavy snow, that blew round us, and almost blinded the soldiers. Emaciated, dirty, and unshaven, our men already had begun to look more like hungry brigands than grenadiers of the Grand Army. It was on this day that the Emperor himself dismounted, seized a musket, and marched at the head of the Old Guard, to encourage them. When I shut my eyes, I can see him now, with the stern, gripped mouth and the broad white forehead, over which one black tress of hair fell. I was riding quietly along with the vanguard, wrapped in thought, when one of my assistant-surgeons tapped me on the shoulder, and pointed at Krautzer.

"Look at that man, Monsieur Frochot," he said; "observe how his holsters are stuffed out. The soldiers tell me they are full of jewels that he stole from a palace in Moscow. Parbleu! I would give a hatful of diamonds now myself to be safe in the Boulevards."

"And look at that poor woman, camarades," said a grenadier from the ranks"how frightened she is of him; they say he beats her if she lags behind, he is so afraid of the Cossacks. Brute! I should like to put a bullet through him!"

"And here comes that Jew that never loses sight of him," cried a third fellow, with a red rag round his forehead-" follows him like a weasel does a wounded rabbit. I'd shoot that Jew if he followed me so. Ugh! how this snow blows in one's eyes!"

Worse and worse; you could trace our march by long lines of snow-hillocks, the the graves of our unhappy soldiers. Four days from Smolensko, where we hoped to get food, I saw the poor Russian lady riding in a sutler's wagon, the next day on a gun-carriage. The day after that, I met her walking with almost bare feet, clinging to an old soldier, who had taken compassion on her; her hair was dishevelled, her rich dress had turned to rags. A day before we reached Smolensko, I came upon her body among a heap of camp-followers who had been speared by the Cossacks. The snow already had partly covered her. I stopped for a moment, and even in the cruel selfishness of that terrible retreat, covered her face with some snow. Poor woman, at last her sufferings were over; she was beyond the reach of pain, sorrow, and hunger. As for that wretch Krautzer, he, intent on

VOL. LX.-NO. 1

saving his plunder, was riding hotly on to Smolensko, hoping to be first to reach the ovens, where the Jews were baking bread for the army. At the sight of Smolensko, with its half-burned walls and dismantled towers, hope once more revisited our hearts, we waved our flags and bayonets, and hurried headlong to the ovens.

I found an infuriated mob of soldiers besieging the doors of the bakehouse where rations were to be distributed. Alarmed at their menaces, the frightened Jews were handing out lumps of the unbaked dough. Hundreds of bayonets were tossing in the air, muskets were discharging, and here and there men were actually fainting with hunger on doorsteps, within arm's-length of the crowd. All order and discipline were gone, and amid a group of infuriated men screaming for more bread, officers were seen clamoring loudly as the meanest camp-follower.

Foremost among these, more cowardly and more importunate than any, I saw Krautzer; he was mounted on a strong artillery-horse, and the well-stuffed holsters were still conspicuous objects on his saddle. He was breasting his way to the front among the cursing soldiers, and the Jew was clinging to his stirrup-leather. His arms were up in the air entreating for bread, and the bayonets were all round him before and behind, and on the right hand and on the left, so that he could not move them either up or down.

"Shoot the savant!" cried a drummer, on whom his horse had trodden; "soldiers first, savants after. Why didn't he foresee the bad weather?"

"Bread, bread, accursed Jews! bread, dear Jews!" screamed out Krautzer, alternately wheedling and threatening.

"Bread, or we'll slay every Jew!" shouted the soldiers, tearing the dough to pieces as the Jew-bakers threw it in great white lumps among them, fierce as sharks fighting for a bait.

I was about four ranks off from Krautzer, and was waiting patiently for my turn, when my attention was drawn to the Jew at the savant's side. He was bending down and evidently cutting at the savant's holsters with a thick, sharp knife. I was fascinated with the sight; so fascinated, that I lost all thought of giving the alarm, though amid the war of four or five thousand hoarse voices, it is not possible that any alarm I could have given could have reached him. Suddenly I saw

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