“I was a captain, a simple captain, at the time, and I was in command of a detachment of scouts, who were retreating through a district which swarmed with Prussians.  We were surrounded, pursued, tired out and half dead with fatigue and hunger, but we were bound to reach Bar-sur-Tain before the morrow, otherwise we should be shot, cut down, massacred.  I do not know how we managed to escape so far.  However, we had ten leagues to go during the night, ten leagues through the night, ten leagues through the snow, and with empty stomachs, and I thought to myself: 

“‘It is all over; my poor devils of fellows will never be able to do it.’

“We had eaten nothing since the day before, and the whole day long we remained hidden in a barn, huddled close together, so as not to feel the cold so much, unable to speak or even move, and sleeping by fits and starts, as one does when worn out with fatigue.

“It was dark by five o’clock, that wan darkness of the snow, and I shook my men.  Some of them would not get up; they were almost incapable of moving or of standing upright; their joints were stiff from cold and hunger.

“Before us there was a large expanse of flat, bare country; the snow was still falling like a curtain, in large, white flakes, which concealed everything under a thick, frozen coverlet, a coverlet of frozen wool One might have thought that it was the end of the world.

“‘Come, my lads, let us start.’

“They looked at the thick white flakes that were coming down, and they seemed to think:  ’We have had enough of this; we may just as well die here!’ Then I took out my revolver and said: 

“‘I will shoot the first man who flinches.’  And so they set off, but very slowly, like men whose legs were of very little use to them, and I sent four of them three hundred yards ahead to scout, and the others followed pell-mell, walking at random and without any order.  I put the strongest in the rear, with orders to quicken the pace of the sluggards with the points of their bayonets in the back.

“The snow seemed as if it were going to bury us alive; it powdered our kepis and cloaks without melting, and made phantoms of us, a kind of spectres of dead, weary soldiers.  I said to myself:  ’We shall never get out of this except by a, miracle.’

“Sometimes we had to stop for a few minutes, on account of those who could not follow us, and then we heard nothing except the falling snow, that vague, almost undiscernible sound made by the falling flakes.  Some of the men shook themselves, others did not move, and so I gave the order to set off again.  They shouldered their rifles, and with weary feet we resumed our march, when suddenly the scouts fell back.  Something had alarmed them; they had heard voices in front of them.  I sent forward six men and a sergeant and waited.