Often from daybreak to dusk no one spoke in the
whole column. It was like a macabre march of struggling corpses towards
a distant grave. Only an alarm of Cossacks could restore to their eyes a
semblance of martial resolution. The battalion faced about and deployed,
or formed square under the endless fluttering of snowflakes. A cloud of
horsemen with fur caps on their heads, levelled long lances, and yelled
"Hurrah! Hurrah!" around their menacing immobility whence, with muffled
detonations, hundreds of dark red flames darted through the air thick
with falling snow. In a very few moments the horsemen would disappear,
as if carried off yelling in the gale, and the sacred battalion standing
still, alone in the blizzard, heard only the howling of the wind, whose
blasts searched their very hearts. Then, with a cry or two of "Vive
l'Empereur!" it would resume its march, leaving behind a few lifeless
bodies lying huddled up, tiny black specks on the white immensity of the
snows.
Though often marching in the ranks, or skirmishing in the woods side
by side, the two officers ignored each other; this not so much from
inimical intention as from a very real indifference.
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