I can walk better than you."
Colonel Feraud nodded, and pushed on towards the warmth of the fierce
flames. Colonel D'Hubert was more deliberate, but not the less bent on
getting a place in the front rank. Those they shouldered aside tried
to greet with a faint cheer the reappearance of the two indomitable
companions in activity and endurance. Those manly qualities had never
perhaps received a higher tribute than this feeble acclamation.
This is the faithful record of speeches exchanged during the retreat
from Moscow by Colonels Feraud and D'Hubert. Colonel Feraud's
taciturnity was the outcome of concentrated rage. Short, hairy, black
faced, with layers of grime and the thick sprouting of a wiry beard,
a frost-bitten hand wrapped up in filthy rags carried in a sling, he
accused fate of unparalleled perfidy towards the sublime Man of Destiny.
Colonel D'Hubert, his long moustaches pendent in icicles on each side of
his cracked blue lips, his eyelids inflamed with the glare of snows, the
principal part of his costume consisting of a sheepskin coat looted
with difficulty from the frozen corpse of a camp follower found in an
abandoned cart, took a more thoughtful view of events.
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