His regularly
handsome features, now reduced to mere bony lines and fleshless hollows,
looked out of a woman's black velvet hood, over which was rammed
forcibly a cocked hat picked up under the wheels of an empty army
fourgon, which must have contained at one time some general officer's
luggage. The sheepskin coat being short for a man of his inches ended
very high up, and the skin of his legs, blue with the cold, showed
through the tatters of his nether garments. This under the circumstances
provoked neither jeers nor pity. No one cared how the next man felt or
looked. Colonel D'Hubert himself, hardened to exposure, suffered mainly
in his self-respect from the lamentable indecency of his costume. A
thoughtless person may think that with a whole host of inanimate bodies
bestrewing the path of retreat there could not have been much difficulty
in supplying the deficiency. But to loot a pair of breeches from a
frozen corpse is not so easy as it may appear to a mere theorist. It
requires time and labour. You must remain behind while your companions
march on.
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