'Come now, General,' he said laughing, 'don't be too hard on my young secretary here! He's Italian and his French is not good. Besides, he's only seventeen.'

'I was already a subaltern at his age! The boy should be capable of sitting a horse and handling a sabre, for all his girlish features and those great staring eyes of his. I'll remind you of what poor Lassalle said, that a hussar who's not dead at thirty isn't worth his salt!'

"That's as may be. Anyone who gave this lad a sabre would be taking a lot on himself. He's as blind as a bat! Put on your spectacles, Fabrice,' he added in Italian. "You know you can't see a thing without them.'

Angry and annoyed, Marianne obeyed. She found herself hating the arrogant officer who was watching her with such open contempt. Indeed, it cost her a considerable effort to refrain from telling him just what she thought of him and his like. To them, a battlefield, even one covered with dead men, was, if not precisely paradise, at least a very special place. It was the gigantic board on which they played out their favourite game, the heady sport of war. They did not care if they left various portions of their anatomy on the field, what mattered to them was the game itself, its frenzy, its intoxication and its dreadful glory. And to the devil with the cost!

When the convoy moved on again and the general had got back into his own vehicle, Marianne tore off the spectacles, which were making her nose sore, and vented her rage on her companion.

'Who is that bloodthirsty imbecile? Do you know him?'

'Yes, of course. He is General the Baron Pierre Mourier, commanding the 9th brigade of cavalry of the 3rd Corps, which is Ney's own. He was wounded on this very field. Nor, let me add, is he in the least imbecile. He merely said what any experienced soldier would have said at the sight of a good-looking young man with nothing apparently wrong with him and all his limbs intact, sitting comfortably in a well-sprung carriage.'

'Oh. Well, you need not go on about it. It was not my idea to dress as a man.'

'No, it was mine. It was the only way you would be acceptable in a military convoy.'

'What about Barbe, then?'

'She is my servant. I said she was my cook. Come now, Marianne, try to keep your spirits up in spite of everything. You are likely to encounter many more incidents of the same kind. It is simply one of the necessary evils of your disguise. Be patient. And you may tell yourself, if it's any comfort to you, that the general thinks much the same of me. He doesn't think much of an auditor of the Council of State, especially one my age. He'd call me a shirker. Just keep your mind on playing your part properly and we'll be all right.'

Marianne glared at him but he had already ceased to pay much attention to her. He had taken a small book, elegantly bound in brown calf from his pocket and plunged into it with such evident enjoyment that Marianne could not resist the urge to disturb him a little.

'What are you reading?' she asked.

'Madame du Deffand's letters,' he said, without taking his eyes from the page. 'She was blind but so intelligent! Far too intelligent ever to interrupt someone else's concentration.'

There was no mistaking his meaning and Marianne subsided indignantly rather than engage in further argument. She flung herself back sulkily into her corner and did her best to sleep.

Progressing at the rate of three or four leagues a day, the journey became depressingly monotonous. The cold set in so bitterly that Beyle and Marianne formed the habit of walking a little way each day to stretch their legs and to ease the horses. The road was broad and quite good, winding in a serpentine fashion through thick forests of dark fires and pale birches. It was all up and down and in the early stages some of the more heavily laden wagons had to be pushed very often. In all this time, they did not see a living soul. Such villages as they came across were deserted and more than half ruined.

They bivouacked at night round huge fires, for which there was never any shortage of wood, and slept as well as they could wrapped in blankets which, by morning, had turned into crackling, icy shells.

At each of these halts, Marianne did her best to keep as far from General Mourier as possible. It was not that he was openly unpleasant, but he seemed to take a mischievous pleasure in teasing the supposed secretary, subjecting him to a spate of humorous pleasantries of a military kind and so broad that for all her self-control Marianne could not help blushing to the roots of her hair, to the great delight of her tormentor. Beyle, meanwhile, was obliged to resort to the most devious methods to enable her to escape by herself from time to time to satisfy the needs of nature. Moreover, however often he repeated that Fabrice, as he called him, did not understand much French, Mourier would still persist in trying to acquaint him with the finer points of military slang, assuring him that this was an excellent way to learn. Having served in Italy, Mourier had some rudiments of Italian, which he could use with fiendish cunning.

One thing that particularly exercised his wit was the fact that Fabrice was never seen to remove his hat. The fur cap had remained firmly pulled down over his ears ever since leaving Moscow, and the general's witticisms rained down on the unfortunate headgear. If he was not hinting that the wretched Fabrice, besides his lack of physical endowments and courage, was also as bald as a coot, he was promising him a fine crop of lice as a result unless he took it off. Poor Marianne could only wish with all her heart that she had listened to Beyle's advice and had her hair cut short before she set out. She had not been able to bring herself to do it, and in this she had been upheld by Barbe's loud indignation at the very idea of parting with her crowning glory. Now she could only suffer in silence, for the sacrifice was no longer possible.

They were almost half-way to Smolensk when the first attack came. It was the evening of the twenty-fourth of October, the cooking fires had been lighted and the meagre daily ration of bacon and dried peas, for food was growing scarce, was stewing over them. The convoy had become a single, great encampment in a clearing in the forest, where the men huddled together, quarrels and bad temper forgotten, seeking only a little warmth and human comfort from one another. The camp was a little patch of France set down in the vast immensity of Russia and the men clung together for company. They had gained a few more leagues that day. It would not be long now before they were safe again behind the thick walls of Smolensk, where supplies of food were pouring in daily – or so Beyle hoped.

Then grey figures loomed up, without warning, under the trees. Simultaneously, there was a crackle of gunfire. A man dropped, headlong, just beside Marianne and was dragged back hastily before his hair caught fire, but he was already dead. She was staring down at him in horrified fascination when she heard General Mourier's voice bellowing: 'To arms! We are attacked! Each man take his weapon and fire at will—'

'Who is it?' Beyle asked, peering into the half-light. The cossacks?'

"No. Cossacks would have rushed up before now. These are on foot – and I've an idea there are peasants among them. I'm almost sure I saw the gleam of a pitchfork.'

With amazing speed, he succeeded in putting the camp in a posture of defence, running up and down the line, bent almost double, handing out ammunition and making sure that everyone had as much cover as possible, especially those of the wounded who could not move from where they lay. He had used his rank to take command automatically, the officer nominally in charge of the convoy being no more than a colonel, and Dutch to boot.

'Try to hold your fire unless you're sure of a hit,' he counselled them. 'Better not waste your powder. We're not at Smolensk yet.'

'If we ever get there at all,' Beyle muttered, drawing a long pistol from one of his valises. 'If the Russians attack in force, we'll never hold them.'

'Don't be so defeatist,' Marianne retorted sharply. 'You must have known we were likely to meet some of them. Or have you forgotten what you were always saying in Moscow, that we were practically surrounded?'

He mumbled something indistinct in answer and then devoted himself earnestly to the business of loading his pistol. Everything was very quiet now but Marianne, crouching behind the carriage and peering out into the gathering dusk, was able to make out stealthy figures creeping nearer. The grey-clad Russians melted into the twilight and it was not easy to distinguish them from the trees they were using as cover. They advanced in short dashes from one trunk to the next but the girl's sharp eyes soon learned to pick them out. All at once, without quite knowing why, she found herself eager to take part in the deadly game.

In the old days, when she was growing up at Selton, Dobs had seen to it that his 'tomboy pupil', as he called her, had acquired a pretty skill with firearms as well as with the foils. Consequently, when Mourier came back to take up a position behind his own carriage, she spoke to him outright, but still remembering to do it in Italian.

'Give me a pistol!'

He did not understand at first and said something coarse in answer. Then Beyle intervened.

'The boy is asking you for a weapon, a pistol,' he translated coldly, but the general only gave a shout of laughter.

'A pistol? What for? Those dainty hands of his could never hold it steady. Oh no, my friend, just you tell your young fire-eater that guns are for men. This is no time to be playing games. I don't know what the Russians are waiting for, but it won't be long now. I think they're coming. When they're close enough, every shot must go home.'