Note 235 — Chapter LXIII

"Sir Walter takes great pains to prove that the extraordinary severity of the winter was not the principal cause of this frightful catastrophe. He is facetious about the snow, to which he believes, or pretends to believe, that the twenty-ninth bulletin attributes the disaster; whereas, it was not the snow alone, but a cold of thirty degrees below zero. And have we not often known, in the severe winters of the north of France, where the cold is slight in comparison with that of Russia—travellers to perish under the snow? How then can it be denied that the extreme severity of the winter was the cause of the disaster?"—Louis Buonaparte.