Note 27 — Chapter III

"It was icy cold. The dying were yet breathing; the crowd of dead bodies, and the black gaps which the blood had made in the snow, were horribly contrasted. The staff were sensibly affected. The Emperor alone looked coolly on that scene of mourning and of blood. I pushed my horse a few paces before his, for I was anxious to observe him at such a moment. You would have said that he was devoid of every human feeling; that all that surrounded him existed but for him. He spoke coolly on the events of the evening before. In passing before a groupe of Russian grenadiers who had been massacred, the horse of one of the aides-de-camp started. The Emperor perceived it: "That horse (said he, coldly) is a coward."