When the major was warm, and his hunger appeased, an invincible desire
to sleep weighed down his eyelids. During the short moment of his
struggle against that desire he looked at the young woman, who had
turned her face to the fire and was now asleep, leaving her closed
eyes and a portion of her forehead exposed to sight. She was wrapped
in a furred pelisse and a heavy dragoon's cloak; her head rested on a
pillow stained with blood; an astrakhan hood, kept in place by a
handkerchief knotted round her neck, preserved her face from the cold
as much as possible. Her feet were wrapped in the cloak. Thus rolled
into a bundle, as it were, she looked like nothing at all. Was she the
last of the "vivandieres"? Was she a charming woman, the glory of a
lover, the queen of Parisian salons? Alas! even the eye of her most
devoted friend could trace no sign of anything feminine in that mass
of rags and tatters. Love had succumbed to cold in the heart of a
woman!
Through the thick veils of irresistible sleep, the major soon saw the
husband and wife as mere points or formless objects. The flames of the
fire, those outstretched figures, the relentless cold, waiting, not
three feet distant from that fugitive heat, became all a dream. One
importunate thought terrified Philippe:
"If I sleep, we shall all die; I will not sleep," he said to himself.
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