FullReads

“Then alone, not certain where to find the body of partizans which was constantly moving about in all directions, he resolved to try and join the main Polish army facing the Russians on the borders of Lithuania. Disguised in peasant clothes, in case of meeting some marauding Cossacks, he wandered a couple of weeks before he came upon a village occupied by a regiment of Polish cavalry on outpost duty.

“On a bench, before a peasant hut of a better sort, sat an elderly officer whom he took for the colonel. The Prince approached respectfully, told his story shortly and stated his desire to enlist; and when asked his name by the officer, who had been looking him over carefully, he gave on the spur of the moment the name of his dead companion.

“The elderly officer thought to himself: Here’s the son of some peasant proprietor of the liberated class. He liked his appearance.

“‘And can you read and write, my good fellow?’he asked.

“‘Yes, your honour, I can,’ said the Prince.

“‘Good. Come along inside the hut; the regimental adjutant is there. He will enter your name and administer the oath to you.’

“The adjutant stared very hard at the newcomer but said nothing. When all the forms had been gone through and the recruit gone out, he turned to his superior officer.

“‘Do you know who that is?’

“‘Who? That Peter? A likely chap.’

“‘That’s Prince Roman S———.’

“‘Nonsense.’

“But the adjutant was positive. He had seen the Prince several times, about two years before, in the Castle in Warsaw. He had even spoken to him once at a reception of officers held by the Grand Duke.

“‘He’s changed. He seems much older, but I am certain of my man. I have a good memory for faces.’

“The two officers looked at each other in silence.

“‘He’s sure to be recognized sooner or later,’ murmured the adjutant. The colonel shrugged his shoulders.

“‘It’s no affair of ours–if he has a fancy to serve in the ranks. As to being recognized it’s not so likely. All our officers and men come from the other end of Poland.’

“He meditated gravely for a while, then smiled. ‘He told me he could read and write. There’s nothing to prevent me making him a sergeant at the first opportunity. He’s sure to shape all right.’

“Prince Roman as a non-commissioned officer surpassed the colonel’s expectations. Before long Sergeant Peter became famous for his resourcefulness and courage. It was not the reckless courage of a desperate man; it was a self-possessed, as if conscientious, valour which nothing could dismay; a boundless but equable devotion, unaffected by time, by reverses, by the discouragement of endless retreats, by the bitterness of waning hopes and the horrors of pestilence added to the toils and perils of war. It was in this year that the cholera made its first appearance in Europe. It devastated the camps of both armies, affecting the firmest minds with the terror of a mysterious death stalking silently between the piled-up arms and around the bivouac fires.

“A sudden shriek would wake up the harassed soldiers and they would see in the glow of embers one of themselves writhe on the ground like a worm trodden on by an invisible foot. And before the dawn broke he would be stiff and cold. Parties so visited have been known to rise like one man, abandon the fire and run off into the night in mute panic. Or a comrade talking to you on the march would stammer suddenly in the middle of a sentence, roll affrighted eyes, and fall down with distorted face and blue lips, breaking the ranks with the convulsions of his agony. Men were struck in the saddle, on sentry duty, in the firing line, carrying orders, serving the guns. I have been told that in a battalion forming under fire with perfect steadiness for the assault of a village, three cases occurred within five minutes at the head of the column; and the attack could not be delivered because the leading companies scattered all over the fields like chaff before the wind.