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Updated: July 20, 2025
There it was that the pontooners saved the army, for the pontooners stood firm at their posts; it was there that Gondrin behaved like a hero, and he is the sole survivor of all the men who were dogged enough to stand in the river so as to build the bridges on which the army crossed over, and so escaped the Russians, who still respected the Grand Army on account of its past victories.
The next day Gondrin and Goguelat, and Butifer, with others, set to work to raise a sort of pyramid of earth, twenty feet high, above the spot where M. Benassis lies; it is being covered now with green sods, and every one is helping them. These things, dear father, have all happened in three days. "M. Dufau found M. Benassis' will lying open on the table where he used to write.
My poor sick folk and my peasants certainly set me an example of unmurmuring resignation; but they know that I at least understand them and their troubles, while there is not a soul here who knows of the tears that I have shed, no one to give me the hand-clasp of a comrade, the noblest reward of all, a reward that falls to the lot of every other; even Gondrin has not missed that."
The clerk bowed and left the room. When the two sisters-in-law were alone together, Brigitte began. "Ah ca!" she cried, "have you lost your head? What is this crotchet you've taken into it?" "It is not a crotchet; it is a fixed idea." "Which you got from the Abbe Gondrin; you dare not deny that you went to see him with Celeste."
He turned quickly and went back, grasped the veteran's hand, and spoke loudly in his ear: "I swear by the Cross I wear the Cross of Honor it used to be that I will do all that man can do to obtain your pension for you; even if I have to swallow a dozen refusals from the minister, and to petition the king and the dauphin and the whole shop!" Old Gondrin quivered as he heard the words.
The Abbe Gondrin passed hastily over the compliments, eager to know in what way he could be useful to his fellow-man. "With an intention that I wish to think kindly," replied Felix, "you were spoken to yesterday about the state of my soul. Those who read it so fluently know more than I do about my inner being, for, during the last few days I have felt strange, inexplicable feelings within me.
And Gondrin is an accomplished soldier," he went on, pointing to his friend, who was gazing at him with the rapt attention peculiar to deaf people, "a distinguished soldier who deserves to have your very highest esteem. "I saw the Emperor standing by the bridge," he went on, "and never feeling the cold at all. Was that, again, a natural thing?
M. le Marquis de Montespan, scion of the old house of Pardaillan de Gondrin, had preferred what he styled "my grace and beauty" to the most wealthy partis of France. He was himself possessed of wealth, and his fortune gave him every facility for maintaining at Court a position of advantage and distinction.
After the bridges had been constructed across the Beresina, General Eble presented such of the pontooners as were not disabled to the Emperor, and Napoleon embraced poor Gondrin perhaps but for that accolade he would have died ere now. This memory and the hope that some day Napoleon will return are all that Gondrin lives by. "Let us go on as fast as possible!" cried Genestas.
As an exact historian, we must go back and begin the day at six in the morning, when we can see Madame Thuillier going to the Madeleine to hear the mass that the Abbe Gondrin was in the habit of saying at that hour, and afterwards approaching the holy table, a viaticum which pious souls never fail to give themselves when it is in their minds to accomplish some great resolution.
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