nine o’clock at night
She is my niece ; and though medical science is powerless in her case , I hope to restore her to reason , though the method which I am trying is , unluckily , only possible to the wealthy . '' Then , like all who live much alone and daily bear the burden of a heavy trouble , he fell to talk with the magistrate . This is the story that he told , set in order , and with the many digressions made by both teller and hearer omitted . When , at nine o'clock at night , on the 28th of November 1812 , Marshal Victor abandoned the heights of Studzianka , which he had held through the day , he left a thousand men behind with instructions to protect , till the last possible moment , the two pontoon bridges over the Beresina that still held good . This rear guard was to save if possible an appalling number of stragglers , so numbed with the cold , that they obstinately refused to leave the baggage-wagons . The heroism of the generous band was doomed to fail ; for , unluckily , the men who poured down to the eastern bank of the Beresina found carriages , caissons , and all kinds of property which the Army had been forced to abandon during its passage on the 27th and 28th days of November . The poor , half-frozen wretches , sunk almost to the level of brutes , finding such unhoped-for riches , bivouacked in the deserted space , laid hands on the military stores , improvised huts out of the material , lighted fires with anything that would burn , cut up the carcasses of the horses for food , tore out the linings of the carriages , wrapped themselves in them , and lay down to sleep instead of crossing the Beresina in peace under cover of night -- the Beresina that even then had proved , by incredible fatality , so disastrous to the Army .