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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Adieu by Honore de Balzac: the bank of the river. Before crossing the bridge which led to Zembin,
he confided the fate of his own rear-guard now left in Studzianka to
Eble, the savior of all those who survived the calamities of the
Beresina. It was towards midnight when this great general, followed by
one brave officer, left the cabin he occupied near the bridge, and
studied the spectacle of that improvised camp placed between the bank
of the river and Studzianka. The Russian cannon had ceased to thunder.
Innumerable fires, which, amid that trackless waste of snow, burned
pale and scarcely sent out any gleams, illumined here and there by
sudden flashes forms and faces that were barely human. Thirty thousand
poor wretches, belonging to all nations, from whom Napoleon had
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