ered a complaint he would have been badly
esteemed by his comrades. We arrived in sight of Smolensk. The Emperor
was the least fatigued of all; and though he was pale, his countenance
was calm, and nothing in his appearance indicated his mental sufferings;
and indeed they must needs have been intense to be evident to the public.
The roads were strewn with men and horses slain by fatigue or famine; and
men as they passed turned their eyes aside. As for the horses they were
a prize for our famished soldiers.

We at last reached Smolensk on the 9th, and the Emperor lodged in a
beautiful house on the Place Neuve. Although this important city had
suffered since we had passed through before, it still had some resources,
and we found there provisions of all kinds for the Emperor's household
and the officers; but the Emperor valued but little this privileged
abundance, so to speak, when he learned that the army needed food for man
and beast. When he learned of this his rage amounted to frenzy, and I
have never seen him so completely beside himself. He had the commissary
in charge of the provisions summoned, and reproached him in such
unmeasured terms that the latter turned pale, and could find no words to
justify himself, whereupon the Emperor became still more violent, and
uttered terrible threats. I heard cries from the next room; and I have
been told since that the quartermaster threw himself at the feet of his
Majesty, beseeching pardon, and the Emperor, when his rage had spent
itself, pardoned him. Never did he sympathize more truly with the
sufferings of his army; never did he suffer more bitterly from his
powerlessness to struggle against such overwhelming misfortunes.

On the 14th we resumed the route which we had traversed a few months
before under far different auspices. The thermometer registered twenty
degrees, and we were still very far from France. After a slow and
painful march we arrived at Krasnoi. The Emperor was obliged to go in
person, with his guard, to meet the enemy, and release the Prince of
Eckmuhl. He passed through the fire of the enemy, surrounded by his old
guard, who pressed around their chief in platoons in which the shell made
large gaps, furnishing one of the grandest examples in all history of the
devotion and love of thousands of men to one. When the fire was hottest,
the band played the air, 'Where can one be better than in the bosom of
his family?' Napoleon interrupted them, exclaiming, "Pla