heless obliged to keep open and fixed on the danger.
A consuming atmosphere parched our throats, and rendered our respiration
short and difficult; and we were already almost suffocated by the smoke.
Our hands were burned, either in endeavoring to protect our faces from
the insupportable heat, or in brushing off the sparks which every moment
fell upon our garments. In this inexpressible distress, and when a rapid
advance seemed to be our only means of safety, our guide stopped in
uncertainty and agitation. Here probably would have terminated our
adventurous career, had not some pillagers of the first corps recognized
the emperor amid the whirling flames: they ran up and guided him towards
the smoking ruins of a quarter which had been reduced to ashes in the
morning.

It was there that we met the Prince of Eckmuehl. This marshal, who had
been wounded at the Moskwa, had desired to be carried back among the
flames to rescue Napoleon, or to perish with him. He threw himself into
his arms with transport; the emperor received him kindly, but with that
composure which in danger he never lost for a moment.

To escape from this vast region of desolation, it was farther necessary
to pass a long convoy of powder which was defiling amid the fire. This
was not the least of his dangers, but it was the last, and by nightfall
he arrived at Petrowski.

The next morning, the 17th of September, Napoleon cast his first look
towards Moscow, hoping to see that the conflagration had subsided. But
he beheld it again raging with the utmost violence: the city appeared
like one vast column of fire, rising in whirling eddies to the sky,
which it deeply colored. Absorbed by this melancholy contemplation, he
maintained a long and gloomy silence, which he broke only by the
exclamation, "This forebodes to us great misfortunes!"

The effort which he had made to reach Moscow had expended all his means
of warfare. Moscow had been the limit of his projects, the aim of all
his hopes, and Moscow was no more! What was now to be done? Here this
decisive genius was forced to hesitate. He who in 1805 had ordered the
sudden and total abandonment of the expedition prepared at an immense
expense, for the invasion of England; and determined at Boulogne on the
surprise and annihilation of the Austrian army, in short, on all the
operations of the campaign between Ulm and Munich exactly as they were
executed; this same man, who in the following year dictated at Pari