and
like labels they have but the smallest connection with the event itself.

Every act of theirs, which appears to them an act of their own will, is
in an historical sense involuntary and is related to the whole course of
history and predestined from eternity.

CHAPTER II

On the twenty-ninth of May Napoleon left Dresden, where he had spent
three weeks surrounded by a court that included princes, dukes, kings,
and even an emperor. Before leaving, Napoleon showed favor to the
emperor, kings, and princes who had deserved it, reprimanded the kings
and princes with whom he was dissatisfied, presented pearls and diamonds
of his own--that is, which he had taken from other kings--to the Empress
of Austria, and having, as his historian tells us, tenderly embraced
the Empress Marie Louise--who regarded him as her husband, though he had
left another wife in Paris--left her grieved by the parting which
she seemed hardly able to bear. Though the diplomatists still firmly
believed in the possibility of peace and worked zealously to that end,
and though the Emperor Napoleon himself wrote a letter to Alexander,
calling him Monsieur mon frere, and sincerely assured him that he did
not want war and would always love and honor him--yet he set off to
join his army, and at every station gave fresh orders to accelerate the
movement of his troops from west to east. He went in a traveling coach
with six horses, surrounded by pages, aides-de-camp, and an escort,
along the road to Posen, Thorn, Danzig, and Konigsberg. At each of these
towns thousands of people met him with excitement and enthusiasm.

The army was moving from west to east, and relays of six horses carried
him in the same direction. On the tenth of June, * coming up with the
army, he spent the night in apartments prepared for him on the estate of
a Polish count in the Vilkavisski forest.

* Old style.

Next day, overtaking the army, he went in a carriage to the Niemen, and,
changing into a Polish uniform, he drove to the riverbank in order to
select a place for the crossing.

Seeing, on the other side, some Cossacks (les Cosaques) and the
wide-spreading steppes in the midst of which lay the holy city of Moscow
(Moscou, la ville sainte), the capital of a realm such as the Scythia
into which Alexander the Great had marched--Napoleon unexpectedly, and
contrary alike to strategic and diplomatic considerations, ordered an
advance, and the next day his army