ary autumn weather that
always comes as a surprise, when the sun hangs low and gives more heat
than in spring, when everything shines so brightly in the rare clear
atmosphere that the eyes smart, when the lungs are strengthened and
refreshed by inhaling the aromatic autumn air, when even the nights
are warm, and when in those dark warm nights, golden stars startle and
delight us continually by falling from the sky.

At ten in the morning of the second of September this weather still
held.

The brightness of the morning was magical. Moscow seen from the Poklonny
Hill lay spaciously spread out with her river, her gardens, and her
churches, and she seemed to be living her usual life, her cupolas
glittering like stars in the sunlight.

The view of the strange city with its peculiar architecture, such as
he had never seen before, filled Napoleon with the rather envious and
uneasy curiosity men feel when they see an alien form of life that has
no knowledge of them. This city was evidently living with the full force
of its own life. By the indefinite signs which, even at a distance,
distinguish a living body from a dead one, Napoleon from the Poklonny
Hill perceived the throb of life in the town and felt, as it were, the
breathing of that great and beautiful body.

Every Russian looking at Moscow feels her to be a mother; every
foreigner who sees her, even if ignorant of her significance as the
mother city, must feel her feminine character, and Napoleon felt it.

"Cette ville asiatique aux innombrables eglises, Moscou la sainte. La
voila done enfin, cette fameuse ville! Il etait temps," * said he, and
dismounting he ordered a plan of Moscow to be spread out before him, and
summoned Lelorgne d'Ideville, the interpreter.

* "That Asiatic city of the innumerable churches, holy
Moscow! Here it is then at last, that famous city. It was
high time."

"A town captured by the enemy is like a maid who has lost her honor,"
thought he (he had said so to Tuchkov at Smolensk). From that point of
view he gazed at the Oriental beauty he had not seen before. It seemed
strange to him that his long-felt wish, which had seemed unattainable,
had at last been realized. In the clear morning light he gazed now at
the city and now at the plan, considering its details, and the assurance
of possessing it agitated and awed him.

"But could it be otherwise?" he thought. "Here is this capital at my
feet. Where is Alexander now,