" Kutuzov interrupted him.

Bolkhovitinov told him everything and was then silent, awaiting
instructions. Toll was beginning to say something but Kutuzov checked
him. He tried to say something, but his face suddenly puckered and
wrinkled; he waved his arm at Toll and turned to the opposite side of
the room, to the corner darkened by the icons that hung there.

"O Lord, my Creator, Thou has heard our prayer..." said he in a
tremulous voice with folded hands. "Russia is saved. I thank Thee, O
Lord!" and he wept.

CHAPTER XVIII

From the time he received this news to the end of the campaign all
Kutuzov's activity was directed toward restraining his troops, by
authority, by guile, and by entreaty, from useless attacks,
maneuvers, or encounters with the perishing enemy. Dokhturov went to
Malo-Yaroslavets, but Kutuzov lingered with the main army and gave
orders for the evacuation of Kaluga--a retreat beyond which town seemed
to him quite possible.

Everywhere Kutuzov retreated, but the enemy without waiting for his
retreat fled in the opposite direction.

Napoleon's historians describe to us his skilled maneuvers at Tarutino
and Malo-Yaroslavets, and make conjectures as to what would have
happened had Napoleon been in time to penetrate into the rich southern
provinces.

But not to speak of the fact that nothing prevented him from advancing
into those southern provinces (for the Russian army did not bar his
way), the historians forget that nothing could have saved his army, for
then already it bore within itself the germs of inevitable ruin. How
could that army--which had found abundant supplies in Moscow and had
trampled them underfoot instead of keeping them, and on arriving at
Smolensk had looted provisions instead of storing them--how could that
army recuperate in Kaluga province, which was inhabited by Russians such
as those who lived in Moscow, and where fire had the same property of
consuming what was set ablaze?

That army could not recover anywhere. Since the battle of Borodino
and the pillage of Moscow it had borne within itself, as it were, the
chemical elements of dissolution.

The members of what had once been an army--Napoleon himself and all his
soldiers fled--without knowing whither, each concerned only to make his
escape as quickly as possible from this position, of the hopelessness of
which they were all more or less vaguely conscious.

So it came about that at the council at Malo-Yaros