lonel!"

"Then find buckets, and tell me where the well is."

"There are no buckets left in Moscow, mon colonel. We found that out
last night, when we wanted to water the horses. The citizens have
removed them. And there is not a well of which the rope has not been
cut. They are droll companions, these Russians, I can tell you."

"Do as I tell you," repeated de Casimir, angrily, "or I shall put you
under arrest. Go and fetch men to help me to extinguish this fire."

By way of reply, Barlasch held up one finger in a childlike gesture of
attention to some distant sound.

"No, thank you," he said, coolly, "not for me. Discipline, mon colonel,
discipline. Listen, you can hear the 'assembly' as well as I. It is the
Emperor that one obeys. One thinks of one's military career."

With knotted and shaking fingers he drew back the bolts and opened the
door. On the threshold he saluted.

"It is the call to arms, mes officiers," he said. Then, shouldering his
musket, he turned away, and all his clocks struck six. The bells of the
city churches seemed to greet him as he stepped into the street, for in
Moscow each hour is proclaimed with deafening iteration from a thousand
towers.

He looked down the Petrovka; from half the houses which bordered the
wide roadway--a street of palaces--the smoke was pouring forth in puffs.
He went uphill towards the Red Square and the Kremlin, where the Emperor
had his head-quarters. It was to this centre that the patrols had
converged. Looking back, Barlasch saw, not one house on fire, but a
hundred. The smoke arose from every quarter of the city at once. He
hurried on, but was stopped by a crowd of soldiers, all laden with
booty, gesticulating, shouting, abusing one another. It was Babel
over again. The riff-raff of sixteen nations had followed Napoleon to
Moscow--to rob. Half a dozen different tongues were spoken in one army
corps. There remained no national pride to act as a deterrent. No man
cared what he did. The blame would be laid upon France.

The crowd was collected in front of a high, many-windowed building in
flames.

"What is it?" Barlasch asked first one and then another. But no one
spoke his tongue. At last he found a Frenchman.

"It is the hospital."

"And what is that smell? What is burning there?"

"Twelve thousand wounded," answered the man, with a sickening laugh.
And even as he spoke one or two of the wounded dragged themselves, half
burnt, down the wide steps. No o