ad just been found
in the great hospital; he was charged with the delivery of this letter.
It was by the baleful light of the flames of the bazaar that Napoleon
finished it, and the Russian departed. He was to be the bearer of the
news of this disaster to his sovereign, whose only answer was this
conflagration.

Daylight favoured the efforts of the Duke of Treviso, to subdue the
fire. The incendiaries kept themselves concealed. Doubts were
entertained of their existence. At length, strict injunctions being
issued, order restored, and alarm suspended, each took possession of a
commodious house, or sumptuous palace, under the idea of there finding
comforts that had been dearly purchased by long and excessive
privations.

Two officers had taken up their quarters in one of the buildings of the
Kremlin. The view hence embraced the north and west of the city. About
midnight they were awakened by an extraordinary light. They looked and
beheld palaces filled with flames, which at first merely illuminated,
but presently consumed these elegant and noble structures. They observed
that the north wind drove these flames directly towards the Kremlin, and
became alarmed for the safety of that fortress in which the flower of
their army and its commander reposed. They were apprehensive also for
the surrounding houses, where our soldiers, attendants and horses, weary
and exhausted, were doubtless buried in profound sleep. Sparks and
burning fragments were already flying over the roofs of the Kremlin,
when the wind, shifting from north to west, blew them in another
direction.

One of these officers, relieved from apprehension respecting his corps,
then composed himself again to sleep, exclaiming, "Let others look to it
now; 'tis no affair of ours." For such was the unconcern produced by the
multiplicity of events and misfortunes, and such the selfishness arising
from excessive suffering and fatigue, that they left to each only just
strength and feeling sufficient for his personal service and
preservation.

It was not long before fresh and vivid lights again awoke them. They
beheld other flames rising precisely in the new direction which the wind
had taken towards the Kremlin, and they cursed French imprudence and
want of discipline, to which they imputed this disaster. But three times
did the wind thus change from north to west, and three times did these
hostile fires, as if obstinately bent on the destruction of the imperial
quarte