thout considering that it would take a month to refit his army
and to evacuate his hospitals; that if he relinquished his wounded, the
Cossacks would celebrate daily triumphs over his sick and his
stragglers. He would appear to fly. All Europe would resound with the
report! Europe, which envied him, which was seeking a rival under whom
to rally, and which imagined that it had found such a rival in
Alexander."

Then appreciating all the power which he derived from the notion of his
infallibility, he shuddered at the idea of giving it the first blow.
"What a frightful series of dangerous wars would date from his first
retrograde step! Let not then his inactivity be censured! As if I did
not know," added he, "that in a military point of view Moscow is of no
value! But Moscow is not a military position, it is a political
position. People look upon me as general there, when in fact I am
Emperor!" He then exclaimed that "in politics a person ought never to
recede, never to retrograde, never to admit himself to be wrong, as it
lessened his consideration; that when mistaken, he ought to persevere,
in order to give him the appearance of being in the right."

On this account he adhered to his own opinion with that tenacity which,
on other occasions, was his best quality, but in this case his worst
defect.

His distress meanwhile increased. He knew that he could not rely on the
Prussian army: an intimation from too authentic a source, addressed to
Berthier, extinguished his confidence in the support of the Austrians.
He was sensible that Kutusoff was playing with him, but he had gone so
far, that he could neither advance nor stay where he was, nor retreat,
nor fight with honour and success. Thus alternately impelled and held
back by all that can decide and dissuade, he remained upon those ashes,
ceasing to hope, but continuing to desire.

The letter of which Lauriston was the bearer had been dispatched on the
6th of October; the answer to it could scarcely arrive before the 20th;
and yet in spite of so many threatening demonstrations, the pride, the
policy, and perhaps the health of Napoleon induced him to pursue the
worst of all courses, that of waiting for this answer, and of trusting
to time which was destroying him. Daru, like his other grandees, was
astonished to find in him no longer that prompt decision, variable and
rapid as the circumstances that called it forth; they asserted, that his
genius could no longer accommod