e number of wax tapers, were exposed to the
adoration of the soldiers. While each of these was, according to custom,
giving proofs of his devotion by an endless repetition of crossings and
genuflections, the priests were addressing them with fanatical
exhortations, which would appear barbarous and absurd to every civilized
nation.

In spite, however, of the great power of such means, of the number of
the Russians, and of our weakness, Kutusoff, who was only at two
leagues' distance from Miloradowitch, while the latter was beating
Prince Eugene, remained immoveable. During the following night,
Beningsen, urged on by the ardent Wilson, in vain attempted to animate
the old Russian. Elevating the faults of his age into virtues, he
applied the names of wisdom, humanity, and prudence, to his dilatoriness
and strange circumspection; he was resolved to finish as he had begun.
For if we may be allowed to compare small things with great, his renown
had been established on a principle directly contrary to that of
Napoleon, fortune having made the one, and the other having created his
fortune.

He made a boast of "advancing only by short marches; of allowing his
soldiers to rest every third day; he would blush, and halt immediately,
if they wanted bread or spirits for a single moment." Then, with great
self-gratulation, he pretended that "all the way from Wiazma, he had
been escorting the French army as his prisoners; chastising them
whenever they wished to halt, or strike out of the high road; that it
was useless to run any risks with captives; that the Cossacks, a
vanguard, and an army of artillery, were quite sufficient to finish
them, and make them pass successively under the yoke; and that in this
plan, he was admirably seconded by Napoleon himself. Why should he seek
to _purchase_ of Fortune what she was so generously giving him? Was not
the term of Napoleon's destiny already irrevocably marked? it was in the
marshes of the Berezina that this meteor would be extinguished, this
colossus overthrown, in the midst of Wittgenstein, Tchitchakof, and
himself, and in the presence of the assembled Russian armies. As for
himself, he would have the glory of delivering him up to them,
enfeebled, disarmed, and dying; and to him that glory was sufficient."

To this discourse the English officer, still more active and eager,
replied only by entreating the field-marshal "to leave his head-quarters
only for a few moments, and advance upon