t by this unparalleled
calamity, a hundred thousand corpses lie rotting in the streets in a
single day, and the city is decimated of its inhabitants! The scene
changes again. Centuries roll on; a dreary day has come, when the
foreign invader once more holds possession of the citadel. With the
prize in his hands, fires burst from every roof in every quarter.
Three hundred thousand of the inhabitants have fled; a wind arises and
fans the devouring flame; churches and houses, temples and palaces,
are wrapped in its relentless embraces; the convicts and the rabble
run like demons through the streets, drunk with wine and reveling in
excesses; soldiers, slaves, and prostitutes pillage the burning ruins,
all wild and mad with the unholy lust of gain. Soon nothing is left
but blackened and smoking masses, the ruins of palaces, temples, and
hospitals, and the seared and mutilated corpses of the dead who have
been crushed by the falling walls or burnt in the flames. Then the
invading hosts, stricken with dismay, fly from this fated and
ill-starred city to darken the snows of Lithuania with their bodies;
and of five hundred thousand men--the flower of French chivalry--but
forty thousand cross the Beresina to tell the tale! Surely Moscow,
like Jerusalem, hath "wept sore in the night."

While lounging about through the gilded and glittering mazes of the
Uspenski Saber, almost wearied by the perpetual glare of burnished
shrines, my attention was attracted by a curious yet characteristic
ceremony within these sacred precincts. In a gold-cased frame, placed
in a horizontal position in one of the alcoves or small chapels, was a
picture of a saint whose cheeks and robes were resplendent with gaudy
colors. This must have been St. Nicholas or some other popular
personage belonging to the holy phalanx. His mouth was very nearly
obliterated by the labial caresses of the worshipers who came there to
bestow upon him their devotions. A stone step, raised about a foot
from the flagged pavement, was nearly worn through by the knees of the
penitents, who were forever dropping down to snatch a kiss from his
sacred lips--or at least what was left of them, for his mouth was now
little more than a dirty blotch, without the semblance of its original
outline. While pondering over the marvelous ways in which men strive
to cast off the burden of their sins, I observed a very graceful and
elegantly-dressed female approach, and with an air of profound
humi