leaving the later arrivals to turn over
their garbage like dogs upon a dust-heap.

The Petrovka is a long street of great houses, and was now deserted.
The pillagers were nervous and ill at ease, as men must always be in the
presence of something they do not understand. The most experienced of
them--and there were some famous robbers in Murat's vanguard--had never
seen an empty city abandoned all standing, as the Russians had
abandoned Moscow. They felt apprehensive of the unknown. Even the least
imaginative of them looked askance at the tall houses, at the open doors
of the empty churches, and they kept together for company's sake.

Charles's rooms were in the Momonoff Palace, where even the youngest
lieutenant had vast apartments assigned to him. It was in one of
these--a lady's boudoir, where his dust-covered baggage had been thrown
down carelessly by his orderly on a blue satin sofa--that he sat down to
write to Desiree.

His emotions had been stirred by all that he had passed through--by the
first sight of Moscow, by the passage beneath the Gate of the Redeemer,
where every man must uncover and only Napoleon dared to wear a hat; by
the bewildering sense of triumph and the knowledge that he was taking
part in one of the epochs of man's history on this earth. The emotions
lie very near together, so that laughter being aroused must also touch
on tears, and hatred being kindled warms the heart to love.

And, here in this unknown woman's room, with the very pen that she had
thrown aside, Charles, who wrote and spoke his love with such facility,
wrote to Desiree a love-letter such as he had never written before.

When it was sealed and addressed he called his orderly to take it to the
officer to whose duty it fell to make up the courier for Germany. But
he received no reply. The man had joined his comrades in the busier
quarters of the city. Charles went to the head of the stairs and called
again, with no better success. The house was comparatively modern, built
on the familiar lines of a Parisian hotel, with a wide stair descending
to an entrance archway where carriages passed through into a courtyard.

Descending the stairs, Charles found that even the sentry had absented
himself from his duty. His musket, leant against the post of the stone
doorway, indicated that he was not far. Listening in the silence of that
great house, Charles heard some one at work with hammer and chisel in
the courtyard. He went there, an