it the horses, and wait for the hospital-waggons, the artillery,
and the pontoons, which were still laboriously dragging after us across
the Lithuanian sands. His correspondence with Europe must also have
been a source of occupation to him. To conclude, a destructive
atmosphere stopped his progress! Such, in fact, is that climate; the
atmosphere is always in the extreme--always excessive; it either parches
or inundates, burns up or freezes, the soil and its inhabitants, for
whose protection it appears expressly framed; a perfidious climate, the
heat of which debilitated our bodies, in order to render them more
accessible to the frosts by which they were shortly to be pierced.

The emperor was not the least sensible of its effects; but when he found
himself somewhat refreshed by repose, when no envoy from Alexander made
his appearance, and his first dispositions were completed, he was seized
with impatience. He was observed to grow restless; whether it was that
inactivity annoyed him, as it does all men of active habits, and that he
preferred danger to the weariness of expectation, or that he was
agitated by that desire of acquisition, which, with the greater part of
mankind, has stronger efficacy than the pleasure of preserving, or the
fear of losing.

It was then especially that the image of captive Moscow besieged him; it
was the boundary of his fears, the object of his hopes: possessed of
that, he would possess every thing. From that time it was foreseen that
an ardent and restless genius, like his, and accustomed to short cuts,
would not wait eight months, when he felt his object within his reach,
and when twenty days were sufficient to attain it.

We must not, however, be too hasty in judging this extraordinary man by
the weaknesses common to all men. We shall presently hear from
himself;--we shall see how much his political position tended to
complicate his military position. At a later period, we shall be less
tempted to blame the resolution he was now about to take, when it is
seen that the fate of Russia depended upon only one more day's health,
which failed Napoleon, even on the very field of the Moskwa.

Meantime, he at first appeared hardly bold enough to confess to himself
a project of such great temerity. But by degrees, he assumed courage to
look it in the face. He then began to deliberate, and the state of great
irresolution which tormented his mind affected his whole frame. He was
observed to wander