om of victory, which allured
him forward, and which he always imagined himself to be on the point of
seizing, had once more eluded his grasp, he proceeded slowly towards his
barren conquest. He inspected the field of battle, according to his
custom, in order to appreciate the value of the attack, the merit of the
resistance, and the loss on both sides.

He found it strewed with a great number of Russian dead, and very few of
ours. Most of them, especially the French, had been stripped; they might
be known by the whiteness of their skin, and by their forms less bony
and muscular than those of the Russians. Melancholy review of the dead
and dying! dismal account to make up and to render! The pain felt by the
emperor might be inferred from the contraction of his features and his
irritation; but in him policy was a second nature, which soon imposed
silence on the first.

For the rest, this calculation of the dead the day after an engagement
was as delusive as it was disagreeable; for most of ours had been
previously removed, but those of the enemy left in sight; an expedient
adopted with a view to prevent unpleasant impressions being made on our
own troops, as well as from that natural impulse, which causes us to
collect and assist our own dying, and to pay the last duties to our own
dead, before we think of those belonging to the enemy.

The emperor, nevertheless, asserted in his bulletin, that his loss on
the preceding day was much smaller than that of the Muscovites; that the
conquest of Smolensk made him master of the Russian salt works, and that
his minister of finance might reckon upon twenty-four additional
millions. It is neither probable nor true, that he suffered himself to
be the dupe of such illusions: yet it was believed, that he was then
turning against himself that faculty of imposing upon others, of which
he knew how to make so important a use.

Continuing his reconnoissance, he came to one of the gates of the
citadel, near the Boristhenes, facing the suburb on the right bank,
which was still occupied by the Russians. There, surrounded by Marshals
Ney, Davoust, Mortier, the Grand-marshal Duroc, Count Lobau, and another
general, he sat down on some mats before a hut, not so much to observe
the enemy, as to relieve his heart from the load which oppressed it, and
to seek, in the flattery or in the ardour of his generals, encouragement
against facts and against his own reflections.

He talked long, vehement