As to other characteristics, proud for want of comparison, and credulous
as they are proud, from ignorance--worshippers of images, idolaters as
much as Christians can be; for they had converted that religion of the
soul, which is wholly intellectual and moral, into one entirely physical
and material, to bring it to the level of their brute and short
capacity.

This solemn spectacle, however, their general's address, the
exhortations of their officers, and the benedictions of their priests,
served to give a thorough tincture of fanaticism to their courage. All,
even to the meanest soldier, fancied themselves devoted by God himself
to the defence of Heaven and their consecrated soil.

With the French there was no solemnity, either religious or military,
no review, no means of excitation: even the address of the emperor was
not distributed till very late, and read the next morning so near the
time of action, that several corps were actually engaged before they
could hear it. The Russians, however, whom so many powerful motives
should have inflamed, added to their invocations the sword of St.
Michael, thus seeking to borrow aid from all the powers of heaven; while
the French sought for it only within themselves, persuaded that real
strength exists only in the heart, and that _there_ is to be found the
"celestial host."

Chance so ordered it, that on that very day the emperor received from
Paris the portrait of the King of Rome, that infant whose birth had been
hailed by the empire with the same transports of joy and hope as it had
been by the emperor. Every day since that happy event, the emperor, in
the interior of his palace, had given loose when near his child, to the
expression of the most tender feelings; when, therefore, in the midst of
these distant fields, and all these menacing preparations, he saw once
more that sweet countenance, how his warlike soul melted! With his own
hand he exhibited this picture outside his tent; he then called his
officers, and even some of the soldiers of his old guard, desirous of
sharing his pleasure with these veteran grenadiers, of showing his
private family to his military family, and making it shine as a symbol
of hope in the midst of imminent peril.

In the evening, an aid-de-camp of Marmont, who had been despatched from
the field of battle near Salamanca, arrived at that of the Moskwa. This
was the same Fabvier, who has since made such a figure in our civil
dissensions. The