even know how to surrender: for
here every thing is new; they to us, and we to them."

Reports now began to succeed each other: they all agreed. Some
Frenchmen, inhabitants of Moscow, ventured to quit the hiding-place
which for some days had concealed them from the fury of the populace,
and confirmed the fatal tidings. The emperor called Daru. "Moscow
deserted!" exclaimed he: "what an improbable story! We must know the
truth of it. Go and bring me the boyars." He imagined that those men,
stiff with pride, or paralysed with terror, were fixed motionless in
their houses: and he, who had hitherto been always met by the submission
of the vanquished, provoked their confidence, and anticipated their
prayers.

How, indeed, was it possible for him to persuade himself, that so many
magnificent palaces, so many splendid temples, so many rich mercantile
establishments, were forsaken by their owners, like the paltry hamlets
through which he had recently passed. Daru's mission however was
fruitless. Not a Muscovite was to be seen; not the least smoke rose from
a single chimney; not the slightest noise issued from this immense and
populous city; its three hundred thousand inhabitants seemed to be
struck dumb and motionless by enchantment: it was the silence of the
desert!

But such was the incredulity of Napoleon, that he was not yet convinced,
and waited for farther information. At length, an officer, determined to
gratify him, or persuaded that whatever the Emperor willed must
necessarily be accomplished, entered the city, seized five or six
vagabonds, drove them before his horse to the Emperor, and imagined that
he had brought him a deputation. From the first words they uttered,
Napoleon discovered that the persons before him were only indigent
labourers.

It was not till then that he ceased to doubt the entire evacuation of
Moscow, and lost all the hopes that he had built upon it. He shrugged
his shoulders, and with that contemptuous look with which he met every
thing that crossed his wishes, he exclaimed, "Ah! the Russians know not
yet the effect which the taking of their capital will produce upon
them!"

CHAP. V.

It was now an hour since Murat, and the long and close column of his
cavalry, had entered Moscow; they penetrated into that gigantic body, as
yet untouched, but inanimate. Struck with profound astonishment at the
sight of this complete solitude, they replied to the taciturnity of this
modern Thebes, b