nothing is so disappointing as failure—except success.
while the dantzigers with grave faces discussed the news of borodino beneath the trees in the frauengasse, charles darragon, white with dust, rose in his stirrups to catch the first sight of the domes and cupolas of moscow.
it was a sunny morning, and the gold on the churches gleamed and glittered in the shimmering heat like fairyland. charles had ridden to the summit of a hill and sat for a moment, as others had done, in silent contemplation. moscow at last! all around him men were shouting: “moscow! moscow!” grave, white-haired generals waved their shakos in the air. those at the summit of the hill called the others to come. far down in the valley, where the dust raised by thousands of feet hung in the air like a mist, a faint sound like the roar of falling water could be heard. it was the word “moscow!” sweeping back to the rearmost ranks of these starving men who had marched for two months beneath the glaring sun, parched with dust, through a country that seemed to them a sahara. every house they approached, they had found deserted. every barn was empty. the very crops ripening to harvest had been gathered in and burnt. near to the miserable farmhouses, a pile of ashes hardly cold marked where the poor furniture had been tossed upon the fire kindled with the year's harvest.
everywhere it was the same. there are, as god created it, few countries of a sadder aspect than that which spreads between the moskwa and the vistula. but it has been decreed by the dim laws of race that the ugly countries shall be blessed with the greater love of their children, while men born in a beautiful land seem readiest to emigrate from it and make the best settlers in a new home. there is only one country in the world with a ring-fence round it. if a russian is driven from his home, he will go to another part of russia: there is always room.
before the advance of the spoilers, chartered by their leader to unlimited and open rapine—indeed, he had led them hither with that understanding—the prussians, peasant and noble alike, fled to the east. a hundred times the advance guard, fully alive to the advantages of their position, had raced to the gates of a chateau only to find, on breaking open the doors, that it was empty—the furniture destroyed, the stores burnt, the wine poured out.
so also in the peasants' huts. some, more careful than the rest, had pulled the thatch from the roof to burn it. there was no corn in this the egypt of their greedy hopes. and, lest they should bring the corn with them, the spoilers found the mills everywhere wrecked.
it was something new to them. it was new to napoleon, who had so frequently been met halfway, who knew that men for greed will part smilingly with half in order to save the residue. he knew that many, rather than help a neighbour who is in danger by a robber, will join the robber and share the spoil, crying out that force majeure was used to them.
but, as every man must judge according to his lights, so must even the greatest find himself in the dark at last. no man of the latin race will ever understand the slav. and because the beginning is easy—because in certain superficial tricks of speech and thought paris and petersburg are not unlike—so much the more is the breach widened when necessity digs deeper than the surface. for, to make the acquaintance of a stranger who seems to be a counterpart of one's self in thought and taste, is like the first hearing of a kindred language such as dutch to the english ear. at first it sounds like one's own tongue with a hundred identical words, but on closer listening it will be found that the words mean something else, and that the whole is incomprehensible and the more difficult to acquire by the very reason of its resemblance.
napoleon thought that the russians would act as his enemies of the latin race had acted. he thought that like his own people they would be over-confident, urging each other on to great deeds by loud words and a hundred boasts. but the russians lack self-confidence, are timid rather than over-bold, dreamy rather than fiery. only their women are glib of speech. he thought that they would begin very brilliantly and end with a compromise, heart-breaking at first and soon lived down.
“they are savages out here in the plains,” he said. “it is a barbaric and stupid instinct that makes them destroy their own property for the sake of hampering us. as we approach moscow we shall find that the more civilized inhabitants of the villages, enervated by an easy life, rendered selfish by possession of wealth, will not abandon their property, but will barter and sell to us and find themselves the victims of our might.”
and the army believed him. for they always believed him. faith can, indeed, move mountains. it carried four hundred thousand men, without provisions, through a barren land.
and now, in sight of the golden city, the army was still hungry. nay! it was ragged already. in three columns it converged on the doomed capital, driving before it like a swarm of flies the cossacks who harassed the advance.
here again, on the hill looking down into the smiling valley of the moskwa, the unexpected awaited the invaders. the city, shimmering in the sunlight like the realization of some arab's dream, was silent. the cossacks had disappeared. except those around the kremlin, towering above the river, the city had no walls.
the army halted while aides-de-camp flew hither and thither on their weary horses. charles darragon, sunburnt, dusty, hoarse with cheering, was among the first. he looked right and left for de casimir, but could not see him. he had not seen his chief since borodino, for he was temporarily attached to the staff of prince eugene, who had lost heavily at the kalugha river.
it was usual for the army to halt before a beleaguered city and await the advent in all humility of the vanquished. commonly it was the mayor of a town who came, followed by his councillors in their robes, to explain that the army had abandoned the city, which now begged to throw itself upon the mercy of the conqueror.
for this the army waited on that sunny september morning.
“he is putting on his robes,” they said gaily. “he is new to this work.”
but the mayor of moscow disappointed them. at last the troops moved on and camped for the night in a village under the kremlin walls. it was here that charles received a note from de casimir.
“i am slightly wounded,” wrote that officer, “but am following the army. at borodino my horse was killed under me, and i was thrown. while i was insensible, i was robbed and lost what money i had, as well as my despatch-case. in the latter was the letter you wrote to your wife. it is lost, my friend; you must write another.”
charles was tired. he would put off till to-morrow, he thought, and write to desiree from moscow. as he lay, all dressed on the hard ground, he fell to thinking of what he should write to desiree to-morrow from moscow. the mere date and address of such a letter would make her love him the more, he thought; for, like his leaders, he was dazed by a surfeit of glory.
as he fell asleep smiling at these happy reflections, desiree, far away in dantzig, was locking in her bureau the letter which had been lost and found again; while, on the deck of his ship, lifting gently to the tideway where the vistula sweeps out into the dantziger bucht, louis d'arragon stood fingering reflectively in his jacket-pocket the unread papers which had fallen from the same despatch-case. for it is a very small world in which to do wrong, though if a man do a little good in his lifetime it is—heaven knows—soon mislaid and trodden under the feet of the new-comers.
the next day it was definitely ascertained that the citizens of moscow had no communication to make to the conquering leaders. soon after daylight the army moved towards the city. the suburbs were deserted. the houses stood with closed shutters and locked doors. not so much as a dog awaited the triumphant entry through the city gates.
long streets without a living being from end to end met the eyes of those daring organizers of triumphal entries who had been sent forward to clear a path and range the respectful citizens on either hand. but there were no citizens. there was not a single witness to this triumph of the greatest army the world had seen, led across europe by the first captain in all history to conquer a virgin capital.
the various corps marched to their quarters in silence, with nervous glances at the shuttered windows. some, breaking rank, ventured into the churches which stood open. the candles were lighted on the altars, they reported to their comrades in a hushed voice when they returned, but there was no one there.
certain palaces were selected as head-quarters for the general officers and the chiefs of various departments. as often as not a summons would be answered and the door opened by an obsequious porter, who handed the keys to the first-comer. but he spoke no french, and only cringed in silence when addressed. other doors were broken in.
it was like a play acted in dumb show on an immense stage. it was disquieting and incomprehensible even to the oldest campaigner, while the young fire-eaters, fresh from st. cyr, were strangely depressed by it. there was a smell of sour smoke in the air, a suggestion of inevitable tragedy.
on the krasnaya ploschad—the great red square, which is the central point of the old town—the soldiers were already buying and selling the spoil wrested from the burning exchange. it seemed that the citizens before leaving had collected their merchandise in this building to burn it. to the rank-and-file this meant nothing but an incomprehensible stupidity. to the educated and the thoughtful it was another evidence of that dumb and sullen capacity for infinite self-sacrifice which makes russians different from any other race, and which has yet to be reckoned with in the history of the world. for it will tend to the greatest good of the greatest number, and is a power for national aggrandisement quite unattainable by any latin people.
charles, with the other officers of prince eugene's staff, was quartered in a palace on the petrovka—that wide street running from the kremlin northward to the boulevards and the parks. going towards it he passed through the bazaars and the merchants' quarters, where, like an army of rag-pickers, the eager looters were silently hurrying from heap to heap. every warehouse had, it seemed, been ransacked and its contents thrown out into the streets. the first-comers had hurried on, seeking something more valuable, more portable, 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, and found the sentry kneeling at a low door, endeavouring to break it open. the man had not been idle; from a piece of rope slung across his back half a dozen clocks were suspended. they rattled together like the wares of a travelling tinsmith at every movement of his arms.
“what are you doing there, my friend?” asked charles.
the man held up one finger over his shoulder without looking round, and shook it from side to side, as not desiring to be interrupted.
“the cellar,” he answered, “always the cellar. it is human nature. we get it from the animals.”
he glanced round as he worked, and, perceiving that he had been addressing an officer, he scrambled to his feet with a grumbled curse. he was an old man, baked by the sun. the wrinkles in his face were filled with dust. since quitting the banks of the vistula no opportunity for ablution seemed to have presented itself to him. he stood at attention, his lips working over sunken gums.
“i want you to take this letter,” said charles, “to the officer on service at head-quarters, and ask him to include it in his courier. it is, as you see, a private letter—to my wife at dantzig.”
the man looked at it, and grumbled something inaudible. he took it in his hand and turned it over with the slow manner of the illiterate.
