THE GUILLOTINE
I
My nephew, Léon, had sworn to seek out the beautiful young Frenchwoman, Valerie, whom we had last seen in the gardens of the burning house; but many days elapsed before that came to be, as you shall presently learn.
In the first place, there was far too much to do in Moscow for the army to think about women at all.
We had arrived at the end of our journey, and the twelve hundred leagues of marching had tired the strongest of us. Now we would rest at the heart of Russia, while the Emperor dictated peace to the Tsar and his army made good its losses. We never so much as dreamed that we had pursued a phantom, and that it would lead the Grand Army to its destruction.
So you must behold us for many days in Moscow enjoying the fruits of our labours and yet finding plenty of work to do. I have told you already that the Guards were quartered in the Palace of the Kremlin, whither the Emperor had repaired; and there I took up my residence with my nephew Léon, and was occupied for some days in attending to the sick who had accompanied us on our long journey from Smolensk. Though many rumours came to me of the strange things that were happening in the city beyond the palace, I paid little heed to them. His Majesty the Emperor had set out to conquer Russia, and here he was at the heart of their empire. What remained, then, but to sign a splendid peace and to return in triumph to Paris?
This is how things should have been, yet how different they were!
We had been prepared to find the Russian nobles fled from Moscow, but the absolute desertion of the city by its people astonished us beyond compare.
Often would I go forth into these magnificent streets, to find the great houses all shut up, their gardens a solitude, the cafés closed, and none but our own soldiers abroad.
Deserted houses everywhere! The hotels shut up and boarded against the stranger. All the shops denuded of their goods and shuttered and barred as though they were prisons.