The same day the courageous answers of one of their popes (the only one found in Smolensk,) enlightened him still more in regard to the blind fury which had been excited in the whole Russian nation.  His interpreter, alarmed by this animosity, conducted the pope to the emperor.  The venerable priest first reproached him, with firmness, for his alleged sacrilegious acts:  he knew not that it was the Russian general himself who had caused the storehouses and churches to be set on fire, and who had accused us of these outrages, in order that the mercantile class and the peasantry might not separate their cause from that of the nobility.

The emperor listened attentively.  “But,” said he to him at last, “has your church been burned?”—­“No, sire,” replied the pope; “God will be more powerful than you; he will protect it, for I have opened it to all the unfortunate people whom the destruction of the city has deprived of a home!”—­“You are right,” rejoined Napoleon, with emotion, “yes, God will watch over the innocent victims of war; he will reward you for your courage.  Go, worthy priest, return to your post.  Had all your popes followed your example, they had not basely betrayed the mission of peace which they received from heaven; if they had not abandoned the temples which their presence alone renders sacred, my soldiers would have spared your holy edifices; for we are all Christians, and your God is our God.”

With these words, Napoleon sent back the priest to his temple with an escort and some succours.  A heart-rending shriek arose at the sight of the soldiers penetrating into this asylum.  A crowd of terrified women and children thronged about the altar; but the pope, raising his voice, cried; “be of good cheer:  I have seen Napoleon; I have spoken to him.  Oh! how have we been deceived, my children! the emperor of France is not the man that he has been represented to you.  Learn that he and his soldiers worship the same God as we do.  The war which he wages is not religious, it is a political quarrel with our emperor.  His soldiers fight only our soldiers.  They do not slaughter, as we have been assured, old men, women, and children.  Cheer up, then, and let us thank God for being relieved from the painful duty of hating them as heathen, impious wretches, and incendiaries!” The pope then commenced a hymn of thanks, in which they all joined with tearful eyes.

But these very words demonstrated how much the nation had been deceived.  The rest of the inhabitants had fled.  Henceforward, then, it was not their army alone, it was the population, it was all Russia, that fled before us.  The emperor felt that, with this population, one of his most powerful engines of conquest was escaping from his hands.

CHAP.  IX.

Ever since our arrival at Witepsk, Napoleon had in fact employed two of his officers to sound the sentiments of these people.  The object was, to instil into them notions of liberty, and to compromise them in our cause by an insurrection more or less general.  But there had been nothing to work upon excepting a few straggling savage boors, whom the Russians had perhaps left as spies amongst us.  This attempt had only served to betray his plan, and to put the Russians on their guard against it.