His nights in particular became irksome to him.  He passed part of them with Count Daru.  It was then only that he admitted the danger of his situation.  “From Wilna to Moscow what submission, what point of support, rest or retreat, marks his power?  It is a vast, bare and desert field of battle, in which his diminished army is imperceptible, insulated, and as it were lost in the horrors of an immense void.  In this country of foreign manners and religion, he has not conquered a single individual; he is in fact master only of the ground on which he stands.  That which he has just quitted and left behind him is no more his than that which he has not yet reached.  Insufficient for these vast deserts, he is lost as it were in their immense space.”

He then reviewed the different resolutions of which he still had the choice.  “People imagined,” he said, “that he had nothing to do but march, without considering that it would take a month to refit his army and to evacuate his hospitals; that if he relinquished his wounded, the Cossacks would celebrate daily triumphs over his sick and his stragglers.  He would appear to fly.  All Europe would resound with the report!  Europe, which envied him, which was seeking a rival under whom to rally, and which imagined that it had found such a rival in Alexander.”

Then appreciating all the power which he derived from the notion of his infallibility, he shuddered at the idea of giving it the first blow.  “What a frightful series of dangerous wars would date from his first retrograde step!  Let not then his inactivity be censured!  As if I did not know,” added he, “that in a military point of view Moscow is of no value!  But Moscow is not a military position, it is a political position.  People look upon me as general there, when in fact I am Emperor!” He then exclaimed that “in politics a person ought never to recede, never to retrograde, never to admit himself to be wrong, as it lessened his consideration; that when mistaken, he ought to persevere, in order to give him the appearance of being in the right.”

On this account he adhered to his own opinion with that tenacity which, on other occasions, was his best quality, but in this case his worst defect.

His distress meanwhile increased.  He knew that he could not rely on the Prussian army:  an intimation from too authentic a source, addressed to Berthier, extinguished his confidence in the support of the Austrians.  He was sensible that Kutusoff was playing with him, but he had gone so far, that he could neither advance nor stay where he was, nor retreat, nor fight with honour and success.  Thus alternately impelled and held back by all that can decide and dissuade, he remained upon those ashes, ceasing to hope, but continuing to desire.