days the army must be in winter-quarters, and he urged the departure of his wounded.  On this, as on other occasions, he would not consent to the voluntary relinquishment of any thing, however trifling; there was a deficiency of horses for his artillery, now too numerous for an army so reduced; it did not signify, and he flew into a passion at the proposal to leave part of it in Moscow.  “No; the enemy would make a trophy of it.”—­and he insisted that every thing should go along with him.

In this desert country, he gave orders for the purchase of twenty thousand horses, and he expected forage for two months to be provided, on a tract where the most distant and dangerous excursions were not sufficient for the supply of the passing day.  Some of his officers were astonished to hear orders which it was so impossible to execute; but we have already seen that he sometimes issued such orders to deceive his enemies, and most frequently to indicate to his own troops the extent of his necessities, and the exertions which they ought to make for the purpose of supplying them.

His distress manifested itself only in some paroxysms of ill humour.  It was in the morning at his levee.  There, amid the assembled chiefs, in whose anxious looks he imagined he could read disapprobation, he seemed desirous to awe them by the severity of his attitude, by his sharp tone and his abrupt language.  From the paleness of his face, it was evident that Truth, whose best time for obtaining a hearing is in the darkness of night, had oppressed him grievously by her presence, and tired him with her unwelcome light.  Sometimes, on these occasions, his bursting heart would overflow, and pour forth his sorrows around him by movements of impatience; but so far from lightening his grief, he aggravated them by those acts of injustice for which he reproached himself, and which he was afterwards anxious to repair.

It was to Count Daru alone that he unbosomed himself frankly, but without weakness.  He said, “he should march upon Kutusoff, crush or drive him back, and then turn suddenly towards Smolensk.”  Daru, who had before approved this course, replied, that “it was now too late; that the Russian army was reinforced, his own weakened; his victory forgotten; that the moment his troops should turn their faces towards France, they would slip away from him by degrees; that each soldier, laden with booty, would try to get the start of the army, for the purpose of selling it in France.”—­“What then is to be done?” exclaimed the Emperor.  “Remain here,” replied Daru, “make one vast entrenched camp of Moscow and pass the winter in it.  He would answer for it that there would be no want of bread and salt:  the rest foraging on a large scale would supply.  Such of the horses as they could not procure food for might be salted down.  As to lodgings, if there were not houses enough, the cellars might make up the deficiency.  Here we might stay till the return of spring, when our reinforcements and all Lithuania in arms should come to relieve, to join us, and to complete the conquest.”