IV.

The equinoctial gales rose higher and higher[1] upon the third night, and extended the flames, with which there was no longer any human power of contending[2]. At the dead[3] hour of midnight, the Kremlin itself was found to be on fire. A soldier of the Russian police, charged with being incendiary[4], was turned over[5] to the summary[6] vengeance of the Imperial Guard. Bonaparte was then, at length, persuaded, by the entreaties of all around him, to relinquish his quarters in the Kremlin, to which, as the visible mark of his conquest, he had seemed to cling with the tenacity of a lion holding a fragment of his prey. He encountered both difficulty and danger in retiring from the palace, and, before he could gain the city gate, he had to traverse with his suite streets arched with fire[7], and in which the very air they breathed was suffocating. At length he gained the open country, and took up his abode in a palace of the Czar’s called Petrowsky, about a French league from the city. As he looked back on the fire, which, under the influence of the autumnal wind, swelled and surged round the Kremlin, like an infernal ocean around a sable Pandemonium[8], he could not suppress the ominous expression: “This bodes us great misfortune!”

The fire continued to triumph unopposed, and consumed in a few days what it had cost centuries to raise. “Palaces and temples,” says a Russian author, “monuments of art, and miracles of luxury, the remains of ages which had passed away, and those which had been the creation of yesterday; the tombs of ancestors, and the nursery-cradles[9] of the present generation, were indiscriminately destroyed. Nothing was left of Moscow save the remembrance of the city, and the deep resolution to avenge its fall.”

The fire raged till the 19th of September with unabated violence, and then began to slacken for want of fuel. It is said four-fifths of this great city were laid in ruins.—SIR WALTER SCOTT.

[1] +immer stärker werden+; upon = during, with which commence the period.

[2] there was no longer ... of contending = could no longer contend.

[3] = quiet.

[4] This man is charged with being incendiary, +man beschuldigt diesen Mann der Brandstiftung+.

[5] +überge´ben+, with Dat.

[6] here = immediate, +sofortig+, adj.

[7] +über denen von beiden Seiten ein Feuermeer emporschlug.+

[8] +um ein schwarzes Pandämonium (ein Dämonentempel+, +das Reich des Satans).+

[9] +die Geburtsstätten+, N. Pl.

_Section 221._

CHRISTMAS IN GERMANY.