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This fact was stated to me by a reliable person, who heard Count Rostopchin himself relate it during his stay in Paris. On the 28th of October the Emperor retraced his way to Smolensk, and passed near the battle-field of Borodino.
Rostopchin received from them a daily report of what was passing at Moscow, as before its capture. If they undertook to be our guides, it was for the purpose of delivering us into his hands. His partizans were every day bringing in some hundreds of prisoners.
He recommended them to prevent the pillage of the French soldiers in the churches, and to have the malefactors shot, and enjoined them to use great rigor towards the galley-slaves, whom Rostopchin had pardoned on condition that they would set fire to the city.
"But you have been misinformed," said Pierre. "Everything is quiet in the city and there is not the slightest danger. See! I've just been reading..." He showed her the broadsheet. "Count Rostopchin writes that he will stake his life on it that the enemy will not enter Moscow." "Oh, that count of yours!" said the princess malevolently.
They abused the police and bribed them, made out estimates at ten times their value for government stores that had perished in the fire, and demanded relief. And Count Rostopchin wrote proclamations. At the end of January Pierre went to Moscow and stayed in an annex of his house which had not been burned.
He even swore to him "by his grey hair that he would perish with him before Moscow," when all at once the governor was informed, that in a council of war held at night in the camp, it had been determined to abandon the capital without a battle. Rostopchin was incensed, but not daunted by this intelligence.
But in this important crisis Rostopchin perceived two great dangers; the one, which threatened the national honour, was that of a disgraceful peace dictated at Moscow, and forced upon his sovereign; the other was a political rather than a military danger, in which he feared the seductions of the enemy more than his arms, and a revolution more than a conquest.
He called on Count Rostopchin and on some acquaintances who were back in Moscow, and he intended to leave for Petersburg two days later. Everybody was celebrating the victory, everything was bubbling with life in the ruined but reviving city. Everyone was pleased to see Pierre, everyone wished to meet him, and everyone questioned him about what he had seen.
I went to visit her at her country-house, in the interior of Moscow. I was obliged to cross a lake and a wood in* order to reach it: it was to this house, one of the most agreeable residences in Russia, that Count Rostopchin himself set-fire, on the approach of the French army. Certainly an action of this kind was likely to excite a certain kind of admiration, even in enemies.
"Yes, Moscow will be surrendered! She will be our expiation!" shouted one man. "He is the enemy of mankind!" cried another. "Allow me to speak...." "Gentlemen, you are crushing me!..." At that moment Count Rostopchin with his protruding chin and alert eyes, wearing the uniform of a general with sash over his shoulder, entered the room, stepping briskly to the front of the crowd of gentry.
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