In a month I may be back at Dantzig, Desiree . . . . "
And the rest would have been for Desiree's eyes alone, had it ever
been penned. For next in sacredness to heaven-inspired words are
mere human love letters; and those who read the love-letters of
another commit a sacrilege. But Charles never finished the letter,
for the dawn surprised him where he wrote in a shed by the miserable
Kalugha, a streamlet running to the Moskwa. And it was the dawn of
September 7, 1812.
"There is the sun of Austerlitz," said Napoleon to those who were
near him when it arose. But it was not. It was the sun of
Borodino. And before it set the great battle desired by the French
had been fought, and eight French generals lay dead, while thirty
more were wounded. Murat, Davoust, Ney, Junot, Prince Eugene,
Napoleon himself--all were there; and all fought to finish a war
which from the first had been disliked. The French claimed it as a
victory; but they gained nothing by it, and they lost forty thousand
killed and wounded.
During the night the Russians evacuated the position which they had
held, and lost, and retaken. They retreated towards Moscow, but
Napoleon was hardly ready to pursue.
These things, however, are history, and those who wish to know of
them may read them in another volume. While to the many orderly
persons who would wish to see everything in its place and the
history-books on the top shelf to be taken down and read on a future
day (which will never come), to such the explanation is due that
this battle of Borodino is here touched upon because it changed the
current of some lives with which we have to deal.
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