Marianne accepted a glass of wine but after that left her new friend to finish the bottle. Nor was he the only person drinking. All round her she could see people busy draining flasks and bottles, some even as they ran. Beyle himself paused briefly to heap curses on a group of three or four lackeys who came up with their carriage and tried, as well as their tottering legs would allow them, to scramble aboard. The whip was brought into play again, all the more vigorously because the men proved to be the young auditor's own servants.
Then, without warning, they saw the Emperor's party flash past. His black hat emerged briefly from the smoke, hung there for a moment in the gloom and then vanished, borne on a wave of white plumes, down a street in which the houses, one after another, were bursting into flames.
'Our turn next,' Beyle said. 'It's time to go.'
Seeing that his own driver seemed likewise to have passed the interval in drinking, he grasped the lead-horse's bridle and, swearing like a trooper, set about guiding the vehicle into the Tver road. The wind had changed again and was now blowing as fiercely as ever from the south-west. Before long the procession of refugees, buffeted by the gale and blinded by the ash that filled the air and clung to skin and clothes, had almost reached a standstill. The heat grew every moment more intense, exciting the horses until it was all they could do to prevent them bolting. Buildings collapsed with a noise like thunder while others were already reduced to smoking ruin, from which a few charred timbers stuck up desolately.
They were passing a large mansion in the course of construction when Marianne uttered a cry of horror. From the unfinished window sockets of the house, never to be completed now for already it was beginning to burn, hung the bodies of some dozen men who there awaited the last judgement day. They were barefoot, clad only in their shirts and had been shot before being suspended in bloodstained clusters with 'I burned Moscow' written on placards round their necks, flapping dismally in the wind about the bullet-riddled corpses.
'It's horrible!' she choked, almost sobbing. 'Horrible! Have we all gone mad?'
'Perhaps we have,' Beyle said quietly. 'Who is the more mad, he who came here seeking death, or he who seeks to wipe out his defeat in a bath of blood? Either way we are all mad! Look about you! This is a very carnival of madmen!'
A frenzy seemed to have overtaken the long stream of vehicles, all laden with booty and compelled by the pressure all around them to proceed only by fits and starts. The drivers, terrified of being trapped by the flames, were shrieking hideously and belabouring their horses. On both sides of the street a mass of armed men were breaking down the doors of every undamaged house as they went along. Such was their fear of leaving anything behind that they would plunge inside and emerge laden with booty. Some covered themselves with stuffs richly worked in gold; some were enveloped in beautiful and costly furs, while yet others dressed themselves in women's clothes and precious cashmere shawls worn round their waists like sashes. Any who fell were lost, for at once a dozen eager hands reached out, not to help him to rise but to plunder what he had. Everywhere, against the roaring of the flames, were faces distorted by fear, cruelty and lust. The Emperor had gone, he had abandoned Moscow, and now there was nothing to restrain the hundreds of men for whom, all through that endless journey, the great Russian capital had gleamed like the promised land, the cornucopia which was to make them rich.
Marianne buried her head in her hands and tried not to look. She no longer knew which was uppermost in her mind, fear or shame: she only knew that at that moment she was in hell.
When at last they passed outside the walls of Moscow it was black night and a huge, round white moon was rising. The long line of close-packed vehicles burst out and scattered, like the contents of a bottle of champagne when the cork is popped. One highroad and a number of smaller ones led out into the countryside.
Beyle halted the carriage on a little ridge and mopped his brow with his sleeve. He looked exhausted.
'Well, here we are outside,' he murmured. 'I think we owe some thanks to Providence for getting us out of that death-trap.'
'What are we going to do now?' Marianne asked wearily, wiping away the tears the smoke had brought to her eyes.
'Find somewhere to sleep if we can. We are still too close. The heat is like an oven. We could get no rest.' He broke off, interrupted by a fit of coughing, and took a generous draught of brandy to cure it.
Marianne scarcely seemed to notice. Although practically asleep on her feet, she was fascinated by the spectacle, even in spite of the accumulated fatigues of the past three days.
The city looked like a volcano in the course of eruption. It was a titanic crucible, melting down all the riches of the world, bubbling and throwing up great sheets of flame, showers of sparks, with the occasional brilliant flash of an explosion. It was like some monstrous firework display for a mad god, blazing away in the darkness. It was the triumph of a demon whose fiery breath could burn even at a distance and whose long, red arms, reaching out over the walls, were still seeking, like the tentacles of a giant squid, to claw back those that had escaped.
'Can't we rest here?' Marianne asked. 'I can't go any farther.'
It was true enough. Her body, deprived of sleep for too long, would no longer obey her except by an immense effort of will.
'It's very hot here, but must we really follow all those people?' She pointed to the column of refugees, still moving onward into the night. 'Where do they think they are going?'
Beyle laughed cynically, his voice already thickening a little from the drink he had taken. Then he shrugged. 'Where they've all been going inexorably for years – where old Panurge's silly sheep went: to look for a shepherd! They've been told the Emperor is going to Petrov-something, so they, too, are going to Petrov-something, without even asking themselves whether they'll find a place to sleep or anything to eat there. Most of them will stay outside in the wind, in the pouring rain if need be, entranced by the place where their god is, like Tibetan lamas before the face of Buddha. But you're right. There's no need for us to follow them. I can see a small lake just ahead, with a little wood beside it. We'll camp there. What's more, I believe I can see the place they were all talking about.'
At the end of what had now developed into a broad, well-kept avenue, lights had begun to spring up, shining out of the darkness, revealing a large, brick-built mansion of a curious architectural style oscillating between Louis XIV and Louis XV with a touch of the classical added on. Several more substantial dwellings were visible in the vicinity and the host of refugees flowed into them, while some kind of guard system seemed to have been established around Petrovskoi itself, in order to protect the Emperor's rest as much as possible, supposing he were able to get any.
Beyle, however, drove his carriage, as he had declared his intention of doing, to the edge of a little lake in which was reflected a small, thickly planted wood of birch and fir. The wretched Bonnaire greeted the sight of the wood with immense relief and vanished into it precipitately as soon as the carriage came to a stop.
With the help of those of his servants who were still on their feet, Beyle set up some kind of a camp. The mountainous clutter of baggage was removed from the carriage so that there was room to lie down and the hood drawn up against the cold night air and the likelihood of insects dropping out of the trees.
Marianne took no part in any of this activity but sat by the lake, her feet among the reeds and her arms about her knees. She was so tired that every separate fibre of her body ached and yet she could not relax. The thoughts continued to go round and round in her head, like a runaway machine, without getting anywhere and without even any logical connection. She stared at the water stretching at her feet, lit by the reflected glow of the fire, and thought that it might be good to bathe in it and find a little coolness after so much heat. She bent down and scooped up some of the water in her hand and splashed it over her burning hot face and neck. But the water was not really cool. It was as if the fire, penetrating deep down into the earth, had imparted some of its heat to the little pool. All the same, it did her good.