[The words are caught up in the rear by veterans who have entered every capital in Europe except London, and are echoed from rank to rank. There is a far-extended clapping of hands, like the babble of waves, and companies of foot run in disorder towards high ground to behold the spectacle, waving their shakos on their bayonets. The army now marches on, and NAPOLEON and his suite disappear citywards from the Hill of Salutation. The day wanes ere the host has passed and dusk begins to prevail, when tidings reach the rear-guard that cause dismay. They have been sent back lip by lip from the front.] SPIRIT IRONIC An anticlimax to Napoleon's dream! SPIRIT OF RUMOUR They say no governor attends with keys To offer his submission gracefully. The streets are solitudes, the houses sealed, And stagnant silence reigns, save where intrudes The rumbling of their own artillery wheels, And their own soldiers' measured tramp along. “Moscow deserted? What a monstrous thing!”-- He shrugs his shoulders soon, contemptuously; “This, then is how Muscovy fights!” cries he. Meanwhile Murat has reached the Kremlin gates, And finds them closed against him. Battered these, The fort reverberates vacant as the streets But for some grinning wretches gaoled there. Enchantment seems to sway from quay to keep, And lock commotion in a century's sleep. [NAPOLEON, reappearing in front of the city, follows MURAT, and is again lost to view. He has entered the Kremlin. An interval. Something becomes visible on the summit of the Ivan Tower.] CHORUS OF RUMOURS [aerial music] Mark you thereon a small lone figure gazing Upon his hard-gained goal? It is He! The startled crows, their broad black pinions raising, Forsake their haunts, and wheel disquietedly. [The scene slowly darkens. Midnight hangs over the city. In blackness to the north of where the Kremlin stands appears what at first seems a lurid, malignant star. It waxes larger. Almost simultaneously a north-east wind rises, and the light glows and sinks with the gusts, proclaiming a fire, which soon grows large enough to irradiate the fronts of adjacent buildings, and to show that it is creeping on towards the Kremlin itself, the walls of that fortress which face the flames emerging from their previous shade.