The officers broke open the doors of some of the principal mansions in search of sleeping quarters. They found every thing in perfect order; the bedrooms were fully furnished as if guests were expected; the drawing-rooms bore the marks of having been recently inhabited; even the work of the ladies was on the tables, the keys in the wardrobes--but still not an inmate was to be seen. By degrees a few of the lowest slaves emerged pale and trembling from the cellars, and showed the way to the sleeping apartments, and laid open every thing which these sumptuous mansions contained; but the only account they could give was that the whole of the inhabitants had fled, and that they alone were left. The persons intrusted with the duty of setting fire to the city, only awaited the retreat of their countrymen to commence the work of destruction. The terrible catastrophe soon commenced. On the night of the 13th a fire broke out in the bourse, and spread to the streets in the vicinity. At midnight, on the 15th, a bright light was seen to illuminate the northern and western parts of the city; fresh fires were then seen breaking out every instant in all directions, and Moscow soon exhibited the spectacle of a sea of flame agitated by the wind. But it was chiefly during the nights of the 18th and 19th that the conflagration attained its greatest violence. At that time the whole city was wrapped in flames, and volumes of fire of various colors ascended to the heavens in many places, diffusing a prodigious light on all sides, and attended by an intolerable heat. These balloons of flame were accompanied in their ascent by a frightful hissing noise, and loud explosions, the result of the vast stores of oil, tar, rosin, spirits, and other combustible materials, with which the greater part of the shops were filled. The wind, naturally high, was raised by the sudden rarefaction of the air to a perfect hurricane. The howling of the tempest drowned even the roar of the conflagration; the whole heavens were filled with the whirl of the burning volumes of smoke, which rose on all sides, and made midnight as bright as day, while even the bravest hearts, subdued by the sublimity of the scene, and the feeling of human impotence in the midst of such elemental strife, sank and trembled in silence. Imagination cannot conceive the horrors into which the remnant of the people who could not abandon their homes were plunged. Bereft of every thing, they wandered amid the ruins eagerly searching for a parent or a child: pillage became universal, and the wrecks of former magnificence were ransacked alike by the licentious soldiery and the suffering multitude.