None of that was much comfort to Marianne. She began to feel that she was dogged by ill-luck. She was trying to find Jolival, her godfather, Gracchus – and instead she had to fall into the hands of someone on the Quartermaster-General's staff, and a man who knew her, at that! She would be lucky if she did not find herself face to face with Napoleon. But then, was there anyone in Moscow at that moment who was not, in some way, connected with him? And she really had no idea of where to go. By this time the only possible place was somewhere out of reach of the flames.

Every bit as much at ease as if they had been conversing in a drawing-room, her companion was explaining to her that he had been obliged to interrupt a most enjoyable dinner in the Apraxin Palace when the flames threatened to engulf it.

'We have already sought refuge in two or three places,' he told her, evidently enjoying himself enormously despite what seemed to be a heavy cold. 'But each time this blessed fire caught us up. That was how we came to visit the Soltikov Palace, an excellent club with a quite outstanding cellar and a library in which I came across a very rare edition of Voltaire's Facéties. Let me show you.' He pulled a small, richly bound book out of his pocket and stroked it lovingly. Then, hastily, he thrust it back again and leaning his arms on the wine cask muttered: 'Unhappily, I fear that all that remains to us now is the open country – supposing we can ever reach it. Look, everything seems to have stopped moving.'

This was true and when they tried to edge into the endless procession of vehicles they were immediately thrust back by a cavalcade of horsemen and carriages which came charging out of a side street and literally plunged straight into the crowd.

'The outriders of the King of Naples!' Beyle muttered. 'That is all we need! Where does the great Murat think he's going?' He spoke to the driver. 'Wait, François. I want to see.'

Once again, he jumped down from the carriage and darted into the crowd. Marianne saw him eagerly questioning three men in splendid livery lavishly adorned with gold braid who seemed to be trying to force a way through the traffic for their master's coaches. When he came back, he was white with anger.

'Well, dear lady,' he said acidly. 'We must stay here to be roasted alive, I fear, so that Murat may save his wardrobe. Look there, the fire is creeping forward to overtake us. In a little while it will be threatening the Tver road also. True, the Emperor is coming this way before long.'

Marianne gulped painfully.

'The Emperor? Are you sure?'

He stared at her in some surprise.

'Why yes, the Emperor. Did you think he was going to stay and burn with the Kremlin? I must say, to judge from what I have just heard, there seems to have been some trouble but in the end his Majesty got out of the confounded place by way of a postern leading on to the river bank. He's going to withdraw to a country house outside the city – Petrovski or some such name. We'll wait for him to pass and then follow on after him – I say, where are you off to?'

For Marianne had scrambled over the cask and slid to the ground.

'I am grateful to you for all your kindness in rescuing me, Sir, but this is where I get down.'

'Here? But this is nowhere near St Louis-des-Français. And I thought you told me you didn't know where to go? Princess, I beg of you—' His face was suddenly very serious. 'Do not do anything rash. This city is doomed and us with it. It may be that we shall not see the day out. Do not leave it on my conscience that I abandoned you in peril. I don't know what has made you change your mind but you are the Emperor's friend and I—'

She fixed her green eyes on him squarely.

'You are mistaken, Monsieur de Beyle. I am no longer the Emperor's friend. I cannot tell you the whole, but you could endanger your own position by helping me. Go to his Majesty. You have a right, even a duty to do so. But let me go my own way.'

She turned and was beginning to walk away but he caught her firmly by the arm.

'Madam,' he said, 'between women and politics I have never known a moment's hesitation. I will serve a lady before I serve the Empire. I have not so far had the privilege of being numbered among your friends. Permit me to take advantage of the unlooked-for opportunity which fate has put in my way today. If you do not wish to see the Emperor, you shall not see him.'

'That is not quite enough, Sir,' Marianne said with the shadow of a smile. 'Neither would I wish the Emperor to see me.'

'Then I will arrange it so, only, I implore you, Princess, do not reject the hand I offer you. Do not deny me the happiness of being, if only briefly, your protector.'

They looked at one another for a moment and Marianne had a sudden conviction that she could place complete trust in this stranger. There was something solid and rock-like about him, like the mountains of his own native Dauphiné. Impulsively, she put out her hand, partly that he might help her up again on to the pile of baggage and partly, also, in acknowledgement of a kind of pact between them.

'Very well,' she said. 'I trust you. Let us be friends.'

'Wonderful! This must be celebrated! The best way to pass the time when you've nothing else to do is to have a drink, and we've some excellent bottles here… Hey, Bonnaire, old fellow! Don't drink all of that!' he cried suddenly becoming aware that his passenger was engaged, with an air of unshakeable gloom, in getting through the contents of an ancient, crusted bottle.

'It's not that I'm enjoying it,' the other returned with a hiccup, releasing the neck of the bottle for an instant. 'But a good wine is the best thing in the world for dysentery.'

'Well I'm damned!' Beyle said indignantly. 'If you can equate Vosne-Romanée with laudanum, then you and I are going to fall out! Hand me a bottle and see if you can find a glass.'

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.