The great majority found their houses burned. Those whose four walls were still standing found their homes sacked and looted, their possessions ruthlessly destroyed and themselves ruined.
From end to end of Moscow a wail of despair arose and continued day long, for in the city proper, out of 6,000 wooden houses 4,500 were burned down, while of the 2,500 brick dwellings which had existed before the fires, only 500 now remained standing.
But meanwhile the last of the retiring French were leaving the city by the Borovitsky Gate, and here, at the very first opportunity, began the stupendous anguish of their terrible retreat. For from the first they marched from ambush to ambush, from disaster to disaster, through miseries of frost and hunger and sleeplessness and unceasing attack in flank and rear. Truly the avenging of Moscow began from her very gates.
Vera Demidof came with the rest of the returning fugitives into Moscow, came--like thousands of others--to find that the house in the Sloboda had been looted and wrecked, though the fire had not reached it. Vera had hurried back to Moscow, however, not from any anxiety as to the family mansion or its contents, she came because she had ascertained from Sasha Maximof that his regiment was to be one of those which should first engage the retreating French beyond the walls of Moscow.
"Just to hurry them up and see them safely off the premises," Sasha had laughingly expressed it but yesterday, paying her a hurried visit at the village to which she had retired on leaving Moscow.
Indeed, as the crowds of Muscovites entered the city at one side, the roar of cannon from the opposite end of the town, beyond the Borovitsky Gate, gave grim evidence that the Frenchmen were not being permitted to march away in peace and impunity.
"If you should be wounded outside Moscow, send me word," Vera had said at parting. She felt depressed and inclined to expect disaster, though she was not one to indulge weakly and without resistance in presentiments; Vera's healthy intelligence was accustomed to look upon such things as foolishness.
"Why do you expect me to get hurt?" Sasha had laughed. "When my time comes I shall die, but I do not think that is yet, Vera. There is something I am determined to achieve before I finish with life--can you guess what it is?"