I, Janil de Constant, remember very well the moment when we first beheld the glorious city of Moscow, which we had marched twelve thousand leagues to take. It would have been the fourteenth day of September. The sun shone fiercely upon our splendid cavalcade, and even in the forests, which we now quitted very willingly, there were oases of light like golden lakes in a wonderland. It was half-past three o'clock when I myself reached the Mont du Salut, a hill from whose summit the traveller first looks down upon the city. And what a spectacle to see! What domes and minarets and mighty towers! What a mingling of East and West, of Oriental beauty and the stately splendour of a European capital! You will not wonder that our men drew rein to gaze with awe upon so transcendent a spectacle. This was Mecca truly. Here they would end their labours and here lay their reward.