guardian angel or tutelary spirit? In what am I different from those
lost ones? In what better, worthier than they? And if not, why had I
been saved and not they? Here! Here was the Czrny Bog, the dark god, in
my own breast.

At last day was dawning, and, in the grey morning light, the horrible
picture looked ghastlier still, when, to our intense relief, the
long-expected train came, and physicians with their assistants, firemen
with their manifold implements, police, and all kinds of labourers,
arrived upon it. The train stopped at a safe distance, and then the work
of rescue began. Wounds were dressed, the insensible restored, watchmen
and travellers were interrogated by officials. Ropes and rope-ladders
were fastened and suspended, and brave men, magnanimously forgetful of
the threatening danger, went down into the flames, although the hope of
success was small. True, the two or three uppermost cars had not as yet
caught fire; but who could breathe amid that suffocating smoke, that
lurid loathsome atmosphere, and yet live?

The labourers set to work at the breaches of the barricade and the line
of rails. The engineers discussed the best way in which a protecting
barrier ought to be built so as to shut out every possibility of such an
accident; and from the plateau before the watch-house some men were
incessantly calling for a "Monsieur d'Astrachan."

At last one of the labourers called my attention to these repeated
shouts, and, turning in their direction, I observed that this title was
intended for me. The watchman's wife, not knowing my name, had described
me as wearing an astrachan cap and coat-collar, and accordingly I was
called "Monsieur d'Astrachan." Now for the first time I remembered the
child I had carried thither. I had completely forgotten it, and the