trailed twisting along the ground. The crowd shrank back from it.

At the moment when Vereshchagin fell and the crowd closed in with savage
yells and swayed about him, Rostopchin suddenly turned pale and, instead
of going to the back entrance where his carriage awaited him, went
with hurried steps and bent head, not knowing where and why, along the
passage leading to the rooms on the ground floor. The count's face was
white and he could not control the feverish twitching of his lower jaw.

"This way, your excellency... Where are you going?... This way,
please..." said a trembling, frightened voice behind him.

Count Rostopchin was unable to reply and, turning obediently, went in
the direction indicated. At the back entrance stood his caleche. The
distant roar of the yelling crowd was audible even there. He hastily
took his seat and told the coachman to drive him to his country house in
Sokolniki.

When they reached the Myasnitski Street and could no longer hear
the shouts of the mob, the count began to repent. He remembered with
dissatisfaction the agitation and fear he had betrayed before his
subordinates. "The mob is terrible--disgusting," he said to himself
in French. "They are like wolves whom nothing but flesh can appease."
"Count! One God is above us both!"--Vereshchagin's words suddenly
recurred to him, and a disagreeable shiver ran down his back. But this
was only a momentary feeling and Count Rostopchin smiled disdainfully
at himself. "I had other duties," thought he. "The people had to be
appeased. Many other victims have perished and are perishing for the
public good"--and he began thinking of his social duties to his family
and to the city entrusted to him, and of himself--not himself as
Theodore Vasilyevich Rostopchin (he fancied that Theodore Vasilyevich
Rostopchin was sacrificing himself for the public good) but himself as
governor, the representative of authority and of the Tsar. "Had I been
simply Theodore Vasilyevich my course of action would have been quite
different, but it was my duty to safeguard my life and dignity as
commander in chief."

Lightly swaying on the flexible springs of his carriage and no longer
hearing the terrible sounds of the crowd, Rostopchin grew physically
calm and, as always happens, as soon as he became physically tranquil
his mind devised reasons why he should be mentally tranquil too. The
thought which tranquillized Rostopchin was not a new one. Since the
world began