I bowed my thanks, and handed my card to
one of the emperor's staff.

When the fire was subdued, and they began
to dig for the bodies, the scene was agonising.
Heaps of charred and trampled corpses lay under
the smoking beams—some stifled, others trodden
or beaten to death.  Some were charred, others
half roasted, many only burnt in the chest and
head, the holiday clothes still bright and gay.
In the galleries, women were found suffocated
and leaning over the front boxes.  In one passage
they discovered a crowd of dead, all erect, like
so many shadows marshalled from the other
world.  More than a hundred were found still
alive, but dangerously burnt.  Most of these
afterwards died in the hospitals.

One little boy was discovered cowering
unhurt under a bench; he had crept there when
the burning roof began to break up and drop
among the struggling multitude.  The beams
and dead bodies had so fallen as to form a
shelter over his head, and there he had remained
till we disinterred him.

The official returns set down the number of
the dead as three hundred; but my agent told
me that while he himself stood there, he counted
fifty waggons pass, each laden with from ten to
fifteen corpses; and many people made a much
higher estimate.

I need not say much about my visit to the
palace; suffice it to mention that the emperor
rewarded me with an order that I highly prize.
On the same day the priests offered up public
prayers for the souls of the sufferers, on the site
of the burnt theatre.  It was a solemn spectacle,
and as I rose from those prayers, full of gratitude
to God for my deliverance, a rough hand
grasped mine.

It was the merchant whose daughter I had
saved. Tears streamed from his eyes as he
embraced me and kissed my forehead and my cheek
in the Oriental manner of his nation.

"My little father,"  he said, "I would rather
have found thee than have cleared a thousand
red rouble notes.  Little Catherine, whom you
saved, has been praying for you ever since.
Come, you must dine with us.  I will take no
denial, for do I not owe you more than my life?
Come, a droshky there—quick to the Fontanka;
Catherine will leap for joy when she sees
you."

That visit was an eventful one to me, for on
my third voyage from that date I married
Catherine Maslovitch, and a loving and devoted
wife I found her.  She is kissing my cheek as I
pen these words.

But it is not to dwell upon my own personal
good fortune and happiness, that I have written
this plain remembrance.  It is, that I may do
what little I can to impress upon those who
may read it, that a rush from any building on
fire is certain to be fatal, and that an orderly
departure from it is certain deliverance.  The
Theatre, Concert-room, Church or Chapel, does
not exist, through which a fire could spread so
rapidly as to prevent the whole assembly from
going out unscathed, if they would go free from
panic. The Santiago case was an extremely
exceptional one.  The whole of the gaudy clap-
traps were under the management of priests
(the worst managers on earth), and what kind
of priests they were, may be inferred from the
fact that the base cowards all precipitately fled,
and that not one of them had the manhood to
stand at the Altar, his place of authority, where
he could be seen on a platform made to render
him conspicuous, and whence his directions
would have been issued at an immense
advantage.  Again, the assemblage was mainly
composed of women and children in light inflammable
dresses.  Again, the Show was lighted by lamps
of paraffine dangling by strings from the whole
of the roof above the people's heads, which
dropped upon them, so many overturned pots
of liquid fire, as the strings were burnt.  But
even under these specially disastrous conditions,
great numbers of the assemblage would have
been saved but for the mad rush at the door
which instantly closed it.  Suppose that rush
not to have been made, suppose the door
wide open, suppose a priest with the soul of a
man in him to have stood on the Altar steps,
passing the people at that end of the church,
out of the Priestly door (of which we hear
nothing, and which the last of those quick
fugitives perhaps shut after him), and how
changed the result!  I entreat any one who
may read this experience of mine, and may
afterwards be in a similar condition, to remember
that in my case, and in the Santiago case,
numbers lost their lives—not because the building
was on fire, but because there was a desperate
rush at the door.  Half a dozen men capable of
self-control, might save as many thousand lives,
by urging this on a crowd at the critical moment,
and by saying "We will go the last."

NEW WORK BY MR. DICKENS,
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