When they reached the Myasnítski 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!”⁠—Vereshchágin’s words suddenly recurred to him, and a disagreeable shiver ran down his back. But this was only a momentary feeling and Count Rostopchín 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 Fëdor Vasílyevich Rostopchín (he fancied that Fëdor Vasílyevich Rostopchín was sacrificing himself for the public good) but himself as governor, the representative of authority and of the Tsar. “Had I been simply Fëdor Vasílyevich my course of action would have been quite different, but it was my duty to safeguard my life and dignity as commander in chief.”