My fancy had often dwelt on that hideous drama and had constantly varied the details and touches.  My actors were men, women and children; their number increased to hundreds, and they were ever furnishing me with new incidents.  There were some provisions in the train, but these were soon exhausted, and the hungry passengers, if they did not actually devour human flesh, at least fought furiously over the last piece of bread.  Sometimes an aged man was driven back with blows and slowly perished; a mother struggled like a she-wolf to keep three or four mouthfuls for her child.  In my own compartment a bride and bridegroom were dying, clasped in each other’s arms in mute despair.

The line was free along the whole length of the train, and people came and went, prowling round the carriages like beasts of prey in search of carrion.  All classes were mingled together.  A millionaire, a high functionary, it was said, wept on a workman’s shoulder.  The lamps had been extinguished from the first, and the engine fire was nearly out.  To pass from one carriage to another it was necessary to grope about, and thus, too, one slowly reached the engine, recognizable by its enormous barrel, its cold, motionless flanks, its useless strength, its grim silence, in the overwhelming night.  Nothing could be more appalling than this train entombed alive with its passengers perishing one by one.

I gloated over the ghastliness of each detail; howls resounded through the vault; somebody whom one could not see, whose vicinity was not even suspected, would suddenly drop upon another’s shoulder.  But what affected me most of all was the cold and the want of air.  I have never felt so chilled; a mantle of snow seemed to enwrap me; heavy moisture rained upon my skull; I was gasping; the rocky vault seemed to crush my chest; the whole mountain was seemingly weighing upon me.

Suddenly a cry of deliverance sounded.  For some time past we fancied that we could hear a dull sound, and we tried to hope that men were at work and that help was coming, but it came not thus.  One of the passengers, however, had discovered an air shaft in the tunnel, and, crowding round, we all saw this shaft, above which we could discern a blue patch about the size of a wafer.  That blue patch filled us with rapture, for it was the sky.  We stretched ourselves and stood on tiptoes to breathe more freely.  Then we distinguished some black specks moving about, specks that must surely be workmen about to deliver us.  A furious clamor arose.  The cry “Saved!  Saved!” burst from every mouth, while trembling arms were uplifted toward the tiny azure patch above.

That roar of voices aroused me.  Where was I?  In the tunnel, of course.  I was lying at full length; hard walls were pressing against my ribs.  Then I attempted to rise and struck my head roughly.  Was it the rock closing in on all sides?  The blue speck had vanished—­aye, the sky had disappeared and I was still suffocating, shivering, with chattering teeth.