with bare heads and faces blackened with smoke; stray horses whose riders had met with some accident; files of porters laden with all manner of household goods; troops of howling dogs; gangs of homeless fugitives stumbling and falling in their mad flight down the steep inclines, blindly treading down the dead and injured, scaling the heaps of débris, and disappearing finally amid fire and smoke like legions of the damned. Once, at the opening of a burning street, the mounted figure of Sultan Abdul-Aziz appeared for an instant, surrounded by his court, pale as a ghost, staring with dilated eyes at the flames, as though repeating to himself the memorable words of Selim I.: “This is the fiery breath of my victims destined to consume my capital, my seraglio, my very self!” A moment later he had disappeared amid a cloud of smoke and cinders, followed by his courtiers. [Illustration: Water Seller.] All of the army stationed at Constantinople, in addition to the innumerable brigades of firemen, were pressed into service, being formed into long chains and immense semicircles, which, under the direction of the viziers, officials of the court, pashas, and ulemas, endeavored to surround whole quarters, or, by concentrating their efforts upon some special spot, check the advance of the fire in that direction. Row after row of buildings would fall in the space of a few minutes; the roofs swarmed with intrepid men waging the unequal conflict at close quarters, and ever and anon falling into the yawning crater at their feet, only to be succeeded by others, as when some daring attack is making upon a powerful enemy, sending up hoarse cries and waving their singed fezzes in the midst of the smoke and flames. But, notwithstanding all these efforts, the fire still advanced triumphant, lit up the thousand streams of water directed against it, and leaped at a bound across the gardens, open squares, small cemeteries, and great stone buildings which lay in its path, forcing back soldiers, firemen, and citizens on all sides, like an army in retreat, and beating them about the shoulders as with red-hot muskets. Yet even in all that frightful panic and confusion there were those who preserved their self-possession sufficiently to perform noble acts of heroism and devotion. White-veiled Sisters of Charity could be seen in the midst of blazing ruins leaning over the prostrate forms of the dying; Turks threw themselves into the flames and reappeared bearing in their scorched and blackened arms the bodies of Christian children; other Mussulmans were known to have stood, apparently unmoved, with folded arms watching a burning house, and, while the families of Christians around them, utterly beside themselves with fright, filled the air with useless lamentations, would coldly offer a reward of a hundred Turkish francs to any one who would rescue a European boy who had failed to escape with the rest; and others, again, who made