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Title: The Secret of the Night

Author: Gaston Leroux

Release date: March 1, 1999 [eBook #1686]
Most recently updated: January 27, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1686

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SECRET
OF THE NIGHT ***

THE SECRET OF THE NIGHT

By Gaston Leroux

CONTENTS

THE SECRET OF THE NIGHT

I. GAYETY AND DYNAMITE

II. NATACHA

III. THE WATCH

IV. "THE YOUTH OF MOSCOW IS DEAD”

V. BY ROULETABILLE’S ORDER THE GENERAL
PROMENADES

VI. THE MYSTERIOUS HAND

VII. ARSENATE OF SODA

VIII. THE LITTLE CHAPEL OF THE GUARDS

IX. ANNOUCHKA

X. A DRAMA IN THE NIGHT

XI. THE POISON CONTINUES

XII. PERE ALEXIS

XIII. THE LIVING BOMBS

XIV. THE MARSHES

XV. "I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR YOU”

XVI. BEFORE THE REVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNAL

XVII. THE LAST CRAVAT

XVIII. A SINGULAR EXPERIENCE

XIX. THE TSAR

THE SECRET OF THE NIGHT

I. GAYETY AND DYNAMITE
“BARINIA, the young stranger has arrived.”
“Where is he?”
“Oh, he is waiting at the lodge.”
“I told you to show him to Natacha’s sitting-room. Didn’t you understand
me, Ermolai?”
“Pardon, Barinia, but the young stranger, when I asked to search him, as
you directed, flatly refused to let me.”
“Did you explain to him that everybody is searched before being allowed
to enter, that it is the order, and that even my mother herself has submitted
to it?”
“I told him all that, Barinia; and I told him about madame your mother.”
“What did he say to that?”
“That he was not madame your mother. He acted angry.”
“Well, let him come in without being searched.”
“The Chief of Police won’t like it.”
“Do as I say.”
Ermolai bowed and returned to the garden. The “barinia” left the
veranda, where she had come for this conversation with the old servant of
General Trebassof, her husband, and returned to the dining-room in the
datcha des Iles, where the gay Councilor Ivan Petrovitch was regaling his
amused associates with his latest exploit at Cubat’s resort. They were a
noisy company, and certainly the quietest among them was not the general,
who nursed on a sofa the leg which still held him captive after the recent
attack, that to his old coachman and his two piebald horses had proved fatal.
The story of the always-amiable Ivan Petrovitch (a lively, little, elderly man
with his head bald as an egg) was about the evening before. After having, as
he said, “recure la bouche” for these gentlemen spoke French like their own
language and used it among themselves to keep their servants from
understanding—after having wet his whistle with a large glass of sparkling
rosy French wine, he cried:

“You would have laughed, Feodor Feodorovitch. We had sung songs on
the Barque* and then the Bohemians left with their music and we went out
onto the river-bank to stretch our legs and cool our faces in the freshness of
the dawn, when a company of Cossacks of the Guard came along. I knew
the officer in command and invited him to come along with us and drink the
Emperor’s health at Cubat’s place. That officer, Feodor Feodorovitch, is a
man who knows vintages and boasts that he has never swallowed a glass of
anything so common as Crimean wine. When I named champagne he cried,
‘Vive l’Empereur!’ A true patriot. So we started, merry as school-children.
The entire company followed, then all the diners playing little whistles, and
all the servants besides, single file. At Cubat’s I hated to leave the
companion-officers of my friend at the door, so I invited them in, too. They
accepted, naturally. But the subalterns were thirsty as well. I understand
discipline. You know, Feodor Feodorovitch, that I am a stickler for
discipline. Just because one is gay of a spring morning, discipline should
not be forgotten. I invited the officers to drink in a private room, and sent
the subalterns into the main hall of the restaurant. Then the soldiers were
thirsty, too, and I had drinks served to them out in the courtyard. Then, my
word, there was a perplexing business, for now the horses whinnied. The
brave horses, Feodor Feodorovitch, who also wished to drink the health of
the Emperor. I was bothered about the discipline. Hall, court, all were full.
And I could not put the horses in private rooms. Well, I made them carry
out champagne in pails and then came the perplexing business I had tried so
hard to avoid, a grand mixture of boots and horse-shoes that was certainly
the liveliest thing I have ever seen in my life. But the horses were the most
joyous, and danced as if a torch was held under their nostrils, and all of
them, my word! were ready to throw their riders because the men were not
of the same mind with them as to the route to follow! From our window we
laughed fit to kill at such a mixture of sprawling boots and dancing hoofs.
But the troopers finally got all their horses to barracks, with patience, for
the Emperor’s cavalry are the best riders in the world, Feodor Feodorovitch.
And we certainly had a great laugh!—Your health, Matrena Petrovna.”

[* The “Barque” is a restaurant on a boat, among the isles,
near the Gulf of Finland, on a bank of the Neva.]

These last graceful words were addressed to Madame Trebassof, who
shrugged her shoulders at the undesired gallantry of the gay Councilor. She

did not join in the conversation, excepting to calm the general, who wished
to send the whole regiment to the guard-house, men and horses. And while
the roisterers laughed over the adventure she said to her husband in the
advisory voice of the helpful wife:
“Feodor, you must not attach importance to what that old fool Ivan tells
you. He is the most imaginative man in the capital when he has had
champagne.”
“Ivan, you certainly have not had horses served with champagne in
pails,” the old boaster, Athanase Georgevitch, protested jealously. He was
an advocate, well-known for his table-feats, who claimed the hardest
drinking reputation of any man in the capital, and he regretted not to have
invented that tale.
“On my word! And the best brands! I had won four thousand roubles. I
left the little fete with fifteen kopecks.”
Matrena Petrovna was listening to Ermolai, the faithful country servant
who wore always, even here in the city, his habit of fresh nankeen, his black
leather belt, his large blue pantaloons and his boots glistening like ice, his
country costume in his master’s city home. Madame Matrena rose, after
lightly stroking the hair of her step-daughter Natacha, whose eyes followed
her to the door, indifferent apparently to the tender manifestations of her
father’s orderly, the soldier-poet, Boris Mourazoff, who had written
beautiful verses on the death of the Moscow students, after having shot
them, in the way of duty, on their barricades.
Ermolai conducted his mistress to the drawing-room and pointed across
to a door that he had left open, which led to the sitting-room before
Natacha’s chamber.
“He is there,” said Ermolai in a low voice.
Ermolai need have said nothing, for that matter, since Madame Matrena
was aware of a stranger’s presence in the sitting-room by the extraordinary
attitude of an individual in a maroon frock-coat bordered with false
astrakhan, such as is on the coats of all the Russian police agents and makes
the secret agents recognizable at first glance. This policeman was on his
knees in the drawing-room watching what passed in the next room through
the narrow space of light in the hinge-way of the door. In this manner, or
some other, all persons who wished to approach General Trebassof were

kept under observation without their knowing it, after having been first
searched at the lodge, a measure adopted since the latest attack.
Madame Matrena touched the policeman’s shoulder with that heroic hand
which had saved her husband’s life and which still bore traces of the terrible
explosion in the last attack, when she had seized the infernal machine
intended for the general with her bare hand. The policeman rose and silently
left the room, reached the veranda and lounged there on a sofa, pretending
to be asleep, but in reality watching the garden paths.
Matrena Petrovna took his place at the hinge-vent. This was her rule; she
always took the final glance at everything and everybody. She roved at all
hours of the day and night round about the general, like a watch-dog, ready
to bite, to throw itself before the danger, to receive the blows, to perish for
its master. This had commenced at Moscow after the terrible repression, the
massacre of revolutionaries under the walls of Presnia, when the surviving
Nihilists left behind them a placard condemning the victorious General
Trebassof to death. Matrena Petrovna lived only for the general. She had
vowed that she would not survive him. So she had double reason to guard
him.
But she had lost all confidence even within the walls of her own home.
Things had happened even there that defied her caution, her instinct, her
love. She had not spoken of these things save to the Chief of Police,
Koupriane, who had reported them to the Emperor. And here now was the
man whom the Emperor had sent, as the supreme resource, this young
stranger—Joseph Rouletabille, reporter.
“But he is a mere boy!” she exclaimed, without at all understanding the
matter, this youthful figure, with soft, rounded cheeks, eyes clear and, at
first view, extraordinarily naive, the eyes of an infant. True, at the moment
Rouletabille’s expression hardly suggested any superhuman profundity of
thought, for, left in view of a table, spread with hors-d’oeuvres, the young
man appeared solely occupied in digging out with a spoon all the caviare
that remained in the jars. Matrena noted the rosy freshness of his cheeks,
the absence of down on his lip and not a hint of beard, the thick hair, with
the curl over the forehead. Ah, that forehead—the forehead was curious,
with great over-hanging cranial lumps which moved above the deep arcade
of the eye-sockets while the mouth was busy—well, one would have said
that Rouletabille had not eaten for a week. He was demolishing a great slice

of Volgan sturgeon, contemplating at the same time with immense interest a
salad of creamed cucumbers, when Matrena Petrovna appeared.
He wished to excuse himself at once and spoke with his mouth full.
“I beg your pardon, madame, but the Czar forgot to invite me to
breakfast.”
Madame Matrena smiled and gave him a hearty handshake as she urged
him to be seated.
“You have seen His Majesty?”
“I come from him, madame. It is to Madame Trebassof that I have the
honor of speaking?”
“Yes. And you are Monsieur—?”
“Joseph Rouletabille, madame. I do not add, ‘At your service—because I
do not know about that yet. That is what I said just now to His Majesty.”
“Then?” asked Madame Matrena, rather amused by the tone the
conversation had taken and the slightly flurried air of Rouletabille.
“Why, then, I am a reporter, you see. That is what I said at once to my
editor in Paris, ‘I am not going to take part in revolutionary affairs that do
not concern my country,’ to which my editor replied, ‘You do not have to
take part. You must go to Russia to make an inquiry into the present status
of the different parties. You will commence by interviewing the Emperor.’ I
said, ‘Well, then, here goes,’ and took the train.”
“And you have interviewed the Emperor?”
“Oh, yes, that has not been difficult. I expected to arrive direct at St.
Petersburg, but at Krasnoie-Coelo the train stopped and the grand-marshal
of the court came to me and asked me to follow him. It was very flattering.
Twenty minutes later I was before His Majesty. He awaited me! I
understood at once that this was obviously for something out of the
ordinary.”
“And what did he say to you?”
“He is a man of genuine majesty. He reassured me at once when I
explained my scruples to him. He said there was no occasion for me to take
part in the politics of the matter, but to save his most faithful servant, who
was on the point of becoming the victim of the strangest family drama ever
conceived.”

Madame Matrena, white as a sheet, rose to her feet.
“Ah,” she said simply.
But Rouletabille, whom nothing escaped, saw her hand tremble on the
back of the chair.
He went on, not appearing to have noticed her emotion:
“His Majesty added these exact words: ‘It is I who ask it of you; I and
Madame Trebassof. Go, monsieur, she awaits you.’”
He ceased and waited for Madame Trebassof to speak.
She made up her mind after brief reflection.
“Have you seen Koupriane?”
“The Chief of Police? Yes. The grand-marshal accompanied me back to
the station at Krasnoie-Coelo, and the Chief of Police accompanied me to
St. Petersburg station. One could not have been better received.”
“Monsieur Rouletabille,” said Matrena, who visibly strove to regain her
self-control, “I am not of Koupriane’s opinion and I am not”—here she
lowered her trembling voice—“of the opinion His Majesty holds. It is better
for me to tell you at once, so that you may not regret intervening in an affair
where there are—where there are—risks—terrible risks to run. No, this is
not a family drama. The family is small, very small: the general, his
daughter Natacha (by his former marriage), and myself. There could not be
a family drama among us three. It is simply about my husband, monsieur,
who did his duty as a soldier in defending the throne of his sovereign, my
husband whom they mean to assassinate! There is nothing else, no other
situation, my dear little guest.”
To hide her distress she started to carve a slice of jellied veal and carrot.
“You have not eaten, you are hungry. It is dreadful, my dear young man.
See, you must dine with us, and then—you will say adieu. Yes, you will
leave me all alone. I will undertake to save him all alone. Certainly, I will
undertake it.”
A tear fell on the slice she was cutting. Rouletabille, who felt the brave
woman’s emotion affecting him also, braced himself to keep from showing
it.
“I am able to help you a little all the same,” he said. “Monsieur
Koupriane has told me that there is a deep mystery. It is my vocation to get

to the bottom of mysteries.”
“I know what Koupriane thinks,” she said, shaking her head. “But if I
could bring myself to think that for a single day I would rather be dead.”
The good Matrena Petrovna lifted her beautiful eyes to Rouletabille,
brimming with the tears she held back.
She added quickly:
“But eat now, my dear guest; eat. My dear child, you must forget what
Koupriane has said to you, when you are back in France.”
“I promise you that, madame.”
“It is the Emperor who has caused you this long journey. For me, I did
not wish it. Has he, indeed, so much confidence in you?” she asked naively,
gazing at him fixedly through her tears.
“Madame, I was just about to tell you. I have been active in some
important matters that have been reported to him, and then sometimes your
Emperor is allowed to see the papers. He has heard talk, too (for everybody
talked of them, madame), about the Mystery of the Yellow Room and the
Perfume of the Lady in Black.”
Here Rouletabille watched Madame Trebassof and was much mortified at
the undoubted ignorance that showed in her frank face of either the yellow
room or the black perfume.
“My young friend,” said she, in a voice more and more hesitant, “you
must excuse me, but it is a long time since I have had good eyes for
reading.”
Tears, at last, ran down her cheeks.
Rouletabille could not restrain himself any further. He saw in one flash
all this heroic woman had suffered in her combat day by day with the death
which hovered. He took her little fat hands, whose fingers were overloaded
with rings, tremulously into his own:
“Madame, do not weep. They wish to kill your husband. Well then, we
will be two at least to defend him, I swear to you.”
“Even against the Nihilists!”
“Aye, madame, against all the world. I have eaten all your caviare. I am
your guest. I am your friend.”

As he said this he was so excited, so sincere and so droll that Madame
Trebassof could not help smiling through her tears. She made him sit down
beside her.
“The Chief of Police has talked of you a great deal. He came here
abruptly after the last attack and a mysterious happening that I will tell you
about. He cried, ‘Ah, we need Rouletabille to unravel this!’ The next day he
came here again. He had gone to the Court. There, everybody, it appears,
was talking of you. The Emperor wished to know you. That is why steps
were taken through the ambassador at Paris.”
“Yes, yes. And naturally all the world has learned of it. That makes it so
lively. The Nihilists warned me immediately that I would not reach Russia
alive. That, finally, was what decided me on coming. I am naturally very
contrary.”
“And how did you get through the journey?”
“Not badly. I discovered at once in the train a young Slav assigned to kill
me, and I reached an understanding with him. He was a charming youth, so
it was easily arranged.”
Rouletabille was eating away now at strange viands that it would have
been difficult for him to name. Matrena Petrovna laid her fat little hand on
his arm:
“You speak seriously?”
“Very seriously.”
“A small glass of vodka?”
“No alcohol.”
Madame Matrena emptied her little glass at a draught.
“And how did you discover him? How did you know him?”
“First, he wore glasses. All Nihilists wear glasses when traveling. And
then I had a good clew. A minute before the departure from Paris I had a
friend go into the corridor of the sleeping-car, a reporter who would do
anything I said without even wanting to know why. I said, ‘You call out
suddenly and very loud, “Hello, here is Rouletabille.”’ So he called, ‘Hello,
here is Rouletabille,’ and all those who were in the corridor turned and all
those who were already in the compartments came out, excepting the man
with the glasses. Then I was sure about him.”

Madame Trebassof looked at Rouletabille, who turned as red as the comb
of a rooster and was rather embarrassed at his fatuity.
“That deserves a rebuff, I know, madame, but from the moment the
Emperor of all the Russias had desired to see me I could not admit that any
mere man with glasses had not the curiosity to see what I looked like. It was
not natural. As soon as the train was off I sat down by this man and told him
who I thought he was. I was right. He removed his glasses and, looking me
straight in the eyes, said he was glad to have a little talk with me before
anything unfortunate happened. A half-hour later the entente-cordiale was
signed. I gave him to understand that I was coming here simply on business
as a reporter and that there was always time to check me if I should be
indiscreet. At the German frontier he left me to go on, and returned
tranquilly to his nitro-glycerine.”
“You are a marked man also, my poor boy.”
“Oh, they have not got us yet.”
Matrena Petrovna coughed. That us overwhelmed her. With what
calmness this boy that she had not known an hour proposed to share the
dangers of a situation that excited general pity but from which the bravest
kept aloof either from prudence or dismay.
“Ah, my friend, a little of this fine smoked Hamburg beef?”
But the young man was already pouring out fresh yellow beer.
“There,” said he. “Now, madame, I am listening. Tell me first about the
earliest attack.”
“Now,” said Matrena, “we must go to dinner.”
Rouletabille looked at her wide-eyed.
“But, madame, what have I just been doing?”
Madame Matrena smiled. All these strangers were alike. Because they
had eaten some hors-d’oeuvres, some zakouskis, they imagined their host
would be satisfied. They did not know how to eat.
“We will go to the dining-room. The general is expecting you. They are
at table.”
“I understand I am supposed to know him.”
“Yes, you have met in Paris. It is entirely natural that in passing through
St. Petersburg you should make him a visit. You know him very well

indeed, so well that he opens his home to you. Ah, yes, my step-daughter
also”—she flushed a little—“Natacha believes that her father knows you.”
She opened the door of the drawing-room, which they had to cross in
order to reach the dining-room.
From his present position Rouletabille could see all the corners of the
drawing-room, the veranda, the garden and the entrance lodge at the gate. In
the veranda the man in the maroon frock-coat trimmed with false astrakhan
seemed still to be asleep on the sofa; in one of the corners of the drawing-
room another individual, silent and motionless as a statue, dressed exactly
the same, in a maroon frock-coat with false astrakhan, stood with his hands
behind his back seemingly struck with general paralysis at the sight of a
flaring sunset which illumined as with a torch the golden spires of Saints
Peter and Paul. And in the garden and before the lodge three others dressed
in maroon roved like souls in pain over the lawn or back and forth at the
entrance. Rouletabille motioned to Madame Matrena, stepped back into the
sitting-room and closed the door.
“Police?” he asked.
Matrena Petrovna nodded her head and put her finger to her mouth in a
naive way, as one would caution a child to silence. Rouletabille smiled.
“How many are there?”
“Ten, relieved every six hours.”
“That makes forty unknown men around your house each day.”
“Not unknown,” she replied. “Police.”
“Yet, in spite of them, you have had the affair of the bouquet in the
general’s chamber.”
“No, there were only three then. It is since the affair of the bouquet that
there have been ten.”
“It hardly matters. It is since these ten that you have had...”
“What?” she demanded anxiously.
“You know well—the flooring.”
“Sh-h-h.”
She glanced at the door, watching the policeman statuesque before the
setting sun.
“No one knows that—not even my husband.”

“So M. Koupriane told me. Then it is you who have arranged for these
ten police-agents?”
“Certainly.”
“Well, we will commence now by sending all these police away.”
Matrena Petrovna grasped his hand, astounded.
“Surely you don’t think of doing such a thing as that!”
“Yes. We must know where the blow is coming from. You have four
different groups of people around here—the police, the domestics, your
friends, your family. Get rid of the police first. They must not be permitted
to cross your threshold. They have not been able to protect you. You have
nothing to regret. And if, after they are gone, something new turns up, we
can leave M. Koupriane to conduct the inquiries without his being
preoccupied here at the house.”
“But you do not know the admirable police of Koupriane. These brave
men have given proof of their devotion.”
“Madame, if I were face to face with a Nihilist the first thing I would ask
myself about him would be, ‘Is he one of the police?’ The first thing I ask in
the presence of an agent of your police is, ‘Is he not a Nihilist?’”
“But they will not wish to go.”
“Do any of them speak French?”
“Yes, their sergeant, who is out there in the salon.”
“Pray call him.”
Madame Trebassof walked into the salon and signaled. The man
appeared. Rouletabille handed him a paper, which the other read.
“You will gather your men together and quit the villa,” ordered
Rouletabille. “You will return to the police Headguarters. Say to M.
Koupriane that I have commanded this and that I require all police service
around the villa to be suspended until further orders.”
The man bowed, appeared not to understand, looked at Madame
Trebassof and said to the young man:
“At your service.”
He went out.

“Wait here a moment,” urged Madame Trebassof, who did not know how
to take this abrupt action and whose anxiety was really painful to see.
She disappeared after the man of the false astrakhan. A few moments
afterwards she returned. She appeared even more agitated.
“I beg your pardon,” she murmured, “but I cannot let them go like this.
They are much chagrined. They have insisted on knowing where they have
failed in their service. I have appeased them with money.”
“Yes, and tell me the whole truth, madame. You have directed them not to
go far away, but to remain near the villa so as to watch it as closely as
possible.”
She reddened.
“It is true. But they have gone, nevertheless. They had to obey you. What
can that paper be you have shown them?”
Rouletabille drew out again the billet covered with seals and signs and
cabalistics that he did not understand. Madame Trebassof translated it
aloud: “Order to all officials in surveillance of the Villa Trebassof to obey
the bearer absolutely. Signed: Koupriane.”
“Is it possible!” murmured Matrena Petrovna. “But Koupriane would
never have given you this paper if he had imagined that you would use it to
dismiss his agents.”
“Evidently. I have not asked him his advice, madame, you may be sure.
But I will see him to-morrow and he will understand.”
“Meanwhile, who is going to watch over him?” cried she.
Rouletabille took her hands again. He saw her suffering, a prey to
anguish almost prostrating. He pitied her. He wished to give her immediate
confidence.
“We will,” he said.
She saw his young, clear eyes, so deep, so intelligent, the well-formed
young head, the willing face, all his young ardency for her, and it reassured
her. Rouletabille waited for what she might say. She said nothing. She took
him in her arms and embraced him.

II. NATACHA
In the dining-room it was Thaddeus Tchnichnikoff’s turn to tell hunting
stories. He was the greatest timber-merchant in Lithuania. He owned
immense forests and he loved Feodor Feodorovitch* as a brother, for they
had played together all through their childhood, and once he had saved him
from a bear that was just about to crush his skull as one might knock off a
hat. General Trebassof’s father was governor of Courlande at that time, by
the grace of God and the Little Father. Thaddeus, who was just thirteen
years old, killed the bear with a single stroke of his boar-spear, and just in
time. Close ties were knit between the two families by this occurrence, and
though Thaddeus was neither noble-born nor a soldier, Feodor considered
him his brother and felt toward him as such. Now Thaddeus had become the
greatest timber-merchant of the western provinces, with his own forests and
also with his massive body, his fat, oily face, his bull-neck and his ample
paunch. He quitted everything at once—all his affairs, his family—as soon
as he learned of the first attack, to come and remain by the side of his dear
comrade Feodor. He had done this after each attack, without forgetting one.
He was a faithful friend. But he fretted because they might not go bear-
hunting as in their youth. ‘Where, he would ask, are there any bears
remaining in Courlande, or trees for that matter, what you could call trees,
growing since the days of the grand-dukes of Lithuania, giant trees that
threw their shade right up to the very edge of the towns? Where were such
things nowadays? Thaddeus was very amusing, for it was he, certainly, who
had cut them away tranquilly enough and watched them vanish in
locomotive smoke. It was what was called Progress. Ah, hunting lost its
national character assuredly with tiny new-growth trees which had not had
time to grow. And, besides, one nowadays had not time for hunting. All the
big game was so far away. Lucky enough if one seized the time to bring
down a brace of woodcock early in the morning. At this point in Thaddeus’s
conversation there was a babble of talk among the convivial gentlemen, for
they had all the time in the world at their disposal and could not see why he
should be so concerned about snatching a little while at morning or evening,
or at midday for that matter. Champagne was flowing like a river when

Rouletabille was brought in by Matrena Petrovna. The general, whose eyes
had been on the door for some time, cried at once, as though responding to
a cue:
“Ah, my dear Rouletabille! I have been looking for you. Our friends
wrote me you were coming to St. Petersburg.”

* In this story according to Russian habit General Trebassof
is called alternately by that name or the family name Feodor
Feodorovitch, and Madame Trebassof by that name or her
family name, Matrena Petrovna.—Translator’s Note.

Rouletabille hurried over to him and they shook hands like friends who
meet after a long separation. The reporter was presented to the company as
a close young friend from Paris whom they had enjoyed so much during
their latest visit to the City of Light. Everybody inquired for the latest word
of Paris as of a dear acquaintance.
“How is everybody at Maxim’s?” urged the excellent Athanase
Georgevitch.
Thaddeus, too, had been once in Paris and he returned with an
enthusiastic liking for the French demoiselles.
“Vos gogottes, monsieur,” he said, appearing very amiable and leaning on
each word, with a guttural emphasis such as is common in the western
provinces, “ah, vos gogottes!”
Matrena Perovna tried to silence him, but Thaddeus insisted on his right
to appreciate the fair sex away from home. He had a turgid, sentimental
wife, always weeping and cramming her religious notions down his throat.
Of course someone asked Rouletabille what he thought of Russia, but he
had no more than opened his mouth to reply than Athanase Georgevitch
closed it by interrupting:
“Permettez! Permettez! You others, of the young generation, what do you
know of it? You need to have lived a long time and in all its districts to
appreciate Russia at its true value. Russia, my young sir, is as yet a closed
book to you.”
“Naturally,” Rouletabille answered, smiling.
“Well, well, here’s your health! What I would point out to you first of all
is that it is a good buyer of champagne, eh?”—and he gave a huge grin.
“But the hardest drinker I ever knew was born on the banks of the Seine.

Did you know him, Feodor Feodorovitch? Poor Charles Dufour, who died
two years ago at fete of the officers of the Guard. He wagered at the end of
the banquet that he could drink a glassful of champagne to the health of
each man there. There were sixty when you came to count them. He
commenced the round of the table and the affair went splendidly up to the
fifty-eighth man. But at the fifty-ninth—think of the misfortune!—the
champagne ran out! That poor, that charming, that excellent Charles took up
a glass of vin dore which was in the glass of this fifty-ninth, wished him
long life, drained the glass at one draught, had just time to murmur, ‘Tokay,
1807,’ and fell back dead! Ah, he knew the brands, my word! and he proved
it to his last breath! Peace to his ashes! They asked what he died of. I knew
he died because of the inappropriate blend of flavors. There should be
discipline in all things and not promiscuous mixing. One more glass of
champagne and he would have been drinking with us this evening. Your
health, Matrena Petrovna. Champagne, Feodor Feodorovitch! Vive la
France, monsieur! Natacha, my child, you must sing something. Boris will
accompany you on the guzla. Your father will enjoy it.”
All eyes turned toward Natacha as she rose.
Rouletabille was struck by her serene beauty. That was the first
enthralling impression, an impression so strong it astonished him, the
perfect serenity, the supreme calm, the tranquil harmony of her noble
features. Natacha was twenty. Heavy brown hair circled about er forehead
and was looped about her ears, which were half-concealed. Her profile was
clear-cut; her mouth was strong and revealed between red, firm lips the
even pearliness of her teeth. She was of medium height. In walking she had
the free, light step of the highborn maidens who, in primal times, pressed
the flowers as they passed without crushing them. But all her true grace
seemed to be concentrated in her eyes, which were deep and of a dark blue.
The impression she made upon a beholder was very complex. And it would
have been difficult to say whether the calm which pervaded every
manifestation of her beauty was the result of conscious control or the most
perfect ease.
She took down the guzla and handed it to Boris, who struck some
plaintive preliminary chords.
“What shall I sing?” she inquired, raising her father’s hand from the back
of the sofa where he rested and kissing it with filial tenderness.

“Improvise,” said the general. “Improvise in French, for the sake of our
guest.”
“Oh, yes,” cried Boris; “improvise as you did the other evening.”
He immediately struck a minor chord.
Natacha looked fondly at her father as she sang:

“When the moment comes that parts us at the close of day,
when the Angel of Sleep covers you with azure wings;
“Oh, may your eyes rest from so many tears, and your oppressed
heart have calm;
“In each moment that we have together, Father dear, let our
souls feel harmony sweet and mystical;
“And when your thoughts may have flown to other worlds, oh, may
my image, at least, nestle within your sleeping eyes.”

Natacha’s voice was sweet, and the charm of it subtly pervasive. The
words as she uttered them seemed to have all the quality of a prayer and
there were tears in all eyes, excepting those of Michael Korsakoff, the
second orderly, whom Rouletabille appraised as a man with a rough heart
not much open to sentiment.
“Feodor Feodorovitch,” said this officer, when the young girl’s voice had
faded away into the blending with the last note of the guzla, “Feodor
Feodorovitch is a man and a glorious soldier who is able to sleep in peace,
because he has labored for his country and for his Czar.”
“Yes, yes. Labored well! A glorious soldier!” repeated Athanase
Georgevitch and Ivan Petrovitch. “Well may he sleep peacefully.”
“Natacha sang like an angel,” said Boris, the first orderly, in a tremulous
voice.
“Like an angel, Boris Nikolaievitch. But why did she speak of his heart
oppressed? I don’t see that General Trebassof has a heart oppressed, for my
part.” Michael Korsakoff spoke roughly as he drained his glass.
“No, that’s so, isn’t it?” agreed the others.
“A young girl may wish her father a pleasant sleep, surely!” said Matrena
Petrovna, with a certain good sense. “Natacha has affected us all, has she
not, Feodor?”
“Yes, she made me weep,” declared the general. “But let us have
champagne to cheer us up. Our young friend here will think we are chicken-
hearted.”

“Never think that,” said Rouletabille. “Mademoiselle has touched me
deeply as well. She is an artist, really a great artist. And a poet.”
“He is from Paris; he knows,” said the others.
And all drank.
Then they talked about music, with great display of knowledge
concerning things operatic. First one, then another went to the piano and ran
through some motif that the rest hummed a little first, then shouted in a
rousing chorus. Then they drank more, amid a perfect fracas of talk and
laughter. Ivan Petrovitch and Athanase Georgevitch walked across and
kissed the general. Rouletabille saw all around him great children who
amused themselves with unbelievable naivete and who drank in a fashion
more unbelievable still. Matrena Petrovna smoked cigarettes of yellow
tobacco incessantly, rising almost continually to make a hurried round of
the rooms, and after having prompted the servants to greater watchfulness,
sat and looked long at Rouletabille, who did not stir, but caught every word,
every gesture of each one there. Finally, sighing, she sat down by Feodor
and asked how his leg felt. Michael and Natacha, in a corner, were deep in
conversation, and Boris watched them with obvious impatience, still
strumming the guzla. But the thing that struck Rouletabille’s youthful
imagination beyond all else was the mild face of the general. He had not
imagined the terrible Trebassof with so paternal and sympathetic an
expression. The Paris papers had printed redoubtable pictures of him, more
or less authentic, but the arts of photography and engraving had cut
vigorous, rough features of an official—who knew no pity. Such pictures
were in perfect accord with the idea one naturally had of the dominating
figure of the government at Moscow, the man who, during eight days—the
Red Week—had made so many corpses of students and workmen that the
halls of the University and the factories had opened their doors since in
vain. The dead would have had to arise for those places to be peopled! Days
of terrible battle where in one quarter or another of the city there was
naught but massacre or burnings, until Matrena Petrovna and her step-
daughter, Natacha (all the papers told of it), had fallen on their knees before
the general and begged terms for the last of the revolutionaries, at bay in the
Presnia quarter, and had been refused by him. “War is war,” had been his
answer, with irrefutable logic. “How can you ask mercy for these men who
never give it?” Be it said for the young men of the barricades that they

never surrendered, and equally be it said for Trebassof that he necessarily
shot them. “If I had only myself to consider,” the general had said to a Paris
journalist, “I could have been gentle as a lamb with these unfortunates, and
so I should not now myself be condemned to death. After all, I fail to see
what they reproach me with. I have served my master as a brave and loyal
subject, no more, and, after the fighting, I have let others ferret out the
children that had hidden under their mothers’ skirts. Everybody talks of the
repression of Moscow, but let us speak, my friend, of the Commune. There
was a piece of work I would not have done, to massacre within a court an
unresisting crowd of men, women and children. I am a rough and faithful
soldier of His Majesty, but I am not a monster, and I have the feelings of a
husband and father, my dear monsieur. Tell your readers that, if you care to,
and do not surmise further about whether I appear to regret being
condemned to death.”
Certainly what stupefied Rouletabille now was this staunch figure of the
condemned man who appeared so tranquilly to enjoy his life. When the
general was not furthering the gayety of his friends he was talking with his
wife and daughter, who adored him and continually fondled him, and he
seemed perfectly happy. With his enormous grizzly mustache, his ruddy
color, his keen, piercing eyes, he looked the typical spoiled father.
The reporter studied all these widely-different types and made his
observations while pretending to a ravenous appetite, which served,
moreover, to fix him in the good graces of his hosts of the datcha des Iles.
But, in reality, he passed the food to an enormous bull-dog under the table,
in whose good graces he was also thus firmly planting himself. As
Trebassof had prayed his companions to let his young friend satisfy his
ravening hunger in peace, they did not concern themselves to entertain him.
Then, too, the music served to distract attention from him, and at a moment
somewhat later, when Matrena Petrovna turned to speak to the young man,
she was frightened at not seeing him. Where had he gone? She went out
into the veranda and looked. She did not dare to call. She walked into the
grand-salon and saw the reporter just as he came out of the sitting-room.
“Where were you?” she inquired.
“The sitting-room is certainly charming, and decorated exquisitely,”
complimented Rouletabille. “It seems almost a boudoir.”

“It does serve as a boudoir for my step-daughter, whose bedroom opens
directly from it; you see the door there. It is simply for the present that the
luncheon table is set there, because for some time the police have pre-
empted the veranda.”
“Is your dog a watch-dog, madame?” asked Rouletabille, caressing the
beast, which had followed him.
“Khor is faithful and had guarded us well hitherto.”
“He sleeps now, then?”
“Yes. Koupriane has him shut in the lodge to keep him from barking
nights. Koupriane fears that if he is out he will devour one of the police
who watch in the garden at night. I wanted him to sleep in the house, or by
his master’s door, or even at the foot of the bed, but Koupriane said, ‘No,
no; no dog. Don’t rely on the dog. Nothing is more dangerous than to rely
on the dog. ‘Since then he has kept Khor locked up at night. But I do not
understand Koupriane’s idea.”
“Monsieur Koupriane is right,” said the reporter. “Dogs are useful only
against strangers.”
“Oh,” gasped the poor woman, dropping her eyes. “Koupriane certainly
knows his business; he thinks of everything.”
“Come,” she added rapidly, as though to hide her disquiet, “do not go out
like that without letting me know. They want you in the dining-room.”
“I must have you tell me right now about this attempt.”
“In the dining-room, in the dining-room. In spite of myself,” she said in a
low voice, “it is stronger than I am. I am not able to leave the general by
himself while he is on the ground-floor.”
She drew Rouletabille into the dining-room, where the gentlemen were
now telling odd stories of street robberies amid loud laughter. Natacha was
still talking with Michael Korsakoff; Boris, whose eyes never quitted them,
was as pale as the wax on his guzla, which he rattled violently from time to
time. Matrena made Rouletabille sit in a corner of the sofa, near her, and,
counting on her fingers like a careful housewife who does not wish to
overlook anything in her domestic calculations, she said:
“There have been three attempts; the first two in Moscow. The first
happened very simply. The general knew he had been condemned to death.
They had delivered to him at the palace in the afternoon the revoluntionary

poster which proclaimed his intended fate to the whole city and country. So
Feodor, who was just about to ride into the city, dismissed his escort. He
ordered horses put to a sleigh. I trembled and asked what he was going to
do. He said he was going to drive quietly through all parts of the city, in
order to show the Muscovites that a governor appointed according to law by
the Little Father and who had in his conscience only the sense that he had
done his full duty was not to be intimidated. It was nearly four o’clock,
toward the end of a winter day that had been clear and bright, but very cold.
I wrapped myself in my furs and took my seat beside him, and he said,
‘This is fine, Matrena; this will have a great effect on these imbeciles.’ So
we started. At first we drove along the Naberjnaia. The sleigh glided like
the wind. The general hit the driver a heavy blow in the back, crying,
‘Slower, fool; they will think we are afraid,’ and so the horses were almost
walking when, passing behind the Church of Protection and intercession,
we reached the Place Rouge. Until then the few passers-by had looked at us,
and as they recognized him, hurried along to keep him in view. At the Place
Rouge there was only a little knot of women kneeling before the Virgin. As
soon as these women saw us and recognized the equipage of the Governor,
they dispersed like a flock of crows, with frightened cries. Feodor laughed
so hard that as we passed under the vault of the Virgin his laugh seemed to
shake the stones. I felt reassured, monsieur. Our promenade continued
without any remarkable incident. The city was almost deserted. Everything
lay prostrated under the awful blow of that battle in the street. Feodor said,
‘Ah, they give me a wide berth; they do not know how much I love them,”
and all through that promenade he said many more charming and delicate
things to me.
“As we were talking pleasantly under our furs we came to la Place
Koudrinsky, la rue Koudrinsky, to be exact. It was just four o’clock, and a
light mist had commenced to mix with the sifting snow, and the houses to
right and left were visible only as masses of shadow. We glided over the
snow like a boat along the river in foggy calm. Then, suddenly, we heard
piercing cries and saw shadows of soldiers rushing around, with movements
that looked larger than human through the mist; their short whips looked
enormous as they knocked some other shadows that we saw down like logs.
The general stopped the sleigh and got out to see what was going on. I got
out with him. They were soldiers of the famous Semenowsky regiment,
who had two prisoners, a young man and a child. The child was being

beaten on the nape of the neck. It writhed on the ground and cried in
torment. It couldn’t have been more than nine years old. The other, the
young man, held himself up and marched along without a single cry as the
thongs fell brutally upon him. I was appalled. I did not give my husband
time to open his mouth before I called to the subaltern who commanded the
detachment, ‘You should be ashamed to strike a child and a Christian like
that, which cannot defend itself.’ The general told him the same thing. Then
the subaltern told us that the little child had just killed a lieutenant in the
street by firing a revolver, which he showed us, and it was the biggest one I
ever have seen, and must have been as heavy for that infant to lift as a small
cannon. It was unbelievable.
“‘And the other,’ demanded the general; ‘what has he done?’
“‘He is a dangerous student,’ replied the subaltern, ‘who has delivered
himself up as a prisoner because he promised the landlord of the house
where he lives that he would do it to keep the house from being battered
down with cannon.’
“‘But that is right of him. Why do you beat him?’
“‘Because he has told us he is a dangerous student.’
“‘That is no reason,’ Feodor told him. ‘He will be shot if he deserves it,
and the child also, but I forbid you to beat him. You have not been furnished
with these whips in order to beat isolated prisoners, but to charge the crowd
when it does not obey the governor’s orders. In such a case you are ordered
“Charge,” and you know what to do. You understand?’ Feodor said roughly.
‘I am General Trebassof, your governor.’
“Feodor was thoroughly human in saying this. Ah, well, he was badly
compensed for it, very badly, I tell you. The student was truly dangerous,
because he had no sooner heard my husband say, ‘I am General Trebassof,
your governor,’ than he cried, ‘Ah, is it you, Trebassoff’ and drew a
revolver from no one knows where and fired straight at the general, almost
against his breast. But the general was not hit, happily, nor I either, who was
by him and had thrown myself onto the student to disarm him and then was
tossed about at the feet of the soldiers in the battle they waged around the
student while the revolver was going off. Three soldiers were killed. You
can understand that the others were furious. They raised me with many
excuses and, all together, set to kicking the student in the loins and striking
at him as he lay on the ground. The subaltern struck his face a blow that

might have blinded him. Feodor hit the officer in the head with his fist and
called, ‘Didn’t you hear what I said?’ The officer fell under the blow and
Feodor himself carried him to the sleigh and laid him with the dead men.
Then he took charge of the soldiers and led them to the barracks. I followed,
as a sort of after-guard. We returned to the palace an hour later. It was quite
dark by then, and almost at the entrance to the palace we were shot at by a
group of revolutionaries who passed swiftly in two sleighs and disappeared
in the darkness so fast that they could not be overtaken. I had a ball in my
toque. The general had not been touched this time either, but our furs were
ruined by the blood of the dead soldiers which they had forgotten to clean
out of the sleigh. That was the first attempt, which meant little enough, after
all, because it was fighting in the open. It was some days later that they
commenced to try assassination.”
At this moment Ermolai brought in four bottles of champagne and
Thaddeus struck lightly on the piano.
“Quickly, madame, the second attempt,” said Rouletabille, who was
aking hasty notes on his cuff, never ceasing, meanwhile, to watch the
convivial group and listening with both ears wide open to Matrena.
“The second happened still in Moscow. We had had a jolly dinner
because we thought that at last the good old days were back and good
citizens could live in peace; and Boris had tried out the guzla singing songs
of the Orel country to please me; he is so fine and sympathetic. Natacha had
gone somewhere or other. The sleigh was waiting at the door and we went
out and got in. Almost instantly there was a fearful noise, and we were
thrown out into the snow, both the general and me. There remained no trace
of sleigh or coachman; the two horses were disemboweled, two magnificent
piebald horses, my dear young monsieur, that the general was so attached
to. As to Feodor, he had that serious wound in his right leg; the calf was
shattered. I simply had my shoulder a little wrenched, practically nothing.
The bomb had been placed under the seat of the unhappy coachman, whose
hat alone we found, in a pool of blood. From that attack the general lay two
months in bed. In the second month they arrested two servants who were
caught one night on the landing leading to the upper floor, where they had
no business, and after that I sent at once for our old domestics in Orel to
come and serve us. It was discovered that these detected servants were in
touch with the revolutionaries, so they were hanged. The Emperor

appointed a provisional governor, and now that the general was better we
decided on a convalescence for him in the midi of France. We took train for
St. Petersburg, but the journey started high fever in my husband and
reopened the wound in his calf. The doctors ordered absolute rest and so we
settled here in the datcha des Iles. Since then, not a day has passed without
the general receiving an anonymous letter telling him that nothing can save
him from the revenge of the revolutionaries. He is brave and only smiles
over them, but for me, I know well that so long as we are in Russia we have
not a moment’s security. So I watch him every minute and let no one
approach him except his intimate friends and us of the family. I have
brought an old gniagnia who watched me grow up, Ermolai, and the Orel
servants. In the meantime, two months later, the third attempt suddenly
occurred. It is certainly of them all the most frightening, because it is so
mysterious, a mystery that has not yet, alas, been solved.”
But Athanase Georgevitch had told a “good story” which raised so much
hubbub that nothing else could be heard. Feodor Feodorovitch was so
amused that he had tears in his eyes. Rouletabille said to himself as Matrena
talked, “I never have seen men so gay, and yet they know perfectly they are
apt to be blown up all together any moment.”
General Trebassof, who had steadily watched Rouletabille, who, for that
matter, had been kept in eye by everyone there, said:
“Eh, eh, monsieur le journaliste, you find us very gay?”
“I find you very brave,” said Rouletabille quietly.
“How is that?” said Feodor Feodorovitch, smiling.
“You must pardon me for thinking of the things that you seem to have
forgotten entirely.”
He indicated the general’s wounded leg.
“The chances of war! the chances of war!” said the general. “A leg here,
an arm there. But, as you see, I am still here. They will end by growing tired
and leaving me in peace. Your health, my friend!”
“Your health, general!”
“You understand,” continued Feodor Feodorovitch, “there is no occasion
to excite ourselves. It is our business to defend the empire at the peril of our
lives. We find that quite natural, and there is no occasion to think of it. I
have had terrors enough in other directions, not to speak of the terrors of

love, that are more ferocious than you can yet imagine. Look at what they
did to my poor friend the Chief of the Surete, Boichlikoff. He was
commendable certainly. There was a brave man. Of an evening, when his
work was over, he always left the bureau of the prefecture and went to join
his wife and children in their apartment in the ruelle des Loups. Not a
soldier! No guard! The others had every chance. One evening a score of
revolutionaries, after having driven away the terrorized servants, mounted
to his apartments. He was dining with his family. They knocked and he
opened the door. He saw who they were, and tried to speak. They gave him
no time. Before his wife and children, mad with terror and on their knees
before the revolutionaries, they read him his death-sentence. A fine end that
to a dinner!”
As he listened Rouletabille paled and he kept his eyes on the door as if he
expected to see it open of itself, giving access to ferocious Nihilists of
whom one, with a paper in his hand, would read the sentence of death to
Feodor Feodorovitch. Rouletabille’s stomach was not yet seasoned to such
stories. He almost regretted, momentarily, having taken the terrible
responsibility of dismissing the police. After what Koupriane had confided
to him of things that had happened in this house, he had not hesitated to risk
everything on that audacious decision, but all the same, all the same—these
stories of Nihilists who appear at the end of a meal, death-sentence in hand,
they haunted him, they upset him. Certainly it had been a piece of
foolhardiness to dismiss the police!
“Well,” he asked, conquering his misgivings and resuming, as always, his
confidence in himself, “then, what did they do then, after reading the
sentence?”
“The Chief of the Surete knew he had no time to spare. He did not ask for
it. The revolutionaries ordered him to bid his family farewell. He raised his
wife, his children, clasped them, bade them be of good courage, then said
he was ready. They took him into the street. They stood him against a wall.
His wife and children watched from a window. A volley sounded. They
descended to secure the body, pierced with twenty-five bullets.”
“That was exactly the number of wounds that were made on the body of
little Jacques Zloriksky,” came in the even tones of Natacha.
“Oh, you, you always find an excuse,” grumbled the general. “Poor
Boichlikoff did his duty, as I did mine.

“Yes, papa, you acted like a soldier. That is what the revolutionaries
ought not to forget. But have no fears for us, papa; because if they kill you
we will all die with you.”
“And gayly too,” declared Athanase Georgevitch.
“They should come this evening. We are in form!”
Upon which Athanase filled the glasses again.
“None the less, permit me to say,” ventured the timber-merchant,
Thaddeus Tchnitchnikof, timidly, “permit me to say that this Boichlikoff
was very imprudent.”
“Yes, indeed, very gravely imprudent,” agreed Rouletabille. “When a
man has had twenty-five good bullets shot into the body of a child, he ought
certainly to keep his home well guarded if he wishes to dine in peace.”
He stammered a little toward the end of this, because it occurred to him
that it was a little inconsistent to express such opinions, seeing what he had
done with the guard over the general.
“Ah,” cried Athanase Georgevitch, in a stage-struck voice, “Ah, it was
not imprudence! It was contempt of death! Yes, it was contempt of death
that killed him! Even as the contempt of death keeps us, at this moment, in
perfect health. To you, ladies and gentlemen! Do you know anything
lovelier, grander, in the world than contempt of death? Gaze on Feodor
Feodorovitch and answer me. Superb! My word, superb! To you all! The
revolutionaries who are not of the police are of the same mind regarding our
heroes. They may curse the tchinownicks who execute the terrible orders
given them by those higher up, but those who are not of the police (there
are some, I believe)—these surely recognize that men like the Chief of the
Surete our dead friend, are brave.”
“Certainly,” endorsed the general. “Counting all things, they need more
heroism for a promenade in a salon than a soldier on a battle-field.”
“I have met some of these men,” continued Athanase in exalted vein. “I
have found in all their homes the same—imprudence, as our young French
friend calls it. A few days after the assassination of the Chief of Police in
Moscow I was received by his successor in the same place where the
assassination had occurred. He did not take the slightest precaution with
me, whom he did not know at all, nor with men of the middle class who
came to present their petitions, in spite of the fact that it was under precisely

identical conditions that his predecessor had been slain. Before I left I
looked over to where on the floor there had so recently occurred such
agony. They had placed a rug there and on the rug a table, and on that table
there was a book. Guess what book. ‘Women’s Stockings,’ by Willy! And—
and then—Your health, Matrena Petrovna. What’s the odds!”
“You yourselves, my friends,” declared the general, “prove your great
courage by coming to share the hours that remain of my life with me.”
“Not at all, not at all! It is war.”
“Yes, it is war.”
“Oh, there’s no occasion to pat us on the shoulder, Athanase,” insisted
Thaddeus modestly. “What risk do we run? We are well guarded.”
“We are protected by the finger of God,” declared Athanase, “because the
police—well, I haven’t any confidence in the police.”
Michael Korsakoff, who had been for a turn in the garden, entered during
the remark.
“Be happy, then, Athanase Georgevitch,” said he, “for there are now no
police around the villa.”
“Where are they?” inquired the timber-merchant uneasily.
“An order came from Koupriane to remove them,” explained Matrena
Petrovna, who exerted herself to appear calm.
“And are they not replaced?” asked Michael.
“No. It is incomprehensible. There must have been some confusion in the
orders given.” And Matrena reddened, for she loathed a lie and it was in
tribulation of spirit that she used this fable under Rouletabille’s directions.
“Oh, well, all the better,” said the general. “It will give me pleasure to see
my home ridded for a while of such people.”
Athanase was naturally of the same mind as the general, and when
Thaddeus and Ivan Petrovitch and the orderlies offered to pass the night at
the villa and take the place of the absent police, Feodor Feodorovitch
caught a gesture from Rouletabille which disapproved the idea of this new
guard.
“No, no,” cried the general emphatically. “You leave at the usual time. I
want now to get back into the ordinary run of things, my word! To live as
everyone else does. We shall be all right. Koupriane and I have arranged the

matter. Koupriane is less sure of his men, after all, than I am of my servants.
You understand me. I do not need to explain further. You will go home to
bed—and we will all sleep. Those are the orders. Besides, you must
remember that the guard-post is only a step from here, at the corner of the
road, and we have only to give a signal to bring them all here. But—more
secret agents or special police—no, no! Good-night. All of us to bed now!”
They did not insist further. When Feodor had said, “Those are the
orders,” there was room for nothing more, not even in the way of polite
insistence.
But before going to their beds all went into the veranda, where liqueurs
were served by the brave Ermolai, as always. Matrena pushed the wheel-
chair of the general there, and he kept repeating, “No, no. No more such
people. No more police. They only bring trouble.”
“Feodor! Feodor!” sighed Matrena, whose anxiety deepened in spite of
all she could do, “they watched over your dear life.”
“Life is dear to me only because of you, Matrena Petrovna.”
“And not at all because of me, papa?” said Natacha.
“Oh, Natacha!”
He took both her hands in his. It was an affecting glimpse of family
intimacy.
From time to time, while Ermolai poured the liqueurs, Feodor struck his
band on the coverings over his leg.
“It gets better,” said he. “It gets better.”
Then melancholy showed in his rugged face, and he watched night
deepen over the isles, the golden night of St. Petersburg. It was not quite yet
the time of year for what they call the golden nights there, the “white
nights,” nights which never deepen to darkness, but they were already
beautiful in their soft clarity, caressed, here by the Gulf of Finland, almost
at the same time by the last and the first rays of the sun, by twilight and
dawn.
From the height of the veranda one of the most beautiful bits of the isles
lay in view, and the hour was so lovely that its charm thrilled these people,
of whom several, as Thaddeus, were still close to nature. It was he, first,
who called to Natacha:

“Natacha! Natacha! Sing us your ‘Soir des Iles.’”
Natacha’s voice floated out upon the peace of the islands under the dim
arched sky, light and clear as a night rose, and the guzla of Boris
accompanied it. Natacha sang:
“This is the night of the Isles—at the north of the world. The sky presses
in its stainless arms the bosom of earth, Night kisses the rose that dawn
gave to the twilight. And the night air is sweet and fresh from across the
shivering gulf, Like the breath of young girls from the world still farther
north. Beneath the two lighted horizons, sinking and rising at once, The sun
rolls rebounding from the gods at the north of the world. In this moment,
beloved, when in the clear shadows of this rose-stained evening I am here
alone with you, Respond, respond with a heart less timid to the holy,
accustomed cry of ‘Good-evening.’”
Ah, how Boris Nikolaievitch and Michael Korsakoff watched her as she
sang! Truly, no one ever can guess the anger or the love that broods in a
Slavic heart under a soldier’s tunic, whether the soldier wisely plays at the
guzla, as the correct Boris, or merely lounges, twirling his mustache with
his manicured and perfumed fingers, like Michael, the indifferent.
Natacha ceased singing, but all seemed to be listening to her still—the
convivial group on the terrace appeared to be held in charmed attention, and
the porcelain statuettes of men on the lawn, according to the mode of the
Iles, seemed to lift on their short legs the better to hear pass the sighing
harmony of Natacha in the rose nights at the north of the world.
Meanwhile Matrena wandered through the house from cellar to attic,
watching over her husband like a dog on guard, ready to bite, to throw itself
in the way of danger, to receive the blows, to die for its master—and
hunting for Rouletabille, who had disappeared again.

III. THE WATCH
She went out to caution the servants to a strict watch, armed to the teeth,
before the gate all night long, and she crossed the deserted garden. Under
the veranda the schwitzar was spreading a mattress for Ermolai. She asked
him if he had seen the young Frenchman anywhere, and after the answer,
could only say to herself, “Where is he, then?” Where had Rouletabille
gone? The general, whom she had carried up to his room on her back,
without any help, and had helped into bed without assistance, was disturbed
by this singular disappearance. Had someone already carried off “their”
Rouletabille? Their friends were gone and the orderlies had taken leave
without being able to say where this boy of a journalist had gone. But it
would be foolish to worry about the disappearance of a Journalist, they had
said. That kind of man—these journalists—came, went, arrived when one
least expected them, and quitted their company—even the highest society—
without formality. It was what they called in France “leaving English
fashion.” However, it appeared it was not meant to be impolite. Perhaps he
had gone to telegraph. A journalist had to keep in touch with the telegraph
at all hours. Poor Matrena Petrovna roamed the solitary garden in tumult of
heart. There was the light in the general’s window on the first floor. There
were lights in the basement from the kitchens. There was a light on the
ground-floor near the sitting-room, from Natacha’s chamber window. Ah,
the night was hard to bear. And this night the shadows weighed heavier than
ever on the valiant breast of Matrena. As she breathed she felt as though she
lifted all the weight of the threatening night. She examined everything—
everything. All was shut tight, was perfectly secure, and there was no one
within excepting people she was absolutely sure of—but whom, all the
same, she did not allow to go anywhere in the house excepting where their
work called them. Each in his place. That made things surer. She wished
each one could remain fixed like the porcelain statues of men out on the
lawn. Even as she thought it, here at her feet, right at her very feet, a
shadow of one of the porcelain men moved, stretched itself out, rose to its
knees, grasped her skirt and spoke in the voice of Rouletabille. Ah, good! it
was Rouletabille. “Himself, dear madame; himself.”

“Why is Ermolai in the veranda? Send him back to the kitchens and tell
the schwitzar to go to bed. The servants are enough for an ordinary guard
outside. Then you go in at once, shut the door, and don’t concern yourself
about me, dear madame. Good-night.”
Rouletabille had resumed, in the shadows, among the other porcelain
figures, his pose of a porcelain man.
Matrena Petrovna did as she was told, returned to the house, spoke to the
schwitzar, who removed to the lodge with Ermolai, and their mistress
closed the outside door. She had closed long before the door of the kitchen
stair which allowed the domestics to enter the villa from below. Down there
each night the devoted gniagnia and the faithful Ermolai watched in turn.
Within the villa, now closed, there were on the ground-floor only
Matrena herself and her step-daughter Natacha, who slept in the chamber
off the sitting-room, and, above on the first floor, the general asleep, or who
ought to be asleep if he had taken his potion. Matrena remained in the
darkness of the drawing-room, her dark-lantern in her hand. All her nights
passed thus, gliding from door to door, from chamber to chamber, watching
over the watch of the police, not daring to stop her stealthy promenade even
to throw herself on the mattress that she had placed across the doorway of
her husband’s chamber. Did she ever sleep? She herself could hardly say.
Who else could, then? A tag of sleep here and there, over the arm of a chair,
or leaning against the wall, waked always by some noise that she heard or
dreamed, some warning, perhaps, that she alone had heard. And to-night,
to-night there is Rouletabille’s alert guard to help her, and she feels a little
less the aching terror of watchfulness, until there surges back into her mind
the recollection that the police are no longer there. Was he right, this young
man? Certainly she could not deny that some way she feels more
confidence now that the police are gone. She does not have to spend her
time watching their shadows in the shadows, searching the darkness, the
arm-chairs, the sofas, to rouse them, to appeal in low tones to all they held
binding, by their own name and the name of their father, to promise them a
bonus that would amount to something if they watched well, to count them
in order to know where they all were, and, suddenly, to throw full in their
face the ray of light from her little dark-lantern in order to be sure,
absolutely sure, that she was face to face with them, one of the police, and
not with some other, some other with an infernal machine under his arm.

Yes, she surely had less work now that she had no longer to watch the
police. And she had less fear!
She thanked the young reporter for that. Where was he? Did he remain in
the pose of a porcelain statue all this time out there on the lawn? She peered
through the lattice of the veranda shutters and looked anxiously out into the
darkened garden. Where could he be? Was that he, down yonder, that
crouching black heap with an unlighted pipe in his mouth? No, no. That,
she knew well, was the dwarf she genuinely loved, her little domovoi-
doukh, the familiar spirit of the house, who watched with her over the
general’s life and thanks to whom serious injury had not yet befallen Feodor
Feodorovitch—one could not regard a mangled leg that seriously.
Ordinarily in her own country (she was from the Orel district) one did not
care to see the domovoi-doukh appear in flesh and blood. When she was
little she was always afraid that she would come upon him around a turn of
the path in her father’s garden. She always thought of him as no higher than
that, seated back on his haunches and smoking his pipe. Then, after she was
married, she had suddenly run across him at a turning in the bazaar at
Moscow. He was just as she had imagined him, and she had immediately
bought him, carried him home herself and placed him, with many
precautions, for he was of very delicate porcelain, in the vestibule of the
palace. And in leaving Moscow she had been careful not to leave him there.
She had carried him herself in a case and had placed him herself on the
lawn of the datcha des Iles, that he might continue to watch over her
happiness and over the life of her Feodor. And in order that he should not be
bored, eternally smoking his pipe all alone, she had surrounded him with a
group of little porcelain genii, after the fashion of the Jardins des Iles. Lord!
how that young Frenchman had frightened her, rising suddenly like that,
without warning, on the lawn. She had believed for a moment that it was
the domovoi-doukh himself rising to stretch his legs. Happily he had
spoken at once and she had recognized his voice. And besides, her domovoi
surely would not speak French. Ah! Matrena Petrovna breathed freely now.
It seemed to her, this night, that there were two little familiar genii watching
over the house. And that was worth more than all the police in the world,
surely. How wily that little fellow was to order all those men away. There
was something it was necessary to know; it was necessary therefore that
nothing should be in the way of learning it. As things were now, the
mystery could operate without suspicion or interference. Only one man

watched it, and he had not the air of watching. Certainly Rouletabille had
not the air of constantly watching anything. He had the manner, out in the
night, of an easy little man in porcelain, neither more nor less, yet he could
see everything—if anything were there to see—and he could hear
everything—if there were anything to hear. One passed beside him without
suspecting him, and men might talk to each other without an idea that he
heard them, and even talk to themselves according to the habit people have
sometimes when they think themselves quite alone. All the guests had
departed thus, passing close by him, almost brushing him, had exchanged
their “Adieus,” their “Au revoirs,” and all their final, drawn-out farewells.
That dear little living domovoi certainly was a rogue! Oh, that dear little
domovoi who had been so affected by the tears of Matrena Petrovna! The
good, fat, sentimental, heroic woman longed to hear, just then, his
reassuring voice.
“It is I. Here I am,” said the voice of her little living familiar spirit at that
instant, and she felt her skirt grasped. She waited for what he should say.
She felt no fear. Yet she had supposed he was outside the house. Still, after
all, she was not too astonished that he was within. He was so adroit! He had
entered behind her, in the shadow of her skirts, on all-fours, and had slipped
away without anyone noticing him, while she was speaking to her
enormous, majestic schwitzar.
“So you were here?” she said, taking his hand and pressing it nervously
in hers.
“Yes, yes. I have watched you closing the house. It is a task well-done,
certainly. You have not forgotten anything.”
“But where were you, dear little demon? I have been into all the corners,
and my hands did not touch you.”
“I was under the table set with hors-d’oeuvres in the sitting-room.”
“Ah, under the table of zakouskis! I have forbidden them before now to
spread a long hanging cloth there, which obliges me to kick my foot
underneath casually in order to be sure there is no one beneath. It is
imprudent, very imprudent, such table-cloths. And under the table of
zakouskis have you been able to see or hear anything?”
“Madame, do you think that anyone could possibly see or hear anything
in the villa when you are watching it alone, when the general is asleep and
your step-daughter is preparing for bed?”

“No. No. I do not believe so. I do not. No, oh, Christ!”
They talked thus very low in the dark, both seated in a corner of the sofa,
Rouletabille’s hand held tightly in the burning hands of Matrena Petrovna.
She sighed anxiously. “And in the garden—have you heard anything?”
“I heard the officer Boris say to the officer Michael, in French, ‘Shall we
return at once to the villa?’ The other replied in Russian in a way I could see
was a refusal. Then they had a discussion in Russian which I, naturally,
could not understand. But from the way they talked I gathered that they
disagreed and that no love was lost between them.”
“No, they do not love each other. They both love Natacha.”
“And she, which one of them does she love? It is necessary to tell me.”
“She pretends that she loves Boris, and I believe she does, and yet she is
very friendly with Michael and often she goes into nooks and corners to
chat with him, which makes Boris mad with jealousy. She has forbidden
Boris to speak to her father about their marriage, on the pretext that she
does not wish to leave her father now, while each day, each minute the
general’s life is in danger.”
“And you, madame—do you love your step-daughter?” brutally inquired
the reporter.
“Yes—sincerely,” replied Matrena Petrovna, withdrawing her hand from
those of Rouletabille.
“And she—does she love you?”
“I believe so, monsieur, I believe so sincerely. Yes, she loves me, and
there is not any reason why she should not love me. I believe—understand
me thoroughly, because it comes from my heart—that we all here in this
house love one another. Our friends are old proved friends. Boris has been
orderly to my husband for a very long time. We do not share any of his too-
modern ideas, and there were many discussions on the duty of soldiers at
the time of the massacres. I reproached him with being as womanish as we
were in going down on his knees to the general behind Natacha and me,
when it became necessary to kill all those poor moujiks of Presnia. It was
not his role. A soldier is a soldier. My husband raised him roughly and
ordered him, for his pains, to march at the head of the troops. It was right.
What else could he do? The general already had enough to fight against,
with the whole revolution, with his conscience, with the natural pity in his

heart of a brave man, and with the tears and insupportable moanings, at
such a moment, of his daughter and his wife. Boris understood and obeyed
him, but, after the death of the poor students, he behaved again like a
woman in composing those verses on the heroes of the barricades; don’t
you think so? Verses that Natacha and he learned by heart, working
together, when they were surprised at it by the general. There was a terrible
scene. It was before the next-to-the-last attack. The general then had the use
of both legs. He stamped his feet and fairly shook the house.”
“Madame,” said Rouletabille, “a propos of the attacks, you must tell me
about the third.”
As he said this, leaning toward her, Matrena Petrovna ejaculated a
“Listen!” that made him rigid in the night with ear alert. What had she
heard? For him, he had heard nothing.
“You hear nothing?” she whispered to him with an effort. “A tick-tack?”
“No, I hear nothing.”
“You know—like the tick-tack of a clock. Listen.”
“How can you hear the tick-tack? I’ve noticed that no clocks are running
here.”
“Don’t you understand? It is so that we shall be able to hear the tick-tack
better.”
“Oh, yes, I understand. But I do not hear anything.”
“For myself, I think I hear the tick-tack all the time since the last attempt.
It haunts my ears, it is frightful, to say to one’s self: There is clockwork
somewhere, just about to reach the death-tick—and not to know where, not
to know where! When the police were here I made them all listen, and I was
not sure even when they had all listened and said there was no tick-tack. It
is terrible to hear it in my ear any moment when I least expect it. Tick-tack!
Tick-tack! It is the blood beating in my ear, for instance, hard, as if it struck
on a sounding-board. Why, here are drops of perspiration on my hands!
Listen!”
“Ah, this time someone is talking—is crying,” said the young man.
“Sh-h-h!” And Rouletabille felt the rigid hand of Matrena Petrovna on his
arm. “It is the general. The general is dreaming!”

She drew him into the dining-room, into a corner where they could no
longer hear the moanings. But all the doors that communicated with the
dining-room, the drawing-room and the sitting-room remained open behind
him, by the secret precaution of Rouletabille.
He waited while Matrena, whose breath he heard come hard, was a little
behind. In a moment, quite talkative, and as though she wished to distract
Rouletabille’s attention from the sounds above, the broken words and sighs,
she continued:
“See, you speak of clocks. My husband has a watch which strikes. Well, I
have stopped his watch because more than once I have been startled by
hearing the tick-tack of his watch in his waistcoat-pocket. Koupriane gave
me that advice one day when he was here and had pricked his ears at the
noise of the pendulums, to stop all my watches and clocks so that there
would be no chance of confusing them with the tick-tack that might come
from an infernal machine planted in some corner. He spoke from
experience, my dear little monsieur, and it was by his order that all the
clocks at the Ministry, on the Naberjnaia, were stopped, my dear little
friend. The Nihilists, he told me, often use clockworks to set off their
machines at the time they decide on. No one can guess all the inventions
that they have, those brigands. In the same way, Koupriane advised me to
take away all the draught-boards from the fireplaces. By that precaution
they were enabled to avoid a terrible disaster at the Ministry near the Pont-
des-chantres, you know, petit demovoi? They saw a bomb just as it was
being lowered into the fire-place of the minister’s cabinet.* The Nihilists
held it by a cord and were up on the roof letting it down the chimney. One
of them was caught, taken to Schlusselbourg and hanged. Here you can see
that all the draught-boards of the fireplaces are cleared away.”

*Actual attack on Witte.

“Madame,” interrupted Rouletabille (Matrena Petrovna did not know that
no one ever succeeded in distracting Rouletabille’s attention), “madame,
someone moans still, upstairs.”
“Oh, that is nothing, my little friend. It is the general, who has bad nights.
He cannot sleep without a narcotic, and that gives him a fever. I am going to
tell you now how the third attack came about. And then you will

understand, by the Virgin Mary, how it is I have yet, always have, the tick-
tack in my ears.
“One evening when the general had got to sleep and I was in my own
room, I heard distinctly the tick-tack of clockwork operating. All the clocks
had been stopped, as Koupriane advised, and I had made an excuse to send
Feodor’s great watch to the repairer. You can understand how I felt when I
heard that tick-tack. I was frenzied. I turned my head in all directions, and
decided that the sound came from my husband’s chamber. I ran there. He
still slept, man that he is! The tick-tack was there. But where? I turned here
and there like a fool. The chamber was in darkness and it seemed absolutely
impossible for me to light a lamp because I thought I could not take the
time for fear the infernal machine would go off in those few seconds. I
threw myself on the floor and listened under the bed. The noise came from
above. But where? I sprang to the fireplace, hoping that, against my orders,
someone had started the mantel-clock. No, it was not that! It seemed to me
now that the tick-tack came from the bed itself, that the machine was in the
bed. The general awaked just then and cried to me, ‘What is it, Matrena?
What are you doing?’ And he raised himself in bed, while I cried, ‘Listen!
Hear the tick-tack. Don’t you hear the tick-tack?’ I threw myself upon him
and gathered him up in my arms to carry him, but I trembled too much, was
too weak from fear, and fell back with him onto the bed, crying, ‘Help!’ He
thrust me away and said roughly, ‘Listen.’ The frightful tick-tack was
behind us now, on the table. But there was nothing on the table, only the
night-light, the glass with the potion in it, and a gold vase where I had
placed with my own hands that morning a cluster of grasses and wild
flowers that Ermolai had brought that morning on his return from the Orel
country. With one bound I was on the table and at the flowers. I struck my
fingers among the grasses and the flowers, and felt a resistance. The tick-
tack was in the bouquet! I took the bouquet in both hands, opened the
window and threw it as far as I could into the garden. At the same moment
the bomb burst with a terrible noise, giving me quite a deep wound in the
hand. Truly, my dear little domovoi, that day we had been very near death,
but God and the Little Father watched over us.”
And Matrena Petrovna made the sign of the cross.
“All the windows of the house were broken. In all, we escaped with the
fright and a visit from the glazier, my little friend, but I certainly believed

that all was over.”
“And Mademoiselle Natacha?” inquired Rouletabille. “She must also
have been terribly frightened, because the whole house must have rocked.”
“Surely. But Natacha was not here that night. It was a Saturday. She had
been invited to the soiree du ‘Michel’ by the parents of Boris Nikolaievitch,
and she slept at their house, after supper at the Ours, as had been planned.
The next day, when she learned the danger the general had escaped, she
trembled in every limb. She threw herself in her father’s arms, weeping,
which was natural enough, and declared that she never would go away from
him again. The general told her how I had managed. Then she pressed me to
her heart, saying that she never would forget such an action, and that she
loved me more than if I were truly her mother. It was all in vain that during
the days following we sought to understand how the infernal machine had
been placed in the bouquet of wild flowers. Only the general’s friends that
you saw this evening, Natacha and I had entered the general’s chamber
during the day or in the evening. No servant, no chamber-maid, had been on
that floor. In the day-time as well as all night long that entire floor is closed
and I have the keys. The door of the servants’ staircase which opens onto
that floor, directly into the general’s chamber, is always locked and barred
on the inside with iron. Natacha and I do the chamber work. There is no
way of taking greater precautions. Three police agents watched over us
night and day. The night of the bouquet two had spent their time watching
around the house, and the third lay on the sofa in the veranda. Then, too, we
found all the doors and windows of the villa shut tight. In such
circumstances you can judge whether my anguish was not deeper than any I
had known hitherto. Because to whom, henceforth, could we trust
ourselves? what and whom could we believe? what and whom could we
watch? From that day, no other person but Natacha and me have the right to
go to the first floor. The general’s chamber was forbidden to his friends.
Anyway, the general improved, and soon had the pleasure of receiving them
himself at his table. I carry the general down and take him to his room again
on my back. I do not wish anyone to help. I am strong enough for that. I
feel that I could carry him to the end of the world if that would save him.
Instead of three police, we had ten; five outside, five inside. The days went
well enough, but the nights were frightful, because the shadows of the
police that I encountered always made me fear that I was face to face with
the Nihilists. One night I almost strangled one with my hand. It was after

that incident that we arranged with Koupriane that the agents who watched
at night, inside, should stay placed in the veranda, after having, at the end of
the evening, made complete examination of everything. They were not to
leave the veranda unless they heard a suspicious noise or I called to them.
And it was after that arrangement that the incident of the floor happened,
that has puzzled so both Koupriane and me.”
“Pardon, madame,” interrupted Rouletabille, “but the agents, during the
examination of everything, never went to the bedroom floor?”
“No, my child, there is only myself and Natacha, I repeat, who, since the
bouquet, go there.”
“Well, madame, it is necessary to take me there at once.”
“At once!”
“Yes, into the general’s chamber.”
“But he is sleeping, my child. Let me tell you exactly how the affair of
the floor happened, and you will know as much of it as I and as Koupriane.”
“To the general’s chamber at once.”
She took both his hands and pressed them nervously. “Little friend! Little
friend! One hears there sometimes things which are the secret of the night!
You understand me?”
“To the general’s chamber, at once, madame.”
Abruptly she decided to take him there, agitated, upset as she was by
ideas and sentiments which held her without respite between the wildest
inquietude and the most imprudent audacity.

IV. “THE YOUTH OF MOSCOW IS DEAD”
Rouletabille let himself be led by Matrena through the night, but he
stumbled and his awkward hands struck against various things. The ascent
to the first floor was accomplished in profound silence. Nothing broke it
except that restless moaning which had so affected the young man just
before.
The tepid warmth, the perfume of a woman’s boudoir, then, beyond,
through two doors opening upon the dressing-room which lay between
Matrena’s chamber and Feodor’s, the dim luster of a night-lamp showed the
bed where was stretched the sleeping tyrant of Moscow. Ah, he was
frightening to see, with the play of faint yellow light and diffused shadows
upon him. Such heavy-arched eyebrows, such an aspect of pain and
menace, the massive jaw of a savage come from the plains of Tartary to be
the Scourge of God, the stiff, thick, spreading beard. This was a form akin
to the gallery of old nobles at Kasan, and young Rouletabille imagined him
as none other than Ivan the Terrible himself. Thus appeared as he slept the
excellent Feodor Feodorovitch, the easy, spoiled father of the family table,
the friend of the advocate celebrated for his feats with knife and fork and of
the bantering timber-merchant and amiable bear-hunter, the joyous
Thaddeus and Athanase; Feodor, the faithful spouse of Matrena Petrovna
and the adored papa of Natacha, a brave man who was so unfortunate as to
have nights of cruel sleeplessness or dreams more frightful still.
At that moment a hoarse sigh heaved his huge chest in an uneven rhythm,
and Rouletabille, leaning in the doorway of the dressing-room, watched—
but it was no longer the general that he watched, it was something else,
lower down, beside the wall, near the door, and it was that which set him
tiptoeing so lightly across the floor that it gave no sound. There was no
slightest sound in the chamber, except the heavy breathing lifting the rough
chest. Behind Rouletabille Matrena raised her arms, as though she wished
to hold him back, because she did not know where he was going. What was
he doing? Why did he stoop thus beside the door and why did he press his
thumb all along the floor at the doorway? He rose again and returned. He
passed again before the bed, where rumbled now, like the bellows of a

forge, the respiration of the sleeper. Matrena grasped Rouletabille by the
hand. And she had already hurried him into the dressing-room when a moan
stopped them.
“The youth of Moscow is dead!”
It was the sleeper speaking. The mouth which had given the stringent
orders moaned. And the lamentation was still a menace. In the haunted
sleep thrust upon that man by the inadequate narcotic the words Feodor
Feodorovitch spoke were words of mourning and pity. This perfect fiend of
a soldier, whom neither bullets nor bombs could intimidate, had a way of
saying words which transformed their meaning as they came from his
terrible mouth. The listeners could not but feel absorbed in the tones of the
brutal victor.
Matrena Petrovna and Rouletabille had leant their two shadows, blended
one into the other, against the open doorway just beyond the gleam of the
night-lamp, and they heard with horror:
“The youth of Moscow is dead! They have cleared away the corpses.
There is nothing but ruin left. The Kremlin itself has shut its gates—that it
may not see. The youth of Moscow is dead!”
Feodor Feodorovitch’s fist shook above his bed; it seemed that he was
about to strike, to kill again, and Rouletabille felt Matrena trembling against
him, while he trembled as well before the fearful vision of the killer in the
Red Week!
Feodor heaved an immense sigh and his breast descended under the bed-
clothes, the fist relaxed and fell, the great head lay over on its ear. There
was silence. Had he repose at last? No, no. He sighed, he choked anew, he
tossed on his couch like the damned in torment, and the words written by
his daughter—by his daughter—blazed in his eyes, which now were wide
open—words written on the wall, that he read on the wall, written in blood.

“The youth of Moscow is dead! They had gone so young into the
fields and into the mines,
And they had not found a single corner of the Russian land where
there were not moanings.
Now the youth of Moscow is dead and no more moanings are heard,
Because those for whom all youth died do not dare even to moan
any more.

But—what? The voice of Feodor lost its threatening tone. His breath
came as from a weeping child. And it was with sobs in his throat that he

said the last verse, the verse written by his daughter in the album, in red
letters:

“The last barricade had standing there the girl of eighteen
winters, the virgin of Moscow, flower of the snow.
Who gave her kisses to the workmen struck by the bullets
from the soldiers of the Czar;
“She aroused the admiration of the very soldiers who, weeping,
killed her:
“What killing! All the houses shuttered, the windows with heavy
eyelids of plank in order not to see!—
“And the Kremlin itself has closed its gates—that it may
not see.
“The youth of Moscow is dead!”

“Feodor! Feodor!”
She had caught him in her arms, holding him fast, comforting him while
still he raved, “The youth of Moscow is dead,” and appeared to thrust away
with insensate gestures a crowd of phantoms. She crushed him to her breast,
she put her hands over his mouth to make him stop, but he, saying, “Do you
hear? Do you hear? What do they say? They say nothing, now. What a
tangle of bodies under the sleigh, Matrena! Look at those frozen legs of
those poor girls we pass, sticking out in all directions, like logs, from under
their icy, blooded skirts. Look, Matrena!”
And then came further delirium uttered in Russian, which was all the
more terrible to Rouletabille because he could not comprehend it.
Then, suddenly, Feodor became silent and thrust away Matrena Petrovna.
“It is that abominable narcotic,” he said with an immense sigh. “I’ll drink
no more of it. I do not wish to drink it.”
With one hand he pointed to a large glass on the table beside him, still
half full of a soporific mixture with which he moistened his lips each time
he woke; with the other hand he wiped the perspiration from his face.
Matrena Petrovna stayed trembling near him, suddenly overpowered by the
idea that he might discover there was someone there behind the door, who
had seen and heard the sleep of General Trebassof! Ah, if he learned that,
everything was over. She might say her prayers; she should die.
But Rouletabille was careful to give no sign. He barely breathed. What a
nightmare! He understood now the emotion of the general’s friends when
Natacha had sung in her low, sweet voice, “Good-night. May your eyes
have rest from tears and calm re-enter your heart oppressed.” The friends

had certainly been made aware, by Matrena’s anxious talking, of the
general’s insomnia, and they could not repress their tears as they listened to
the poetic wish of charming Natacha. “All the same,” thought Rouletabille,
“no one could imagine what I have just seen. They are not dead for
everyone in the world, the youths of Moscow, and every night I know now
a chamber where in the glow of the night-lamp they rise—they rise—they
rise!” and the young man frankly, naively regretted to have intruded where
he was; to have penetrated, however unintentionally, into an affair which,
after all, concerned only the many dead and the one living. Why had he
come to put himself between the dead and the living? It might be said to
him: “The living has done his whole heroic duty,” but the dead, what else
was it that they had done?
Ah, Rouletabille cursed his curiosity, for—he saw it now—it was the
desire to approach the mystery revealed by Koupriane and to penetrate once
more, through all the besetting dangers, an astounding and perhaps
monstrous enigma, that had brought him to the threshold of the datcha des
Iles, which had placed him in the trembling hands of Matrena Petrovna in
promising her his help. He had shown pity, certainly, pity for the delirious
distress of that heroic woman. But there had been more curiosity than pity
in his motives. And now he must pay, because it was too late now to
withdraw, to say casually, “I wash my hands of it.” He had sent away the
police and he alone remained between the general and the vengeance of the
dead! He might desert, perhaps! That one idea brought him to himself,
roused all his spirit. Circumstances had brought him into a camp that he
must defend at any cost, unless he was afraid!
The general slept now, or, at least, with eyelids closed simulated sleep,
doubtless in order to reassure poor Matrena who, on her knees beside his
pillow, had retained the hand of her terrible husband in her own. Shortly she
rose and rejoined Rouletabille in her chamber. She took him then to a little
guest-chamber where she urged him to get some sleep. He replied that it
was she who needed rest. But, agitated still by what had just happened, she
babbled:
“No, no! after such a scene I would have nightmares myself as well. Ah,
it is dreadful! Appalling! Appalling! Dear little monsieur, it is the secret of
the night. The poor man! Poor unhappy man! He cannot tear his thoughts
away from it. It is his worst and unmerited punishment, this translation that

Natacha has made of Boris’s abominable verses. He knows them by heart,
they are in his brain and on his tongue all night long, in spite of narcotics,
and he says over and over again all the time, ‘It is my daughter who has
written that!—my daughter!—my daughter!’ It is enough to wring all the
tears from one’s body—that an aide-de-camp of a general, who himself has
killed the youth of Moscow, is allowed to write such verses and that
Natacha should take it upon herself to translate them into lovely poetic
French for her album. It is hard to account for what they do nowadays, to
our misery.”
She ceased, for just then they heard the floor creak under a step
downstairs. Rouletabille stopped Matrena short and drew his revolver. He
wished to creep down alone, but he had not time. As the floor creaked a
second time, Matrena’s anguished voice called down the staircase in
Russian, “Who is there?” and immediately the calm voice of Natacha
answered something in the same language. Then Matrena, trembling more
and more, and very much excited keeping steadily to the same place as
though she had been nailed to the step of the stairway, said in French, “Yes,
all is well; your father is resting. Good-night, Natacha.” They heard
Natacha’s step cross the drawing-room and the sitting-room. Then the door
of her chamber closed. Matrena and Rouletabille descended, holding their
breath. They reached the dining-room and Matrena played her dark-lantern
on the sofa where the general always reclined. The sofa was in its usual
place on the carpet. She pushed it back and raised the carpet, laying the
floor bare. Then she got onto her knees and examined the floor minutely.
She rose, wiping the perspiration from her brow, put the carpet hack in
place, adjusted the sofa and dropped upon it with a great sigh.
“Well?” demanded Rouletabille.
“Nothing at all,” said she.
“Why did you call so openly?”
“Because there was no doubt that it could only be my step-daughter on
the ground-floor at that hour.”
“And why this anxiety to examine the floor again?”
“I entreat you, my dear little child, do not see in my acts anything
mysterious, anything hard to explain. That anxiety you speak of never
leaves me. Whenever I have the chance I examine the flooring.”

“Madame,” demanded the young man, “what was your daughter doing in
this room?”
“She came for a glass of mineral water; the bottle is still on the table.”
“Madame, it is necessary that you tell me precisely what Koupriane has
only hinted to me, unless I am entirely mistaken. The first time that you
thought to examine the floor, was it after you heard a noise on the ground-
floor such as has just happened?”
“Yes. I will tell you all that is necessary. It was the night after the attempt
with the bouquet, my dear little monsieur, my dear little domovoi; it seemed
to me I heard a noise on the ground-floor. I hurried downstairs and saw
nothing suspicious at first. Everything was shut tight. I opened the door of
Natacha’s chamber softly. I wished to ask her if she had heard anything. But
she was so fast asleep that I had not the heart to awaken her. I opened the
door of the veranda, and all the police—all, you understand—slept soundly.
I took another turn around the furniture, and, with my lantern in my hand, I
was just going out of the dining-room when I noticed that the carpet on the
floor was disarranged at one corner. I got down and my hand struck a great
fold of carpet near the general’s sofa. You would have said that the sofa had
been rolled carelessly, trying to replace it in the position it usually occupied.
Prompted by a sinister presentiment, I pushed away the sofa and I lifted the
carpet. At first glance I saw nothing, but when I examined things closer I
saw that a strip of wood did not lie well with the others on the floor. With a
knife I was able to lift that strip and I found that two nails which had
fastened it to the beam below had been freshly pulled out. It was just so I
could raise the end of the board a little without being able to slip my hand
under. To lift it any more it would be necessary to pull at least half-a-dozen
nails. What could it mean? Was I on the point of discovering some new
terrible and mysterious plan? I let the board fall back into place. I spread the
carpet back again carefully, put the sofa in its place, and in the morning sent
for Koupriane.”
Rouletabille interrupted.
“You had not, madame, spoken to anyone of this discovery?”
“To no one.”
“Not even to your step-daughter?”
“No,” said the husky voice of Matrena, “not even to my step-daughter.”

“Why?” demanded Rouletabille.
“Because,” replied Matrena, after a moment’s hesitation, “there were
already enough frightening things about the house. I would not have spoken
to my daughter any more than I would have said a word to the general. Why
add to the disquiet they already suffered so much, in case nothing
developed?”
“And what did Koupriane say?”
“We examined the floor together, secretly. Koupriane slipped his hand
under more easily than I had done, and ascertained that under the board,
that is to say between the beam and the ceiling of the kitchen, there was a
hollow where any number of things might be placed. For the moment the
board was still too little released for any maneuver to be possible.
Koupriane, when he rose, said to me, ‘You have happened, madame, to
interrupt the person in her operations. But we are prepared henceforth. We
know what she does and she is unaware that we know. Act as though you
had not noticed anything; do not speak of it to anyone whatever—and
watch. Let the general continue to sit in his usual place and let no one
suspect that we have discovered the beginnings of this attempt. It is the only
way we can plan so that they will continue. All the same,’ he added, ‘I will
give my agents orders to patrol the ground-floor anew during the night. I
would be risking too much to let the person continue her work each night.
She might continue it so well that she would be able to accomplish it—you
understand me? But by day you arrange that the rooms on the ground-floor
be free from time to time—not for long, but from time to time.’ I don’t
know why, but what he said and the way he said it frightened me more than
ever. However, I carried out his program. Then, three days later, about eight
o’clock, when the night watch was not yet started, that is to say at the
moment when the police were still all out in the garden or walking around
the house, outside, and when I had left the the ground-floor perfectly free
while I helped the general to bed, I felt drawn even against myself suddenly
to the dining-room. I lifted the carpet and examined the floor. Three more
nails had been drawn from the board, which lifted more easily now, and
under it, I could see that the normal cavity had been made wider still!”
When she had said this, Matrena stopped, as if, overcome, she could not
tell more.
“Well?” insisted Rouletabille.

“Well, I replaced things as I found them and made rapid inquiries of the
police and their chief; no one had entered the ground-floor. You understand
me?—no one at all. Neither had anyone come out from it.”
“How could anyone come out if no one had entered?”
“I wish to say,” said she with a sob, “that Natacha during this space of
time had been in her chamber, in her chamber on the ground-floor.”
“You appear to be very disturbed, madame, at this recollection. Can you
tell me further, and precisely, why you are agitated?”
“You understand me, surely,” she said, shaking her head.
“If I understand you correctly, I have to understand that from the
previous time you examined the floor until the time that you noted three
more nails drawn out, no other person could have entered the dining-room
but you and your step-daughter Natacha.”
Matrena took Rouletabille’s hand as though she had reached an important
decision.
“My little friend,” moaned she, “there are things I am not able to think
about and which I can no longer entertain when Natacha embraces me. It is
a mystery more frightful than all else. Koupriane tells me that he is sure,
absolutely sure, of the agents he kept here; my sole consolation, do you see,
my little friend can tell you frankly, now that you have sent away those men
—my sole consolation since that day has been that Koupriane is less sure of
his men than I am of Natacha.”
She broke down and sobbed.
When she was calmed, she looked for Rouletabille, and could not find
him. Then she wiped her eyes, picked up her dark-lantern, and, furtively,
crept to her post beside the general.
For that day these are the points in Rouletabille’s notebook:
“Topography: Villa surrounded by a large garden on three sides. The
fourth side gives directly onto a wooded field that stretches to the river
Neva. On this side the level of the ground is much lower, so low that the
sole window opening in that wall (the window of Natacha’s sitting-room on
the ground-floor) is as high from the ground as though it were on the next
floor in any other part of the house. This window is closed by iron shutters,
fastened inside by a bar of iron.

“Friends: Athanase Georgevitch, Ivan Petrovitch, Thaddeus the timber-
merchant (peat boots), Michael and Boris (fine shoes). Matrena, sincere
love, blundering heroism. Natacha unknown. Against Natacha: Never there
during the attacks. At Moscow at the time of the bomb in the sleigh, no one
knows where she was, and it is she who should have accompanied the
general (detail furnished by Koupriane that Matrena generously kept back).
The night of the bouquet is the only night Natacha has slept away from the
house. Coincidence of the disappearance of the nails and the presence all
alone on the ground-floor of Natacha, in case, of course, Matrena did not
pull them out herself. For Natacha: Her eyes when she looks at her father.”
And this bizarre phrase:
“We mustn’t be rash. This evening I have not yet spoken to Matrena
Petrovna about the little hat-pin. That little hat-pin is the greatest relief of
my life.”

V. BY ROULETABILLE’S ORDER THE
GENERAL PROMENADES
“Good morning, my dear little familiar spirit. The general slept
splendidly the latter part of the night. He did not touch his narcotic. I am
sure it is that dreadful mixture that gives him such frightful dreams. And
you, my dear little friend, you have not slept an instant. I know it. I felt you
going everywhere about the house like a little mouse. Ah, it seems good, so
good. I slept so peacefully, hearing the subdued movement of your little
steps. Thanks for the sleep you have given me, little friend.”
Matrena talked on to Rouletabille, whom she had found the morning after
the nightmare tranquilly smoking his pipe in the garden.
“Ah, ah, you smoke a pipe. Now you do certainly look exactly like a dear
little domovoi-doukh. See how much you are alike. He smokes just like
you. Nothing new, eh? You do not look very bright this morning. You are
worn out. I have just arranged the little guest-chamber for you, the only one
we have, just behind mine. Your bed is waiting for you. Is there anything
you need? Tell me. Everything here is at your service.”
“I’m not in need of anything, madame,” said the young man smilingly,
after this outpouring of words from the good, heroic dame.
“How can you say that, dear child? You will make yourself sick. I want
you to understand that I wish you to rest. I want to be a mother to you, if
you please, and you must obey me, my child. Have you had breakfast yet
this morning? If you do not have breakfast promptly mornings, I will think
you are annoyed. I am so annoyed that you have heard the secret of the
night. I have been afraid that you would want to leave at once and for good,
and that you would have mistaken ideas about the general. There is not a
better man in the world than Feodor, and he must have a good, a very good
conscience to dare, without fail, to perform such terrible duties as those at
Moscow, when he is so good at heart. These things are easy enough for
wicked people, but for good men, for good men who can reason it out, who
know what they do and that they are condemned to death into the bargain, it
is terrible, it is terrible! Why, I told him the moment things began to go

wrong in Moscow, ‘You know what to expect, Feodor. Here is a dreadful
time to get through—make out you are sick.’ I believed he was going to
strike me, to kill me on the spot. ‘I! Betray the Emperor in such a moment!
His Majesty, to whom I owe everything! What are you thinking of, Matrena
Petrovna!’ And he did not speak to me after that for two days. It was only
when he saw I was growing very ill that he pardoned me, but he had to be
plagued with my jeremiads and the appealing looks of Natacha without end
in his own home each time we heard any shooting in the street. Natacha
attended the lectures of the Faculty, you know. And she knew many of
them, and even some of those who were being killed on the barricades. Ah,
life was not easy for him in his own home, the poor general! Besides, there
was also Boris, whom I love as well, for that matter, as my own child,
because I shall be very happy to see him married to Natacha—there was
poor Boris who always came home from the attacks paler than a corpse and
who could not keep from moaning with us.”
“And Michael?” questioned Rouletabille.
“Oh, Michael only came towards the last. He is a new orderly to the
general. The government at St. Petersburg sent him, because of course they
couldn’t help learning that Boris rather lacked zeal in repressing the
students and did not encourage the general in being as severe as was
necessary for the safety of the Empire. But Michael, he has a heart of stone;
he knows nothing but the countersign and massacres fathers and mothers,
crying, ‘Vive le Tsar!’ Truly, it seems his heart can only be touched by the
sight of Natacha. And that again has caused a good deal of anxiety to
Feodor and me. It has caught us in a useless complication that we would
have liked to end by the prompt marriage of Natacha and Boris. But
Natacha, to our great surprise, has not wished it to be so. No, she has not
wished it, saying that there is always time to think of her wedding and that
she is in no hurry to leave us. Meantime she entertains herself with this
Michael as if she did not fear his passion, and neither has Michael the
desperate air of a man who knows the definite engagement of Natacha and
Boris. And my step-daughter is not a coquette. No, no. No one can say she
is a coquette. At least, no one had been able to say it up to the time that
Michael arrived. Can it be that she is a coquette? They are mysterious, these
young girls, very mysterious, above all when they have that calm and
tranquil look that Natacha always has; a face, monsieur, as you have noticed
perhaps, whose beauty is rather passive whatever one says and does,

excepting when the volleys in the streets kill her young comrades of the
schools. Then I have seen her almost faint, which proves she has a great
heart under her tranquil beauty. Poor Natacha! I have seen her excited as I
over the life of her father. My little friend, I have seen her searching in the
middle of the night, with me, for infernal machines under the furniture, and
then she has expressed the opinion that it is nervous, childish, unworthy of
us to act like that, like timid beasts under the sofas, and she has left me to
search by myself. True, she never quits the general. She is more reassured,
and is reassuring to him, at his side. It has an excellent moral effect on him,
while I walk about and search like a beast. And she has become as fatalistic
as he, and now she sings verses to the guzla, like Boris, or talks in corners
with Michael, which makes the two enraged each with the other. They are
curious, the young women of St. Petersburg and Moscow, very curious. We
were not like that in our time, at Orel. We did not try to enrage people. We
would have received a box on the ears if we had.”
Natacha came in upon this conversation, happy, in white voile, fresh and
smiling like a girl who had passed an excellent night. She asked after the
health of the young man very prettily and embraced Matrena, in truth as one
embraces a much-beloved mother. She complained again of Matrena’s
night-watch.
“You have not stopped it, mamma; you have not stopped it, eh? You are
not going to be a little reasonable at last? I beg of you! What has given me
such a mother! Why don’t you sleep? Night is made for sleep. Koupriane
has upset you. All the terrible things are over in Moscow. There is no
occasion to think of them any more. That Koupriane makes himself
important with his police-agents and obsesses us all. I am convinced that
the affair of the bouquet was the work of his police.”
“Mademoiselle,” said Rouletabille, “I have just had them all sent away,
all of them—because I think very much the same as you do.”
“Well, then, you will be my friend, Monsieur Rouletabille I promise you,
since you have done that. Now that the police are gone we have nothing
more to fear. Nothing. I tell you, mamma; you can believe me and not weep
any more, mamma dear.”
“Yes, yes; kiss me. Kiss me again!” repeated Matrena, drying her eyes.
“When you kiss me I forget everything. You love me like your own mother,
don’t you?”

“Like my mother. Like my own mother.”
“You have nothing to hide from me?—tell me, Natacha.”
“Nothing to hide.”
“Then why do you make Boris suffer so? Why don’t you marry him?”
“Because I don’t wish to leave you, mamma dear.”
She escaped further parley by jumping up on the garden edge away from
Khor, who had just been set free for the day.
“The dear child,” said Matrena; “the dear little one, she little knows how
much pain she has caused us without being aware of it, by her ideas, her
extravagant ideas. Her father said to me one day at Moscow, ‘Matrena
Petrovna, I’ll tell you what I think—Natacha is the victim of the wicked
books that have turned the brains of all these poor rebellious students. Yes,
yes; it would be better for her and for us if she did not know how to read,
for there are moments—my word!—when she talks very wildly, and I have
said to myself more than once that with such ideas her place is not in our
salon hut behind a barricade. All the same,’ he added after reflection, ‘I
prefer to find her in the salon where I can embrace her than behind a
barricade where I would kill her like a mad dog.’ But my husband, dear
little monsieur, did not say what he really thinks, for he loves his daughter
more than all the rest of the world put together, and there are things that
even a general, yes, even a governor-general, would not be able to do
without violating both divine and human laws. He suspects Boris also of
setting Natacha’s wits awry. We really have to consider that when they are
married they will read everything they have a mind to. My husband has
much more real respect for Michael Korsakoff because of his impregnable
character and his granite conscience. More than once he has said, ‘Here is
the aide I should have had in the worst days of Moscow. He would have
spared me much of the individual pain.’ I can understand how that would
please the general, but how such a tigerish nature succeeds in appealing to
Natacha, how it succeeds in not actually revolting her, these young girls of
the capital, one never can tell about them—they get away from all your
notions of them.”
Rouletabille inquired:
“Why did Boris say to Michael, ‘We will return together’? Do they live
together?”

“Yes, in the small villa on the Krestowsky Ostrov, the isle across from
ours, that you can see from the window of the sitting-room. Boris chose it
because of that. The orderlies wished to have camp-beds prepared for them
right here in the general’s house, by a natural devotion to him; but I
opposed it, in order to keep them both from Natacha, in whom, of course, I
have the most complete confidence, but one cannot be sure about the
extravagance of men nowadays.”
Ermolai came to announce the petit-dejeuner. They found Natacha
already at table and she poured them coffee and milk, eating away all the
time at a sandwich of anchovies and caviare.
“Tell me, mamma, do you know what gives me such an appetite? It is the
thought of the way poor Koupriane must have taken this dismissal of his
men. I should like to go to see him.”
“If you see him,” said Rouletabille, “it is unnecessary to tell him that the
general will go for a long promenade among the isles this afternoon,
because without fail he would send us an escort of gendarmes.”
“Papa! A promenade among the islands? Truly? Oh, that is going to be
lovely!”
Matrena Petrovna sprang to her feet.
“Are you mad, my dear little domovoi, actually mad?”
“Why? Why? It is fine. I must run and tell papa.”
“Your father’s room is locked,” said Matrena brusquely.
“Yes, yes; he is locked in. You have the key. Locked away until death!
You will kill him. It will be you who kills him.”
She left the table without waiting for a reply and went and shut herself
also in her chamber.
Matrena looked at Rouletabille, who continued his breakfast as though
nothing had happened.
“Is it possible that you speak seriously?” she demanded, coming over and
sitting down beside him. “A promenade! Without the police, when we have
received again this morning a letter saying now that before forty-eight hours
the general will be dead!”
“Forty-eight hours,” said Rouletabille, soaking his bread in his chocolate,
“forty-eight hours? It is possible. In any case, I know they will try

something very soon.”
“My God, how is it that you believe that? You speak with assurance.”
“Madame, it is necessary to do everything I tell you, to the letter.”
“But to have the general go out, unless he is guarded—how can you take
such a responsibility? When I think about it, when I really think about it, I
ask myself how you have dared send away the police. But here, at least, I
know what to do in order to feel a little safe, I know that downstairs with
Gniagnia and Ermolai we have nothing to fear. No stranger can approach
even the basement. The provisions are brought from the lodge by our
dvornicks whom we have had sent from my mother’s home in the Orel
country and who are as devoted to us as bull-dogs. Not a bottle of preserves
is taken into the kitchens without having been previously opened outside.
No package comes from any tradesman without being opened in the lodge.
Here, within, we are able to feel a little safe, even without the police—but
away from here—outside!”
“Madame, they are going to try to kill your husband within forty-eight
hours. Do you desire me to save him perhaps for a long time—for good,
perhaps?”
“Ah, listen to him! Listen to him, the dear little domovoi! But what will
Koupriane say? He will not permit any venturing beyond the villa; none, at
least for the moment. Ah, now, how he looks at me, the dear little domovoi!
Oh, well, yes. There, I will do as you wish.”
“Very well, come into the garden with me.”
She accompanied him, leaning on his arm.
“Here’s the idea,” said Rouletabille. “This afternoon you will go with the
general in his rolling-chair. Everybody will follow. Everyone, you
understand, Madame—understand me thoroughly, I mean to say that
everyone who wishes to come must be invited to. Only those who wish to
remain behind will do so. And do not insist. Ah, now, I see, you understand
me. Why do you tremble?”
“But who will guard the house?”
“No one. Simply tell the servant at the lodge to watch from the lodge
those who enter the villa, but simply from the lodge, without interfering
with them, and saying nothing to them, nothing.”

“I will do as you wish. Do you want me to announce our promenade
beforehand?”
“Why, certainly. Don’t be uneasy; let everybody have the good news.”
“Oh, I will tell only the general and his friends, you may be sure.”
“Now, dear Madame, just one more word. Do not wait for me at
luncheon.”
“What! You are going to leave us?” she cried instantly, breathless. “No,
no. I do not wish it. I am willing to do without the police, but I am not
willing to do without you. Everything might happen in your absence.
Everything! Everything!” she repeated with singular energy. “Because, for
me, I cannot feel sure as I should, perhaps. Ah, you make me say these
things. Such things! But do not go.”
“Do not be afraid; I am not going to leave you, madame.”
“Ah, you are good! You are kind, kind! Caracho! (Very well.)”
“I will not leave you. But I must not be at luncheon. If anyone asks where
I am, say that I have my business to look after, and have gone to interview
political personages in the city.”
“There’s only one political personage in Russia,” replied Matrena
Petrovna bluntly; “that is the Tsar.”
“Very well; say I have gone to interview the Tsar.”
“But no one will believe that. And where will you be?”
“I do not know myself. But I will be about the house.”
“Very well, very well, dear little domovoi.”
She left him, not knowing what she thought about it all, nor what she
should think—her head was all in a muddle.
In the course of the morning Athanase Georgevitch and Thaddeus
Tchnitchnikof arrived. The general was already in the veranda. Michael and
Boris arrived shortly after, and inquired in their turn how he had passed the
night without the police. When they were told that Feodor was going for a
promenade that afternoon they applauded his decision. “Bravo! A
promenade a la strielka (to the head of the island) at the hour when all St.
Petersburg is driving there. That is fine. We will all be there.” The general
made them stay for luncheon. Natacha appeared for the meal, in rather
melancholy mood. A little before luncheon she had held a double

conversation in the garden with Michael and Boris. No one ever could have
known what these three young people had said if some stenographic notes
in Rouletabille’s memorandum-book did not give us a notion; the reporter
had overheard, by accident surely, since all self-respecting reporters are
quite incapable of eavesdropping.
The memorandum notes:
Natacha went into the garden with a book, which she gave to Boris, who
pressed her hand lingeringly to his lips. “Here is your book; I return it to
you. I don’t want any more of them, the ideas surge so in my brain. It
makes my head ache. It is true, you are right, I don’t love novelties. I can
satisfy myself with Pouchkine perfectly. The rest are all one to me. Did you
pass a good night?”
Boris (good-looking young man, about thirty years old, blonde, a little
effeminate, wistful. A curious appurtenance in the military household of so
vigorous a general). “Natacha, there is not an hour that I can call truly good
if I spend it away from you, dear, dear Natacha.”
“I ask you seriously if you have passed a good night?”
She touched his hand a moment and looked into his eyes, but he shook
his head.
“What did you do last night after you reached home?” she demanded
insistently. “Did you stay up?”
“I obeyed you; I only sat a half-hour by the window looking over here at
the villa, and then I went to bed.”
“Yes, it is necessary you should get your rest. I wish it for you as for
everyone else. This feverish life is impossible. Matrena Petrovna is getting
us all ill, and we shall be prostrated.”
“Yesterday,” said Boris, “I looked at the villa for a half-hour from my
window. Dear, dear villa, dear night when I can feel you breathing, living
near me. As if you had been against my heart. I could have wept because I
could hear Michael snoring in his chamber. He seemed happy. At last, I
heard nothing more, there was nothing more to hear but the double chorus
of frogs in the pools of the island. Our pools, Natacha, are like the
enchanted lakes of the Caucasus which are silent by day and sing at
evening; there are innumerable throngs of frogs which sing on the same
chord, some of them on a major and some on a minor. The chorus speaks

from pool to pool, lamenting and moaning across the fields and gardens,
and re-echoing like AEolian harps placed opposite one another.”
“Do AEolian harps make so much noise, Boris?”
“You laugh? I don’t find you yourself half the time. It is Michael who has
changed you, and I am out of it. (Here they spoke in Russian.) I shall not be
easy until I am your husband. I can’t understand your manner with Michael
at all.”
(Here more Russian words which I do not understand.)
“Speak French; here is the gardener,” said Natacha.
“I do not like the way you are managing our lives. Why do you delay our
marriage? Why?”
(Russian words from Natacha. Gesture of desperation from Boris.)
“How long? You say a long time? But that says nothing—a long time.
How long? A year? Two years? Ten years? Tell me, or I will kill myself at
your feet. No, no; speak or I will kill Michael. On my word! Like a dog!”
“I swear to you, by the dear head of your mother, Boris, that the date of
our marriage does not depend on Michael.”
(Some words in Russian. Boris, a little consoled, holds her hand
lingeringly to his lips.)
Conversation between Michael and Natacha in the garden:
“Well? Have you told him?”
“I ended at last by making him understand that there is not any hope.
None. It is necessary to have patience. I have to have it myself.”
“He is stupid and provoking.”
“Stupid, no. Provoking, yes, if you wish. But you also, you are
provoking.”
“Natacha! Natacha!”
(Here more Russian.) As Natacha started to leave, Michael placed his
hand on her shoulder, stopped her and said, looking her direct in the eyes:
“There will be a letter from Annouchka this evening, by a messenger at
five o’clock.” He made each syllable explicit. “Very important and
requiring an immediate reply.”
These notes of Rouletabille’s are not followed by any commentary.

After luncheon the gentlemen played poker until half-past four, which is
the “chic” hour for the promenade to the head of the island. Rouletabille
had directed Matrena to start exactly at a quarter to five. He appeared in the
meantime, announcing that he had just interviewed the mayor of St.
Petersburg, which made Athanase laugh, who could not understand that
anyone would come clear from Paris to talk with men like that. Natacha
came from her chamber to join them for the promenade. Her father told her
she looked too worried.
They left the villa. Rouletabille noted that the dvornicks were before the
gate and that the schwitzar was at his post, from which he could detect
everyone who might enter or leave the villa. Matrena pushed the rolling-
chair herself. The general was radiant. He had Natacha at his right and at his
left Athanase and Thaddeus. The two orderlies followed, talking with
Rouletabille, who had monopolized them. The conversation turned on the
devotion of Matrena Petrovna, which they placed above the finest heroic
traits in the women of antiquity, and also on Natacha’s love for her father.
Rouletabille made them talk.
Boris Mourazoff explained that this exceptional love was accounted for
by the fact that Natacha’s own mother, the general’s first wife, died in
giving birth to their daughter, and accordingly Feodor Feodorovitch had
been both father and mother to his daughter. He had raised her with the
most touching care, not permitting anyone else, when she was sick, to have
the care of passing the nights by her bedside.
Natacha was seven years old when Feodor Feodorovitch was appointed
governor of Orel. In the country near Orel, during the summer, the general
and his daughter lived on neighborly terms near the family of old Petroff,
one of the richest fur merchants in Russia. Old Petroff had a daughter,
Matrena, who was magnificent to see, like a beautiful field-flower. She was
always in excellent humor, never spoke ill of anyone in the neighborhood,
and not only had the fine manners of a city dame but a great, simple heart,
which she lavished on the little Natacha.
The child returned the affection of the beautiful Matrena, and it was on
seeing them always happy to find themselves together that Trebassof
dreamed of reestablishing his fireside. The nuptials were quickly arranged,
and the child, when she learned that her good Matrena was to wed her papa,
danced with joy. Then misfortune came only a few weeks before the

ceremony. Old Petroff, who speculated on the Exchange for a long time
without anyone knowing anything about it, was ruined from top to bottom.
Matrena came one evening to apprise Feodor Feodorovitch of this sad news
and return his pledge to him. For all response Feodor placed Natacha in
Matrena’s arms. “Embrace your mother,” he said to the child, and to
Matrena, “From to-day I consider you my wife, Matrena Petrovna. You
should obey me in all things. Take that reply to your father and tell him my
purse is at his disposition.”
The general was already, at that time, even before he had inherited the
Cheremaieff, immensely rich. He had lands behind Nijni as vast as a
province, and it would have been difficult to count the number of moujiks
who worked for him on his property. Old Pretroff gave his daughter and did
not wish to accept anything in exchange. Feodor wished to settle a large
allowance on his wife; her father opposed that, and Matrena sided with him
in the matter against her husband, because of Natacha. “It all belongs to the
little one,” she insisted. “I accept the position of her mother, but on the
condition that she shall never lose a kopeck of her inheritance.”
“So that,” concluded Boris, “if the general died tomorrow she would be
poorer than Job.”
“Then the general is Matrena’s sole resource,” reflected Rouletabille
aloud.
“I can understand her hanging onto him,” said Michael Korsakoff,
blowing the smoke of his yellow cigarette. “Look at her. She watches him
like a treasure.”
“What do you mean, Michael Nikolaievitch?” said Boris, curtly. “You
believe, do you, that the devotion of Matrena Petrovna is not disinterested.
You must know her very poorly to dare utter such a thought.”
“I have never had that thought, Boris Alexandrovitch,” replied the other
in a tone curter still. “To be able to imagine that anyone who lives in the
Trebassofs’ home could have such a thought needs an ass’s head, surely.”
“We will speak of it again, Michael Nikolaievitch.”
“At your pleasure, Boris Alexandrovitch.”
They had exchanged these latter words tranquilly continuing their walk
and negligently smoking their yellow tobacco. Rouletabille was between
them. He did not regard them; he paid no attention even to their quarrel; he

had eyes only for Natacha, who just now quit her place beside her father’s
wheel-chair and passed by them with a little nod of the head, seeming in
haste to retrace the way back to the villa.
“Are you leaving us?” Boris demanded of her.
“Oh, I will rejoin you immediately. I have forgotten my umbrella.”
“But I will go and get it for you,” proposed Michael.
“No, no. I have to go to the villa; I will return right away.”
She was already past them. Rouletabille, during this, looked at Matrena
Petrovna, who looked at him also, turning toward the young man a visage
pale as wax. But no one else noted the emotion of the good Matrena, who
resumed pushing the general’s wheel-chair.
Rouletabille asked the officers, “Was this arrangement because the first
wife of the general, Natacha’s mother, was rich?”
“No. The general, who always had his heart in his hand,” said Boris,
“married her for her great beauty. She was a beautiful girl of the Caucasus,
of excellent family besides, that Feodor Feodorovitch had known when he
was in garrison at Tiflis.”
“In short,” said Rouletabille, “the day that General Trebassof dies
Madame Trebassof, who now possesses everything, will have nothing, and
the daughter, who now has nothing, will have everything.”
“Exactly that,” said Michael.
“That doesn’t keep Matrena Petrovna and Natacha Feodorovna from
deeply loving each other,” observed Boris.
The little party drew near the “Point.” So far the promenade had been
along pleasant open country, among the low meadows traversed by fresh
streams, across which tiny bridges had been built, among bright gardens
guarded by porcelain dwarfs, or in the shade of small weeds from the feet of
whose trees the newly-cut grass gave a seasonal fragrance. All was reflected
in the pools—which lay like glass whereon a scene-painter had cut the
green hearts of the pond-lily leaves. An adorable country glimpse which
seemed to have been created centuries back for the amusement of a queen
and preserved, immaculately trimmed and cleaned, from generation to
generation, for the eternal charm of such an hour as this on the banks of the
Gulf of Finland.

Now they had reached the bank of the Gulf, and the waves rippled to the
prows of the light ships, which dipped gracefully like huge and rapid sea-
gulls, under the pressure of their great white sails.
Along the roadway, broader now, glided, silently and at walking pace, the
double file of luxurious equipages with impatient horses, the open carriages
in which the great personages of the court saw the view and let themselves
be seen. Enormous coachmen held the reins high. Lively young women,
negligently reclining against the cushions, displayed their new Paris
toilettes, and kept young officers on horseback busy with salutes. There
were all kinds of uniforms. No talking was heard. Everyone was kept busy
looking. There rang in the pure, thin air only the noise of the champing bits
and the tintinnabulation of the bells attached to the hairy Finnish ponies’
collars. And all that, so beautiful, fresh, charming and clear, and silent, it all
seemed more a dream than even that which hung in the pools, suspended
between the crystal of the air and the crystal of the water. The transparence
of the sky and the transparence of the gulf blended their two unrealities so
that one could not note where the horizons met.
Rouletabille looked at the view and looked at the general, and in all his
young vibrating soul there was a sense of infinite sadness, for he recalled
those terrible words in the night: “They have gone into all the corners of the
Russian land, and they have not found a single corner of that land where
there are not moanings.” “Well,” thought he, “they have not come into this
corner, apparently. I don’t know anything lovelier or happier in the world.”
No, no, Rouletabille, they have not come here. In every country there is a
corner of happy life, which the poor are ashamed to approach, which they
know nothing of, and of which merely the sight would turn famished
mothers enraged, with their thin bosoms, and, if it is not more beautiful than
that, certainly no part of the earth is made so atrocious to live in for some,
nor so happy for others as in this Scythian country, the boreal country of the
world.
Meanwhile the little group about the general’s rolling-chair had attracted
attention. Some passers-by saluted, and the news spread quickly that
General Trebassof had come for a promenade to “the Point.” Heads turned
as carriages passed; the general, noticing how much excitement his
presence produced, begged Matrena Petrovna to push his chair into an

adjacent by-path, behind a shield of trees where he would be able to enjoy
the spectacle in peace.
He was found, nevertheless, by Koupriane, the Chief of Police, who was
looking for him. He had gone to the datcha and been told there that the
general, accompanied by his friends and the young Frenchman, had gone
for a turn along the gulf. Koupriane had left his carriage at the datcha, and
taken the shortest route after them.
He was a fine man, large, solid, clear-eyed. His uniform showed his fine
build to advantage. He was generally liked in St. Petersburg, where his
martial bearing and his well-known bravery had given him a sort of
popularity in society, which, on the other hand, had great disdain for
Gounsovski, the head of the Secret Police, who was known to be capable of
anything underhanded and had been accused of sometimes playing into the
hands of the Nihilists, whom he disguised as agents-provocateurs, without
anybody really doubting it, and he had to fight against these widespread
political suspicions.
Well-informed men declared that the death of the previous “prime
minister,” who had been blown up before Varsovie station when he was on
his way to the Tsar at Peterhof, was Gounsovski’s work and that in this he
was the instrument of the party at court which had sworn the death of the
minister which inconvenienced it.* On the other hand, everyone regarded
Koupriane as incapable of participating in any such horrors and that he
contented himself with honest performance of his obvious duties, confining
himself to ridding the streets of its troublesome elements, and sending to
Siberia as many as he could of the hot-heads, without lowering himself to
the compromises which, more than once, had given grounds for the enemies
of the empire to maintain that it was difficult to say whether the chiefs of
the Russian police played the part of the law or that of the revolutionary
party, even that the police had been at the end of a certain time of such
mixed procedure hardly able to decide themselves which they did.

* Rumored cause of Plehve’s assassination.

This afternoon Koupriane appeared very nervous. He paid his
compliments to the general, grumbled at his imprudence, praised him for
his bravery, and then at once picked out Rouletabille, whom he took aside
to talk to.

“You have sent my men back to me,” said he to the young reporter. “You
understand that I do not allow that. They are furious, and quite rightly. You
have given publicly as explanation of their departure—a departure which
has naturally astonished, stupefied the general’s friends—the suspicion of
their possible participation in the last attack. That is abominable, and I will
not permit it. My men have not been trained in the methods of Gounsovski,
and it does them a cruel injury, which I resent, for that matter, personally, to
treat them this way. But let that go, as a matter of sentiment, and return to
the simple fact itself, which proves your excessive imprudence, not to say
more, and which involves you, you alone, in a responsibility of which you
certainly have not measured the importance. All in all, I consider that you
have strangely abused the complete authority that I gave you upon the
Emperor’s orders. When I learned what you had done I went to find the
Tsar, as was my duty, and told him the whole thing. He was more
astonished than can be expressed. He directed me to go myself to find out
just how things were and to furnish the general the guard you had removed.
I arrive at the isles and not only find the villa open like a mill where anyone
may enter, but I am informed, and then I see, that the general is
promenading in the midst of the crowd, at the mercy of the first miserable
venturer. Monsieur Rouletabille, I am not satisfied. The Tsar is not satisfied.
And, within an hour, my men will return to assume their guard at the
datcha.”
Rouletabille listened to the end. No one ever had spoken to him in that
tone. He was red, and as ready to burst as a child’s balloon blown too hard.
He said:
“And I will take the train this evening.”
“You will go?”
“Yes, and you can guard your general all alone. I have had enough of it.
Ah, you are not satisfied! Ah, the Tsar is not satisfied! It is too bad. No
more of it for me. Monsieur, I am not satisfied, and I say Good-evening to
you. Only do not forget to send me from here every three or four days a
letter which will keep me informed of the health of the general, whom I
love dearly. I will offer up a little prayer for him.”
Thereupon he was silent, for he caught the glance of Matrena Petrovna, a
glance so desolated, so imploring, so desperate, that the poor woman
inspired him anew with great pity. Natacha had not returned. What was the

young girl doing at that moment? If Matrena really loved Natacha she must
be suffering atrociously. Koupriane spoke; Rouletabille did not hear him,
and he had already forgotten his own anger. His spirit was wrapped in the
mystery.
“Monsieur,” Koupriane finished by saying, tugging his sleeve, “do you
hear me? I pray you at least reply to me. I offer all possible excuses for
speaking to you in that tone. I reiterate them. I ask your pardon. I pray you
to explain your conduct, which appeared imprudent to me but which, after
all, should have some reason. I have to explain to the Emperor. Will you tell
me? What ought I to say to the Emperor?”
“Nothing at all,” said Rouletabille. “I have no explanation to give you or
the Emperor, or to anyone. You can offer him my utmost homage and do me
the kindness to vise my passport for this evening.”
And he sighed:
“It is too bad, for we were just about to see something interesting.”
Koupriane looked at him. Rouletabille had not quitted Matrena
Petrovna’s eyes, and her pallor struck Koupriane.
“Just a minute,” continued the young man. “I’m sure there is someone
who will miss me—that brave woman there. Ask her which she prefers, all
your police, or her dear little domovoi. We are good friends already. And—
don’t forget to present my condolences to her when the terrible moment has
come.”
It was Koupriane’s turn to be troubled.
He coughed and said:
“You believe, then, that the general runs a great immediate danger?”
“I do not only believe it, monsieur, I am sure of it. His death is a matter
of hours for the poor dear man. Before I go I shall not fail to tell him, so
that he can prepare himself comfortably for the great journey and ask
pardon of the Lord for the rather heavy hand he has laid on these poor men
of Presnia.”
“Monsieur Rouletabille, have you discovered something?”
“Good Lord, yes, I have discovered something, Monsieur Koupriane.
You don’t suppose I have come so far to waste my time, do you?”
“Something no one else knows?”

“Yes, Monsieur Koupriane, otherwise I shouldn’t have troubled to feel
concerned. Something I have not confided to anyone, not even to my note-
book, because a note-book, you know, a note-book can always be lost. I just
mention that in case you had any idea of having me searched before my
departure.”
“Oh, Monsieur Rouletabille!”
“Eh, eh, like the way the police do in your country; in mine too, for that
matter. Yes, that’s often enough seen. The police, furious because they can’t
hit a clue in some case that interests them, arrest a reporter who knows
more than they do, in order to make him talk. But—nothing of that sort with
me, monsieur. You might have me taken to your famous ‘Terrible Section,’
I’d not open my mouth, not even in the famous rocking-chair, not even
under the blows of clenched fists.”
“Monsieur Rouletabille, what do you take us for? You are the guest of the
Tsar.”
“Ah, I have the word of an honest man. Very well, I will treat you as an
honest man. I will tell you what I have discovered. I don’t wish through any
false pride to keep you in darkness about something which may perhaps—I
say perhaps—permit you to save the general.”
“Tell me. I am listening.”
“But it is perfectly understood that once I have told you this you will give
me my passport and allow me to depart?”
“You feel that you couldn’t possibly,” inquired Koupriane, more and
more troubled, and after a moment of hesitation, “you couldn’t possibly tell
me that and yet remain?”
“No, monsieur. From the moment you place me under the necessity of
explaining each of my movements and each of my acts, I prefer to go and
leave to you that ‘responsibility’ of which you spoke just now, my dear
Monsieur Koupriane.”
Astonished and disquieted by this long conversation between
Rouletabille and the Head of Police, Matrena Petrovna continually turned
upon them her anguished glance, which always insensibly softened as it
rested on Rouletabille. Koupriane read there all the hope that the brave
woman had in the young reporter, and he read also in Rouletabille’s eye all
the extraordinary confidence that the mere boy had in himself. As a last

consideration had he not already something in hand in circumstances where
all the police of the world had admitted themselves vanquished? Koupriane
pressed Rouletabille’s hand and said just one word to him:
“Remain.”
Having saluted the general and Matrena affectionately, and a group of
friends in one courteous sweep, he departed, with thoughtful brow.
During all this time the general, enchanted with the promenade, told
stories of the Caucasus to his friends, believing himself young again and re-
living his nights as sub-lieutenant at Tills. As to Natacha, no one had seen
her. They retraced the way to the villa along deserted by-paths. Koupriane’s
call made occasion for Athanase Georgevitch and Thaddeus, and the two
officers also, to say that he was the only honest man in all the Russian
police, and that Matrena Petrovna was a great woman to have dared rid
herself of the entire clique of agents, who are often more revolutionary than
the Nihilists themselves. Thus they arrived at the datcha.
The general inquired for Natacha, not understanding why she had left
him thus during his first venture out. The schwitzar replied that the young
mistress had returned to the house and had left again about a quarter of an
hour later, taking the way that the party had gone on their promenade, and
he had not seen her since.
Boris spoke up:
“She must have passed on the other side of the carriages while we were
behind the trees, general, and not seeing us she has gone on her way,
making the round of the island, over as far as the Barque.”
The explanation seemed the most plausible one.
“Has anyone else been here?” demanded Matrena, forcing her voice to be
calm. Rouletabille saw her hand tremble on the handle of the rolling-chair,
which she had not quitted for a second during all the promenade, refusing
aid from the officers, the friends, and even from Rouletabille.
“First there came the Head of Police, who told me he would go and find
you, Barinia, and right after, His Excellency the Marshal of the Court. His
Excellency will return, although he is very pressed for time, before he takes
the train at seven o’clock for Krasnoie-Coelo.”
All this had been said in Russian, naturally, but Matrena translated the
words of the schwitzar into French in a low voice for Rouletabille, who was

near her. The general during this time had taken Rouletabille’s hand and
pressed it affectionately, as if, in that mute way, to thank him for all the
young man had done for them. Feodor himself also had confidence, and he
was grateful for the freer air that he was being allowed to breathe. It seemed
to him that he was emerging from prison. Nevertheless, as the promenade
had been a little fatiguing, Matrena ordered him to go and rest immediately.
Athanase and Thaddeus took their leave. The two officers were already at
the end of the garden, talking coldly, and almost confronting one another,
like wooden soldiers. Without doubt they were arranging the conditions of
an encounter to settle their little difference at once.
The schwitzar gathered the general into his great arms and carried him
into the veranda. Feodor demanded five minutes’ respite before he was
taken upstairs to his chamber. Matrena Petrovna had a light luncheon
brought at his request. In truth, the good woman trembled with impatience
and hardly dared move without consulting Rouletabille’s face. While the
general talked with Ermolai, who passed him his tea, Rouletabille made a
sign to Matrena that she understood at once. She joined the young man in
the drawing-room.
“Madame,” he said rapidly, in a low voice, “you must go at once to see
what has happened there.”
He pointed to the dining-room.
“Very well.”
It was pitiful to watch her.
“Go, madame, with courage.”
“Why don’t you come with me?”
“Because, madame, I have something to do elsewhere. Give me the keys
of the next floor.”
“No, no. What for?”
“Not a second’s delay, for the love of Heaven. Do what I tell you on your
side, and let me do mine. The keys! Come, the keys!”
He snatched them rather than took them, and pointed a last time to the
dining-room with a gesture so commanding that she did not hesitate further.
She entered the dining-room, shaking, while he bounded to the upper floor.
He was not long. He took only time to open the doors, throw a glance into
the general’s chamber, a single glance, and to return, letting a cry of joy

escape him, borrowed from his new and very limited accomplishment of
Russian, “Caracho!”
How Rouletabille, who had not spent half a second examining the
general’s chamber, was able to be certain that all went well on that side,
when it took Matrena—and that how many times a day!—at least a quarter
of an hour of ferreting in all the corners each time she explored her house
before she was even inadequately reassured, was a question. If that dear
heroic woman had been with him during this “instant information” she
would have received such a shock that, with all confidence gone, she would
have sent for Koupriane immediately, and all his agents, reinforced by the
personnel of the Okrana (Secret Police). Rouletabille at once rejoined the
general, whistling. Feodor and Ermolai were deep in conversation about the
Orel country. The young man did not disturb them. Then, soon, Matrena
reappeared. He saw her come in quite radiant. He handed back her keys,
and she took them mechanically. She was overjoyed and did not try to hide
it. The general himself noticed it, and asked what had made her so.
“It is my happiness over our first promenade since we arrived at the
datcha des Iles,” she explained. “And now you must go upstairs to bed,
Feodor. You will pass a good night, I am sure.”
“I can sleep only if you sleep, Matrena.”
“I promise you. It is quite possible now that we have our dear little
domovoi. You know, Feodor, that he smokes his pipe just like the dear little
porcelain domovoi.”
“He does resemble him, he certainly does,” said Feodor. “That makes us
feel happy, but I wish him to sleep also.”
“Yes, yes,” smiled Rouletabille, “everybody will sleep here. That is the
countersign. We have watched enough. Since the police are gone we can all
sleep, believe me, general.”
“Eh, eh, I believe you, on my word, easily enough. There were only they
in the house capable of attempting that affair of the bouquet. I have thought
that all out, and now I am at ease. And anyway, whatever happens, it is
necessary to get sleep, isn’t it? The chances of war! Nichevo!” He pressed
Rouletabille’s hand, and Matrena Petrovna took, as was her habit, Feodor
Feodorovitch on her back and lugged him to his chamber. In that also she
refused aid from anyone. The general clung to his wife’s neck during the
ascent and laughed like a child. Rouletabille remained in the hallway,

watching the garden attentively. Ermolai walked out of the villa and crossed
the garden, going to meet a personage in uniform whom the young man
recognized immediately as the grand-marshal of the court, who had
introduced him to the Tsar. Ermolai informed him that Madame Matrena
was engaged in helping her husband retire, and the marshal remained at the
end of the garden where he had found Michael and Boris talking in the
kiosque. All three remained there for some time in conversation, standing
by a table where General and Madame Trebassof sometimes dined when
they had no guests. As they talked the marshal played with a box of white
cardboard tied with a pink string. At this moment Matrena, who had not
been able to resist the desire to talk for a moment with Rouletabille and tell
him how happy she was, rejoined the young man.
“Little domovoi,” said she, laying her hand on his shoulder, “you have
not watched on this side?”
She pointed in her turn to the dining-room.
“No, no. You have seen it, madame, and I am sufficiently informed.”
“Perfectly. There is nothing. No one has worked there! No one has
touched the board. I knew it. I am sure of it. It is dreadful what we have
thought about it! Oh, you do not know how relieved and happy I am. Ah,
Natacha, Natacha, I have not loved you in vain. (She pronounced these
words in accents of great beauty and tragic sincerity.) When I saw her leave
us, my dear, ah, my legs sank under me. When she said, ‘I have forgotten
something; I must hurry back,’ I felt I had not the strength to go a single
step. But now I certainly am happy, that weight at least is off my heart, off
my heart, dear little domovoi, because of you, because of you.”
She embraced him, and then ran away, like one possessed, to resume her
post near the general.
Notes in Rouletabille’s memorandum-book: The affair of the little cavity
under the floor not having been touched again proves nothing for or against
Natacha (even though that excellent Matrena Petrovna thinks so). Natacha
could very well have been warned by the too great care with which
Madame Matrena watched the floor. My opinion, since I saw Matrena lift
the carpet the first time without any real precaution, is that they have
definitely abandoned the preparation of that attack and are trying to account
for the secret becoming known. What Matrena feels so sure of is that the
trap I laid by the promenade to the Point was against Natacha particularly. I

knew beforehand that Natacha would absent herself during the promenade.
I’m not looking for anything new from Natacha, but what I did need was to
be sure that Matrena didn’t detest Natacha, and that she had not faked the
preparations for an attack under the floor in such a way as to throw almost
certain suspicion on her step-daughter. I am sure about that now. Matrena is
innocent of such a thing, the poor dear soul. If Matrena had been a monster
the occasion was too good. Natacha’s absence, her solitary presence for a
quarter of an hour in the empty villa, all would have urged Matrena, whom I
sent alone to search under the carpet in the dining-room, to draw the last
nails from the board if she was really guilty of having drawn the others.
Natacha would have been lost then! Matrena returned sincerely, tragically
happy at not having found anything new, and now I have the material proof
that I needed. Morally and physically Matrena is removed from it. So I am
going to speak to her about the hat-pin. I believe that the matter is urgent on
that side rather than on the side of the nails in the floor.

VI. THE MYSTERIOUS HAND
After the departure of Matrena, Rouletabille turned his attention to the
garden. Neither the marshal of the court nor the officers were there any
longer. The three men had disappeared. Rouletabille wished to know at
once where they had gone. He went rapidly to the gate, named the officers
and the marshal to Ermolai, and Ermolai made a sign that they had passed
out. Even as he spoke he saw the marshal’s carriage disappear around a
corner of the road. As to the two officers, they were nowhere on the
roadway. He was surprised that the marshal should have gone without
seeing Matrena or the general or himself, and, above all, he was disquieted
by the disappearance of the orderlies. He gathered from the gestures of
Ermolai that they had passed before the lodge only a few minutes after the
marshal’s departure. They had gone together. Rouletabille set himself to
follow them, traced their steps in the soft earth of the roadway and soon
they crossed onto the grass. At this point the tracks through the massed
ferns became very difficult to follow. He hurried along, bending close to the
ground over such traces as he could see, which continually led him astray,
but which conducted him finally to the thing that he sought. A noise of
voices made him raise his head and then throw himself behind a tree. Not
twenty steps from him Natacha and Boris were having an animated
conversation. The young officer held himself erect directly in front of her,
frowning and impatient. Under the uniform cloak that he had wrapped
about him without having bothered to use the sleeves, which were tossed up
over his chest, Boris had his arms crossed. His entire attitude indicated
hauteur, coldness and disdain for what he was hearing. Natacha never
appeared calmer or more mistress of herself. She talked to him rapidly and
mostly in a low voice. Sometimes a word in Russian sounded, and then she
resumed her care to speak low. Finally she ceased, and Boris, after a short
silence, in which he had seemed to reflect deeply, pronounced distinctly
these words in French, pronouncing them syllable by syllable, as though to
give them additional force:
“You ask a frightful thing of me.”

“It is necessary to grant it to me,” said the young girl with singular
energy. “You understand, Boris Alexandrovitch! It is necessary.”
Her gaze, after she had glanced penetratingly all around her and
discovered nothing suspicious, rested tenderly on the young officer, while
she murmured, “My Boris!” The young man could not resist either the
sweetness of that voice, nor the captivating charm of that glance. He took
the hand she extended toward him and kissed it passionately. His eyes,
fixed on Natacha, proclaimed that he granted everything that she wished
and admitted himself vanquished. Then she said, always with that adorable
gaze upon him, “This evening!” He replied, “Yes, yes. This evening! This
evening!” upon which Natacha withdrew her hand and made a sign to the
officer to leave, which he promptly obeyed. Natacha remained there still a
long time, plunged in thought. Rouletabille had already taken the road back
to the villa. Matrena Petrovna was watching for his return, seated on the
first step of the landing on the great staircase which ran up from the
veranda. When she saw him she ran to him. He had already reached the
dining-room.
“Anyone in the house?” he asked.
“No one. Natacha has not returned, and...”
“Your step-daughter is coming in now. Ask her where she has been, if she
has seen the orderlies, and if they said they would return this evening, in
case she answers that she has seen them.”
“Very well, little domovoi doukh. The orderlies left without my seeing
when they went.”
“Ah,” interrupted Rouletabille, “before she arrives, give me all her hat-
pins.”
“What!”
“I say, all her hat-pins. Quickly!”
Matrena ran to Natacha’s chamber and returned with three enormous hat-
pins with beautifully-cut stones in them.
“These are all?”
“They are all I have found. I know she has two others. She has one on her
head, or two, perhaps; I can’t find them.”

“Take these back where you found them,” said the reporter, after glancing
at them.
Matrena returned immediately, not understanding what he was doing.
“And now, your hat-pins. Yes, your hat-pins.”
“Oh, I have only two, and here they are,” said she, drawing them from
the toque she had been wearing and had thrown on the sofa when she re-
entered the house.
Rouletabille gave hers the same inspection.
“Thanks. Here is your step-daughter.”
Natacha entered, flushed and smiling.
“Ah, well,” said she, quite breathless, “you may boast that I had to search
for you. I made the entire round, clear past the Barque. Has the promenade
done papa good?”
“Yes, he is asleep,” replied Matrena. “Have you met Boris and Michael?”
She appeared to hesitate a second, then replied:
“Yes, for an instant.”
“Did they say whether they would return this evening?”
“No,” she replied, slightly troubled. “Why all these questions?”
She flushed still more.
“Because I thought it strange,” parried Matrena, “that they went away as
they did, without saying goodby, without a word, without inquiring if the
general needed them. There is something stranger yet. Did you see Kaltsof
with them, the grand-marshal of the court?”
“No.”
“Kaltsof came for a moment, entered the garden and went away again
without seeing us, without saying even a word to the general.”
“Ah,” said Natacha.
With apparent indifference, she raised her arms and drew out her hat-
pins. Rouletabille watched the pin without a word. The young girl hardly
seemed aware of their presence. Entirely absorbed in strange thoughts, she
replaced the pin in her hat and went to hang it in the veranda, which served
also as vestibule. Rouletabille never quitted her eyes. Matrena watched the
reporter with a stupid glance. Natacha crossed the drawing-room and

entered her chamber by passing through her little sitting-room, through
which all entrance to her chamber had to be made. That little room, though,
had three doors. One opened into Natacha’s chamber, one into the drawing-
room, and the third into the little passage in a corner of the house where
was the stairway by which the servants passed from the kitchens to the
ground-floor and the upper floor. This passage had also a door giving
directly upon the drawing-room. It was certainly a poor arrangement for
serving the dining-room, which was on the other side of the drawing-room
and behind the veranda, such a chance laying-out of a house as one often
sees in the off-hand planning of many places in the country.
Alone again with Rouletabille, Matrena noticed that he had not lost sight
of the corner of the veranda where Natacha had hung her hat. Beside this
hat there was a toque that Ermolai had brought in. The old servant had
found it in some corner of the garden or the conservatory where he had
been. A hat-pin stuck out of that toque also.
“Whose toque is that?” asked Rouletabille. “I haven’t seen it on the head
of anyone here.”
“It is Natacha’s,” replied Matrena.
She moved toward it, but the young man held her back, went into the
veranda himself, and, without touching it, standing on tiptoe, he examined
the pin. He sank back on his heels and turned toward Matrena. She caught a
glimpse of fleeting emotion on the face of her little friend.
“Explain to me,” she said.
But he gave her a glance that frightened her, and said low:
“Go and give orders right away that dinner be served in the veranda. All
through dinner it is absolutely necessary that the door of Natacha’s sitting-
room, and that of the stairway passage, and that of the veranda giving on
the drawing-room remain open all the time. Do you understand me? As
soon as you have given your orders go to the general’s chamber and do not
quit the general’s bedside, keep it in view. Come down to dinner when it is
announced, and do not bother yourself about anything further.”
So saying, he filled his pipe, lighted it with a sort of sigh of relief, and,
after a final order to Matrena, “Go,” he went into the garden, puffing great
clouds. Anyone would have said he hadn’t smoked in a week. He appeared
not to be thinking but just idly enjoying himself. In fact, he played like a

child with Milinki, Matrena’s pet cat, which he pursued behind the shrubs,
up into the little kiosque which, raised on piles, lifted its steep thatched roof
above the panorama of the isles that Rouletabille settled down to
contemplate like an artist with ample leisure.
The dinner, where Matrena, Natacha and Rouletabille were together
again, was lively. The young man having declared that he was more and
more convinced that the mystery of the bomb in the bouquet was simply a
play of the police, Natacha reinforced his opinion, and following that they
found themselves in agreement on about everything else. For himself, the
reporter during that conversation hid a real horror which had seized him at
the cynical and inappropriate tranquillity with which the young lady
received all suggestions that accused the police or that assumed the general
no longer ran any immediate danger. In short, he worked, or at least
believed he worked, to clear Natacha as he had cleared Matrena, so that
there would develop the absolute necessity of assuming a third person’s
intervention in the facts disclosed so clearly by Koupriane where Matrena
or Natacha seemed alone to be possible agents. As he listened to Natacha
Rouletabille commenced to doubt and quake just as he had seen Matrena
do. The more he looked into the nature of Natacha the dizzier he grew.
What abysmal obscurities were there in her nature!
Nothing interesting happened during dinner. Several times, in spite of
Rouletabille’s obvious impatience with her for doing it, Matrena went up to
the general. She returned saying, “He is quiet. He doesn’t sleep. He doesn’t
wish anything. He has asked me to prepare his narcotic. It is too bad. He
has tried in vain, he cannot get along without it.”
“You, too, mamma, ought to take something to make you sleep. They say
morphine is very good.”
“As for me,” said Rouletabille, whose head for some few minutes had
been dropping now toward one shoulder and now toward another, “I have
no need of any narcotic to make me sleep. If you will permit me, I will get
to bed at once.”
“Eh, my little domovoi doukh, I am going to carry you there in my
arms.”
Matrena extended her large round arms ready to take Rouletabille as
though he had been a baby.

“No, no. I will get up there all right alone,” said Rouletabille, rising
stupidly and appearing ashamed of his excessive sleepiness.
“Oh, well, let us both accompany him to his chamber,” said Natacha,
“and I will wish papa good-night. I’m eager for bed myself. We will all
make a good night of it. Ermolai and Gniagnia will watch with the
schwitzar in the lodge. Things are reasonably arranged now.”
They all ascended the stairs. Rouletabille did not even go to see the
general, but threw himself on his bed. Natacha got onto the bed beside her
father, embraced him a dozen times, and went downstairs again. Matrena
followed behind her, closed doors and windows, went upstairs again to
close the door of the landing-place and found Rouletabille seated on his
bed, his arms crossed, not appearing to have any desire for sleep at all. His
face was so strangely pensive also that the anxiety of Matrena, who had
been able to make nothing out of his acts and looks all day, came back upon
her instantly in greater force than ever. She touched his arm in order to be
sure that he knew she was there.
“My little friend,” she said, “will you tell me now?”
“Yes, madame,” he replied at once. “Sit in that chair and listen to me.
There are things you must know at once, because we have reached a
dangerous hour.”
“The hat-pins first. The hat-pins!”
Rouletabille rose lightly from the bed and, facing her, but watching
something besides her, said:
“It is necessary you should know that someone almost immediately is
going to renew the attempt of the bouquet.”
Matrena sprang to her feet as quickly as though she had been told there
was a bomb in the seat of her chair. She made herself sit down again,
however, in obedience to Rouletabille’s urgent look commanding absolute
quiet.
“Renew the attempt of the bouquet!” she murmured in a stifled voice.
“But there is not a flower in the general’s chamber.”
“Be calm, madame. Understand me and answer me: You heard the tick-
tack from the bouquet while you were in your own chamber?”
“Yes, with the doors open, naturally.”

“You told me the persons who came to say good-night to the general. At
that time there was no noise of tick-tack?”
“No, no.”
“Do you think that if there had been any tick-tack then you would have
heard it, with all those persons talking in the room?”
“I hear everything. I hear everything.”
“Did you go downstairs at the same time those people did?”
“No, no; I remained near the general for some time, until he was sound
asleep.”
“And you heard nothing?”
“Nothing.”
“You closed the doors behind those persons?”
“Yes, the door to the great staircase. The door of the servants’ stairway
was condemned a long time ago; it has been locked by me, I alone have the
key and on the inside of the door opening into the general’s chamber there
is also a bolt which is always shot. All the other doors of the chambers have
been condemned by me. In order to enter any of the four rooms on this floor
it is necessary now to pass by the door of my chamber, which gives on the
main staircase.”
“Perfect. Then, no one has been able to enter the apartment. No one had
been in the apartment for at least two hours excepting you and the general,
when you heard the clockwork. From that the only conclusion is that only
the general and you could have started it going.”
“What are you trying to say?” Matrena demanded, astounded.
“I wish to prove to you by this absurd conclusion, madame, that it is
necessary never—never, you understand? Never—to reason solely upon
even the most evident external evidence when those seemingly-conclusive
appearances are in conflict with certain moral truths that also are clear as
the light of day. The light of day for me, madame, is that the general does
not desire to commit suicide and, above all, that he would not choose the
strange method of suicide by clockwork. The light of day for me is that you
adore your husband and that you are ready to sacrifice your life for his.”
“Now!” exclaimed Matrena, whose tears, always ready in emotional
moments, flowed freely. “But, Holy Mary, why do you speak to me without

looking at me? What is it? What is it?”
“Don’t turn! Don’t make a movement! You hear—not a move! And speak
low, very low. And don’t cry, for the love of God!”
“But you say at once... the bouquet! Come to the general’s room!”
“Not a move. And continue listening to me without interrupting,” said he,
still inclining his ear, and still without looking at her. “It is because these
things were as the light of day to me that I say to myself, ‘It is impossible
that it should be impossible for a third person not to have placed the bomb
in the bouquet. Someone is able to enter the general’s chamber even when
the general is watching and all the doors are locked.’”
“Oh, no. No one could possibly enter. I swear it to you.”
As she swore it a little too loudly, Rouletabille seized her arm so that she
almost cried out, but she understood instantly that it was to keep her quiet.
“I tell you not to interrupt me, once for all.”
“But, then, tell me what you are looking at like that.”
“I am watching the corner where someone is going to enter the general’s
chamber when everything is locked, madame. Do not move!”
Matrena, her teeth chattering, recalled that when she entered
Rouletabille’s chamber she had found all the doors open that communicated
with the chain of rooms: the young man’s chamber with hers, the dressing-
room and the general’s chamber. She tried, under Rouletabille’s look, to
keep calm, but in spite of all the reporter’s exhortations she could not hold
her tongue.
“But which way? Where will they enter?”
“By the door.”
“Which door?”
“That of the chamber giving on the servants’ stair-way.”
“Why, how? The key! The bolt!”
“They have made a key.”
“But the bolt is drawn this side.”
“They will draw it back from the other side.”
“What! That is impossible.”

Rouletabille laid his two hands on Matrena’s strong shoulders and
repeated, detaching each syllable, “They will draw it back from the other
side.”
“It is impossible. I repeat it.”
“Madame, your Nihilists haven’t invented anything. It is a trick much in
vogue with sneak thieves in hotels. All it needs is a little hole the size of a
pin bored in the panel of the door above the bolt.”
“God!” quavered Matrena. “I don’t understand what you mean by your
little hole. Explain to me, little domovoi.”
“Follow me carefully, then,” continued Rouletabille, his eyes all the time
fixed elsewhere. “The person who wishes to enter sticks through the hole a
brass wire that he has already given the necessary curve to and which is
fitted on its end with a light point of steel curved inward. With such an
instrument it is child’s play, if the hole has been made where it ought to be,
to touch the bolt on the inside from the outside, pick the knob on it,
withdraw it, and open the door if the bolt is like this one, a small door-bolt.”
“Oh, oh, oh,” moaned Matrena, who paled visibly. “And that hole?”
“It exists.”
“You have discovered it?”
“Yes, the first hour I was here.”
“Oh, domovoi! But how did you do that when you never entered the
general’s chamber until to-night?”
“Doubtless, but I went up that servants’ staircase much earlier than that.
And I will tell you why. When I was brought into the villa the first time, and
you watched me, bidden behind the door, do you know what I was watching
myself, while I appeared to be solely occupied digging out the caviare? The
fresh print of boot-nails which left the carpet near the table, where someone
had spilled beer (the beer was still running down the cloth). Someone had
stepped in the beer. The boot-print was not clearly visible excepting there.
But from there it went to the door of the servants’ stairway and mounted the
stairs. That boot was too fine to be mounting a stairway reserved to servants
and that Koupriane told me had been condemned, and it was that made me
notice it in a moment; but just then you entered.”
“You never told me anything about it. Of course if I had known there was
a boot-print...”

“I didn’t tell you anything about it because I had my reasons for that, and,
anyway, the trace dried while I was telling you about my journey.”
“Ah, why not have told me later?”
“Because I didn’t know you yet.”
“Subtle devil! You will kill me. I can no longer... Let us go into the
general’s chamber. We will wake him.”
“Remain here. Remain here. I have not told you anything. That boot-print
preoccupied me, and later, when I could get away from the dining-room, I
was not easy until I had climbed that stairway myself and gone to see that
door, where I discovered what I have just told you and what I am going to
tell you now.”
“What? What? In all you have said there has been nothing about the hat-
pins.”
“We have come to them now.”
“And the bouquet attack, which is going to happen again? Why? Why?”
“This is it. When this evening you let me go to the general’s chamber, I
examined the bolt of the door without your suspecting it. My opinion was
confirmed. It was that way that the bomb was brought, and it is by that way
that someone has prepared to return.”
“But how? You are sure the little hole is the way someone came? But
what makes you think that is how they mean to return? You know well
enough that, not having succeeded in the general’s chamber, they are at
work in the dining-room.”
“Madame, it is probable, it is certain that they have given up the work in
the dining-room since they have commenced this very day working again in
the general’s chamber. Yes, someone returned, returned that way, and I was
so sure of that, of the forthcoming return, that I removed the police in order
to be able to study everything more at my ease. Do you understand now my
confidence and why I have been able to assume so heavy a responsibility? It
is because I knew I had only one thing to watch: one little hat-pin. It is not
difficult, madame, to watch a single little hat-pin.”
“A mistake,” said Matrena, in a low voice. “Miserable little domovoi
who told me nothing, me whom you let go to sleep on my mattress, in front
of that door that might open any moment.”

“No, madame. For I was behind it!”
“Ah, dear little holy angel! But what were you thinking of! That door has
not been watched this afternoon. In our absence it could have been opened.
If someone has placed a bomb during our absence!”
“That is why I sent you at once in to the dining-room on that search that I
thought would be fruitless, dear madame. And that is why I hurried upstairs
to the bedroom. I went to the stairway door instantly. I had prepared for
proof positive if anyone had pushed it open even half a millimeter. No, no
one had touched the door in our absence.
“Ah, dear heroic little friend of Jesus! But listen to me. Listen to me, my
angel. Ah, I don’t know where I am or what I say. My brain is no more than
a flabby balloon punctured with pins, with little holes of hat-pins. Tell me
about the hat-pins. Right off! No, at first, what is it that makes you believe
—good God!—that someone will return by that door? How can you see
that, all that, in a poor little hat-pin?”
“Madame, it is not a single hat-pin hole; there are two of them.
“Two hat-pin holes?”
“Yes, two. An old one and a new one. One quite new. Why this second
hole? Because the old one was judged a little too narrow and they wished to
enlarge it, and in enlarging it they broke off the point of a hat-pin in it.
Madame, the point is there yet, filling up the little old hole and the piece of
metal is very sharp and very bright.”
“Now I understand the examination of the hat-pins. Then it is so easy as
that to get through a door with a hat-pin?”
“Nothing easier, especially if the panel is of pine. Sometimes one
happens to break the point of a pin in the first hole. Then of necessity one
makes a second. In order to commence the second hole, the point of the pin
being broken, they have used the point of a pen-knife, then have finished
the hole with the hat-pin. The second hole is still nearer the bolt than the
first one. Don’t move like that, madame.”
“But they are going to come! They are going to come!”
“I believe so.”
“But I can’t understand how you can remain so quiet with such a
certainty. Great heavens! what proof have you that they have not been there
already?”

“Just an ordinary pin, madame, not a hat-pin this time. Don’t confuse the
pins. I will show you in a little while.”
“He will drive me distracted with his pins, dear light of my eyes! Bounty
of Heaven! God’s envoy! Dear little happiness-bearer!”
In her transport she tried to take him in her trembling arms, but he waved
her back. She caught her breath and resumed:
“Did the examination of all the hat-pins tell you anything?”
“Yes. The fifth hat-pin of Mademoiselle Natacha’s, the one in the toque
out in the veranda, has the tip newly broken off.”
“O misery!” cried Matrena, crumpling in her chair.
Rouletabille raised her.
“What would you have? I have examined your own hat-pins. Do you
think I would have suspected you if I had found one of them broken? I
would simply have thought that someone had used your property for an
abominable purpose, that is all.”
“Oh, that is true, that is true. Pardon me. Mother of Christ, this boy
crazes me! He consoles me and he horrifies me. He makes me think of such
dreadful things, and then he reassures me. He does what he wishes with me.
What should I become without him?”
And this time she succeeded in taking his head in her two hands and
kissing him passionately. Rouletabille pushed her back roughly.
“You keep me from seeing,” he said.
She was in tears over his rebuff. She understood now. Rouletabille during
all this conversation had not ceased to watch through the open doors of
Matrena’s room and the dressing-room the farther fatal door whose brass
bolt shone in the yellow light of the night-lamp.
At last he made her a sign and the reporter, followed by Matrena,
advanced on tip-toe to the threshold of the general’s chamber, keeping close
to the wall. Feodor Feodorovitch slept. They heard his heavy breath, but he
appeared to be enjoying peaceful sleep. The horrors of the night before had
fled. Matrena was perhaps right in attributing the nightmares to the narcotic
prepared for him each night, for the glass from which he drank it when he
felt he could not sleep was still full and obviously had not been touched.
The bed of the general was so placed that whoever occupied it, even if they

were wide awake, could not see the door giving on the servants’ stairway.
The little table where the glass and various phials were placed and which
had borne the dangerous bouquet, was placed near the bed, a little back of
it, and nearer the door. Nothing would have been easier than for someone
who could open the door to stretch an arm and place the infernal machine
among the wild flowers, above all, as could easily be believed, if he had
waited for that treachery until the heavy breathing of the general told them
outside that he was fast asleep, and if, looking through the key-hole, he had
made sure Matrena was occupied in her own chamber. Rouletabille, at the
threshold, glided to one side, out of the line of view from the hole, and got
down on all fours. He crawled toward the door. With his head to the floor he
made sure that the little ordinary pin which he had placed on guard that
evening, stuck in the floor against the door, was still erect, having thus
additional proof that the door had not been moved. In any other case the pin
would have lain flat on the floor. He crept back, rose to his feet, passed into
the dressing-room and, in a corner, had a rapid conversation in a low voice
with Matrena.
“You will go,” said he, “and take your mattress into the corner of the
dressing-room where you can still see the door but no one can see you by
looking through the key-hole. Do that quite naturally, and then go to your
rest. I will pass the night on the mattress, and I beg you to believe that I will
be more comfortable there than on a bed of staircase wood where I spent
the night last night, behind the door.”
“Yes, but you will fall asleep. I don’t wish that.”
“What are you thinking, madame?”
“I don’t wish it. I don’t wish it. I don’t wish to quit the door where the
eye is. And since I’m not able to sleep, let me watch.”
He did not insist, and they crouched together on the mattress.
Rouletabille was squatted like a tailor at work; but Matrena remained on
all-fours, her jaw out, her eyes fixed, like a bulldog ready to spring. The
minutes passed by in profound silence, broken only by the irregular
breathing and puffing of the general. His face stood out pallid and tragic on
the pillow; his mouth was open and, at times, the lips moved. There was
fear at any moment of nightmare or his awakening. Unconsciously he threw
an arm over toward the table where the glass of narcotic stood. Then he lay
still again and snored lightly. The night-lamp on the mantelpiece caught

queer yellow reflections from the corners of the furniture, from the gilded
frame of a picture on the wall and from the phials and glasses on the table.
But in all the chamber Matrena Petrovna saw nothing, thought of nothing
but the brass bolt which shone there on the door. Tired of being on her
knees, she shifted, her chin in her hands, her gaze steadily fixed. As time
passed and nothing happened she heaved a sigh. She could not have said
whether she hoped for or dreaded the coming of that something new which
Rouletabille had indicated. Rouletabille felt her shiver with anguish and
impatience.
As for him, he had not hoped that anything would come to pass until
toward dawn, the moment, as everyone knows, when deep sleep is most apt
to vanquish all watchfulness and all insomnia. And as he waited for that
moment he had not budged any more than a Chinese ape or the dear little
porcelain domovoi doukh in the garden. Of course it might be that it was
not to happen this night.
Suddenly Matrena’s hand fell on Rouletabille’s. His imprisoned hers so
firmly that she understood she was forbidden to make the least movement.
And both, with necks extended, ears erect, watched like beasts, like beasts
on the scent.
Yes, yes, there had been a slight noise in the lock. A key turned, softly,
softly, in the lock, and then—silence; and then another little noise, a
grinding sound, a slight grating of wire, above, then on the bolt; upon the
bolt which shone in the subdued glow of the night-lamp. The bolt softly,
very softly, slipped slowly.
Then the door was pushed slowly, so slowly. It opened.
Through the opening the shadow of an arm stretched, an arm which held
in its fingers something which shone. Rouletabille felt Matrena ready to
bound. He encircled her, he pressed her in his arms, he restrained her in
silence, and he had a horrible fear of hearing her suddenly shout, while the
arm stretched out, almost touched the pillow on the bed where the general
continued to sleep a sleep of peace such as he had not known for a long
time.

VII. ARSENATE OF SODA
The mysterious hand held a phial and poured the entire contents into the
potion. Then the hand withdrew as it had come, slowly, prudently, slyly, and
the key turned in the lock and the bolt slipped back into place.
Like a wolf, Rouletabille, warning Matrena for a last time not to budge,
gained the landing-place, bounded towards the stairs, slid down the banister
right to the veranda, crossed the drawing-room like a flash, and reached the
little sitting-room without having jostled a single piece of furniture. He
noticed nothing, saw nothing. All around was undisturbed and silent.
The first light of dawn filtered through the blinds. He was able to make
out that the only closed door was the one to Natacha’s chamber. He stopped
before that door, his heart beating, and listened. But no sound came to his
ear. He had glided so lightly over the carpet that he was sure he had not
been heard. Perhaps that door would open. He waited. In vain. It seemed to
him there was nothing alive in that house except his heart. He was stifled
with the horror that he glimpsed, that he almost touched, although that door
remained closed. He felt along the wall in order to reach the window, and
pulled aside the curtain. Window and blinds of the little room giving on the
Neva were closed. The bar of iron inside was in its place. Then he went to
the passage, mounted and descended the narrow servants’ stairway, looked
all about, in all the rooms, feeling everywhere with silent hands, assuring
himself that no lock had been tampered with. On his return to the veranda,
as he raised his head, he saw at the top of the main staircase a figure wan as
death, a spectral apparition amid the shadows of the passing night, who
leaned toward him. It was Matrena Petrovna. She came down, silent as a
phantom and he no longer recognized her voice when she demanded of him,
“Where? I require that you tell me. Where?”
“I have looked everywhere,” he said, so low that Matrena had to come
nearer to understand his whisper. “Everything is shut tight. And there is no
one about.”
Matrena looked at Rouletabille with all the power of her eyes, as though
she would discover his inmost thoughts, but his clear glance did not waver,

and she saw there was nothing he wished to hide. Then Matrena pointed her
finger at Natacha’s chamber.
“You have not gone in there?” she inquired.
He replied, “It is not necessary to enter there.”
“I will enter there, myself, nevertheless,” said she, and she set her teeth.
He barred her way with his arms spread out.
“If you hold the life of someone dear,” said he, “don’t go a step farther.”
“But the person is in that chamber. The person is there! It is there you
will find out!” And she waved him aside with a gesture as though she were
sleepwalking.
To recall her to the reality of what he had said to her and to make her
understand what he desired, he had to grip her wrist in the vice of his
nervous hand.
“The person is not there, perhaps,” he said, shaking his head.
“Understand me now.”
But she did not understand him. She said:
“Since the person is nowhere else, the person must be there.”
But Rouletabille continued obstinately:
“No, no. Perhaps he is gone.”
“Gone! And everything locked on the inside!”
“That is not a reason,” he replied.
But she could not follow his thoughts any further. She wished absolutely
to make her way into Natacha’s chamber. The obsession of that was upon
her.
“If you enter there,” said he, “and if (as is most probable) you don’t find
what you seek there, all is lost! And as to me, I give up the whole thing.”
She sank in a heap onto a chair.
“Don’t despair,” he murmured. “We don’t know for sure yet.”
She shook her poor old head dejectedly.
“We know that only she is here, since no one has been able to enter and
since no one has been able to leave.”
That, in truth, filled her brain, prevented her from discerning in any
corner of her mind the thought of Rouletabille. Then the impossible

dialogue resumed.
“I repeat that we do not know but that the person has gone,” repeated the
reporter, and demanded her keys.
“Foolish,” she said. “What do you want them for?”
“To search outside as we have searched inside.”
“Why, everything is locked on the inside!”
“Madame, once more, that is no reason that the person may not be
outside.”
He consumed five minutes opening the door of the veranda, so many
were his precautions. She watched him impatiently.
He whispered to her:
“I am going out, but don’t you lose sight of the little sitting-room. At the
least movement call me; fire a revolver if you need to.”
He slipped into the garden with the same precautions for silence. From
the corner that she kept to, through the doors left open, Matrena could
follow all the movements of the reporter and watch Natacha’s chamber at
the same time. The attitude of Rouletabille continued to confuse her beyond
all expression. She watched what he did as if she thought him besotted. The
dyernick on guard out in the roadway also watched the young man through
the bars of the gate in consternation, as though he thought him a fool. Along
the paths of beaten earth or cement which offered no chance for footprints
Rouletabille hurried silently. Around him he noted that the grass of the lawn
had not been trodden. And then he paid no more attention to his steps. He
seemed to study attentively the rosy color in the east, breathing the delicacy
of dawning morning in the Isles, amid the silence of the earth, which still
slumbered.
Bare-headed, face thrown back, hands behind his back, eyes raised and
fixed, he made a few steps, then suddenly stopped as if he had been given
an electric shock. As soon as he seemed to have recovered from that shock
he turned around and went a few steps back to another path, into which he
advanced, straight ahead, his face high, with the same fixed look that he had
had up to the time he so suddenly stopped, as if something or someone
advised or warned him not to go further. He continually worked back
toward the house, and thus he traversed all the paths that led from the villa,
but in all these excursions he took pains not to place himself in the field of

vision from Natacha’s window, a restricted field because of its location just
around an abutment of the building. To ascertain about this window he crept
on all-fours up to the garden-edge that ran along the foot of the wall and
had sufficient proof that no one had jumped out that way. Then he went to
rejoin Matrena in the veranda.
“No one has come into the garden this morning,” said he, “and no one
has gone out of the villa into the garden. Now I am going to look outside
the grounds. Wait here; I’ll be back in five minutes.”
He went away, knocked discreetly on the window of the lodge and waited
some seconds. Ermolai came out and opened the gate for him. Matrena
moved to the threshold of the little sitting-room and watched Natacha’s
door with horror. She felt her legs give under her, she could not stand up
under the diabolic thought of such a crime. Ah, that arm, that arm! reaching
out, making its way, with a little shining phial in its hand. Pains of Christ!
What could there be in the damnable books over which Natacha and her
companions pored that could make such abominable crimes possible? Ah,
Natacha, Natacha! it was from her that she would have desired the answer,
straining her almost to stifling on her rough bosom and strangling her with
her own strong hand that she might not hear the response. Ah, Natacha,
Natacha, whom she had loved so much! She sank to the floor, crept across
the carpet to the door, and lay there, stretched like a beast, and buried her
head in her arms while she wept over her daughter. Natacha, Natacha,
whom she had cherished as her own child, and who did not hear her. Ah,
what use that the little fellow had gone to search outside when the whole
truth lay behind this door? Thinking of him, she was embarrassed lest he
should find her in that animalistic posture, and she rose to her knees and
worked her way over to the window that looked out upon the Neva. The
angle of the slanting blinds let her see well enough what passed outside, and
what she saw made her spring to her feet. Below her the reporter was going
through the same incomprehensible maneuvers that she had seen him do in
the garden. Three pathways led to the little road that ran along the wall of
the villa by the bank of the Neva. The young man, still with his hands
behind his back and with his face up, took them one after the other. In the
first he stopped at the first step. He didn’t take more than two steps in the
second. In the third, which cut obliquely toward the right and seemed to run
to the bank nearest Krestowsky Ostrow, she saw him advance slowly at
first, then more quickly among the small trees and hedges. Once only he

stopped and looked closely at the trunk of a tree against which he seemed to
pick out something invisible, and then he continued to the bank. There he
sat down on a stone and appeared to reflect, and then suddenly he cast off
his jacket and trousers, picked out a certain place on the bank across from
him, finished undressing and plunged into the stream. She saw at once that
he swam like a porpoise, keeping beneath and showing his head from time
to time, breathing, then diving below the surface again. He reached
Krestowsky Ostrow in a clump of reeds. Then he disappeared. Below him,
surrounded by trees, could be seen the red tiles of the villa which sheltered
Boris and Michael. From that villa a person could see the window of the
sitting-room in General Trebassof’s residence, but not what might occur
along the bank of the river just below its walls. An isvotchick drove along
the distant route of Krestowsky, conveying in his carriage a company of
young officers and young women who had been feasting and who sang as
they rode; then deep silence ensued. Matrena’s eyes searched for
Rouletabille, but could not find him. How long was he going to stay hidden
like that? She pressed her face against the chill window. What was she
waiting for? She waited perhaps for someone to make a move on this side,
for the door near her to open and the traitorous figure of The Other to
appear.
A hand touched her carefully. She turned.
Rouletabille was there, his face all scarred by red scratches, without
collar or neck-tie, having hastily resumed his clothes. He appeared furious
as he surprised her in his disarray. She let him lead her as though she were a
child. He drew her to his room and closed the door.
“Madame,” he commenced, “it is impossible to work with you. Why in
the world have you wept not two feet from your step-daughter’s door? You
and your Koupriane, you commence to make me regret the Faubourg
Poissoniere, you know. Your step-daughter has certainly heard you. It is
lucky that she attaches no importance at all to your nocturnal
phantasmagorias, and that she has been used to them a long time. She has
more sense than you, Mademoiselle Natacha has. She sleeps, or at least she
pretends to sleep, which leaves everybody in peace. What reply will you
give her if it happens that she asks you the reason to-day for your marching
and counter-marching up and down the sitting-room and complains that you
kept her from sleeping?”

Matrena only shook her old, old head.
“No, no, she has not heard me. I was there like a shadow, like a shadow
of myself. She will never hear me. No one hears a shadow.”
Rouletabille felt returning pity for her and spoke more gently.
“In any case, it is necessary, you must understand, that she should attach
no more importance to what you have done to-night than to the things she
knows of your doing other nights. It is not the first time, is it, that you have
wandered in the sitting-room? You understand me? And to-morrow,
madame, embrace her as you always have.”
“No, not that,” she moaned. “Never that. I could not.”
“Why not?”
Matrena did not reply. She wept. He took her in his arms like a child
consoling its mother.
“Don’t cry. Don’t cry. All is not lost. Someone did leave the villa this
morning.”
“Oh, little domovoi! How is that? How is that? How did you find that
out?”
“Since we didn’t find anything inside, it was certainly necessary to find
something outside.”
“And you have found it?”
“Certainly.”
“The Virgin protect you!”
“SHE is with us. She will not desert us. I will even say that I believe she
has a special guardianship over the Isles. She watches over them from
evening to morning.”
“What are you saying?”
“Certainly. You don’t know what we call in France ‘the watchers of the
Virgin’?”
“Oh, yes, they are the webs that the dear little beasts of the good God
spin between the trees and that...”
“Exactly. You understand me and you will understand further when you
know that in the garden the first thing that struck me across the face as I
went into it was these watchers of the Virgin spun by the dear little spiders

of the good God. At first when I felt them on my face I said to myself,
‘Hold on, no one has passed this way,’ and so I went to search other places.
The webs stopped me everywhere in the garden. But, outside the garden,
they kept out of the way and let me pass undisturbed down a pathway
which led to the Neva. So then I said to myself, ‘Now, has the Virgin by
accident overlooked her work in this pathway? Surely not. Someone has
ruined it.’ I found the shreds of them hanging to the bushes, and so I
reached the river.”
“And you threw yourself into the river, my dear angel. You swim like a
little god.”
“And I landed where the other landed. Yes, there were the reeds all
freshly broken. And I slipped in among the bushes.”
“Where to?”
“Up to the Villa Krestowsky, madame—where they both live.”
“Ah, it was from there someone came?”
There was a silence between them.
She questioned:
“Boris?”
“Someone who came from the villa and who returned there. Boris or
Michael, or another. They went and returned through the reeds. But in
coming they used a boat; they returned by swimming.”
Her customary agitation reasserted itself.
She demanded ardently:
“And you are sure that he came here and that he left here?”
“Yes, I am sure of it.”
“How?”
“By the sitting-room window.”
“It is impossible, for we found it locked.”
“It is possible, if someone closed it behind him.”
“Ah!”
She commenced to tremble again, and, falling back into her nightmarish
horror, she no longer wasted fond expletives on her domovoi as on a dear

little angel who had just rendered a service ten times more precious to her
than life. While he listened patiently, she said brutally:
“Why did you keep me from throwing myself on him, from rushing upon
him as he opened the door? Ah, I would have, I would have... we would
know.”
“No. At the least noise he would have closed the door. A turn of the key
and he would have escaped forever. And he would have been warned.”
“Careless boy! Why then, if you knew he was going to come, didn’t you
leave me in the bedroom and you watch below yourself?”
“Because so long as I was below he would not have come. He only
comes when there is no one downstairs.”
“Ah, Saints Peter and Paul pity a poor woman. Who do you think it is,
then? Who do you think it is? I can’t think any more. Tell me, tell me that.
You ought to know—you know everything. Come—who? I demand the
truth. Who? Still some agent of the Committee, of the Central Committee?
Still the Nihilists?”
“If it was only that!” said Rouletabille quietly.
“You have sworn to drive me mad! What do you mean by your ‘if it was
only that’?”
Rouletabille, imperturbable, did not reply.
“What have you done with the potion?” said he.
“The potion? The glass of the crime! I have locked it in my room, in the
cupboard—safe, safe!”
“Ah, but, madame, it is necessary to replace it where you took it from.”
“What!”
“Yes, after having poured the poison into a phial, to wash the glass and
fill it with another potion.”
“You are right. You think of everything. If the general wakes and wants
his potion, he must not be suspicious of anything, and he must be able to
have his drink.”
“It is not necessary that he should drink.”
“Well, then, why have the drink there?”

“So that the person can be sure, madame, that if he has not drunk it is
simply because he has not wished to. A pure chance, madame, that he is not
poisoned. You understand me this time?”
“Yes, yes. O Christ! But how now, if the general wakes and wishes to
drink his narcotic?”
“Tell him I forbid it. And here is another thing you must do. When—
Someone—comes into the general’s chamber, in the morning, you must
quite openly and naturally throw out the potion, useless and vapid, you see,
and so Someone will have no right to be astonished that the general
continues to enjoy excellent health.”
“Yes, yes, little one; you are wiser than King Solomon. And what will I
do with the phial of poison?”
“Bring it to me.”
“Right away.”
She went for it and returned five minutes later.
“He is still asleep. I have put the glass on the table, out of his reach. He
will have to call me.”
“Very good. Then push the door to, close it; we have to talk things over.”
“But if someone goes back up the servants’ staircase?”
“Be easy about that. They think the general is poisoned already. It is the
first care-free moment I have been able to enjoy in this house.”
“When will you stop making me shake with horror, little demon! You
keep your secret well, I must say. The general is sleeping better than if he
really were poisoned. But what shall we do about Natacha? I dare ask you
that—you and you alone.”
“Nothing at all.”
“How—nothing?”
“We will watch her...”
“Ah, yes, yes.”
“Still, Matrena, you let me watch her by myself.”
“Yes, yes, I promise you. I will not pay any attention to her. That is
promised. That is promised. Do as you please. Why, just now, when I spoke
of the Nihilists to you, did you say, ‘If it were only that!’? You believe,

then, that she is not a Nihilist? She reads such things—things like on the
barricades...”
“Madame, madame, you think of nothing but Natacha. You have
promised me not to watch her; promise me not to think about her.”
“Why, why did you say, ‘If it was only that!’?”
“Because, if there were only Nihilists in your affair, dear madame, it
would be too simple, or, rather, it would have been more simple. Can you
possibly believe, madame, that simply a Nihilist, a Nihilist who was only a
Nihilist, would take pains that his bomb exploded from a vase of flowers?
—that it would have mattered where, so long as it overwhelmed the
general? Do you imagine that the bomb would have had less effect behind
the door than in front of it? And the little cavity under the floor, do you
believe that a genuine revolutionary, such as you have here in Russia,
would amuse himself by penetrating to the villa only to draw out two nails
from a board, when one happens to give him time between two visits to the
dining-room? Do you suppose that a revolutionary who wished to avenge
the dead of Moscow and who could succeed in getting so far as the door
behind which General Trebassof slept would amuse himself by making a
little hole with a pin in order to draw back the bolt and amuse himself by
pouring poison into a glass? Why, in such a case, he would have thrown his
bomb outright, whether it blew him up along with the villa, or he was
arrested on the spot, or had to submit to the martyrdom of the dungeons in
the Fortress of SS. Peter and Paul, or be hung at Schlusselburg. Isn’t that
what always happens? That is the way he would have done, and not have
acted like a hotel-rat! Now, there is someone in your home (or who comes
to your home) who acts like a hotel-rat because he does not wish to be seen,
because he does not wish to be discovered, because he does not wish to be
taken in the act. Now, the moment that he fears nothing so much as to be
taken in the act, so that he plays all these tricks of legerdemain, it is certain
that his object lies beyond the act itself, beyond the bomb, beyond the
poison. Why all this necessity for bombs of deferred explosion, for
clockwork placed where it will be confused with other things, and not on a
bare staircase forbidden to everybody, though you visit it twenty times a
day?”
“But this man comes in as he pleases by day and by night? You don’t
answer. You know who he is, perhaps?”

“I know him, perhaps, but I am not sure who it is yet.”
“You are not curious, little domovoi doukh! A friend of the house,
certainly, and who enters the house as he wishes, by night, because
someone opens the window for him. And who comes from the Krestowsky
Villa! Boris or Michael! Ah, poor miserable Matrena! Why don’t they kill
poor Matrena? Their general! Their general! And they are soldiers—soldiers
who come at night to kill their general. Aided by—by whom? Do you
believe that? You? Light of my eyes! you believe that! No, no, that is not
possible! I want you to understand, monsieur le domovoi, that I am not able
to believe anything so horrible. No, no, by Jesus Christ Who died on the
Cross, and Who searches our hearts, I do not believe that Boris—who,
however, has very advanced ideas, I admit—it is necessary not to forget
that; very advanced; and who composes very advanced verses also, as I
have always told him—I will not believe that Boris is capable of such a
fearful crime. As to Michael, he is an honest man, and my daughter, my
Natacha, is an honest girl. Everything looks very bad, truly, but I do not
suspect either Michael or Boris or my pure and beloved Natacha (even
though she has made a translation into French of very advanced verses,
certainly most improper for the daughter of a general). That is what lies at
the bottom of my mind, the bottom of my heart—you have understood me
perfectly, little angel of paradise? Ah, it is you the general owes his life to,
that Matrena owes her life. Without you this house would already be a
coffin. How shall I ever reward you? You wish for nothing! I annoy you!
You don’t even listen to me! A coffin—we would all be in our coffins! Tell
me what you desire. All that I have belongs to you!”
“I desire to smoke a pipe.
“Ah, a pipe! Do you want some yellow perfumed tobacco that I receive
every month from Constantinople, a treat right from the harem? I will get
enough for you, if you like it, to smoke ten thousand pipes full.”
“I prefer caporal,” replied Rouletabille. “But you are right. It is not wise
to suspect anybody. See, watch, wait. There is always time, once the game
is caught, to say whether it is a hare or a wild boar. Listen to me, then, my
good mamma. We must know first what is in the phial. Where is it?”
“Here it is.”
She drew it from her sleeve. He stowed it in his pocket.

“You wish the general a good appetite, for me. I am going out. I will be
back in two hours at the latest. And, above all, don’t let the general know
anything. I am going to see one of my friends who lives in the Aptiekarski
pereolek.” *

* The little street of the apothecaries.

“Depend on me, and get back quickly for love of me. My blood clogs in
my heart when you are not here, dear servant of God.”
She mounted to the general’s room and came down at least ten times to
see if Rouletabille had not returned. Two hours later he was around the
villa, as he had promised. She could not keep herself from running to meet
him, for which she was scolded.
“Be calm. Be calm. Do you know what was in the phial?”
“No.”
“Arsenate of soda, enough to kill ten people.”
“Holy Mary!”
“Be quiet. Go upstairs to the general.”
Feodor Feodorovitch was in charming humor. It was his first good night
since the death of the youth of Moscow. He attributed it to his not having
touched the narcotic and resolved, once more, to give up the narcotic, a
resolve Rouletabille and Matrena encouraged. During the conversation
there was a knock at the door of Matrena’s chamber. She ran to see who
was there, and returned with Natacha, who wished to embrace her father.
Her face showed traces of fatigue. Certainly she had not passed as good a
night as her father, and the general reproached her for looking so downcast.
“It is true. I had dreadful dreams. But you, papa, did you sleep well? Did
you take your narcotic?”
“No, no, I have not touched a drop of my potion.”
“Yes, I see. Oh, well, that is all right; that is very good. Natural sleep
must be coming back...”
Matrena, as though hypnotized by Rouletabille, had taken the glass from
the table and ostentatiously carried it to the dressing-room to throw it out,
and she delayed there to recover her self-possession.
Natacha continued:

“You will see, papa, that you will be able to live just like everyone else
finally. The great thing was to clear away the police, the atrocious police;
wasn’t it, Monsieur Rouletabille?”
“I have always said, for myself, that I am entirely of Mademoiselle
Natacha’s mind. You can be entirely reassured now, and I shall leave you
feeling reassured. Yes, I must think of getting my interviews done quickly,
and departing. Ah well, I can only say what I think. Run things yourselves
and you will not run any danger. Besides, the general gets much better, and
soon I shall see you all in France, I hope. I must thank you now for your
friendly hospitality.”
“Ah, but you are not going? You are not going!” Matrena had already set
herself to protest with all the strenuous torrent of words in her poor
desolated heart, when a glance from the reporter cut short her despairing
utterances.
“I shall have to remain a week still in the city. I have engaged a chamber
at the Hotel de France. It is necessary. I have so many people to see and to
receive. I will come to make you a little visit from time to time.”
“You are then quite easy,” demanded the general gravely, “at leaving me
all alone?”
“Entirely easy. And, besides, I don’t leave you all alone. I leave you with
Madame Trebassof and Mademoiselle. I repeat: All three of you stay as I
see you now. No more police, or, in any case, the fewest possible.”
“He is right, he is right,” repeated Natacha again.
At this moment there were fresh knocks at the door of Matrena’s
chamber. It was Ermolai, who announced that his Excellency the Marshal of
the Court, Count Keltzof, wished to see the general, acting for His Majesty.
“Go and receive the Count, Natacha, and tell him that your father will be
downstairs in a moment.”
Natacha and Rouletabille went down and found the Count in the
drawing-room. He was a magnificent specimen, handsome and big as one
of the Swiss papal guard. He seemed watchful in all directions and all
among the furniture, and was quite evidently disquieted. He advanced
immediately to meet the young lady, inquiring the news.
“It is all good news,” replied Natacha. “Everybody here is splendid. The
general is quite gay. But what news have you, monsieur le marechal? You

appear preoccupied.”
The marshal had pressed Rouletabille’s hand.
“And my grapes?” he demanded of Natacha.
“How, your grapes? What grapes?”
“If you have not touched them, so much the better. I arrived here very
anxious. I brought you yesterday, from Krasnoie-Coelo, some of the
Emperor’s grapes that Feodor Feodorovitch enjoyed so much. Now this
morning I learned that the eldest son of Doucet, the French head-gardener
of the Imperial conservatories at Krasnoie, had died from eating those
grapes, which he had taken from those gathered for me to bring here.
Imagine my dismay. I knew, however, that at the general’s table, grapes
would not be eaten without having been washed, but I reproached myself
for not having taken the precaution of leaving word that Doucet recommend
that they be washed thoroughly. Still, I don’t suppose it would matter. I
couldn’t see how my gift could be dangerous, but when I learned of little
Doucet’s death this morning, I jumped into the first train and came straight
here.”
“But, your Excellency,” interrupted Natacha, “we have not seen your
grapes.”
“Ah, they have not been served yet? All the better. Thank goodness!”
“The Emperor’s grapes are diseased, then?” interrogated Rouletabille.
“Phylloxera pest has got into the conservatories?”
“Nothing can stop it, Doucet told me. So he didn’t want me to leave last
evening until he had washed the grapes. Unfortunately, I was pressed for
time and I took them as they were, without any idea that the mixture they
spray on the grapes to protect them was so deadly. It appears that in the
vineyard country they have such accidents every year. They call it, I think,
the... the mixture...”
“The Bordeaux mixture,” was heard in Rouletabille’s trembling voice
“And do you know what it is, Your Excellency, this Bordeaux mixture?”
“Why, no.”
At this moment the general came down the stairs, clinging to the banister
and supported by Matrena Petrovna.

“Well,” continued Rouletabille, watching Natacha, “the Bordeaux
mixture which covered the grapes you brought the general yesterday was
nothing more nor less than arsenate of soda.”
“Ah, God!” cried Natacha.
As for Matrena Petrovna, she uttered a low exclamation and let go the
general, who almost fell down the staircase. Everybody rushed. The general
laughed. Matrena, under the stringent look of Rouletabille, stammered that
she had suddenly felt faint. At last they were all together in the veranda. The
general settled back on his sofa and inquired:
“Well, now, were you just saying something, my dear marshal, about
some grapes you have brought me?”
“Yes, indeed,” said Natacha, quite frightened, “and what he said isn’t
pleasant at all. The son of Doucet, the court gardener, has just been
poisoned by the same grapes that monsieur le marschal, it appears, brought
you.”
“Where was this? Grapes? What grapes? I haven’t seen any grapes!”
exclaimed Matrena. “I noticed you, yesterday, marshal, out in the garden,
but you went away almost immediately, and I certainly was surprised that
you did not come in. What is this story?”
“Well, we must clear this matter up. It is absolutely necessary that we
know what happened to those grapes.”
“Certainly,” said Rouletabille, “they could cause a catastrophe.”
“If it has not happened already,” fretted the marshal.
“But how? Where are they? Whom did you give them to?”
“I carried them in a white cardboard box, the first one that came to hand
in Doucet’s place. I came here the first time and didn’t find you. I returned
again with the box, and the general was just lying down. I was pressed for
my train and Michael Nikolaievitch and Boris Alexandrovitch were in the
garden, so I asked them to execute my commission, and I laid the box down
near them on the little garden table, telling them not to forget to tell you it
was necessary to wash the grapes as Doucet expressly recommended.”
“But it is unbelievable! It is terrible!” quavered Matrena. “Where can the
grapes be? We must know.”
“Absolutely,” approved Rouletabille.

“We must ask Boris and Michael,” said Natacha. “Good God! surely they
have not eaten them! Perhaps they are sick.”
“Here they are,” said the general. All turned. Michael and Boris were
coming up the steps. Rouletabille, who was in a shadowed corner under the
main staircase, did not lose a single play of muscle on the two faces which
for him were two problems to solve. Both faces were smiling; too smiling,
perhaps.
“Michael! Boris! Come here,” cried Feodor Feodorovitch. “What have
you done with the grapes from monsieur le marechal?”
They both looked at him upon this brusque interrogation, seemed not to
understand, and then, suddenly recalling, they declared very naturally that
they had left them on the garden table and had not thought about them.
“You forgot my caution, then?” said Count Kaltzof severely.
“What caution?” said Boris. “Oh, yes, the washing of the grapes.
Doucet’s caution.”
“Do you know what has happened to Doucet with those grapes? His
eldest son is dead, poisoned. Do you understand now why we are anxious to
know what has become of my grapes?”
“But they ought to be out there on the table,” said Michael.
“No one can find them anywhere,” declared Matrena, who, no less than
Rouletabille, watched every change in the countenances of the two officers.
“How did it happen that you went away yesterday evening without saying
good-bye, without seeing us, without troubling yourselves whether or not
the general might need you?”
“Madame,” said Michael, coldly, in military fashion, as though he replied
to his superior officer himself, “we have ample excuse to offer you and the
general. It is necessary that we make an admission, and the general will
pardon us, I am sure. Boris and I, during the promenade, happened to
quarrel. That quarrel was in full swing when we reached here and we were
discussing the way to end it most promptly when monsieur le marechal
entered the garden. We must make that our excuse for giving divided
attention to what he had to say. As soon as he was gone we had only one
thought, to get away from here to settle our difference with arms in our
hands.”

“Without speaking to me about it!” interrupted Trehassof. “I never will
pardon that.”
“You fight at such a time, when the general is threatened! It is as though
you fought between yourselves in the face of the enemy. It is treason!”
added Matrena.
“Madame,” said Boris, “we did not fight. Someone pointed out our fault,
and I offered my excuses to Michael Nikolaievitch, who generously
accepted them. Is that not so, Michael Nikolaievitch?”
“And who is this that pointed out your fault?” demanded the marshal.
“Natacha.”
“Bravo, Natacha. Come, embrace me, my daughter.”
The general pressed his daughter effusively to his broad chest.
“And I hope you will not have further disputing,” he cried, looking over
Natacha’s shoulder.
“We promise you that, General,” declared Boris. “Our lives belong to
you.”
“You did well, my love. Let us all do as well. I have passed an excellent
night, messieurs. Real sleep! I have had just one long sleep.”
“That is so,” said Matrena slowly. “The general had no need of narcotic.
He slept like a child and did not touch his potion.”
“And my leg is almost well.”
“All the same, it is singular that those grapes should have disappeared,”
insisted the marshal, following his fixed idea.
“Ermolai,” called Matrena.
The old servant appeared.
“Yesterday evening, after these gentlemen had left the house, did you
notice a small white box on the garden table?”
“No, Barinia.”
“And the servants? Have any of them been sick? The dvornicks? The
schwitzar? In the kitchens? No one sick? No? Go and see; then come and
tell me.”
He returned, saying, “No one sick.”

Like the marshal, Matrena Petrovna and Feodor Feodorovitch looked at
one another, repeating in French, “No one sick! That is strange!”
Rouletabille came forward and gave the only explanation that was
plausible—for the others.
“But, General, that is not strange at all. The grapes have been stolen and
eaten by some domestic, and if the servant has not been sick it is simply
that the grapes monsieur le marechal brought escaped the spraying of the
Bordeaux mixture. That is the whole mystery.”
“The little fellow must be right,” cried the delighted marshal.
“He is always right, this little fellow,” beamed Matrena, as proudly as
though she had brought him into the world.
But “the little fellow,” taking advantage of the greetings as Athanase
Georgevitch and Ivan Petrovitch arrived, left the villa, gripping in his
pocket the phial which held what is required to make grapes flourish or to
kill a general who is in excellent health. When he had gone a few hundred
steps toward the bridges one must cross to go into the city, he was
overtaken by a panting dvornick, who brought him a letter that had just
come by courier. The writing on the envelope was entirely unknown to him.
He tore it open and read, in excellent French:
“Request to M. Joseph Rouletabille not to mix in matters that do not
concern him. The second warning will be the last.” It was signed: “The
Central Revolutionary Committee.”
“So, ho!” said Rouletabille, slipping the paper into his pocket, “that’s the
line it takes, is it! Happily I have nothing more to occupy myself with at all.
It is Koupriane’s turn now! Now to go to Koupriane’s!”
On this date, Rouletabille’s note-book: “Natacha to her father: ‘But you,
papa, have you had a good night? Did you take your narcotic?’
“Fearful, and (lest I confuse heaven and hell) I have no right to take any
further notes.” *

* As a matter of fact, after this day no more notes are
found in Rouletabille’s memorandum-book. The last one is
that above, bizarre and romantic, and necessary, as
Sainclair, the Paris advocate and friend of Rouletabille,
indicates opposite it in the papers from which we have taken
all the details of this story.

VIII. THE LITTLE CHAPEL OF THE GUARDS
Rouletabille took a long walk which led him to the Troitsky Bridge, then,
re-descending the Naberjnaia, he reached the Winter Palace. He seemed to
have chased away all preoccupation, and took a child’s pleasure in the
different aspects of the life that characterizes the city of the Great Peter. He
stopped before the Winter Palace, walked slowly across the square where
the prodigious monolith of the Alexander Column rises from its bronze
socket, strolled between the palace and the colonnades, passed under an
immense arch: everything seemed Cyclopean to him, and he never had felt
so tiny, so insignificant. None the less he was happy in his insignificance,
he was satisfied with himself in the presence of these colossal things;
everything pleased him this morning. The speed of the isvos, the bickering
humor of the osvotchicks, the elegance of the women, the fine presences of
the officers and their easy naturalness under their uniforms, so opposed to
the wooden posturing of the Berlin military men whom he had noticed at
the “Tilleuls” and in the Friederichstrasse between two trains. Everything
enchanted him—the costume even of the moujiks, vivid blouses, the red
shirts over the trousers, the full legs and the boots up to the knees, even the
unfortunates who, in spite of the soft atmosphere, were muffled up in
sheepskin coats, all impressed him favorably, everything appeared to him
original and congenial.
Order reigned in the city. The guards were polite, decorative and superb
in bearing. The passers-by in that quarter talked gayly among themselves,
often in French, and had manners as civilized as anywhere in the world.
Where, then, was the Bear of the North? He never had seen bears so well
licked. Was it this very city that only yesterday was in revolution? This was
certainly the Alexander Park where troops a few weeks before had fired on
children who had sought refuge in the trees, like sparrows. Was this the very
pavement where the Cossacks had left so many bodies? Finally he saw
before him the Nevsky Prospect, where the bullets rained like hail not long
since upon a people dressed for festivities and very joyous. Nichevo!
Nichevo! All that was so soon forgotten. They forgot yesterday as they
forget to-morrow. The Nihilists? Poets, who imagined that a bomb could

accomplish anything in that Babylon of the North more important than the
noise of its explosion! Look at these people who pass. They have no more
thought for the old attack than for those now preparing in the shadow of the
“tracktirs.” Happy men, full of serenity in this bright quarter, who move
about their affairs and their pleasures in the purest air, the lightest, the most
transparent on earth. No, no; no one knows the joy of mere breathing if he
has not breathed the air there, the finest in the north of the world, which
gives food and drink of beautiful white eau-de-vie and yellow pivo, and
strikes the blood and makes one a beast vigorous and joyful and fatalistic,
and mocks at the Nihilists and, as well, at the ten thousand eyes of the
police staring from under the porches of houses, from under the skulls of
dvornicks—all police, the dvornicks; all police, also the joyous concierges
with extended hands. Ah, ah, one mocks at it all in such air, provided one
has roubles in one’s pockets, plenty of roubles, and that one is not besotted
by reading those extraordinary books that preach the happiness of all
humanity to students and to poor girl-students too. Ah, ah, seed of the
Nihilists, all that! These poor little fellows and poor little girls who have
their heads turned by lectures that they cannot digest! That is all the trouble,
the digestion. The digestion is needed. Messieurs the commercial travelers
for champagne, who talk together importantly in the lobbies of the Grand
Morskaia Hotel and who have studied the Russian people even in the most
distant cities where champagne is sold, will tell you that over any table of
hors-d’oeuvres, and will regulate the whole question of the Revolution
between two little glasses of vodka, swallowed properly, quickly, elbow up,
at a single draught, in the Russian manner. Simply an affair of digestion,
they tell you. Who is the fool that would dare compare a young gentleman
who has well digested a bottle of champagne or two, and another young
man who has poorly digested the lucubrations of, who shall we say?—the
lucubrations of the economists? The economists? The economists! Fools
who compete which can make the most violent statements! Those who read
them and don’t understand them go off like a bomb! Your health! Nichevo!
The world goes round still, doesn’t it?
Discussion political, economic, revolutionary, and other in the room
where they munch hors-d’oeuvres! You will hear it all as you pass through
the hotel to your chamber, young Rouletabille. Get quickly now to the home
of Koupriane, if you don’t wish to arrive there at luncheon-time; then you
would have to put off these serious affairs until evening.

The Department of Police. Massive entrance, heavily guarded, a great
lobby, halls with swinging doors, many obsequious schwitzars on the
lookout for tips, many poor creatures sitting against the walls on dirty
benches, desks and clerks, brilliant boots and epaulets of gay young officers
who are telling tales of the Aquarium with great relish.
“Monsieur Rouletabille! Ah, yes. Please be seated. Delighted, M.
Koupriane will be very happy to receive you, but just at this moment he is
at inspection. Yes, the inspection of the police dormitories in the barracks.
We will take you there. His own idea! He doesn’t neglect anything, does
he? A great Chief. Have you seen the police-guards’ dormitory? Admirable!
The first dormitories of the world. We say that without wishing to offend
France. We love France. A great nation! I will take you immediately to M.
Koupriane. I shall be delighted.”
“I also,” said Rouletabille, who put a rouble into the honorable
functionary’s hand.
“Permit me to precede you.”
Bows and salutes. For two roubles he would have walked obsequiously
before him to the end of the world.
“These functionaries are admirable,” thought Rouletabille as he was led
to the barracks. He felt he had not paid too much for the services of a
personage whose uniform was completely covered with lace. They tramped,
they climbed, they descended. Stairways, corridors. Ah, the barracks at last.
He seemed to have entered a convent. Beds very white, very narrow, and
images of the Virgin and saints everywhere, monastic neatness and the most
absolute silence. Suddenly an order sounded in the corridor outside, and the
police-guard, who sprang from no one could tell where, stood to attention at
the head of their beds. Koupriane and his aide appeared. Koupriane looked
at everything closely, spoke to each man in turn, called them by their
names, inquired about their needs, and the men stammered replies, not
knowing what to answer, reddening like children. Koupriane observed
Rouletabille. He dismissed his aide with a gesture. The inspection was over.
He drew the young man into a little room just off the dormitory.
Rouletabille, frightened, looked about him. He found himself in a chapel.
This little chapel completed the effect of the guards’ dormitory. It was all
gilded, decorated in marvelous colors, thronged with little ikons that bring
happiness, and, naturally, with the portrait of the Tsar, the dear Little Father.

“You see,” said Koupriane, smiling at Rouletabille’s amazement, “we
deny them nothing. We give them their saints right here in their quarters.”
Closing the door, he drew a chair toward Rouletabille and motioned him to
sit down. They sat before the little altar loaded with flowers, with colored
paper and winged saints.
“We can talk here without being disturbed,” he said. “Yonder there is
such a crowd of people waiting for me. I’m ready to listen.”
“Monsieur,” said Rouletabille, “I have come to give you the report of my
mission here, and to terminate my connection with it. All that is left for
clearing this obscure affair is to arrest the guilty person, with which I have
nothing to do. That concerns you. I simply inform you that someone tried to
poison the general last night by pouring arsenate of soda into his sleeping-
potion, which I bring you in this phial, arsenate which was secured most
probably by washing it from grapes brought to General Trebassof by the
marshal of the court, and which disappeared without anyone being able to
say how.”
“Ah, ah, a family affair, a plot within the family. I told you so,”
murmured Koupriane.
“The affair at least has happened within the family, as you think,
although the assassin came from outside. Contrary to what you may be able
to believe, he does not live in the house.”
“Then how does he get there?” demanded Koupriane.
“By the window of the room overlooking the Neva. He has often come
that way. And that is the way he returns also, I am sure. It is there you can
take him if you act with prudence.”
“How do you know he often comes that way?”
“You know the height of the window above the little roadway. To reach it
he uses a water-trough, whose iron rings are bent, and also the marks of a
grappling-iron that he carries with him and uses to hoist himself to the
window are distinctly visible on the ironwork of the little balcony outside.
The marks are quite obviously of different dates.”
“But that window is closed.”
“Someone opens it for him.”
“Who, if you please?”

“I have no desire to know.”
“Eh, yes. It necessarily is Natacha. I was sure that the Villa des Iles had
its viper. I tell you she doesn’t dare leave her nest because she knows she is
watched. Not one of her movements outside escapes us! She knows it. She
has been warned. The last time she ventured outside alone was to go into
the old quarters of Derewnia. What has she to do in such a rotten quarter? I
ask you that. And she turned in her tracks without seeing anyone, without
knocking at a single door, because she saw that she was followed. She isn’t
able to get to see them outside, therefore she has to see them inside.”
“They are only one, and always the same one.”
“Are you sure?”
“An examination of the marks on the wall and on the pipe doesn’t leave
any doubt of it, and it is always the same grappling-iron that is used for the
window.”
“The viper!”
“Monsieur Koupriane, Mademoiselle Natacha seems to preoccupy you
exceedingly. I did not come here to talk about Mademoiselle Natacha. I
came to point out to you the route used by the man who comes to do the
murder.”
“Eh, yes, it is she who opens the way.”
“I can’t deny that.”
“The little demon! Why does she take him into her room at night? Do
you think perhaps there is some love-affair...?”
“I am sure of quite the opposite.”
“I too. Natacha is not a wanton. Natacha has no heart. She has only a
brain. And it doesn’t take long for a brain touched by Nihilism to get so it
won’t hesitate at anything.”
Koupriane reflected a minute, while Rouletabille watched him in silence.
“Have we solely to do with Nihilism?” resumed Koupriane. “Everything
you tell me inclines me more and more to my idea: a family affair, purely in
the family. You know, don’t you, that upon the general’s death Natacha will
be immensely rich?”
“Yes, I know it,” replied Rouletabille, in a voice that sounded singular to
the ear of the Chief of Police and which made him raise his head.

“What do you know?”
“I? Nothing,” replied the reporter, this time in a firmer tone. “I ought,
however, to say this to you: I am sure that we are dealing with Nihilism...”
“What makes you believe it?”
“This.”
And Rouletabille handed Koupriane the message he had received that
same morning.
“Oh, oh,” cried Koupriane. “You are under watch! Look out.”
“I have nothing to fear; I’m not bothering myself about anything further.
Yes, we have an affair of the revolutionaries, but not of the usual kind. The
way they are going about it isn’t like one of their young men that the
Central Committee arms with a bomb and who is sacrificed in advance.”
“Where are the tracks that you have traced?”
“Right up to the little Krestowsky Villa.”
Koupriane bounded from his chair.
“Occupied by Boris. Parbleu! Now we have them. I see it all now. Boris,
another cracked brain! And he is engaged. If he plays the part of the
Revolutionaries, the affair would work out big for him.”
“That villa,” said Rouletabille quietly, “is also occupied by Michael
Korosakoff.”
“He is the most loyal, the most reliable soldier of the Tsar.”
“No one is ever sure of anything, my dear Monsieur Koupriane.”
“Oh, I am sure of a man like that.”
“No man is ever sure of any man, my dear Monsieur Koupriane.”
“I am, in every case, for those I employ.”
“You are wrong.”
“What do you say?”
“Something that can serve you in the enterprise you are going to
undertake, because I trust you can catch the murderer right in his nest. To
do that, I’ll not conceal from you that I think your agents will have to be
enormously clever. They will have to watch the datcha des Iles at night,
without anyone possibly suspecting it. No more maroon coats with false
astrakhan trimmings, eh? But Apaches, Apaches on the wartrail, who blend

themselves with the ground, with the trees, with the stones in the roadway.
But among those Apaches don’t send that agent of your Secret Service who
watched the window while the assassin climbed to it.”
“What?”
“Why, these climbs that you can read the proofs of on the wall and on the
iron forgings of the balcony went on while your agents, night and day, were
watching the villa. Have you noticed, monsieur, that it was always the same
agent who took the post at night, behind the villa, under the window?
General Trebassof’s book in which he kept a statement of the exact disposal
of each of your men during the period of siege was most instructive on that
point. The other posts changed in turn, but the same agent, when he was
among the guard, demanded always that same post, which was not disputed
by anybody, since it is no fun to pass the hours of the night behind a wall, in
an empty field. The others much preferred to roll away the time watching in
the villa or in front of the lodge, where vodka and Crimean wine, kwass and
pivo, kirsch and tchi, never ran short. That agent’s name is Touman.”
“Touman! Impossible! He is one of the best agents from Kiew. He was
recommended by Gounsovski.”
Rouletabille chuckled.
“Yes, yes, yes,” grumbled the Chief of Police. “Someone always laughs
when his name is mentioned.”
Koupriane had turned red. He rose, opened the door, gave a long
direction in Russian, and returned to his chair.
“Now,” said he, “go ahead and tell me all the details of the poison and the
grapes the marshal of the court brought. I’m listening.”
Rouletabille told him very briefly and without drawing any deductions all
that we already know. He ended his account as a man dressed in a maroon
coat with false astrakhan was introduced. It was the same man Rouletabille
had met in General Trebassof’s drawing-room and who spoke French. Two
gendarmes were behind him. The door had been closed. Koupriane turned
toward the man in the coat.
“Touman,” he said, “I want to talk to you. You are a traitor, and I have
proof. You can confess to me, and I will give you a thousand roubles and
you can take yourself off to be hanged somewhere else.”

The man’s eyes shrank, but he recovered himself quickly. He replied in
Russian.
“Speak French. I order it,” commanded Koupriane.
“I answer, Your Excellency,” said Touman firmly, “that I don’t know
what Your Excellency means.”
“I mean that you have helped a man get into the Trebassof villa by night
when you were on guard under the window of the little sitting-room. You
see that there is no use deceiving us any longer. I play with you frankly,
good play, good money. The name of that man, and you have a thousand
roubles.”
“I am ready to swear on the ikon of...”
“Don’t perjure yourself.”
“I have always loyally served...”
“The name of that man.”
“I still don’t know yet what Your Excellency means.”
“Oh, you understand me,” replied Koupriane, who visibly held in an
anger that threatened to break forth any moment. “A man got into the house
while you were watching...”
“I never saw anything. After all, it is possible. There were some very dark
nights. I went back and forth.”
“You are not a fool. The name of that man.”
“I assure you, Excellency...”
“Strip him.”
“What are you going to do?” cried Rouletabille.
But already the two guards had thrown themselves on Touman and had
drawn off his coat and shirt. The man was bare to the waist.
“What are you going to do? What are you going to do?”
“Leave them alone,” said Koupriane, roughly pushing Rouletabille back.
Seizing a whip which hung at the waist of the guards he struck Touman a
blow across the shoulders that drew blood. Touman, mad with the outrage
and the pain, shouted, “Yes, it is true! I brag of it!”
Koupriane did not restrain his rage. He showered the unhappy man with
blows, having thrown Rouletabille to the end of the room when he tried to

interfere. And while he proceeded with the punishment the Chief of Police
hurled at the agent who had betrayed him an accompaniment of fearful
threats, promising him that before he was hanged he should rot in the
bottom-most dungeon of Peter and Paul, in the slimy pits lying under the
Neva. Touman, between the two guards who held him, and who sometimes
received blows on the rebound that were not intended for them, never
uttered a complaint. Outside the invectives of Koupriane there was heard
only the swish of the cords and the cries of Rouletabille, who continued to
protest that it was abominable, and called the Chief of Police a savage.
Finally the savage stopped. Gouts of blood had spattered all about.
“Monsieur,” said Rouletabille, who supported himself against the wall. “I
shall complain to the Tsar.”
“You are right,” Koupriane replied, “but I feel relieved now. You can’t
imagine the harm this man can have done to us in the weeks he has been
here.”
Touman, across whose shoulders they had thrown his coat and who lay
now across a chair, found strength to look up and say:
“It is true. You can’t do me as much harm as I have done you, whether
you think so or not. All the harm that can be done me by you and yours is
already accomplished. My name is not Touman, but Matiev. Listen. I had a
son that was the light of my eyes. Neither my son nor I had ever been
concerned with politics. I was employed in Moscow. My son was a student.
During the Red Week we went out, my son and I, to see a little of what was
happening over in the Presnia quarter. They said everybody had been killed
over there! We passed before the Presnia gate. Soldiers called to us to stop
because they wished to search us. We opened our coats. The soldiers saw
my son’s student waistcoat and set up a cry. They unbuttoned the vest, drew
a note-book out of his pocket and they found a workman’s song in it that
had been published in the Signal. The soldiers didn’t know how to read.
They believed the paper was a proclamation, and they arrested my son. I
demanded to be arrested with him. They pushed me away. I ran to the
governor’s house. Trebassof had me thrust away from his door with blows
from the butt-ends of his Cossacks’ guns. And, as I persisted, they kept me
locked up all that night and the morning of the next day. At noon I was set
free. I demanded my son and they replied they didn’t know what I was
talking about. But a soldier that I recognized as having arrested my son the

evening before pointed out a van that was passing, covered with a tarpaulin
and surrounded by Cossacks. ‘Your son is there,’ he said; ‘they are taking
him to the graves.’ Mad with despair, I ran after the van. It went to the
outskirts of Golountrine cemetery. There I saw in the white snow a huge
grave, wide, deep. I shall see it to my last minute. Two vans had already
stopped near the hole. Each van held thirteen corpses. The vans were
dumped into the trench and the soldiers commenced to sort the bodies into
rows of six. I watched for my son. At last I recognized him in a body that
half hung over the edge of the trench. Horrors of suffering were stamped in
the expression of his face. I threw myself beside him. I said that I was his
father. They let me embrace him a last time and count his wounds. He had
fourteen. Someone had stolen the gold chain that had hung about his neck
and held the picture of his mother, who died the year before. I whispered
into his ear, I swore to avenge him. Forty-eight hours later I had placed
myself at the disposition of the Revolutionary Committee. A week had not
passed before Touman, whom, it seems, I resemble and who was one of the
Secret Service agents in Kiew, was assassinated in the train that was taking
him to St. Petersburg. The assassination was kept a secret. I received all his
papers and I took his place with you. I was doomed beforehand and I asked
nothing better, so long as I might last until after the execution of Trebassof.
Ah, how I longed to kill him with my own hands! But another had already
been assigned the duty and my role was to help him. And do you suppose I
am going to tell you the name of that other? Never! And if you discover that
other, as you have discovered me, another will come, and another, and
another, until Trebassof has paid for his crimes. That is all I have to say to
you, Koupriane. As for you, my little fellow,” added he, turning to
Rouletabille, “I wouldn’t give much for your bones. Neither of you will last
long. That is my consolation.”
Koupriane had not interrupted the man. He looked at him in silence,
sadly.
“You know, my poor man, you will be hanged now?” he said.
“No,” growled Rouletabille. “Monsieur Koupriane, I’ll bet you my purse
that he will not be hanged.”
“And why not?” demanded the Chief of rolice, while, upon a sign from
him, they took away the false Touman.
“Because it is I who denounced him.”

“What a reason! And what would you like me to do?”
“Guard him for me; for me alone, do you understand?”
“In exchange for what?”
“In exchange for the life of General Trebassof, if I must put it that way.”
“Eh? The life of General Trebassof! You speak as if it belonged to you, as
if you could dispose of it.”
Rouletabille laid his hand on Koupriane’s arm.
“Perhaps that’s so,” said he.
“Would you like me to tell you one thing, Monsieur Rouletabille? It is
that General Trebassof’s life, after what has just escaped the lips of this
Touman, who is not Touman, isn’t worth any more than—than yours if you
remain here. Since you are disposed not to do anything more in this affair,
take the train, monsieur, take the train, and go.”
Rouletabille walked back and forth, very much worked up; then suddenly
he stopped short.
“Impossible,” he said. “It is impossible. I cannot; I am not able to go
yet.”
“Why?”
“Good God, Monsieur Koupriane, because I have to interview the
President of the Duma yet, and complete my little inquiry into the politics
of the cadets.”
“Oh, indeed!”
Koupriane looked at him with a sour grin.
“What are you going to do with that man?” demanded Rouletabille.
“Have him fixed up first.”
“And then?”
“Then take him before the judges.”
“That is to say, to the gallows?”
“Certainly.”
“Monsieur Koupriane, I offer it to you again. Life for life. Give me the
life of that poor devil and I promise you General Trebassof’s.”
“Explain yourself.”

“Not at all. Do you promise me that you will maintain silence about the
case of that man and that you will not touch a hair of his head?”
Koupriane looked at Rouletabille as he had looked at him during the
altercation they had on the edge of the Gulf. He decided the same way this
time.
“Very well,” said he. “You have my word. The poor devil!”
“You are a brave man, Monsieur Koupriane, but a little quick with the
whip...”
“What would you expect? One’s work teaches that.”
“Good morning. No, don’t trouble to show me out. I am compromised
enough already,” said Rouletabille, laughing.
“Au revoir, and good luck! Get to work interviewing the President of the
Duma,” added Koupriane knowingly, with a great laugh.
But Rouletabille was already gone.
“That lad,” said the Chief of Police aloud to himself, “hasn’t told me a bit
of what he knows.”

IX. ANNOUCHKA
“And now it’s between us two, Natacha,” murmured Rouletabille as soon
as he was outside. He hailed the first carriage that passed and gave the
address of the datcha des Iles. When he got in he held his head between his
hands; his face burned, his jaws were set. But by a prodigious effort of his
will he resumed almost instantly his calm, his self-control. As he went back
across the Neva, across the bridge where he had felt so elated a little while
before, and saw the isles again he sighed heavily. “I thought I had got it all
over with, so far as I was concerned, and now I don’t know where it will
stop.” His eyes grew dark for a moment with somber thoughts and the
vision of the Lady in Black rose before him; then he shook his head, filled
his pipe, lighted it, dried a tear that had been caused doubtless by a little
smoke in his eye, and stopped sentimentalizing. A quarter of an hour later
he gave a true Russian nobleman’s fist-blow in the back to the coachman as
an intimation that they had reached the Trebassof villa. A charming picture
was before him. They were all lunching gayly in the garden, around the
table in the summer-house. He was astonished, however, at not seeing
Natacha with them. Boris Mourazoff and Michael Korsakoff were there.
Rouletabille did not wish to be seen. He made a sign to Ermolai, who was
passing through the garden and who hurried to meet him at the gate.
“The Barinia,” said the reporter, in a low voice and with his finger to his
lips to warn the faithful attendant to caution.
In two minutes Matrena Petrovna joined Rouletabille in the lodge.
“Well, where is Natacha?” he demanded hurriedly as she kissed his hands
quite as though she had made an idol of him.
“She has gone away. Yes, out. Oh, I did not keep her. I did not try to hold
her back. Her expression frightened me, you can understand, my little
angel. My, you are impatient! What is it about? How do we stand? What
have you decided? I am your slave. Command me. Command me. The keys
of the villa?”
“Yes, give me a key to the veranda; you must have several. I must be able
to get into the house to-night if it becomes necessary.”

She drew a key from her gown, gave it to the young man and said a few
words in Russian to Ermolai, to enforce upon him that he must obey the
little domovoi-doukh in anything, day or night.
“Now tell me where Natacha has gone.”
“Boris’s parents came to see us a little while ago, to inquire after the
general. They have taken Natacha away with them, as they often have done.
Natacha went with them readily enough. Little domovoi, listen to me, listen
to Matrena Petrovna—Anyone would have said she was expecting it!”
“Then she has gone to lunch at their house?”
“Doubtless, unless they have gone to a cafe. I don’t know. Boris’s father
likes to have the family lunch at the Barque when it is fine. Calm yourself,
little domovoi. What ails you? Bad news, eh? Any bad news?”
“No, no; everything is all right. Quick, the address of Boris’s family.”
“The house at the corner of La Place St. Isaac and la rue de la Poste.”
“Good. Thank you. Adieu.”
He started for the Place St. Isaac, and picked up an interpreter at the
Grand Morskaia Hotel on the way. It might be useful to have him. At the
Place St. Isaac he learned the Morazoffs and Natacha Trebassof had gone
by train for luncheon at Bergalowe, one of the nearby stations in Finland.
“That is all,” said he, and added apart to himself, “And perhaps that is not
true.”
He paid the coachman and the interpreter, and lunched at the Brasserie de
Vienne nearby. He left there a half-hour later, much calmer. He took his
way to the Grand Morskaia Hotel, went inside and asked the schwitzar:
“Can you give me the address of Mademoiselle Annouchka?”
“The singer of the Krestowsky?”
“That is who I mean.”
“She had luncheon here. She has just gone away with the prince.”
Without any curiosity as to which prince, Rouletabille cursed his luck
and again asked for her address.
“Why, she lives in an apartment just across the way.”
Rouletabille, feeling better, crossed the street, followed by the interpreter
that he had engaged. Across the way he learned on the landing of the first

floor that Mademoiselle Annouchka was away for the day. He descended,
still followed by his interpreter, and recalling how someone had told him
that in Russia it was always profitable to be generous, he gave five roubles
to the interpreter and asked him for some information about Mademoiselle
Annouchka’s life in St. Petersburg. The interpreter whispered:
“She arrived a week ago, but has not spent a single night in her apartment
over there.”
He pointed to the house they had just left, and added:
“Merely her address for the police.”
“Yes, yes,” said Rouletabille, “I understand. She sings this evening,
doesn’t she?”
“Monsieur, it will be a wonderful debut.”
“Yes, yes, I know. Thanks.”
All these frustrations in the things he had undertaken that day instead of
disheartening him plunged him deep into hard thinking. He returned, his
hands in his pockets, whistling softly, to the Place St. Isaac, walked around
the church, keeping an eye on the house at the corner, investigated the
monument, went inside, examined all its details, came out marveling, and
finally went once again to the residence of the Mourazoffs, was told that
they had not yet returned from the Finland town, then went and shut himself
in his room at the hotel, where he smoked a dozen pipes of tobacco. He
emerged from his cloud of smoke at dinner-time.
At ten that evening he stepped out of his carriage before the Krestowsky.
The establishment of Krestowsky, which looms among the Isles much as
the Aquarium does, is neither a theater, nor a music-hall, nor a cafe-concert,
nor a restaurant, nor a public garden; it is all of these and some other things
besides. Summer theater, winter theater, open-air theater, hall for spectacles,
scenic mountain, exercise-ground, diversions of all sorts, garden
promenades, cafes, restaurants, private dining-rooms, everything is
combined here that can amuse, charm, lead to the wildest orgies, or provide
those who never think of sleep till toward three or four o’clock of a
morning the means to await the dawn with patience. The most celebrated
companies of the old and the new world play there amid an enthusiasm that
is steadily maintained by the foresight of the managers: Russian and foreign
dancers, and above all the French chanteuses, the little dolls of the cafes-

concerts, so long as they are young, bright, and elegantly dressed, may meet
their fortune there. If there is no such luck, they are sure at least to find
every evening some old beau, and often some officer, who willingly pays
twenty-five roubles for the sole pleasure of having a demoiselle born on the
banks of the Seine for his companion at the supper-table. After their turn at
the singing, these women display their graces and their eager smiles in the
promenades of the garden or among the tables where the champagne-
drinkers sit. The head-liners, naturally, are not driven to this wearying
perambulation, but can go away to their rest if they are so inclined.
However, the management is appreciative if they accept the invitation of
some dignitary of the army, of administration, or of finance, who seeks the
honor of hearing from the chanteuse, in a private room and with a company
of friends not disposed to melancholy, the Bohemian songs of the Vieux
Derevnia. They sing, they loll, they talk of Paris, and above all they drink.
If sometimes the little fete ends rather roughly, it is the friendly and
affectionate champagne that is to blame, but usually the orgies remain quite
innocent, of a character that certainly might trouble the temperance
societies but need not make M. le Senateur Berenger feel involved.
A war whose powder fumes reeked still, a revolution whose last defeated
growls had not died away at the period of these events, had not at all
diminished the nightly gayeties of Kretowsky. Many of the young men who
displayed their uniforms that evening and called their “Nichevo” along the
brilliantly lighted paths of the public gardens, or filled the open-air tables,
or drank vodka at the buffets, or admired the figures of the wandering
soubrettes, had come here on the eve of their departure for the war and had
returned with the same child-like, enchanted smile, the same ideal of futile
joy, and kissed their passing comrades as gayly as ever. Some of them had a
sleeve lying limp now, or walked with a crutch, or even on a wooden leg,
but it was, all the same, “Nichevo!”
The crowd this evening was denser than ordinarily, because there was the
chance to hear Annouchka again for the first time since the somber days of
Moscow. The students were ready to give her an ovation, and no one
opposed it, because, after all, if she sang now it was because the police were
willing at last. If the Tsar’s government had granted her her life, it was not
in order to compel her to die of hunger. Each earned a livelihood as was
possible. Annouchka only knew how to sing and dance, and so she must
sing and dance!

When Rouletabille entered the Krestowsky Gardens, Annouchka had
commenced her number, which ended with a tremendous “Roussalka.”
Surrounded by a chorus of male and female dancers in the national dress
and with red boots, striking tambourines with their fingers, then suddenly
taking a rigid pose to let the young woman’s voice, which was of rather
ordinary register, come out, Annouchka had centered the attention of the
immense audience upon herself. All the other parts of the establishment
were deserted, the tables had been removed, and a panting crowd pressed
about the open-air theater. Rouletabille stood up on his chair at the moment
tumultuous “Bravos” sounded from a group of students. Annouchka bowed
toward them, seeming to ignore the rest of the audience, which had not
dared declare itself yet. She sang the old peasant songs arranged to present-
day taste, and interspersed them with dances. They had an enormous
success, because she gave her whole soul to them and sang with her voice
sometimes caressing, sometimes menacing, and sometimes magnificently
desperate, giving much significance to words which on paper had not
aroused the suspicions of the censor. The taste of the day was obviously still
a taste for the revolution, which retained its influence on the banks of the
Neva. What she was doing was certainly very bold, and apparently she
realized how audacious she was, because, with great adroitness, she would
bring out immediately after some dangerous phrase a patriotic couplet
which everybody was anxious to applaud. She succeeded by such means in
appealing to all the divergent groups of her audience and secured a
complete triumph for herself. The students, the revolutionaries, the radicals
and the cadets acclaimed the singer, glorifying not only her art but also and
beyond everything else the sister of the engineer Volkousky, who had been
doomed to perish with her brother by the bullets of the Semenovsky
regiment. The friends of the Court on their side could not forget that it was
she who, in front of the Kremlin, had struck aside the arm of Constantin
Kochkarof, ordered by the Central Revolutionary Committee to assassinate
the Grand Duke Peter Alexandrovitch as he drove up to the governor’s
house in his sleigh. The bomb burst ten feet away, killing Constantin
Kochkarof himself. It may be that before death came he had time to hear
Annouchka cry to him, “Wretch! You were told to kill the prince, not to
assassinate his children.” As it happened, Peter Alexandrovitch held on his
knees the two little princesses, seven and eight years old. The Court had
wished to recompense her for that heroic act. Annouchka had spit at the

envoy of the Chief of Police who called to speak to her of money. At the
Hermitage in Moscow, where she sang then, some of her admirers had
warned her of possible reprisals on the part of the revolutionaries. But the
revolutionaries gave her assurance at once that she had nothing to fear.
They approved her act and let her know that they now counted on her to kill
the Grand Duke some time when he was alone; which had made Annouchka
laugh. She was an enfant terrible, whose friends no one knew, who passed
for very wise, and whose lines of intrigue were inscrutable. She enjoyed
making her hosts in the private supper-rooms quake over their meal. One
day she had said bluntly to one of the most powerful tchinovnicks of
Moscow: “You, my old friend, you are president of the Black Hundred.
Your fate is sealed. Yesterday you were condemned to death by the
delegates of the Central Committee at Presnia. Say your prayers.” The man
reached for champagne. He never finished his glass. The dvornicks carried
him out stricken with apoplexy. Since the time she saved the little grand-
duchesses the police had orders to allow her to act and talk as she pleased.
She had been mixed up in the deepest plots against the government. Those
who lent the slightest countenance to such plottings and were not of the
police simply disappeared. Their friends dared not even ask for news of
them. The only thing not in doubt about them was that they were at hard
labor somewhere in the mines of the Ural Mountains. At the moment of the
revolution Annouchka had a brother who was an engineer on the Kasan-
Moscow line. This Volkousky was one of the leaders on the Strike
Committee. The authorities had an eye on him. The revolution started. He,
with the help of his sister, accomplished one of those formidable acts which
will carry their memory as heroes to the farthest posterity. Their work
accomplished, they were taken by Trebassof’s soldiers. Both were
condemned to death. Volkousky was executed first, and the sister was
taking her turn when an officer of the government arrived on horseback to
stop the firing. The Tsar, informed of her intended fate, had sent a pardon
by telegraph. After that she disappeared. She was supposed to have gone on
some tour across Europe, as was her habit, for she spoke all the languages,
like a true Bohemian. Now she had reappeared in all her joyous glory at
Krestowsky. It was certain, however, that she had not forgotten her brother.
Gossips said that if the government and the police showed themselves so
long-enduring they found it to their interest to do so. The open, apparent life
Annouchka led was less troublesome to them than her hidden activities

would be. The lesser police who surrounded the Chief of the St. Petersburg
Secret Service, the famous Gounsovski, had meaning smiles when the
matter was discussed. Among them Annouchka had the ignoble nickname,
“Stool-pigeon.”
Rouletabille must have been well aware of all these particulars
concerning Annouchka, for he betrayed no astonishment at the great interest
and the strong emotion she aroused. From the corner where he was he could
see only a bit of the stage, and he was standing on tiptoes to see the singer
when he felt his coat pulled. He turned. It was the jolly advocate, well
known for his gastronomic feats, Athanase Georgevitch, along with the jolly
Imperial councilor, Ivan Petrovitch, who motioned him to climb down.
“Come with us; we have a box.”
Rouletabille did not need urging, and he was soon installed in the front of
a box where he could see the stage and the public both. Just then the curtain
fell on the first part of Annouchka’s performance. The friends were soon
rejoined by Thaddeus Tchitchnikoff, the great timber-merchant, who came
from behind the scenes.
“I have been to see the beautiful Onoto,” announced the Lithuanian with
a great satisfied laugh. “Tell me the news. All the girls are sulking over
Annouchka’s success.”
“Who dragged you into the Onoto’s dressing-room then?" demanded
Athanase.
“Oh, Gounsovski himself, my dear. He is very amateurish, you know.”
“What! do you knock around with Gounsovski?”
“On my word, I tell you, dear friends, he isn’t a bad acquaintance. He did
me a little service at Bakou last year. A good acquaintance in these times of
public trouble.”
“You are in the oil business now, are you?”
“Oh, yes, a little of everything for a livelihood. I have a little well down
Bakou way, nothing big; and a little house, a very small one for my small
business.”
“What a monopolist Thaddeus is,” declared Athanase Georgevitch,
hitting him a formidable slap on the thigh with his enormous hand.
“Gounsovski has come himself to keep an eye on Annouchka’s debut, eh?
Only he goes into Onoto’s dressing-room, the rogue.”

“Oh, he doesn’t trouble himself. Do you know who he is to have supper
with? With Annouchka, my dears, and we are invited.”
“How’s that?” inquired the jovial councilor.
“It seems Gounsovski influenced the minister to permit Annouchka’s
performance by declaring he would be responsible for it all. He required
from Annouchka solely that she have supper with him on the evening of her
debut.”
“And Annouchka consented?”
“That was the condition, it seems. For that matter, they say that
Annouchka and Gounsovski don’t get along so badly together. Gounsovski
has done Annouchka many a good turn. They say he is in love with her.”
“He has the air of an umbrella merchant,” snorted Athanase Georgevitch.
“Have you seen him at close range?” inquired Ivan.
“I have dined at his house, though it is nothing to boast of, on my word.”
“That is what he said,” replied Thaddeus. “When he knew we were here
together, he said to me: ‘Bring him, he is a charming fellow who plies a
great fork; and bring that dear man Ivan Petrovitch, and all your friends.’”
“Oh, I only dined at his house,” grumbled Athanase, “because there was a
favor he was going to do me.”
“He does services for everybody, that man,” observed Ivan Petrovitch.
“Of course, of course; he ought to,” retorted Athanase. “What is a chief
of Secret Service for if not to do things for everybody? For everybody, my
dear friends, and a little for himself besides. A chief of Secret Service has to
be in with everybody, with everybody and his father, as La Fontaine says (if
you know that author), if he wants to hold his place. You know what I
mean.”
Athanase laughed loudly, glad of the chance to show how French he
could be in his allusions, and looked at Rouletabille to see if he had been
able to catch the tone of the conversation; but Rouletabille was too much
occupied in watching a profile wrapped in a mantilla of black lace, in the
Spanish fashion, to repay Athanase’s performance with a knowing smile.
“You certainly have naive notions. You think a chief of Secret Police
should be an ogre,” replied the advocate as he nodded here and there to his
friends.

“Why, certainly not. He needs to be a sheep in a place like that, a
thorough sheep. Gounsovski is soft as a sheep. The time I dined with him he
had mutton streaked with fat. He is just like that. I am sure he is mainly
layers of fat. When you shake hands you feel as though you had grabbed a
piece of fat. My word! And when he eats he wags his jaw fattishly. His head
is like that, too; bald, you know, with a cranium like fresh lard. He speaks
softly and looks at you like a kid looking to its mother for a juicy meal.”
“But—why—it is Natacha!” murmured the lips of the young man.
“Certainly it is Natacha, Natacha herself,” exclaimed Ivan Petrovitch,
who had used his glasses the better to see whom the young French
journalist was looking at. “Ah, the dear child! she has wanted to see
Annouchka for a long time.”
“What, Natacha! So it is. So it is. Natacha! Natacha!” said the others.
“And with Boris Mourazoff’s parents.”
“But Boris is not there,” sniggered Thaddeus Tehitchnikoff.
“Oh, he can’t be far away. If he was there we would see Michael
Korsakoff too. They keep close on each other’s heels.”
“How has she happened to leave the general? She said she couldn’t bear
to be away from him.”
“Except to see Annouchka,” replied Ivan. “She wanted to see her, and
talked so about it when I was there that even Feodor Feodorovitch was
rather scandalized at her and Matrena Petrovna reproved her downright
rudely. But what a girl wishes the gods bring about. That’s the way.”
“That’s so, I know,” put in Athanase. “Ivan Petrovitch is right. Natacha
hasn’t been able to hold herself in since she read that Annouchka was going
to make her debut at Krestowsky. She said she wasn’t going to die without
having seen the great artist.”
“Her father had almost drawn her away from that crowd,” affirmed Ivan,
“and that was as it should be. She must have fixed up this affair with Boris
and his parents.”
“Yes, Feodor certainly isn’t aware that his daughter’s idea was to applaud
the heroine of Kasan station. She is certainly made of stern stuff, my word,”
said Athanase.
“Natacha, you must remember, is a student,” said Thaddeus, shaking his
head; “a true student. They have misfortunes like that now in so many

families. I recall, apropos of what Ivan said just now, how today she asked
Michael Korsakoff, before me, to let her know where Annouchka would
sing. More yet, she said she wished to speak to that artist if it were possible.
Michael frowned on that idea, even before me. But Michael couldn’t refuse
her, any more than the others. He can reach Annouchka easier than anyone
else. You remember it was he who rode hard and arrived in time with the
pardon for that beautiful witch; she ought not to forget him if she cared for
her life.”
“Anyone who knows Michael Nikolaievitch knows that he did his duty
promptly,” announced Athanase Georgevitch crisply. “But he would not
have gone a step further to save Annouchka. Even now he won’t
compromise his career by being seen at the home of a woman who is never
from under the eyes of Gounsovski’s agents and who hasn’t been
nicknamed ‘Stool-pigeon’ for nothing.”
“Then why do we go to supper tonight with Annouchka?” asked Ivan.
“That’s not the same thing. We are invited by Gounsovski himself. Don’t
forget that, if stories concerning it drift about some day, my friends,” said
Thaddeus.
“For that matter, Thaddeus, I accept the invitation of the honorable chief
of our admirable Secret Service because I don’t wish to slight him. I have
dined at his house already. By sitting opposite him at a public table here I
feel that I return that politeness. What do you say to that?”
“Since you have dined with him, tell us what kind of a man he is aside
from his fattish qualities,” said the curious councilor. “So many things are
said about him. He certainly seems to be a man it is better to stand in with
than to fall out with, so I accept his invitation. How could you manage to
refuse it, anyway?”
“When he first offered me hospitality,” explained the advocate, “I didn’t
even know him. I never had been near him. One day a police agent came
and invited me to dinner by command—or, at least, I understood it wasn’t
wise to refuse the invitation, as you said, Ivan Petrovitch. When I went to
his house I thought I was entering a fortress, and inside I thought it must be
an umbrella shop. There were umbrellas everywhere, and goloshes. True, it
was a day of pouring rain. I was struck by there being no guard with a big
revolver in the antechamber. He had a little, timid schwitzar there, who took
my umbrella, murmuring ‘barine’ and bowing over and over again. He

conducted me through very ordinary rooms quite unguarded to an average
sitting-room of a common kind. We dined with Madame Gounsovski, who
appeared fattish like her husband, and three or four men whom I had never
seen anywhere. One servant waited on us. My word!
“At dessert Gounsovski took me aside and told me I was unwise to
‘argue that way.’ I asked him what he meant by that. He took my hands
between his fat hands and repeated, ‘No, no, it is not wise to argue like
that.’ I couldn’t draw anything else out of him. For that matter, I understood
him, and, you know, since that day I have cut out certain side passages
unnecessary in my general law pleadings that had been giving me a
reputation for rather too free opinions in the papers. None of that at my age!
Ah, the great Gounsovski! Over our coffee I asked him if he didn’t find the
country in pretty strenuous times. He replied that he looked forward with
impatience to the month of May, when he could go for a rest to a little
property with a small garden that he had bought at Asnieres, near Paris.
When he spoke of their house in the country Madame Gounsovski heaved a
sigh of longing for those simple country joys. The month of May brought
tears to her eyes. Husband and wife looked at one another with real
tenderness. They had not the air of thinking for one second: to-morrow or
the day after, before our country happiness comes, we may find ourselves
stripped of everything. No! They were sure of their happy vacation and
nothing seemed able to disquiet them under their fat. Gounsovski has done
everybody so many services that no one really wishes him ill, poor man.
Besides, have you noticed, my dear old friends, that no one ever tries to
work harm to chiefs of Secret Police? One goes after heads of police,
prefects of police, ministers, grand-dukes, and even higher, but the chiefs of
Secret Police are never, never attacked. They can promenade tranquilly in
the streets or in the gardens of Krestowsky or breathe the pure air of the
Finland country or even the country around Paris. They have done so many
little favors for this one and that, here and there, that no one wishes to do
them the least injury. Each person always thinks, too, that others have been
less well served than he. That is the secret of the thing, my friends, that is
the secret. What do you say?”
The others said: “Ah, ah, the good Gounsovski. He knows. He knows.
Certainly, accept his supper. With Annouchka it will be fun.”

“Messieurs,” asked Rouletabille, who continued to make discoveries in
the audience, “do you know that officer who is seated at the end of a row
down there in the orchestra seats? See, he is getting up.”
“He? Why, that is Prince Galitch, who was one of the richest lords of the
North Country. Now he is practically ruined.”
“Thanks, gentlemen; certainly it is he. I know him,” said Rouletabille,
seating himself and mastering his emotion.
“They say he is a great admirer of Annouchka,” hazarded Thaddeus.
Then he walked away from the box.
“The prince has been ruined by women,” said Athanase Georgevitch,
who pretended to know the entire chronicle of gallantries in the empire.
“He also has been on good terms with Gounsovski,” continued Thaddeus.
“He passes at court, though, for an unreliable. He once made a long visit
to Tolstoi.”
“Bah! Gounsovski must have rendered some signal service to that
imprudent prince,” concluded Athanase. “But for yourself, Thaddeus, you
haven’t said what you did with Gounsovski at Bakou.”
(Rouletabille did not lose a word of what was being said around him,
although he never lost sight of the profile hidden in the black mantle nor of
Prince Galitch, his personal enemy,* who reappeared, it seemed to him, at a
very critical moment.)

* as told in “The Lady In Black.”

“I was returning from Balakani in a drojki,” said Thaddeus Tchitchnikoff,
“and I was drawing near Bakou after having seen the debris of my oil shafts
that had been burned by the Tartars, when I met Gounsovski in the road,
who, with two of his friends, found themselves badly off with one of the
wheels of their carriage broken. I stopped. He explained to me that he had a
Tartar coachman, and that this coachman having seen an Armenian on the
road before him, could find nothing better to do than run full tilt into the
Armenian’s equipage. He had reached over and taken the reins from him,
but a wheel of the carriage was broken.” (Rouletabille quivered, because he
caught a glance of communication between Prince Galitch and Natacha,
who was leaning over the edge of her box.) “So I offered to take

Gounsovski and his friends into my carriage, and we rode all together to
Bakou after Gounsovski, who always wishes to do a service, as Athanase
Georgevitch says, had warned his Tartar coachman not to finish the
Armenian.” (Prince Galitch, at the moment the orchestra commenced the
introductory music for Annouchka’s new number, took advantage of all
eyes being turned toward the rising curtain to pass near Natacha’s seat. This
time he did not look at Natacha, but Rouletabille was sure that his lips had
moved as he went by her.)
Thaddeus continued: “It is necessary to explain that at Bakou my little
house is one of the first before you reach the quay. I had some Armenian
employees there. When arrived, what do you suppose I saw? A file of
soldiers with cannon, yes, with a cannon, on my word, turned against my
house and an officer saying quietly, ‘there it is. Fire!’” (Rouletabille made
yet another discovery—two, three discoveries. Near by, standing back of
Natacha’s seat, was a figure not unknown to the young reporter, and there,
in one of the orchestra chairs, were two other men whose faces he had seen
that same morning in Koupriane’s barracks. Here was where a memory for
faces stood him in good stead. He saw that he was not the only person
keeping close watch on Natacha.) “When I heard what the officer said,”
Thaddeus went on, “I nearly dropped out of the drojki. I hurried to the
police commissioner. He explained the affair promptly, and I was quick to
understand. During my absence one of my Armenian employees had fired at
a Tartar who was passing. For that matter, he had killed him. The governor
was informed and had ordered the house to be bombarded, for an example,
as had been done with several others. I found Gounsovski and told him the
trouble in two words. He said it wasn’t necessary for him to interfere in the
affair, that I had only to talk to the officer. ‘Give him a good present, a
hundred roubles, and he will leave your house. I went back to the officer
and took him aside; he said he wanted to do anything that he could for me,
but that the order was positive to bombard the house. I reported his answer
to Gounsovski, who told me: ‘Tell him then to turn the muzzle of the
cannon the other way and bombard the building of the chemist across the
way, then he can always say that he mistook which house was intended.’ I
did that, and he had them turn the cannon. They bombarded the chemist’s
place, and I got out of the whole thing for the hundred roubles. Gounsovski,
the good fellow, may be a great lump of fat and be like an umbrella

merchant, but I have always been grateful to him from the bottom of my
heart, you can understand, Athanase Georgevitch.”
“What reputation has Prince Galitch at the court?” inquired Rouletabille
all at once.
“Oh, oh!” laughed the others. “Since he went so openly to visit Tolstoi he
doesn’t go to the court any more.”
“And—his opinions? What are his opinions?”
“Oh, the opinions of everybody are so mixed nowadays, nobody knows.”
Ivan Petrovitch said, “He passes among some people as very advanced
and very much compromised.”
“Yet they don’t bother him?” inquired Rouletabille.
“Pooh, pooh,” replied the gay Councilor of Empire, “it is rather he who
tries to mix with them.”
Thaddeus stooped down and said, “They say that he can’t be reached
because of the hold he has over a certain great personage in the court, and it
would be a scandal—a great scandal.”
“Be quiet, Thaddeus,” interrupted Athanase Georgevitch, roughly. “It is
easy to see that you are lately from the provinces to speak so recklessly, but
if you go on this way I shall leave.”
“Athanase Georgevitch is right; hang onto your mouth, Thaddeus,”
counseled Ivan Petrovitch.
The talkers all grew silent, for the curtain was rising. In the audience
there were mysterious allusions being made to this second number of
Annouchka, but no one seemed able to say what it was to be, and it was, as
a matter of fact, very simple. After the whirl-wind of dances and choruses
and all the splendor with which she had been accompanied the first time,
Annouchka appeared as a poor Russian peasant in a scene representing the
barren steppes, and very simply she sank to her knees and recited her
evening prayers. Annouchka was singularly beautiful. Her aquiline nose
with sensitive nostrils, the clean-cut outline of her eyebrows, her look that
now was almost tender, now menacing, always unusual, her pale rounded
cheeks and the entire expression of her face showed clearly the strength of
new ideas, spontaneity, deep resolution and, above all, passion. The prayer
was passionate. She had an admirable contralto voice which affected the
audience strangely from its very first notes. She asked God for daily bread

for everyone in the immense Russian land, daily bread for the flesh and for
the spirit, and she stirred the tears of everyone there, to which-ever party
they belonged. And when, as her last note sped across the desolate steppe
and she rose and walked toward the miserable hut, frantic bravos from a
delirious audience told her the prodigious emotions she had aroused. Little
Rouletabille, who, not understanding the words, nevertheless caught the
spirit of that prayer, wept. Everybody wept. Ivan Petrovitch, Athanase
Georgevitch, Thaddeus Tchitchnikoff were standing up, stamping their feet
and clapping their hands like enthusiastic boys. The students, who could be
easily distinguished by the uniform green edging they wore on their coats,
uttered insensate cries. And suddenly there rose the first strains of the
national hymn. There was hesitation at first, a wavering. But not for long.
Those who had been dreading some counter-demonstration realized that no
objection could possibly be raised to a prayer for the Tsar. All heads
uncovered and the Bodje Taara Krari mounted, unanimously, toward the
stars.
Through his tears the young reporter never gave up his close watch on
Natacha. She had half risen, and, sinking back, leaned on the edge of the
box. She called, time and time again, a name that Rouletabille could not
hear in the uproar, but that he felt sure was “Annouchka! Annouchka!” “The
reckless girl,” murmured Rouletabille, and, profiting by the general
excitement, he left the box without being noticed. He made his way through
the crowd toward Natacha, whom he had sought futilely since morning. The
audience, after clamoring in vain for a repetition of the prayer by
Annouchka, commenced to disperse, and the reporter was swept along with
them for a few moments. When he reached the range of boxes he saw that
Natacha and the family she had been with were gone. He looked on all sides
without seeing the object of his search and like a madman commenced to
run through the passages, when a sudden idea struck his blood cold. He
inquired where the exit for the artists was and as soon as it was pointed out,
he hurried there. He was not mistaken. In the front line of the crowd that
waited to see Annouchka come out he recognized Natacha, with her head
enveloped in the black mantle so that none should see her face. Besides, this
corner of the garden was in a half-gloom. The police barred the way; he
could not approach as near Natacha as he wished. He set himself to slip like
a serpent through the crowd. He was not separated from Natacha by more
than four or five persons when a great jostling commenced. Annouchka was

coming out. Cries rose: “Annouchka! Annouchka!” Rouletabille threw
himself on his knees and on all-fours succeeded in sticking his head through
into the way kept by the police for Annouchka’s passage. There, wrapped in
a great red mantle, his hat on his arm, was a man Rouletabille immediately
recognized. It was Prince Galitch. They were hurrying to escape the
impending pressure of the crowd. But Annouchka as she passed near
Natacha stopped just a second—a movement that did not escape
Rouletabille—and, turning toward her said just the one word, “Caracho.”
Then she passed on. Rouletabille got up and forced his way back, having
once more lost Natacha. He searched for her. He ran to the carriage-way
and arrived just in time to see her seated in a carriage with the Mourazoff
family. The carriage started at once in the direction of the datcha des Iles.
The young man remained standing there, thinking. He made a gesture as
though he were ready now to let luck take its course. “In the end,” said he,
“it will be better so, perhaps,” and then, to himself, “Now to supper, my
boy.”
He turned in his tracks and soon was established in the glaring light of
the restaurant. Officers standing, glass in hand, were saluting from table to
table and waving a thousand compliments with grace that was almost
feminine.
He heard his name called joyously, and recognized the voice of Ivan
Petrovitch. The three boon companions were seated over a bottle of
champagne resting in its ice-bath and were being served with tiny pates
while they waited for the supper-hour, which was now near.
Rouletabille yielded to their invitation readily enough, and accompanied
them when the head-waiter informed Thaddeus that the gentlemen were
desired in a private room. They went to the first floor and were ushered into
a large apartment whose balcony opened on the hall of the winter-theater,
empty now. But the apartment was already occupied. Before a table covered
with a shining service Gounsovski did the honors.
He received them like a servant, with his head down, an obsequious
smile, and his back bent, bowing several times as each of the guests were
presented to him. Athanase had described him accurately enough, a
mannikin in fat. Under the vast bent brow one could hardly see his eyes,
behind the blue glasses that seemed always ready to fall as he inclined too
far his fat head with its timid and yet all-powerful glance. When he spoke in

his falsetto voice, his chin dropped in a fold over his collar, and he had a
steady gesture with the thumb and index finger of his right hand to retain
the glasses from sliding down his short, thick nose.
Behind him there was the fine, haughty silhouette of Prince Galitch. He
had been invited by Annouchka, for she had consented to risk this supper
only in company with three or four of her friends, officers who could not be
further compromised by this affair, as they were already under the eye of
the Okrana (Secret Police) despite their high birth. Gounsovski had seen
them come with a sinister chuckle and had lavished upon them his marks of
devotion.
He loved Annouchka. It would have sufficed to have surprised just once
the jealous glance he sent from beneath his great blue glasses when he
gazed at the singer to have understood the sentiments that actuated him in
the presence of the beautiful daughter of the Black Land.
Annouchka was seated, or, rather, she lounged, Oriental fashion, on the
sofa which ran along the wall behind the table. She paid attention to no one.
Her attitude was forbidding, even hostile. She indifferently allowed her
marvelous black hair that fell in two tresses over her shoulder to be caressed
by the perfumed hands of the beautiful Onoto, who had heard her this
evening for the first time and had thrown herself with enthusiasm into her
arms after the last number. Onoto was an artist too, and the pique she felt at
first over Annouchka’s success could not last after the emotion aroused by
the evening prayer before the hut. “Come to supper,” Annouchka had said
to her.
“With whom?” inquired the Spanish artist.
“With Gounsovski.”
“Never.”
“Do come. You will help me pay my debt and perhaps he will be useful
to you as well. He is useful to everybody.”
Decidedly Onoto did not understand this country, where the worst
enemies supped together.
Rouletabille had been monopolized at once by Prince Galitch, who took
him into a corner and said:
“What are you doing here?”
“Do I inconvenience you?” asked the boy.

The other assumed the amused smile of the great lord.
“While there is still time,” he said, “believe me, you ought to start, to quit
this country. Haven’t you had sufficient notice?”
“Yes,” replied the reporter. “And you can dispense with any further
notice from this time on.”
He turned his back.
“Why, it is the little Frenchman from the Trebassof villa,” commenced
the falsetto voice of Gounsovski as he pushed a seat towards the young man
and begged him to sit between him and Athanase Georgevitch, who was
already busy with the hors-d’oeuvres.
“How do you do, monsieur?” said the beautiful, grave voice of
Annouchka.
Rouletabille saluted.
“I see that I am in a country of acquaintances,” he said, without
appearing disturbed.
He addressed a lively compliment to Annouchka, who threw him a kiss.
“Rouletabille!” cried la belle Onoto. “Why, then, he is the little fellow
who solved the mystery of the Yellow Room.”
“Himself.”
“What are you doing here?”
“He came to save the life of General Trebassof,” sniggered Gounsovski.
“He is certainly a brave little young man.”
“The police know everything,” said Rouletabille coldly. And he asked for
champagne, which he never drank.
The champagne commenced its work. While Thaddeus and the officers
told each other stories of Bakou or paid compliments to the women,
Gounsovski, who was through with raillery, leaned toward Rouletabille and
gave that young man fatherly counsel with great unction.
“You have undertaken, young man, a noble task and one all the more
difficult because General Trebassof is condemned not only by his enemies
but still more by the ignorance of Koupriane. Understand me thoroughly:
Koupriane is my friend and a man whom I esteem very highly. He is good,
brave as a warrior, but I wouldn’t give a kopeck for his police. He has
mixed in our affairs lately by creating his own secret police, but I don’t

wish to meddle with that. It amuses us. It’s the new style, anyway;
everybody wants his secret police nowadays. And yourself, young man,
what, after all, are you doing here? Reporting? No. Police work? That is our
business and your business. I wish you good luck, but I don’t expect it.
Remember that if you need any help I will give it you willingly. I love to be
of service. And I don’t wish any harm to befall you.”
“You are very kind, monsieur,” was all Rouletabille replied, and he called
again for champagne.
Several times Gounsovski addressed remarks to Annouchka, who
concerned herself with her meal and had little answer for him.
“Do you know who applauded you the most this evening?”
“No,” said Annouchka indifferently.
“The daughter of General Trebassof.”
“Yes, that is true, on my word,” cried Ivan Petrovitch.
“Yes, yes, Natacha was there,” joined in the other friends from the datcha
des Iles.
“For me, I saw her weep,” said Rouletabille, looking at Annouchka
fixedly.
But Annouchka replied in an icy tone:
“I do not know her.”
“She is unlucky in having a father...” Prince Galitch commenced.
“Prince, no politics, or let me take my leave,” clucked Gounsovski. “Your
health, dear Annouchka.”
“Your health, Gounsovski. But you have no worry about that.”
“Why?” demanded Thaddeus Tchitchnikoff in equivocal fashion.
“Because he is too useful to the government,” cried Ivan Petrovitch.
“No,” replied Annouchka; “to the revolutionaries.”
All broke out laughing. Gounsovski recovered his slipping glasses by his
usual quick movement and sniggered softly, insinuatingly, like fat boiling in
the pot:
“So they say. And it is my strength.”
“His system is excellent,” said the prince. “As he is in with everybody,
everybody is in with the police, without knowing it.”

“They say... ah, ah... they say...” (Athanase was choking over a little
piece of toast that he had soaked in his soup) “they say that he has driven
away all the hooligans and even all the beggars of the church of Kasan.”
Thereupon they commenced to tell stories of the hooligans, street-thieves
who since the recent political troubles had infested St. Petersburg and
whom nobody, could get rid of without paying for it.
Athanase Georgevitch said:
“There are hooligans that ought to have existed even if they never have.
One of them stopped a young girl before Varsovie station. The girl,
frightened, immediately held out her purse to him, with two roubles and
fifty kopecks in it. The hooligan took it all. ‘Goodness,’ cried she, ‘I have
nothing now to take my train with.’ ‘How much is it?’ asked the hooligan.
‘Sixty kopecks.’ ‘Sixty kopecks! Why didn’t you say so?’ And the bandit,
hanging onto the two roubles, returned the fifty-kopeck piece to the
trembling child and added a ten-kopeck piece out of his own pocket.”
“Something quite as funny happened to me two winters ago, at Moscow,”
said la belle Onoto. “I had just stepped out of the door when I was stopped
by a hooligan. ‘Give me twenty kopecks,’ said the hooligan. I was so
frightened that I couldn’t get my purse open. ‘Quicker,’ said he. Finally I
gave him twenty kopecks. ‘Now,’ said he then, ‘kiss my hand.’ And I had to
kiss it, because he held his knife in the other.”
“Oh, they are quick with their knives,” said Thaddeus. “As I was leaving
Gastinidvor once I was stopped by a hooligan who stuck a huge carving-
knife under my nose. ‘You can have it for a rouble and a half,’ he said. You
can believe that I bought it without any haggling. And it was a very good
bargain. It was worth at least three roubles. Your health, belle Onoto.”
“I always take my revolver when I go out,” said Athanase. “It is more
prudent. I say this before the police. But I would rather be arrested by the
police than stabbed by the hooligans.”
“There’s no place any more to buy revolvers,” declared Ivan Petrovitch.
“All such places are closed.”
Gounsovski settled his glasses, rubbed his fat hands and said:
“There are some still at my locksmith’s place. The proof is that to-day in
the little Kaniouche my locksmith, whose name is Smith, went into the
house of the grocer at the corner and wished to sell him a revolver. It was a

Browning. ‘An arm of the greatest reliability,’ he said to him, ‘which never
misses fire and which works very easily.’ Having pronounced these words,
the locksmith tried his revolver and lodged a ball in the grocer’s lung. The
grocer is dead, but before he died he bought the revolver. ‘You are right,’ he
said to the locksmith; ‘it is a terrible weapon.’ And then he died.”
The others laughed heartily. They thought it very funny. Decidedly this
great Gounsovski always had a funny story. Who would not like to be his
friend? Annouchka had deigned to smile. Gounsovski, in recognition,
extended his hand to her like a mendicant. The young woman touched it
with the end of her fingers, as if she were placing a twenty-kopeck piece in
the hand of a hooligan, and withdrew from it with disgust. Then the doors
opened for the Bohemians. Their swarthy troupe soon filled the room.
Every evening men and women in their native costumes came from old
Derevnia, where they lived all together in a sort of ancient patriarchal
community, with customs that had not changed for centuries; they scattered
about in the places of pleasure, in the fashionable restaurants, where they
gathered large sums, for it was a fashionable luxury to have them sing at the
end of suppers, and everyone showered money on them in order not to be
behind the others. They accompanied on guzlas, on castanets, on
tambourines, and sang the old airs, doleful and languorous, or excitable and
breathless as the flight of the earliest nomads in the beginnings of the
world.
When they had entered, those present made place for them, and
Rouletabille, who for some moments had been showing marks of fatigue
and of a giddiness natural enough in a young man who isn’t in the habit of
drinking the finest champagnes, profited by the diversion to get a corner of
the sofa not far from Prince Galitch, who occupied the place at
Annouchka’s right.
“Look, Rouletabaille is asleep,” remarked la belle Onoto.
“Poor boy!” said Annouchka.
And, turning toward Gounsovski:
“Aren’t you soon going to get him out of our way? I heard some of our
brethren the other day speaking in a way that would cause pain to those
who care about his health.”
“Oh, that,” said Gounsovski, shaking his head, “is an affair I have
nothing to do with. Apply to Koupriane. Your health, belle Annouchka.”

But the Bohemians swept some opening chords for their songs, and the
singers took everybody’s attention, everybody excepting Prince Galitch and
Annouchka, who, half turned toward one another, exchanged some words
on the edge of all this musical uproar. As for Rouletabille, he certainly must
have been sleeping soundly not to have been waked by all that noise,
melodious as it was. It is true that he had—apparently—drunk a good deal
and, as everyone knows, in Russia drink lays out those who can’t stand it.
When the Bohemians had sung three times Gounsovski made a sign that
they might go to charm other ears, and slipped into the hands of the chief of
the band a twenty-five rouble note. But Onoto wished to give her mite, and
a regular collection commenced. Each one threw roubles into the plate held
out by a little swarthy Bohemian girl with crow-black hair, carelessly
combed, falling over her forehead, her eyes and her face, in so droll a
fashion that one would have said the little thing was a weeping-willow
soaked in ink. The plate reached Prince Galitch, who futilely searched his
pockets.
“Bah!” said he, with a lordly air, “I have no money. But here is my
pocket-book; I will give it to you for a souvenir of me, Katharina.”
Thaddeus and Athanase exclaimed at the generosity of the prince, but
Annouchka said:
“The prince does as he should, for my friends can never sufficiently
repay the hospitality that that little thing gave me in her dirty hut when I
was in hiding, while your famous department was deciding what to do
about me, my dear Gounsovski.”
“Eh,” replied Gounsovski, “I let you know that all you had to do was to
take a fine apartment in the city.”
Annouchka spat on the ground like a teamster, and Gounsovski from
yellow turned green.
“But why did you hide yourself that way, Annouchka?” asked Onoto as
she caressed the beautiful tresses of the singer.
“You know I had been condemned to death, and then pardoned. I had
been able to leave Moscow, and I hadn’t any desire to be re-taken here and
sent to taste the joys of Siberia.”
“But why were you condemned to death?”
“Why, she doesn’t know anything!” exclaimed the others.

“Good Lord, I’m just back from London and Paris—how should I know
anything! But to have been condemned to death! That must have been
amusing.”
“Very amusing,” said Annouchka icily. “And if you have a brother whom
you love, Onoto, think how much more amusing it must be to have him shot
before you.”
“Oh, my love, forgive me!”
“So you may know and not give any pain to your Annouchka in the
future, I will tell you, madame, what happened to our dear friend,” said
Prince Galitch.
“We would do better to drive away such terrible memories,” ventured
Gounsovski, lifting his eyelashes behind his glasses, but he bent his head as
Annouchka sent him a blazing glance.
“Speak, Galitch.”
The Prince did as she said.
“Annouchka had a brother, Vlassof, an engineer on the Kasan line, whom
the Strike Committee had ordered to take out a train as the only means of
escape for the leaders of the revolutionary troops when Trebassof’s soldiers,
aided by the Semenowsky regiment, had become masters of the city. The
last resistance took place at the station. It was necessary to get started. All
the ways were guarded by the military. There were soldiers everywhere!
Vlassof said to his comrades, ‘I will save you;’ and his comrades saw him
mount the engine with a woman. That woman was—well, there she sits.
Vlassof’s fireman had been killed the evening before, on a barricade; it was
Annouchka who took his place. They busied themselves and the train
started like a shot. On that curved line, discovered at once, easy to attack,
under a shower of bullets, Vlassof developed a speed of ninety versts an
hour. He ran the indicator up to the explosion point. The lady over there
continued to pile coal into the furnace. The danger came to be less from the
military and more from an explosion at any moment. In the midst of the
balls Vlassof kept his usual coolness. He sped not only with the firebox
open but with the forced draught. It was a miracle that the engine was not
smashed against the curve of the embankment. But they got past. Not a man
was hurt. Only a woman was wounded. She got a ball in the chest.”
“There!” cried Annouchka.

With a magnificent gesture she flung open her white and heaving chest,
and put her finger on a scar that Gounsovski, whose fat began to melt in
heavy drops of sweat about his temples, dared not look at.
“Fifteen days later,” continued the prince, “Vlassof entered an inn at
Lubetszy. He didn’t know it was full of soldiers. His face never altered.
They searched him. They found a revolver and papers on him. They knew
whom they had to do with. He was a good prize. Vlassof was taken to
Moscow and condemned to be shot. His sister, wounded as she was, learned
of his arrest and joined him. ‘I do not wish,’ she said to him, ‘to leave you
to die alone.’ She also was condemned. Before the execution the soldiers
offered to bandage their eyes, but both refused, saying they preferred to
meet death face to face. The orders were to shoot all the other condemned
revolutionaries first, then Vlassof, then his sister. It was in vain that Vlassof
asked to die last. Their comrades in execution sank to their knees, bleeding
from their death wounds. Vlassof embraced his sister and walked to the
place of death. There he addressed the soldiers: ‘Now you have to carry out
your duty according to the oath you have taken. Fulfill it honestly as I have
fulfilled mine. Captain, give the order.’ The volley sounded. Vlassof
remained erect, his arms crossed on his breast, safe and sound. Not a ball
had touched him. The soldiers did not wish to fire at him. He had to
summon them again to fulfill their duty, and obey their chief. Then they
fired again, and he fell. He looked at his sister with his eyes full of horrible
suffering. Seeing that he lived, and wishing to appear charitable, the
captain, upon Annouchka’s prayers, approached and cut short his sufferings
by firing a revolver into his ear. Now it was Annouchka’s turn. She knelt by
the body of her brother, kissed his bloody lips, rose and said, ‘I am ready.’
As the guns were raised, an officer came running, bearing the pardon of the
Tsar. She did not wish it, and she whom they had not bound when she was
to die had to be restrained when she learned she was to live.”
Prince Galitch, amid the anguished silence of all there, started to add
some words of comment to his sinister recital, but Annouchka interrupted:
“The story is ended,” said she. “Not a word, Prince. If I asked you to tell
it in all its horror, if I wished you to bring back to us the atrocious moment
of my brother’s death, it is so that monsieur” (her fingers pointed to
Gounsovski) “shall know well, once for all, that if I have submitted for
some hours now to this promiscuous company that has been imposed upon

me, now that I have paid the debt by accepting this abominable supper, I
have nothing more to do with this purveyor of bagnios and of hangman’s
ropes who is here.”
“She is mad,” he muttered. “She is mad. What has come over her? What
has happened? Only to-day she was so, so amiable.”
And he stuttered, desolately, with an embarrassed laugh:
“Ah, the women, the women! Now what have I done to her?”
“What have you done to me, wretch? Where are Belachof, Bartowsky
and Strassof? And Pierre Slutch? All the comrades who swore with me to
revenge my brother? Where are they? On what gallows did you have them
hung? What mine have you buried them in? And still you follow your
slavish task. And my friends, my other friends, the poor comrades of my
artist life, the inoffensive young men who have not committed any other
crime than to come to see me too often when I was lively, and who believed
they could talk freely in my dressing-room—where are they? Why have
they left me, one by one? Why have they disappeared? It is you, wretch,
who watched them, who spied on them, making me, I haven’t any doubt,
your horrible accomplice, mixing me up in your beastly work, you dog! You
knew what they call me. You have known it for a long time, and you may
well laugh over it. But I, I never knew until this evening; I never learned
until this evening all I owe to you. ‘Stool pigeon! Stool pigeon!’ I! Horror!
Ah, you dog, you dog! Your mother, when you were brought into the world,
your mother...” Here she hurled at him the most offensive insult that a
Russian can offer a man of that race.
She trembled and sobbed with rage, spat in fury, and stood up ready to
go, wrapped in her mantle like a great red flag. She was the statue of hate
and vengeance. She was horrible and terrible. She was beautiful. At the
final supreme insult, Gounsovski started and rose to his feet as though he
had received an actual blow in the face. He did not look at Annouchka, but
fixed his eyes on Prince Galitch. His finger pointed him out:
“There is the man,” he hissed, “who has told you all these fine things.”
“Yes, it is I,” said the Prince, tranquilly.
“Caracho!” barked Gounsovski, instantaneously regaining his coolness.
“Ah, yes, but you’ll not touch him,” clamored the spirited girl of the
Black Land; “you are not strong enough for that.”

“I know that monsieur has many friends at court,” agreed the chief of the
Secret Service with an ominous calm. “I don’t wish ill to monsieur. You
speak, madame, of the way some of your friends have had to be sacrificed. I
hope that some day you will be better informed, and that you will
understand I saved all of them I could.”
“Let us go,” muttered Annouchka. “I shall spit in his face.”
“Yes, all I could,” replied the other, with his habitual gesture of hanging
on to his glasses. “And I shall continue to do so. I promise you not to say
anything more disagreeable to the prince than as regards his little friend the
Bohemian Katharina, whom he has treated so generously just now,
doubtless because Boris Mourazoff pays her too little for the errands she
runs each morning to the villa of Krestowsky Ostrow.”
At these words the Prince and Annouchka both changed countenance.
Their anger rose. Annouchka turned her head as though to arrange the folds
of her cloak. Galitch contented himself with shrugging his shoulders
impatiently and murmuring:
“Still some other abomination that you are concocting, monsieur, and that
we don’t know how to reply to.”
After which he bowed to the supper-party, took Annouchka’s arm and
had her move before him. Gounsovski bowed, almost bent in two. When he
rose he saw before him the three astounded and horrified figures of
Thaddeus Tchitchnikoff, Ivan Petrovitch and Athanase Georgevitch.
“Messieurs,” he said to them, in a colorless voice which seemed not to
belong to him, “the time has come for us to part. I need not say that we have
supped as friends and that, if you wish it to be so, we can forget everything
that has been said here.”
The three others, frightened, at once protested their discretion. He added,
roughly this time, “Service of the Tsar,” and the three stammered, “God
save the Tsar!” After which he saw them to the door. When the door had
closed after them, he said, “My little Annouchka, you mustn’t reckon
without me.” He hurried toward the sofa, where Rouletabille was lying
forgotten, and gave him a tap on the shoulder.
“Come, get up. Don’t act as though you were asleep. Not an instant to
lose. They are going to carry through the Trebassof affair this evening.”
Rouletabille was already on his legs.

“Oh, monsieur,” said he, “I didn’t want you to tell me that. Thanks all the
same, and good evening.”
He went out.
Gounsovski rang. A servant appeared.
“Tell them they may now open all the rooms on this corridor; I’ll not hold
them any longer.” Thus had Gounsovski kept himself protected.
Left alone, the head of the Secret Service wiped his brow and drank a
great glass of iced water which he emptied at a draught. Then he said:
“Koupriane will have his work cut out for him this evening; I wish him
good luck. As to them, whatever happens, I wash my hands of them.”
And he rubbed his hands.

X. A DRAMA IN THE NIGHT
At the door of the Krestowsky Rouletabille, who was in a hurry for a
conveyance, jumped into an open carriage where la belle Onoto was already
seated. The dancer caught him on her knees.
“To Eliaguine, fast as you can,” cried the reporter for all explanation.
“Scan! Scan! (Quickly, quickly)” repeated Onoto.
She was accompanied by a vague sort of person to whom neither of them
paid the least attention.
“What a supper! You waked up at last, did you?” quizzed the actress. But
Rouletabille, standing up behind the enormous coachman, urged the horses
and directed the route of the carriage. They bolted along through the night
at a dizzy pace. At the corner of a bridge he ordered the horses stopped,
thanked his companions and disappeared.
“What a country! What a country! Caramba!” said the Spanish artist.
The carriage waited a few minutes, then turned back toward the city.
Rouletabille got down the embankment and slowly, taking infinite
precautions not to reveal his presence by making the least noise, made his
way to where the river is widest. Seen through the blackness of the night the
blacker mass of the Trebassof villa loomed like an enormous blot, he
stopped. Then he glided like a snake through the reeds, the grass, the ferns.
He was at the back of the villa, near the river, not far from the little path
where he had discovered the passage of the assassin, thanks to the broken
cobwebs. At that moment the moon rose and the birch-trees, which just
before had been like great black staffs, now became white tapers which
seemed to brighten that sinister solitude.
The reporter wished to profit at once by the sudden luminance to learn if
his movements had been noticed and if the approaches to the villa on that
side were guarded. He picked up a small pebble and threw it some distance
from him along the path. At the unexpected noise three or four shadowy
heads were outlined suddenly in the white light of the moon, but
disappeared at once, lost again in the dark tufts of grass.

He had gained his information.
The reporter’s acute ear caught a gliding in his direction, a slight swish of
twigs; then all at once a shadow grew by his side and he felt the cold of a
revolver barrel on his temple. He said “Koupriane,” and at once a hand
seized his and pressed it.
The night had become black again. He murmured: “How is it you are
here in person?”
The Prefect of Police whispered in his ear:
“I have been informed that something will happen to-night. Natacha went
to Krestowsky and exchanged some words with Annouchka there. Prince
Galitch is involved, and it is an affair of State.”
“Natacha has returned?” inquired Rouletabille.
“Yes, a long time ago. She ought to be in bed. In any case she is
pretending to be abed. The light from her chamber, in the window over the
garden, has been put out.”
“Have you warned Matrena Petrovna?”
“Yes, I have let her know that she must keep on the sharp look-out to-
night.”
“That’s a mistake. I shouldn’t have told her anything. She will take such
extra precautions that the others will be instantly warned.”
“I have told her she should not go to the ground-floor at all this night,
and that she must not leave the general’s chamber.”
“That is perfect, if she will obey you.”
“You see I have profited by all your information. I have followed your
instructions. The road from the Krestowsky is under surveillance.”
“Perhaps too much. How are you planning?”
“We will let them enter. I don’t know whom I have to deal with. I want to
strike a sure blow. I shall take him in the act. No more doubt after this, you
trust me.”
“Adieu.”
“Where are you going?”
“To bed. I have paid my debt to my host. I have the right to some repose
now. Good luck!”

But Koupriane had seized his hand.
“Listen.”
With a little attention they detected a light stroke on the water. If a boat
was moving at this time for this bank of the Neva and wished to remain
hidden, the right moment had certainly been chosen. A great black cloud
covered the moon; the wind was light. The boat would have time to get
from one bank to the other without being discovered. Rouletabille waited
no longer. On all-fours he ran like a beast, rapidly and silently, and rose
behind the wall of the villa, where he made a turn, reached the gate, aroused
the dvornicks and demanded Ermolai, who opened the gate for him.
“The Barinia?” he said.
Ermolai pointed his finger to the bedroom floor.
“Caracho!”
Rouletabille was already across the garden and had hoisted himself by his
fingers to the window of Natacha’s chamber, where he listened. He plainly
heard Natacha walking about in the dark chamber. He fell back lightly onto
his feet, mounted the veranda steps and opened the door, then closed it so
lightly that Ermolai, who watched him from outside not two feet away, did
not hear the slightest grinding of the hinges. Inside the villa Rouletabille
advanced on tiptoe. He found the door of the drawing-room open. The door
of the sitting-room had not been closed, or else had been reopened. He
turned in his tracks, felt in the dark for a chair and sat down, with his hand
on his revolver in his pocket, waiting for the events that would not delay
long now. Above he heard distinctly from time to time the movements of
Matrena Petrovna. And this would evidently give a sense of security to
those who needed to have the ground-floor free this night. Rouletabille
imagined that the doors of the rooms on the ground-floor had been left open
so that it would be easier for those who would be below to hear what was
happening upstairs. And perhaps he was not wrong.
Suddenly there was a vertical bar of pale light from the sitting-room that
overlooked the Neva. He deduced two things: first, that the window was
already slightly open, then that the moon was out from the clouds again.
The bar of light died almost instantly, but Rouletabille’s eyes, now used to
the obscurity, still distinguished the open line of the window. There the
shade was less deep. Suddenly he felt the blood pound at his temples, for

the line of the open window grew larger, increased, and the shadow of a
man gradually rose on the balcony. Rouletabille drew his revolver.
The man stood up immediately behind one of the shutters and struck a
light blow on the glass. Placed as he was now he could be seen no more.
His shadow mixed with the shadow of the shutter. At the noise on the glass
Natacha’s door had opened cautiously, and she entered the sitting-room. On
tiptoe she went quickly to the window and opened it. The man entered. The
little light that by now was commencing to dawn was enough to show
Rouletabille that Natacha still wore the toilette in which he had seen her
that same evening at Krestowsky. As for the man, he tried in vain to identify
him; he was only a dark mass wrapped in a mantle. He leaned over and
kissed Natacha’s hand. She said only one word: “Scan!” (Quickly).
But she had no more than said it before, under a vigorous attack, the
shutters and the two halves of the window were thrown wide, and silent
shadows jumped rapidly onto the balcony and sprang into the villa. Natacha
uttered a shrill cry in which Rouletabille believed still he heard more of
despair than terror, and the shadows threw themselves on the man; but he, at
the first alarm, had thrown himself upon the carpet and had slipped from
them between their legs. He regained the balcony and jumped from it as the
others turned toward him. At least, it was so that Rouletabille believed he
saw the mysterious struggle go in the half-light, amid most impressive
silence, after that frightened cry of Natacha’s. The whole affair had lasted
only a few seconds, and the man was still hanging over the balcony, when
from the bottom of the hall a new person sprang. It was Matrena Petrovna.
Warned by Koupriane that something would happen that night, and
foreseeing that it would happen on the ground-floor where she was
forbidden to be, she had found nothing better to do than to make her faithful
maid go secretly to the bedroom floor, with orders to walk about there all
night, to make all think she herself was near the general, while she
remained below, hidden in the dining-room.
Matrena Petrovna now threw herself out onto the balcony, crying in
Russian, “Shoot! Shoot!” In just that moment the man was hesitating
whether to risk the jump and perhaps break his neck, or descend less rapidly
by the gutter-pipe. A policeman fired and missed him, and the man, after
firing back and wounding the policeman, disappeared. It was still too far
from dawn for them to see clearly what happened below, where the barking

of Brownings alone was heard. And there could be nothing more sinister
than the revolver-shots unaccompanied by cries in the mists of the morning.
The man, before he disappeared, had had only time by a quick kick to throw
down one of the two ladders which had been used by the police in climbing;
down the other one all the police in a bunch, even to the wounded one, went
sliding, falling, rising, running after the shadow which fled still, discharging
the Browning steadily; other shadows rose from the river-bank, hovering in
the mist. Suddenly Koupriane’s voice was heard shouting orders, calling
upon his agents to take the quarry alive or dead. From the balcony Matrena
Petrovna cried out also, like a savage, and Rouletabille tried in vain to keep
her quiet. She was delirious at the thought “The Other” might escape yet.
She fired a revolver, she also, into the group, not knowing whom she might
wound. Rouletabille grabbed her arm and as she turned on him angrily she
observed Natacha, who, leaning until she almost fell over the balcony, her
lips trembling with delirious utterance, followed as well as she could the
progress of the struggle, trying to understand what happened below, under
the trees, near the Neva, where the tumult by now extended. Matrena
Petrovna pulled her back by the arms. Then she took her by the neck and
threw her into the drawing-room in a heap. When she had almost strangled
her step-daughter, Matrena Petrovna saw that the general was there. He
appeared in the pale glimmerings of dawn like a specter. By what miracle
had Feodor Feodorovitch been able to descend the stairs and reach there?
How had it been brought about? She saw him tremble with anger or with
wretchedness under the folds of the soldier’s cape that floated about him.
He demanded in a hoarse voice, “What is it?”
Matrena Petrovna threw herself at his feet, made the orthodox sign of the
Cross, as if she wished to summon God to witness, and then, pointing to
Natacha, she denounced his daughter to her husband as she would have
pointed her out to a judge.
“The one, Feodor Feodorovitch, who has wished more than once to
assassinate you, and who this night has opened the datcha to your assassin
is your daughter.”
The general held himself up by his two hands against the wall, and,
looking at Matrena and Natacha, who now were both upon the floor before
him like suppliants, he said to Matrena:
“It is you who assassinate me.”

“Me! By the living God!” babbled Matrena Petrovna desperately. “If I
had been able to keep this from you, Jesus would have been good! But I say
no more to crucify you. Feodor Feodorovitch, question your daughter, and
if what I have said is not true, kill me, kill me as a lying, evil beast. I will
say thank you, thank you, and I will die happier than if what I have said was
true. Ah, I long to be dead! Kill me!”
Feodor Feodorovitch pushed her back with his stick as one would push a
worm in his path. Without saying anything further, she rose from her knees
and looked with her haggard eyes, with her crazed face, at Rouletabille,
who grasped her arm. If she had had her hands still free she would not have
hesitated a second in wreaking justice upon herself under this bitter fate of
alienating Feodor. And it seemed frightful to Rouletabille that he should be
present at one of those horrible family dramas the issue of which in the wild
times of Peter the Great would have sent the general to the hangman either
as a father or as a husband.
The general did not deign even to consider for any length of time
Matrena’s delirium. He said to his daughter, who shook with sobs on the
floor, “Rise, Natacha Feodorovna.” And Feodor’s daughter understood that
her father never would believe in her guilt. She drew herself up towards
him and kissed his hands like a happy slave.
At this moment repeated blows shook the veranda door. Matrena, the
watch-dog, anxious to die after Feodor’s reproach, but still at her post, ran
toward what she believed to be a new danger. But she recognized
Koupriane’s voice, which called on her to open. She let him in herself.
“What is it?” she implored.
“Well, he is dead.”
A cry answered him. Natacha had heard.
“But who—who—who?” questioned Matrena breathlessly.
Koupriane went over to Feodor and grasped his hands.
“General,” he said, “there was a man who had sworn your ruin and who
was made an instrument by your enemies. We have just killed that man.”
“Do I know him?” demanded Feodor.
“He is one of your friends, you have treated him like a son.”
“His name?”

“Ask your daughter, General.”
Feodor turned toward Natacha, who burned Koupriane with her gaze,
trying to learn what this news was he brought—the truth or a ruse.
“You know the man who wished to kill me, Natacha?”
“No,” she replied to her father, in accents of perfect fury. “No, I don’t
know any such man.”
“Mademoiselle,” said Koupriane, in a firm, terribly hostile voice, “you
have yourself, with your own hands, opened that window to-night; and you
have opened it to him many other times besides. While everyone else here
does his duty and watches that no person shall be able to enter at night the
house where sleeps General Trebassof, governor of Moscow, condemned to
death by the Central Revolutionary Committee now reunited at Presnia, this
is what you do; it is you who introduce the enemy into this place.”
“Answer, Natacha; tell me, yes or no, whether you have let anybody into
this house by night.”
“Father, it is true.”
Feodor roared like a lion:
“His name!”
“Monsieur will tell you himself,” said Natacha, in a voice thick with
terror, and she pointed to Koupriane. “Why does he not tell you himself the
name of that person? He must know it, if the man is dead.”
“And if the man is not dead,” replied Feodor, who visibly held onto
himself, “if that man, whom you helped to enter my house this night, has
succeeded in escaping, as you seem to hope, will you tell us his name?”
“I could not tell it, Father.”
“And if I prayed you to do so?”
Natacha desperately shook her head.
“And if I order you?”
“You can kill me, Father, but I will not pronounce that name.”
“Wretch!”
He raised his stick toward her. Thus Ivan the Terrible had killed his son
with a blow of his boar-spear.

But Natacha, instead of bowing her head beneath the blow that menaced
her, turned toward Koupriane and threw at him in accents of triumph:
“He is not dead. If you had succeeded in taking him, dead or alive, you
would already have his name.”
Koupriane took two steps toward her, put his hand on her shoulder and
said:
“Michael Nikolaievitch.”
“Michael Korsakoff!” cried the general.
Matrena Petrovna, as if revolted by that suggestion, stood upright to
repeat:
“Michael Korsakoff!”
The general could not believe his ears, and was about to protest when he
noticed that his daughter had turned away and was trying to flee to her
room. He stopped her with a terrible gesture.
“Natacha, you are going to tell us what Michael Korsakoff came here to
do to-night.”
“Feodor Feodorovitch, he came to poison you.”
It was Matrena who spoke now and whom nothing could have kept silent,
for she saw in Natacha’s attempt at flight the most sinister confession. Like
a vengeful fury she told over with cries and terrible gestures what she had
experienced, as if once more stretched before her the hand armed with the
poison, the mysterious hand above the pillow of her poor invalid, her dear,
rigorous tyrant; she told them about the preceding night and all her terrors,
and from her lips, by her voluble staccato utterance that ominous recital had
grotesque emphasis. Finally she told all that she had done, she and the little
Frenchman, in order not to betray their suspicions to The Other, in order to
take finally in their own trap all those who for so many days and nights
schemed for the death of Feodor Feodorovitch. As she ended she pointed
out Rouletabille to Feodor and cried, “There is the one who has saved you.”
Natacha, as she listened to this tragic recital, restrained herself several
times in order not to interrupt, and Rouletabille, who was watching her
closely, saw that she had to use almost superhuman efforts in order to
achieve that. All the horror of what seemed to be to her as well as to Feodor
a revelation of Michael’s crime did not subdue her, but seemed, on the
contrary, to restore to her in full force all the life that a few seconds earlier

had fled from her. Matrena had hardly finished her cry, “There is the one
who has saved you,” before Natacha cried in her turn, facing the reporter
with a look full of the most frightful hate, “There is the one who has been
the death of an innocent man!” She turned to her father. “Ah, papa, let me,
let me say that Michael Nikolaievitch, who came here this evening, I admit,
and whom, it is true, I let into the house, that Michael Nikolaievitch did not
come here yesterday, and that the man who has tried to poison you is
certainly someone else.”
At these words Rouletabille turned pale, but he did not let himself lose
self-control. He replied simply:
“No, mademoiselle, it was the same man.”
And Koupriane felt compelled to add:
“Anyway, we have found the proof of Michael Nikolaievitch’s relations
with the revolutionaries.”
“Where have you found that?” questioned the young girl, turning toward
the Chief of Police a face ravished with anguish.
“At Krestowsky, mademoiselle.”
She looked a long time at him as though she would penetrate to the
bottom of his thoughts.
“What proofs?” she implored.
“A correspondence which we have placed under seal.”
“Was it addressed to him? What kind of correspondence?”
“If it interests you, we will open it before you.”
“My God! My God!” she gasped. “Where have you found this
correspondence? Where? Tell me where!”
“I will tell you. At the villa, in his chamber. We forced the lock of his
bureau.”
She seemed to breathe again, but her father took her brutally by the arm.
“Come, Natacha, you are going to tell us what that man was doing here
to-night.”
“In her chamber!” cried Matrena Petrovna.
Natacha turned toward Matrena:
“What do you believe, then? Tell me now.”

“And I, what ought I to believe?” muttered Feodor. “You have not told
me yet. You did not know that man had relations with my enemies. You are
innocent of that, perhaps. I wish to think so. I wish it, in the name of
Heaven I wish it. But why did you receive him? Why? Why did you bring
him in here, as a robber or as a...”
“Oh, papa, you know that I love Boris, that I love him with all my heart,
and that I would never belong to anyone but him.”
“Then, then, then.—speak!”
The young girl had reached the crisis.
“Ah, Father, Father, do not question me! You, you above all, do not
question me now. I can say nothing! There is nothing I can tell you.
Excepting that I am sure—sure, you understand—that Michael
Nikolaievitch did not come here last night.”
“He did come,” insisted Rouletabille in a slightly troubled voice.
“He came here with poison. He came here to poison your father,
Natacha,” moaned Matrena Petrovna, who twined her hands in gestures of
sincere and naive tragedy.
“And I,” replied the daughter of Feodor ardently, with an accent of
conviction which made everyone there vibrate, and particularly
Rouletabille, “and I, I tell you it was not he, that it was not he, that it could
not possibly be he. I swear to you it was another, another.”
“But then, this other, did you let him in as well?” said Koupriane.
“Ah, yes, yes. It was I. It was I. It was I who left the window and blinds
open. Yes, it is I who did that. But I did not wait for the other, the other who
came to assassinate. As to Michael Nikolaievitch, I swear to you, my father,
by all that is most sacred in heaven and on earth, that he could not have
committed the crime that you say. And now—kill me, for there is nothing
more I can say.”
“The poison,” replied Koupriane coldly, “the poison that he poured into
the general’s potion was that arsenate of soda which was on the grapes the
Marshal of the Court brought here. Those grapes were left by the Marshal,
who warned Michael Nikolaievitch and Boris Alexandrovitch to wash them.
The grapes disappeared. If Michael is innocent, do you accuse Boris?”
Natacha, who seemed to have suddenly lost all power for defending
herself, moaned, begged, railed, seemed dying.

“No, no. Don’t accuse Boris. He has nothing to do with it. Don’t accuse
Michael. Don’t accuse anyone so long as you don’t know. But these two are
innocent. Believe me. Believe me. Ah, how shall I say it, how shall I
persuade you! I am not able to say anything to you. And you have killed
Michael. Ah, what have you done, what have you done!”
“We have suppressed a man,” said the icy voice of Koupriane, “who was
merely the agent for the base deeds of Nihilism.”
She succeeded in recovering a new energy that in her depths of despair
they would have supposed impossible. She shook her fists at Koupriane:
“It is not true, it is not true. These are slanders, infamies! The inventions
of the police! Papers devised to incriminate him. There is nothing at all of
what you said you found at his house. It is not possible. It is not true.”
“Where are those papers?” demanded the curt voice of Feodor. “Bring
them here at once, Koupriane; I wish to see them.”
Koupriane was slightly troubled, and this did not escape Natacha, who
cried:
“Yes, yes, let him give us them, let him bring them if he has them. But he
hasn’t,” she clamored with a savage joy. “He has nothing. You can see,
papa, that he has nothing. He would already have brought them out. He has
nothing. I tell you he has nothing. Ah, he has nothing! He has nothing!”
And she threw herself on the floor, weeping, sobbing, “He has nothing,
he has nothing!” She seemed to weep for joy.
“Is that true?” demanded Feodor Feodorovitch, with his most somber
manner. “Is it true, Koupriane, that you have nothing?”
“It is true, General, that we have found nothing. Everything had already
been carried away.”
But Natacha uttered a veritable torrent of glee:
“He has found nothing! Yet he accuses him of being allied with the
revolutionaries. Why? Why? Because I let him in? But I, am I a
revolutionary? Tell me. Have I sworn to kill papa? I? I? Ah, he doesn’t
know what to say. You see for yourself, papa, he is silent. He has lied. He
has lied.”
“Why have you made this false statement, Koupriane?”

“Oh, we have suspected Michael for some time, and truly, after what has
just happened, we cannot have any doubt.”
“Yes, but you declared you had papers, and you have not. That is
abominable procedure, Koupriane,” replied Feodor sternly. “I have heard
you condemn such expedients many times.”
“General! We are sure, you hear, we are absolutely sure that the man who
tried to poison you yesterday and the man to-day who is dead are one and
the same.”
“And what reason have you for being so sure? It is necessary to tell it,”
insisted the general, who trembled with distress and impatience.
“Yes, let him tell now.”
“Ask monsieur,” said Koupriane.
They all turned to Rouletabille.
The reporter replied, affecting a coolness that perhaps he did not entirely
feel:
“I am able to state to you, as I already have before Monsieur the Prefect
of Police, that one, and only one, person has left the traces of his various
climbings on the wall and on the balcony.”
“Idiot!” interrupted Natacha, with a passionate disdain for the young
man. “And that satisfies you?”
The general roughly seized the reporter’s wrist:
“Listen to me, monsieur. A man came here this night. That concerns only
me. No one has any right to be astonished excepting myself. I make it my
own affair, an affair between my daughter and me. But you, you have just
told us that you are sure that man is an assassin. Then, you see, that calls for
something else. Proofs are necessary, and I want the proofs at once. You
speak of traces; very well, we will go and examine those traces together.
And I wish for your sake, monsieur, that I shall be as convinced by them as
you are.”
Rouletabille quietly disengaged his wrist and replied with perfect calm:
“Now, monsieur, I am no longer able to prove anything to you.”
“Why?”
“Because the ladders of the police agents have wiped out all my proofs,
monsieur.

“So now there remains for us only your word, only your belief in
yourself. And if you are mistaken?”
“He would never admit it, papa,” cried Natacha. “Ah, it is he who
deserves the fate Michael Nikolaievitch has met just now. Isn’t it so? Don’t
you know it? And that will be your eternal remorse! Isn’t there something
that always keeps you from admitting that you are mistaken? You have had
an innocent man killed. Now, you know well enough, you know well that I
would not have admitted Michael Nikolaievitch here if I had believed he
was capable of wishing to poison my father.”
“Mademoiselle,” replied Rouletabille, not lowering his eyes under
Natacha’s thunderous regard, “I am sure of that.”
He said it in such a tone that Natacha continued to look at him with
incomprehensible anguish in her eyes. Ah, the baffling of those two regards,
the mute scene between those two young people, one of whom wished to
make himself understood and the other afraid beyond all other things of
being thoroughly understood. Natacha murmured:
“How he looks at me! See, he is the demon; yes, yes, the little domovoi,
the little domovoi. But look out, poor wretch; you don’t know what you
have done.”
She turned brusquely toward Koupriane:
“Where is the body of Michael Nikolaievitch?” said she. “I wish to see it.
I must see it.”
Feodor Feodorovitch had fallen, as though asleep, upon a chair. Matrena
Petrovna dared not approach him. The giant appeared hurt to the death,
disheartened forever. What neither bombs, nor bullets, nor poison had been
able to do, the single idea of his daughter’s co-operation in the work of
horror plotted about him—or rather the impossibility he faced of
understanding Natacha’s attitude, her mysterious conduct, the chaos of her
explanations, her insensate cries, her protestations of innocence, her
accusations, her menaces, her prayers and all her disorder, the avowed fact
of her share in that tragic nocturnal adventure where Michael Nikolaievitch
found his death, had knocked over Feodor Feodorovitch like a straw. One
instant he sought refuge in some vague hope that Koupriane was less
assured than he pretended of the orderly’s guilt. But that, after all, was only
a detail of no importance in his eyes. What alone mattered was the
significance of Natacha’s act, and the unhappy girl seemed not to be

concerned over what he would think of it. She was there to fight against
Koupriane, Rouletabille and Matrena Petrovna, defending her Michael
Nikolaievitch, while he, the father, after having failed to overawe her just
now, was there in a corner suffering agonizedly.
Koupriane walked over to him and said:
“Listen to me carefully, Feodor Feodorovitch. He who speaks to you is
Head of the Police by the will of the Tsar, and your friend by the grace of
God. If you do not demand before us, who are acquainted with all that has
happened and who know how to keep any necessary secret, if you do not
demand of your daughter the reason for her conduct with Michael
Nikolaievitch, and if she does not tell you in all sincerity, there is nothing
more for me to do here. My men have already been ordered away from this
house as unworthy to guard the most loyal subject of His Majesty; I have
not protested, but now I in my turn ask you to prove to me that the most
dangerous enemy you have had in your house is not your daughter.”
These words, which summed up the horrible situation, came as a relief
for Feodor. Yes, they must know. Koupriane was right. She must speak. He
ordered his daughter to tell everything, everything.
Natacha fixed Koupriane again with her look of hatred to the death,
turned from him and repeated in a firm voice:
“I have nothing to say.”
“There is the accomplice of your assassins,” growled Koupriane then, his
arm extended.
Natacha uttered a cry like a wounded beast and fell at her father’s feet.
She gathered them within her supplicating arms. She pressed them to her
breasts. She sobbed from the bottom of her heart. And he, not
comprehending, let her lie there, distant, hostile, somber. Then she moaned,
distractedly, and wept bitterly, and the dramatic atmosphere in which she
thus suddenly enveloped Feodor made it all sound like those cries of an
earlier time when the all-powerful, punishing father appeared in the
women’s apartments to punish the culpable ones.
“My father! Dear Father! Look at me! Look at me! Have pity on me, and
do not require me to speak when I must be silent forever. And believe me!
Do not believe these men! Do not believe Matrena Petrovna. And am I not
your daughter? Your very own daughter! Your Natacha Feodorovna! I

cannot make things dear to you. No, no, by the Holy Virgin Mother of Jesus
I cannot explain. By the holy ikons, it is because I must not. By my mother,
whom I have not known and whose place you have taken, oh, my father, ask
me nothing more! Ask me nothing more! But take me in your arms as you
did when I was little; embrace me, dear father; love me. I never have had
such need to be loved. Love me! I am miserable. Unfortunate me, who
cannot even kill myself before your eyes to prove my innocence and my
love. Papa, Papa! What will your arms be for in the days left you to live, if
you no longer wish to press me to your heart? Papa! Papa!”
She laid her head on Feodor’s knees. Her hair had come down and hung
about her in a magnificent disorderly mass of black.
“Look in my eyes! Look in my eyes! See how they love you, Batouchka!
Batouchka! My dear Batouchka!”
Then Feodor wept. His great tears fell upon Natacha’s tears. He raised
her head and demanded simply in a broken voice:
“You can tell me nothing now? But when will you tell me?”
Natacha lifted her eyes to his, then her look went past him toward
heaven, and from her lips came just one word, in a sob:
“Never.”
Matrena Petrovna, Koupriane and the reporter shuddered before the high
and terrible thing that happened then. Feodor had taken his daughter’s face
between his hands. He looked long at those eyes raised toward heaven, the
mouth which had just uttered the word “Never,” then, slowly, his rude lips
went to the tortured, quivering lips of the girl. He held her close. She raised
her head wildly, triumphantly, and cried, with arm extended toward Matrena
Petrovna:
“He believes me! He believes me! And you would have believed me also
if you had been my real mother.”
Her head fell back and she dropped unconscious to the floor. Feodor fell
to his knees, tending her, deploring her, motioning the others out of the
room.
“Go away! All of you, go! All! You, too, Matrena Petrovna. Go away!”
They disappeared, terrified by his savage gesture.

In the little datcha across the river at Krestowsky there was a body.
Secret Service agents guarded it while they waited for their chief. Michael
Nikolaievitch had come there to die, and the police had reached him just at
his last breath. They were behind him as, with the death-rattle in his throat,
he pulled himself into his chamber and fell in a heap. Katharina the
Bohemian was there. She bent her quick-witted, puzzled head over his
death agony. The police swarmed everywhere, ransacking, forcing locks,
pulling drawers from the bureau and tables, emptying the cupboards. Their
search took in everything, even to ripping the mattresses, and not respecting
the rooms of Boris Mourazoff, who was away this night. They searched
thoroughly, but they found absolutely nothing they were looking for in
Michael’s rooms. But they accumulated a multitude of publications that
belonged to Boris: Western books, essays on political economy, a history of
the French Revolution, and verses that a man ought to hang for. They put
them all under seal. During the search Michael died in Katharina’s arms.
She had held him close, after opening his clothes over the chest, doubtless
to make his last breaths easier. The unfortunate officer had received a bullet
at the back of the head just after he had plunged into the Neva from the rear
of the Trebassof datcha and started to swim across. It was a miracle that he
had managed to keep going. Doubtless he hoped to die in peace if only he
could reach his own house. He apparently had believed he could manage
that once he had broken through his human bloodhounds. He did not know
he was recognized and his place of retreat therefore known.
Now the police had gone from cellar to garret. Koupriane came from the
Trebassof villa and joined them, Rouletabille followed him. The reporter
could not stand the sight of that body, that still had a lingering warmth, of
the great open eyes that seemed to stare at him, reproaching him for this
violent death. He turned away in distaste, and perhaps a little in fright.
Koupriane caught the movement.
“Regrets?” he queried.
“Yes,” said Rouletabille. “A death always must be regretted. None the
less, he was a criminal. But I’m sincerely sorry he died before he had been
driven to confess, even though we are sure of it.”
“Being in the pay of the Nihilists, you mean? That is still your opinion?”
asked Koupriane.
“Yes.”

“You know that nothing has been found here in his rooms. The only
compromising papers that have been found belong to Boris Mourazoff.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Oh—nothing.”
Koupriane questioned his men further. They replied categorically. No,
nothing had been found that directly incriminated anybody; and suddenly
Rouletabille noted that the conversation of the police and their chief had
grown more animated. Koupriane had become angry and was violently
reproaching them. They excused themselves with vivid gesture and rapid
speech.
Koupriane started away. Rouletabille followed him. What had happened?
As he came up behind Koupriane, he asked the question. In a few curt
words, still hurrying on, Koupriane told the reporter he had just learned that
the police had left the little Bohemian Katharina alone for a moment with
the expiring officer. Katharina acted as housekeeper for Michael and Boris.
She knew the secrets of them both. The first thing any novice should have
known was to keep a constant eye upon her, and now no one knew where
she was. She must be searched for and found at once, for she had opened
Michael’s shirt, and therein probably lay the reason that no papers were
found on the corpse when the police searched it. The absence of papers, of a
portfolio, was not natural.
The chase commenced in the rosy dawn of the isles. Already blood-like
tints were on the horizon. Some of the police cried that they had the trail.
They ran under the trees, because it was almost certain she had taken the
narrow path leading to the bridge that joins Krestowsky to Kameny-Ostrow.
Some indications discovered by the police who swarmed to right and left of
the path confirmed this hypothesis. And no carriage in sight! They all ran
on, Koupriane among the first. Rouletabille kept at his heels, but he did not
pass him. Suddenly there were cries and calls among the police. One
pointed out something below gliding upon the sloping descent. It was little
Katharina. She flew like the wind, but in a distracted course. She had
reached Kameny-Ostrow on the west bank. “Oh, for a carriage, a horse!”
clamored Koupriane, who had left his turn-out at Eliaguine. “The proof is
there. It is the final proof of everything that is escaping us!”
Dawn was enough advanced now to show the ground clearly. Katharina
was easily discernible as she reached the Eliaguine bridge. There she was in

Eliaguine-Ostrow. What was she doing there? Was she going to the
Trebassof villa? What would she have to say to them? No, she swerved to
the right. The police raced behind her. She was still far ahead, and seemed
untiring. Then she disappeared among the trees, in the thicket, keeping still
to the right. Koupriane gave a cry of joy. Going that way she must be taken.
He gave some breathless orders for the island to be barred. She could not
escape now! She could not escape! But where was she going? Koupriane
knew that island better than anybody. He took a short cut to reach the other
side, toward which Katharina seemed to be heading, and all at once he
nearly fell over the girl, who gave a squawk of surprise and rushed away,
seeming all arms and legs.
“Stop, or I fire!” cried Koupriane, and he drew his revolver. But a hand
grabbed it from him.
“Not that!” said Rouletabille, as he threw the revolver far from them.
Koupriane swore at him and resumed the chase. His fury multiplied his
strength, his agility; he almost reached Katharina, who was almost out of
breath, but Rouletabille threw himself into the Chief’s arms and they rolled
together upon the grass. When Koupriane rose, it was to see Katharina
mounting in mad haste the stairs that led to the Barque, the floating
restaurant of the Strielka. Cursing Rouletabille, but believing his prey easily
captured now, the Chief in his turn hurried to the Barque, into which
Katharina had disappeared. He reached the bottom of the stairs. On the top
step, about to descend from the festive place, the form of Prince Galitch
appeared. Koupriane received the sight like a blow stopping him short in his
ascent. Galitch had an exultant air which Koupriane did not mistake.
Evidently he had arrived too late. He felt the certainty of it in profound
discouragement. And this appearance of the prince on the Barque explained
convincingly enough the reason for Katharina’s flight here.
If the Bohemian had filched the papers or the portfolio from the dead, it
was the prince now who had them in his pocket.
Koupriane, as he saw the prince about to pass him, trembled. The prince
saluted him and ironically amused himself by inquiring:
“Well, well, how do you do, my dear Monsieur Koupriane. Your
Excellency has risen in good time this morning, it seems to me. Or else it is
I who start for bed too late.”

“Prince,” said Koupriane, “my men are in pursuit of a little Bohemian
named Katharina, well known in the restaurants where she sings. We have
seen her go into the Barque. Have you met her by any chance?”
“Good Lord, Monsieur Koupriane, I am not the concierge of the Barque,
and I have not noticed anything at all, and nobody. Besides, I am naturally a
little sleepy. Pardon me.”
“Prince, it is not possible that you have not seen Katharina.”
“Oh, Monsieur the Prefect of Police, if I had seen her I would not tell you
about it, since you are pursuing her. Do you take me for one of your
bloodhounds? They say you have them in all classes, but I insist that I
haven’t enlisted yet. You have made a mistake, Monsieur Koupriane.”
The prince saluted again. But Koupriane still stood in his way.
“Prince, consider that this matter is very serious. Michael Nikolaievitch,
General Trebassof’s orderly, is dead, and this little girl has stolen his papers
from his body. All persons who have spoken with Katharina will be under
suspicion. This is an affair of State, monsieur, which may reach very far.
Can you swear to me that you have not seen, that you have not spoken to
Katharina?”
The prince looked at Koupriane so insolently that the Prefect turned pale
with rage. Ah, if he were able—if he only dared!—but such men as this
were beyond him. Galitch walked past him without a word of answer, and
ordered the schwitzar to call him a carriage.
“Very well,” said Koupriane, “I will make my report to the Tsar.”
Galitch turned. He was as pale as Koupriane.
“In that case, monsieur,” said he, “don’t forget to add that I am His
Majesty’s most humble servant.”
The carriage drew up. The prince stepped in. Koupriane watched him roll
away, raging at heart and with his fists doubled. Just then his men came up.
“Go. Search,” he said roughly, pointing into the Barque.
They scattered through the establishment, entering all the rooms. Cries of
irritation and of protest arose. Those lingering after the latest of late suppers
were not pleased at this invasion of the police. Everybody had to rise while
the police looked under the tables, the benches, the long table-cloths. They
went into the pantries and down into the hold. No sign of Katharina.

Suddenly Koupriane, who leaned against a netting and looked vaguely out
upon the horizon, waiting for the outcome of the search, got a start. Yonder,
far away on the other side of the river, between a little wood and the Staria
Derevnia, a light boat drew to the shore, and a little black spot jumped from
it like a flea. Koupriane recognized the little black spot as Katharina. She
was safe. Now he could not reach her. It would be useless to search the
maze of the Bohemian quarter, where her country-people lived in full
control, with customs and privileges that had never been infringed. The
entire Bohemian population of the capital would have risen against him. It
was Prince Galitch who had made him fail. One of his men came to him:
“No luck,” said he. “We have not found Katharina, but she has been here
nevertheless. She met Prince Galitch for just a minute, and gave him
something, then went over the other side into a canoe.”
“Very well,” and the Prefect shrugged his shoulders. “I was sure of it.”
He felt more and more, exasperated. He went down along the river edge
and the first person he saw was Rouletabille, who waited for him without
any impatience, seated philosophically on a bench.
“I was looking for you,” cried the Prefect. “We have failed. By your
fault! If you had not thrown yourself into my arms—”
“I did it on purpose,” declared the reporter.
“What! What is that you say? You did it on purpose?”
Koupriane choked with rage.
“Your Excellency,” said Rouletabille, taking him by the arm, “calm
yourself. They are watching us. Come along and have a cup of tea at
Cubat’s place. Easy now, as though we were out for a walk.”
“Will you explain to me?”
“No, no, Your Excellency. Remember that I have promised you General
Trebassof’s life in exchange for your prisoner’s. Very well; by throwing
myself in your arms and keeping you from reaching Katharina, I saved the
general’s life. It is very simple.”
“Are you laughing at me? Do you think you can mock me?”
But the prefect saw quickly that Rouletabille was not fooling and had no
mockery in his manner.

“Monsieur,” he insisted, “since you speak seriously, I certainly wish to
understand—”
“It is useless,” said Rouletabille. “It is very necessary that you should not
understand.”
“But at least...”
“No, no, I can’t tell you anything.”
“When, then, will you tell me something to explain your unbelievable
conduct?”
Rouletabille stopped in his tracks and declared solemnly:
“Monsieur Koupriane, recall what Natacha Feodorovna as she raised her
lovely eyes to heaven, replied to her father, when he, also, wished to
understand: ‘Never.’”

XI. THE POISON CONTINUES
At ten o’clock that morning Rouletabille went to the Trebassof villa,
which had its guard of secret agents again, a double guard, because
Koupriane was sure the Nihilists would not delay in avenging Michael’s
death. Rouletabille was met by Ermolai, who would not allow him to enter.
The faithful servant uttered some explanation in Russian, which the young
man did not understand, or, rather, Rouletabille understood perfectly from
his manner that henceforth the door of the villa was closed to him. In vain
he insisted on seeing the general, Matrena Petrovna and Mademoiselle
Natacha. Ermolai made no reply but “Niet, niet, niet.” The reporter turned
away without having seen anyone, and walked away deeply depressed. He
went afoot clear into the city, a long promenade, during which his brain
surged with the darkest forebodings. As he passed by the Department of
Police he resolved to see Koupriane again. He went in, gave his name, and
was ushered at once to the Chief of Police, whom he found bent over a long
report that he was reading through with noticeable agitation.
“Gounsovski has sent me this,” he said in a rough voice, pointing to the
report. “Gounsovski, ‘to do me a service,’ desires me to know that he is
fully aware of all that happened at the Trebassof datcha last night. He warns
me that the revolutionaries have decided to get through with the general at
once, and that two of them have been given the mission to enter the datcha
in any way possible. They will have bombs upon their bodies and will blow
the bombs and themselves up together as soon as they are beside the
general. Who are the two victims designated for this horrible vengeance,
and who have light-heartedly accepted such a death for themselves as well
as for the general? That is what we don’t know. That is what we would have
known, perhaps, if you had not prevented me from seizing the papers that
Prince Galitch has now,” Koupriane finished, turning hostilely toward
Rouletabille.
Rouletabille had turned pale.
“Don’t regret what happened to the papers,” he said. “It is I who tell you
not to. But what you say doesn’t surprise me. They must believe that
Natacha has betrayed them.”

“Ah, then you admit at last that she really is their accomplice?”
“I haven’t said that and I don’t admit it. But I know what I mean, and
you, you can’t. Only, know this one thing, that at the present moment I am
the only person able to save you in this horrible situation. To do that I must
see Natacha at once. Make her understand this, while I wait at my hotel for
word. I’ll not leave it.”
Rouletabille saluted Koupriane and went out.
Two days passed, during which Rouletabille did not receive any word
from either Natacha or Koupriane, and tried in vain to see them. He made a
trip for a few hours to Finland, going as far as Pergalovo, an isolated town
said to be frequented by the revolutionaries, then returned, much disturbed,
to his hotel, after having written a last letter to Natacha imploring an
interview. The minutes passed very slowly for him in the hotel’s vestibule,
where he had seemed to have taken up a definite residence.
Installed on a bench, he seemed to have become part of the hotel staff,
and more than one traveler took him for an interpreter. Others thought he
was an agent of the Secret Police appointed to study the faces of those
arriving and departing. What was he waiting for, then? Was it for
Annouchka to return for a luncheon or dinner in that place that she
sometimes frequented? And did he at the same time keep watch upon
Annouchka’s apartments just across the way? If that was so, he could only
bewail his luck, for Annouchka did not appear either at her apartments or
the hotel, or at the Krestowsky establishment, which had been obliged to
suppress her performance. Rouletabille naturally thought, in the latter
connection, that some vengeance by Gounsovski lay back of this, since the
head of the Secret Service could hardly forget the way he had been treated.
The reporter could see already the poor singer, in spite of all her safeguards
and the favor of the Imperial family, on the road to the Siberian steppes or
the dungeons of Schlusselbourg.
“My, what a country!” he murmured.
But his thoughts soon quit Annouchka and returned to the object of his
main preoccupation. He waited for only one thing, and for that as soon as
possible—to have a private interview with Natacha. He had written her ten
letters in two days, but they all remained unanswered. It was an answer that
he waited for so patiently in the vestibule of the hotel—so patiently, but so
nervously, so feverishly.

When the postman entered, poor Rouletabille’s heart beat rapidly. On that
answer he waited for depended the formidable part he meant to play before
quitting Russia. He had accomplished nothing up to now, unless he could
play his part in this later development.
But the letter did not come. The postman left, and the schwitzar, after
examining all the mail, made him a negative sign. Ah, the servants who
entered, and the errand-boys, how he looked at them! But they never came
for him. Finally, at six o’clock in the evening of the second day, a man in a
frock-coat, with a false astrakhan collar, came in and handed the concierge
a letter for Joseph Rouletabille. The reporter jumped up. Before the man
was out the door he had torn open the letter and read it. The letter was not
from Natacha. It was from Gounsovski. This is what it said:
“My dear Monsieur Joseph Rouletabille, if it will not inconvenience you,
I wish you would come and dine with me to-day. I will look for you within
two hours. Madame Gounsovski will be pleased to make your acquaintance.
Believe me your devoted Gounsovski.”
Rouletabille considered, and decided:
“I will go. He ought to have wind of what is being plotted, and as for me,
I don’t know where Annouchka has gone. I have more to learn from him
than he has from me. Besides, as Athanase Georgevitch said, one may
regret not accepting the Head of the Okrana’s pleasant invitation.”
From six o’clock to seven he still waited vainly for Natacha’s response.
At seven o’clock, he decided to dress for the dinner. Just as he rose, a
messenger arrived. There was still another letter for Joseph Rouletabille.
This time it was from Natacha, who wrote him:
“General Trebassof and my step-mother will be very happy to have you
come to dinner to-day. As for myself, monsieur, you will pardon me the
order which has closed to you for a number of days a dwelling where you
have rendered services which I shall not forget all my life.”
The letter ended with a vague polite formula. With the letter in his hand
the reporter sat in thought. He seemed to be asking himself, “Is it fish or
flesh?” Was it a letter of thanks or of menace? That was what he could not
decide. Well, he would soon know, for he had decided to accept that
invitation. Anything that brought him and Natacha into communication at
the moment was a thing of capital importance to him. Half-an-hour later he

gave the address of the villa to an isvotchick, and soon he stepped out
before the gate where Ermolai seemed to be waiting for him.
Rouletabille was so occupied by thought of the conversation he was
going to have with Natacha that he had completely forgotten the excellent
Monsieur Gounsovski and his invitation.
The reporter found Koupriane’s agents making a close-linked chain
around the grounds and each watching the other. Matrena had not wished
any agent to be in house. He showed Koupriane’s pass and entered.
Ermolai ushered Rouletabille in with shining face. He seemed glad to
have him there again. He bowed low before him and uttered many
compliments, of which the reporter did not understand a word. Rouletabille
passed on, entered the garden and saw Matrena Petrovna there walking with
her step-daughter. They seemed on the best of terms with each other. The
grounds wore an air of tranquillity and the residents seemed to have totally
forgotten the somber tragedy of the other night. Matrena and Natacha came
smilingly up to the young man, who inquired after the general. They both
turned and pointed out Feodor Feodorovitch, who waved to him from the
height of the kiosk, where it seemed the table had been spread. They were
going to dine out of doors this fine night.
“Everything goes very well, very well indeed, dear little domovoi,” said
Matrena. “How glad it is to see you and thank you. If you only knew how I
suffered in your absence, I who know how unjust my daughter was to you.
But dear Natacha knows now what she owes you. She doesn’t doubt your
word now, nor your clear intelligence, little angel. Michael Nikolaievitch
was a monster and he was punished as he deserved. You know the police
have proof now that he was one of the Central Revolutionary Committee’s
most dangerous agents. And he an officer! Whom can we trust now!”
“And Monsieur Boris Mourazoff, have you seen him since?” inquired
Rouletabille.
“Boris called to see us to-day, to say good-by, but we did not receive him,
under the orders of the police. Natacha has written to tell him of
Koupriane’s orders. We have received letters from him; he is quitting St.
Petersburg.
“What for?”

“Well, after the frightful bloody scene in his little house, when he learned
how Michael Nikolaievitch had found his death, and after he himself had
undergone a severe grilling from the police, and when he learned the police
had sacked his library and gone through his papers, he resigned, and has
resolved to live from now on out in the country, without seeing anyone, like
the philosopher and poet he is. So far as I am concerned, I think he is doing
absolutely right. When a young man is a poet, it is useless to live like a
soldier. Someone has said that, I don’t know the name now, and when one
has ideas that may upset other people, surely they ought to live in solitude.”
Rouletabille looked at Natacha, who was as pale as her white gown, and
who added no word to her mother’s outburst. They had drawn near the
kiosk. Rouletabille saluted the general, who called to him to come up and,
when the young man extended his hand, he drew him abruptly nearer and
embraced him. To show Rouletabille how active he was getting again,
Feodor Feodorovitch marched up and down the kiosk with only the aid of a
stick. He went and came with a sort of wild, furious gayety.
“They haven’t got me yet, the dogs. They haven’t got me! And one (he
was thinking of Michael) who saw me every day was here just for that. Very
well. I ask you where he is now. And yet here I am! An attack! I’m always
here! But with a good eye; and I begin to have a good leg. We shall see.
Why, I recollect how, when I was at Tiflis, there was an insurrection in the
Caucasus. We fought. Several times I could feel the swish of bullets past my
hair. My comrades fell around me like flies. But nothing happened to me,
not a thing. And here now! They will not get me, they will not get me. You
know how they plan now to come to me, as living bombs. Yes, they have
decided on that. I can’t press a friend’s hand any more without the fear of
seeing him explode. What do you think of that? But they won’t get me.
Come, drink my health. A small glass of vodka for an appetizer. You see,
young man, we are going to have zakouskis here. What a marvelous
panorama! You can see everything from here. If the enemy comes,” he
added with a singular loud laugh, “we can’t fail to detect him.”
Certainly the kiosk did rise high above the garden and was completely
detached, no wall being near. They had a clear view. No branches of trees
hung over the roof and no tree hid the view. The rustic table of rough wood
was covered with a short cloth and was spread with zakouskis. It was a
meal under the open sky, a seat and a glass in the clear azure. The evening

could not have been softer and clearer. And, as the general felt so gay, the
repast would have promised to be most agreeable, if Rouletabille had not
noticed that Matrena Petrovna and Natacha were uneasy and downcast. The
reporter soon saw, too, that all the general’s joviality was a little excessive.
Anyone would have said that Feodor Feodorovitch spoke to distract
himself, to keep himself from thinking. There was sufficient excuse for him
after the outrageous drama of the other night. Rouletabille noticed further
that the general never looked at his daughter, even when he spoke to her.
There was too formidable a mystery lying between them for restraint not to
increase day by day. Rouletabille involuntarily shook his head, saddened by
all he saw. His movement was surprised by Matrena Petrovna, who pressed
his hand in silence.
“Well, now,” said the general, “well, now my children, where is the
vodka?”
Among all the bottles which graced the table the general looked in vain
for his flask of vodka. How in the world could he dine if he did not prepare
for that important act by the rapid absorption of two or three little glasses of
white wine, between two or three sandwiches of caviare!
“Ermolai must have left it in the wine-chest,” said Matrena.
The wine-closet was in the dining-room. She rose to go there, but
Natacha hurried before her down the little flight of steps, crying, “Stay
there, mamma. I will go.”
“Don’t you bother, either. I know where it is,” cried Rouletabille, and
hurried after Natacha.
She did not stop. The two young people arrived in the dining-room at the
same time. They were there alone, as Rouletabille had foreseen. He stopped
Natacha and planted himself in front of her.
“Why, mademoiselle, did you not answer me earlier?”
“Because I don’t wish to have any conversation with you.”
“If that was so, you would not have come here, where you were sure I
would follow.”
She hesitated, with an emotion that would have been incomprehensible to
all others perhaps, but was not to Rouletabille.
“Well, yes, I wished to say this to you: Don’t write to me any more.
Don’t speak to me. Don’t see me. Go away from here, monsieur; go away.

They will have your life. And if you have found out anything, forget it. Ah,
on the head of your mother, forget it, or you are lost. That is what I wished
to tell you. And now, you go.”
She grasped his hand in a quick sympathetic movement that she seemed
instantly to regret.
“You go away,” she repeated.
Rouletabille still held his place before her. She turned from him; she did
not wish to hear anything further.
“Mademoiselle,” said he, “you are watched closer than ever. Who will
take Michael Nikolaievitch’s place?”
“Madman, be silent! Hush!”
“I am here.”
He said this with such simple bravery that tears sprang to her eyes.
“Dear man! Poor man! Dear brave man!” She did not know what to say.
Her emotion checked all utterance. But it was necessary for her to enable
him to understand that there was nothing he could do to help her in her sad
straits.
“No. If they knew what you have just said, what you have proposed now,
you would be dead to-morrow. Don’t let them suspect. And above all, don’t
try to see me anywhere. Go back to papa at once. We have been here too
long. What if they learn of it?—and they learn everything! They are
everywhere, and have ears everywhere.”
“Mademoiselle, just one word more, a single word. Do you doubt now
that Michael tried to poison your father?”
“Ah, I wish to believe it. I wish to. I wish to believe it for your sake, my
poor boy.”
Rouletabille desired something besides “I wish to believe it for your
sake, my poor boy.” He was far from being satisfied. She saw him turn pale.
She tried to reassure him while her trembling hands raised the lid of the
wine-chest.
“What makes me think you are right is that I have decided myself that
only one and the same person, as you said, climbed to the window of the
little balcony. Yes, no one can doubt that, and you have reasoned well.”
But he persisted still.

“And yet, in spite of that, you are not entirely sure, since you say, ‘I wish
to believe it, my poor boy.’”
“Monsieur Rouletabille, someone might have tried to poison my father,
and not have come by way of the window.”
“No, that is impossible.”
“Nothing is impossible to them.”
And she turned her head away again.
“Why, why,” she said, with her voice entirely changed and quite
indifferent, as if she wished to be merely ‘the daughter of the house’ in
conversation with the young man, “the vodka is not in the wine chest, after
all. What has Ermolai done with it, then?”
She ran over to the buffet and found the flask.
“Oh, here it is. Papa shan’t be without it, after all.”
Rouletabille was already into the garden again.
“If that is the only doubt she has,” he said to himself, “I can reassure her.
No one could come, excepting by the window. And only one came that
way.”
The young girl had rejoined him, bringing the flask. They crossed the
garden together to the general, who was whiling away the time as he waited
for his vodka explaining to Matrena Petrovna the nature of “the
constitution.” He had spilt a box of matches on the table and arranged them
carefully.
“Here,” he cried to Natacha and Rouletabille. “Come here and I will
explain to you as well what this Constitution amounts to.”
The young people leaned over his demonstration curiously and all eyes in
the kiosk were intent on the matches.
“You see that match,” said Feodor Feodorovitch. “It is the Emperor. And
this other match is the Empress; this one is the Tsarevitch; and that one is
the Grand-duke Alexander; and these are the other granddukes. Now, here
are the ministers and there the principal governors, and then the generals;
these here are the bishops.”
The whole box of matches was used up, and each match was in its place,
as is the way in an empire where proper etiquette prevails in government
and the social order.

“Well,” continued the general, “do you want to know, Matrena Petrovna,
what a constitution is? There! That is the Constitution.”
The general, with a swoop of his hand, mixed all the matches.
Rouletabille laughed, but the good Matrena said:
“I don’t understand, Feodor.”
“Find the Emperor now.”
Then Matrena understood. She laughed heartily, she laughed violently,
and Natacha laughed also. Delighted with his success, Feodor Feodorovitch
took up one of the little glasses that Natacha had filled with the vodka she
brought.
“Listen, my children,” said he. “We are going to commence the
zakouskis. Koupriane ought to have been here before this.”
Saying this, holding still the little glass in his hand, he felt in his pocket
with the other for his watch, and drew out a magnificent large watch whose
ticking was easily heard.
“Ah, the watch has come back from the repairer,” Rouletabille remarked
smilingly to Matrena Petrovna. “It looks like a splendid one.”
“It has very fine works,” said the general. “It was bequeathed to me by
my grandfather. It marks the seconds, and the phases of the moon, and
sounds the hours and half-hours.”
Rouletabille bent over the watch, admiring it.
“You expect M. Koupriane for dinner?” inquired the young man, still
examining the watch.
“Yes, but since he is so late, we’ll not delay any longer. Your healths, my
children,” said the general as Rouletabille handed him back the watch and
he put it in his pocket.
“Your health, Feodor Feodorovitch,” replied Matrena Petrovna, with her
usual tenderness.
Rouletabille and Natacha only touched their lips to the vodka, but Feodor
Feodorovitch and Matrena drank theirs in the Russian fashion, head back
and all at a draught, draining it to the bottom and flinging the contents to
the back of the throat. They had no more than performed this gesture when
the general uttered an oath and tried to expel what he had drained so

heartily. Matrena Petrovna spat violently also, looking with horror at her
husband.
“What is it? What has someone put in the vodka?” cried Feodor.
“What has someone put in the vodka?” repeated Matrena Petrovna in a
thick voice, her eyes almost starting from her head.
The two young people threw themselves upon the unfortunates. Feodor’s
face had an expression of atrocious suffering.
“We are poisoned,” cried the general, in the midst of his chokings. “I am
burning inside.”
Almost mad, Natacha took her father’s head in her hands. She cried to
him:
“Vomit, papa; vomit!”
“We must find an emetic,” cried Rouletabille, holding on to the general,
who had almost slipped from his arms.
Matrena Petrovna, whose gagging noises were violent, hurried down the
steps of the kiosk, crossed the garden as though wild-fire were behind her,
and bounded into the veranda. During this time the general succeeded in
easing himself, thanks to Rouletabille, who had thrust a spoon to the root of
his tongue. Natacha could do nothing but cry, “My God, my God, my God!”
Feodor held onto his stomach, still crying, “I’m burning, I’m burning!” The
scene was frightfully tragic and funny at the same time. To add to the
burlesque, the general’s watch in his pocket struck eight o’clock. Feodor
Feodorovitch stood up in a final supreme effort. “Oh, it is horrible!”
Matrena Petrovna showed a red, almost violet face as she came back; she
distorted it, she choked, her mouth twitched, but she brought something, a
little packet that she waved, and from which, trembling frightenedly, she
shook a powder into the first two empty glasses, which were on her side of
the table and were those she and the general had drained. She still had
strength to fill them with water, while Rouletabille was almost overcome by
the general, whom he still had in his arms, and Natacha concerned herself
with nothing but her father, leaning over him as though to follow the
progress of the terrible poison, to read in his eyes if it was to be life or
death. “Ipecac,” cried Matrena Petrovna, and she made the general drink it.
She did not drink until after him. The heroic woman must have exerted

superhuman force to go herself to find the saving antidote in her medicine-
chest, even while the agony pervaded her vitals.
Some minutes later both could be considered saved. The servants,
Ermolai at their head, were clustered about. Most of them had been at the
lodge and they had not, it appeared, heard the beginning of the affair, the
cries of Natacha and Rouletabille. Koupriane arrived just then. It was he
who worked with Natacha in getting the two to bed. Then he directed one of
his agents to go for the nearest doctors they could find.
This done, the Prefect of Police went toward the kiosk where he had left
Rouletabille. But Rouletabille was not to be found, and the flask of vodka
and the glasses from which they had drunk were gone also. Ermolai was
near-by, and he inquired of the servant for the young Frenchman. Ermolai
replied that he had just gone away, carrying the flask and the glasses.
Koupriane swore. He shook Ermolai and even started to give him a blow
with the fist for permitting such a thing to happen before his eyes without
making a protest.
Ermolai, who had his own haughtiness, dodged Koupriane’s fist and
replied that he had wished to prevent the young Frenchman, but the reporter
had shown him a police-paper on which Koupriane himself had declared in
advance that the young Frenchman was to do anything he pleased.

XII. PERE ALEXIS
Koupriane jumped into his carriage and hurried toward St. Petersburg.
On the way he spoke to three agents who only he knew were posted in the
neighborhood of Eliaguine. They told him the route Rouletabille had taken.
The reporter had certainly returned into the city. He hurried toward Troitski
Bridge. There, at the corner of the Naberjnaia, Koupriane saw the reporter
in a hired conveyance. Rouletabille was pounding his coachman in the
back, Russian fashion, to make him go faster, and was calling with all his
strength one of the few words he had had time to learn, “Naleva, naleva” (to
the left). The driver was forced to understand at last, for there was no other
way to turn than to the left. If he had turned to the right (naprava) he would
have driven into the river. The conveyance clattered over the pointed flints
of a neighborhood that led to a little street, Aptiekarski-Pereoulok, at the
corner of the Katharine canal. This “alley of the pharmacists” as a matter of
fact contained no pharmacists, but there was a curious sign of a herbarium,
where Rouletabille made the driver stop. As the carriage rolled under the
arch Rouletabille recognized Koupriane. He did not wait, but cried to him,
“Ah, here you are. All right; follow me.” He still had the flask and the
glasses in his hands. Koupriane couldn’t help noticing how strange he
looked. He passed through a court with him, and into a squalid shop.
“What,” said Koupriane, “do you know Pere Alexis?”
They were in the midst of a curious litter. Clusters of dried herbs hung
from the ceiling, and all among them were clumps of old boots, shriveled
skins, battered pans, scrap-iron, sheep-skins, useless touloupes, and on the
floor musty old clothes, moth-eaten furs, and sheep-skin coats that even a
moujik of the swamps would not have deigned to wear. Here and there were
old teeth, ragged finery, dilapidated hats, and jars of strange herbs ranged
upon some rickety shelving. Between the set of scales on the counter and a
heap of little blocks of wood used for figuring the accounts of this singular
business were ungilded ikons, oxidized silver crosses, and Byzantine
pictures representing scenes from the Old and New Testaments. Jars of
alcohol with what seemed to be the skeletons of frogs swimming in them
filled what space was left. In a corner of this large, murky room, under the

vault of mossed stone, a small altar stood and the light burned in a hanging
glass of oil before the holy images. A man was praying before the altar. He
wore the costume of old Russia, the caftan of green cloth, buttoned at the
shoulder and tucked in at the waist by a narrow belt. He had a bushy beard
and his hair fell to his shoulders. When he had finished his prayer he rose,
perceived Rouletabille and came over to take his hand. He spoke French to
the reporter:
“Well, here you are again, lad. Do you bring poison again to-day? This
will end by being found out, and the police...”
Just then he discerned Koupriane’s form in the shadow, drew close to
make out who it was, and fell to his knees as he saw who it was.
Rouletabille tried to raise him, but he insisted on prostrating himself. He
was sure the Prefect of Police had come to his house to hang him. Finally
he was reassured by Rouletabille’s positive assertions and the great chief’s
robust laugh. The Prefect wished to know how the young man came to be
acquainted with the “alchemist” of the police. Rouletabille told him in a few
words.
Maitre Alexis, in his youth, went to France afoot, to study pharmacy,
because of his enthusiasm for chemistry. But he always remained
countrified, very much a Russian peasant, a semi-Oriental bear, and did not
achieve his degree. He took some certificates, but the examinations were
too much for him. For fifty years he lived miserably as a pharmacist’s
assistant in the back of a disreputable shop in the Notre Dame quarter. The
proprietor of the place was implicated in the famous affair of the gold
ingots, which started Rouletabille’s reputation, and was arrested along with
his assistant, Alexis. It was Rouletabille who proved, clear as day, that poor
Alexis was innocent, and that he had never been cognizant of his master’s
evil ways, being absorbed in the depths of his laboratory in trying to work
out a naive alchemy which fascinated him, though the world of chemistry
had passed it by centuries ago. At the trial Alexis was acquitted, but found
himself in the street. He shed what tears remained in his body upon the neck
of the reporter, assuring him of paradise if he got him back to his own
country, because he desired only the one thing more of life, that he might
see his birth-land before he died. Rouletabille advanced the necessary
means and sent him to St. Petersburg. There he was picked up at the end of
two days by the police, in a petty gambling-game, and thrown into prison,

where he promptly had a chance to show his talents. He cured some of his
companions in misery, and even some of the guards. A guard who had an
injured leg, whose healing he had despaired of, was cured by Alexis. Then
there was found to be no actual charge against him. They set him free and,
moreover, they interested themselves in him. They found meager
employment for him in the Stchoukine-dvor, an immense popular bazaar.
He accumulated a few roubles and installed himself on his own account at
the back of a court in the Aptiekarski-Pereoulok, where he gradually piled
up a heap of old odds and ends that no one wanted even in the Stchoukine-
dvor. But he was happy, because behind his shop he had installed a little
laboratory where he continued for his pleasure his experiments in alchemy
and his study of plants. He still proposed to write a book that he had already
spoken of in France to Rouletabille, to prove the truth of “Empiric
Treatment of Medicinal Herbs, the Science of Alchemy, and the Ancient
Experiments in Sorcery.” Between times he continued to cure anyone who
applied to him, and the police in particular. The police guards protected him
and used him. He had splendid plasters for them after “the scandal,” as they
called the October riots. So when the doctors of the quarter tried to
prosecute him for illegal practice, a deputation of police-guards went to
Koupriane, who took the responsibility and discontinued proceedings
against him. They regarded him as under protection of the saints, and Alexis
soon came to be regarded himself as something of a holy man. He never
failed every Christmas and Easter to send his finest images to Rouletabille,
wishing him all prosperity and saying that if ever he came to St. Petersburg
he should be happy to receive him at Aptiekarski-Pereoulok, where he was
established in honest labor. Pere Alexis, like all the true saints, was a
modest man.
When Alexis had recovered a little from his emotion Rouletabille said to
him:
“Pere Alexis, I do bring you poison again, but you have nothing to fear,
for His Excellency the Chief of Police is with me. Here is what we want
you to do. You must tell us what poison these four glasses have held, and
what poison is still in this flask and this little phial.”
“What is that little phial?” demanded Koupriane, as he saw Rouletabille
pull a small, stoppered bottle out of his pocket.

The reporter replied, “I have put into this bottle the vodka that was
poured into Natacha’s glass and mine and that we barely touched.”
“Someone has tried to poison you!” exclaimed Pere Alexis.
“No, not me,” replied Rouletabille, in bored fashion. “Don’t think about
that. Simply do what I tell you. Then analyze these two napkins, as well.”
And he drew from his coat two soiled napkins.
“Well,” said Koupriane, “you have thought of everything.”
“They are the napkins the general and his wife used.”
“Yes, yes, I understand that,” said the Chief of Police.
“And you, Alexis, do you understand?” asked the reporter. “When can we
have the result of your analysis?
“In an hour, at the latest.”
“Very well,” said Koupriane. “Now I need not tell you to hold your
tongue. I am going to leave one of my men here. You will write us a note
that you will seal, and he will bring it to head-quarters. Sure you
understand? In an hour?”
“In an hour, Excellency.”
They went out, and Alexis followed them, bowing to the floor. Koupriane
had Rouletabille get into his carriage. The young man did as he was told.
One would have said he did not know where he was or what he did. He
made no reply to the chief’s questions.
“This Pere Alexander,” resumed Koupriane, “is a character, really quite a
figure. And a bit of a schemer, I should say. He has seen how Father John of
Cronstadt succeeded, and he says to himself, ‘Since the sailors had their
Father John of Cronstadt, why shouldn’t the police-guard have their Father
Alexis of Aptiekarski-Pereoulok?’”
But Rouletabille did not reply at all, and Koupriane wound up by
demanding what was the matter with him.
“The matter is,” replied Rouletabille, unable longer to conceal his
anguish, “that the poison continues.”
“Does that astonish you?” returned Koupriane. “It doesn’t me.”
Rouletabille looked at him and shook his head. His lips trembled as he
said, “I know what you think. It is abominable. But the thing I have done
certainly is more abominable still.”

“What have you done, then, Monsieur Rouletabille?”
“Perhaps I have caused the death of an innocent man.”
“So long as you aren’t sure of it, you would better not fret about it, my
dear friend.”
“It is enough that the doubt has arisen,” said the reporter, “almost to kill
me;” and he heaved so gloomy a sigh that the excellent Monsieur
Koupriane felt pity for the lad. He tapped him on the knee.
“Come, come, young man, you ought to know one thing by this time
—‘you can’t make omelettes without breaking eggs,’ as they say, I think, in
Paris.”
Rouletabille turned away from him with horror in his heart. If there
should be another, someone besides Michael! If it was another hand than his
that appeared to Matrena and him in the mysterious night! If Michael
Nikolaievitch had been innocent! Well, he would kill himself, that was all.
And those horrible words that he had exchanged with Natacha rose in his
memory, singing in his ears as though they would deafen him.
“Do you doubt still?” he had asked her, “that Michael tried to poison
your father?”
And Natacha had replied, “I wish to believe it! I wish to believe it, for
your sake, my poor boy.” And then he recalled her other words, still more
frightful now! “Couldn’t someone have tried to poison my father and not
have come by the window?” He had faced such a hypothesis with assurance
then—but now, now that the poison continued, continued within the house,
where he believed himself so fully aware of all people and things—
continued now that Michael Nikolaievitch was dead—ah, where did it come
from, this poison?—and what was it? Pere Alexis would hurry his analysis
if he had any regard for poor Rouletabille.
For Rouletabille to doubt, and in an affair where already there was one
man dead through his agency, was torment worse than death.
When they arrived at police-headquarters, Rouletabille jumped from
Koupriane’s carriage and without saying a word hailed an empty isvotchick
that was passing. He had himself driven back to Pere Alexis. His doubt
mastered his will; he could not bear to wait away. Under the arch of
Aptiekarski-Pereoulok he saw once more the man Koupriane had placed
there with the order to bring him Alexis’s message. The man looked at him

in astonishment. Rouletabille crossed the court and entered the dingy old
room once more. Pere Alexis was not there, naturally, engaged as he was in
his laboratory. But a person whom he did not recognize at first sight
attracted the reporter’s attention. In the half-light of the shop a melancholy
shadow leaned over the ikons on the counter. It was only when he
straightened up, with a deep sigh, and a little light, deflected and yellow
from passing through window-panes that had known no touch of cleaning
since they were placed there, fell faintly on the face, that Rouletabille
ascertained he was face to face with Boris Mourazoff. It was indeed he, the
erstwhile brilliant officer whose elegance and charm the reporter had
admired as he saw him at beautiful Natacha’s feet in the datcha at
Eliaguine. Now, no more in uniform, he had thrown over his bowed
shoulders a wretched coat, whose sleeves swayed listlessly at his sides, in
accord with his mood of languid desperation, a felt hat with the rim turned
down hid a little the misery in his face in these few days, these not-many
hours, how he was changed! But, even as he was, he still concerned
Rouletabille. What was he doing there? Was he not going to go away,
perhaps? He had picked up an ikon from the counter and carried it over to
the window to examine its oxidized silver, giving such close attention to it
that the reporter hoped he might reach the door of the laboratory without
being noticed. He already had his hand on the knob of that door, which was
behind the counter, when he heard his name called.
“It is you, Monsieur Rouletabille,” said the low, sad voice of Boris.
“What has brought you here, then?”
“Well, well, Monsieur Boris Mourazoff, unless I’m mistaken? I certainly
didn’t expect to find you here in Pere Alexis’s place.”
“Why not, Monsieur Rouletabille? One can find anything here in Pere
Alexis’s stock. See; here are two old ikons in wood, carved with sculptures,
which came direct from Athos, and can’t be equaled, I assure you, either at
Gastini-Dvor nor even at Stchoukine-Dvor.”
“Yes, yes, that is possible,” said Rouletabille, impatiently. “Are you an
amateur of such things?” he added, in order to say something.
“Oh, like anybody else. But I was going to tell you, Monsieur
Rouletabille, I have resigned my commission. I have resolved to retire from
the world; I am going on a long voyage.” (Rouletabille thought: ‘Why not
have gone at once?’) “And before going, I have come here to supply myself

with some little gifts to send those of my friends I particularly care for,
although now, my dear Monsieur Rouletabille, I don’t care much for
anything.”
“You look desolate enough, monsieur.”
Boris sighed like a child.
“How could it be otherwise?” he said. “I loved and believed myself
beloved. But it proved to be—nothing, alas!”
“Sometimes one only imagines things,” said Rouletabille, keeping his
hand on the door.
“Oh, yes,” said the other, growing more and more melancholy. “So a man
suffers. He is his own tormentor; he himself makes the wheel on which, like
his own executioner, he binds himself.”
“It is not necessary, monsieur; it is not necessary,” counseled the reporter.
“Listen,” implored Boris in a voice that showed tears were not far away.
“You are still a child, but still you can see things. Do you believe Natacha
loves me?”
“I am sure of it, Monsieur Boris; I am sure of it.”
“I am sure of it, too. But I don’t know what to think now. She has let me
go, without trying to detain me, without a word of hope.”
“And where are you going like that?”
“I am returning to the Orel country, where I first saw her.”
“That is good, very good, Monsieur Boris. At least there you are sure to
see her again. She goes there every year with her parents for a few weeks. It
is a detail you haven’t overlooked, doubtless.”
“Certainly I haven’t. I will tell you that that prospect decided my place of
retreat.”
“See!”
“God gives me nothing, but He opens His treasures, and each takes what
he can.”
“Yes, yes; and Mademoiselle Natacha, does she know it is to Orel you
have decided to retire?”
“I have no reason for concealing it from her, Monsieur Rouletabille.”

“So far so good. You needn’t feel so desolate, my dear Monsieur Boris.
All is not lost. I will say even that I see a future for you full of hope.”
“Ah, if you are able to say that truthfully, I am happy indeed to have met
you. I will never forget this rope you have flung me when all the waters
seemed closing over my head. ‘What do you advise, then?”
“I advise you to go to Orel, monsieur, and as quickly as possible.”
“Very well. You must have reasons for saying that. I obey you, monsieur,
and go.”
As Boris started towards the entrance-arch, Rouletabille slipped into the
laboratory. Old Alexis was bent over his retorts. A wretched lamp barely
lighted his obscure work. He turned at the noise the reporter made.
“Ah!-you, lad!”
“‘Well?”
“Oh, nothing so quick. Still, I have already analyzed the two napkins,
you know.”
“Yes? The stains? Tell me, for the love of God!”
“Well, my boy, it is arsenate of soda again.”
Rouletabille, stricken to the heart, uttered a low cry and everything
seemed to dance around him. Pere Alexis in the midst of all the strange
laboratory instruments seemed Satan himself, and he repulsed the kindly
arms stretched forth to sustain him; in the gloom, where danced here and
there the little blue flames from the crucibles, lively as flickering tongues,
he believed he saw Michael Nikolaievitch’s ghost come to cry, “The
arsenate of soda continues, and I am dead.” He fell against the door, which
swung open, and he rolled as far as the counter, and struck his face against
it. The shock, that might well have been fatal, brought him out of his
intense nightmare and made him instantly himself again. He rose, jumped
over the heap of boots and fol-de-rols, and leaped to the court. There Boris
grabbed him by his coat. Rouletabille turned, furious:
“What do you want? You haven’t started for the Orel yet?”
“Monsieur, I am going, but I will be very grateful if you will take these
things yourself to—to Natacha.” He showed him, still with despairing mien,
the two ikons from Mount Athos, and Rouletabille took them from him,
thrust them in his pocket, and hurried on, crying, “I understand.”

Outside, Rouletabille tried to get hold of himself, to recover his coolness
a little. Was it possible that he had made a mortal error? Alas, alas, how
could he doubt it now! The arsenate of soda continued. He made, a
superhuman effort to ward off the horror of that, even momentarily—the
death of innocent Michael Nikolaievitch—and to think of nothing except
the immediate consequences, which must be carefully considered if he
wished to avoid some new catastrophe. Ah, the assassin was not
discouraged. And that time, what a piece of work he had tried! What a
hecatomb if he had succeeded! The general, Matrena Petrovna, Natacha and
Rouletabille himself (who almost regretted, so far as he was concerned, that
it had not succeeded)—and Koupriane! Koupriane, who should have been
there for luncheon. What a bag for the Nihilists! That was it, that was it.
Rouletabille understood now why they had not hesitated to poison
everybody at once: Koupriane was among them.
Michael Nikolaievitch would have been avenged!
The attempt had failed this time, but what might they not expect now!
From the moment he believed Michael Nikolaievitch no longer guilty, as he
had imagined, Rouletabille fell into a bottomless abyss.
Where should he go? After a few moments he made the circuit of the
Rotunda, which serves as the market for this quarter and is the finest
ornament of Aptiekarski-Pereoulok. He made the circuit without knowing
it, without stopping for anything, without seeing or understanding anything.
As a broken-winded horse makes its way in the treadmill, so he walked
around with the thought that he also was lost in a treadmill that led him
nowhere. Rouletabille was no longer Rouletabille.

XIII. THE LIVING BOMBS
At random—because now he could only act at random—he returned to
the datcha. Great disorder reigned there. The guard had been doubled. The
general’s friends, summoned by Trebassof, surrounded the two poisoned
sufferers and filled the house with their bustling devotion and their
protestations of affection. However, an insignificant doctor from the
common quarter of the Vasili-Ostrow, brought by the police, reassured
everybody. The police had not found the general’s household physician at
home, but promised the immediate arrival of two specialists, whom they
had found instead. In the meantime they had picked up on the way this little
doctor, who was gay and talkative as a magpie. He had enough to do
looking after Matrena Petrovna, who had been so sick that her husband,
Feodor Feodorovitch, still trembled, “for the first time in his life,” as the
excellent Ivan Petrovitch said.
The reporter was astonished at not finding Natacha either in Matrena’s
apartment or Feodor’s. He asked Matrena where her step-daughter was.
Matrena turned a frightened face toward him. When they were alone, she
said:
“We do not know where she is. Almost as soon as you left she
disappeared, and no one has seen her since. The general has asked for her
several times. I have had to tell him Koupriane took her with him to learn
the details from her of what happened.”
“She is not with Koupriane,” said Rouletabille.
“Where is she? This disappearance is more than strange at the moment
we were dying, when her father—O God! Leave me, my child; I am
stifling; I am stifling.”
Rouletabille called the temporary doctor and withdrew from the chamber.
He had come with the idea of inspecting the house room by room, corner by
corner, to make sure whether or not any possibility of entrance existed that
he had not noticed before, an entrance would-be poisoners were continuing
to use. But now a new fact confronted him and overshadowed everything:
the disappearance of Natacha. How he lamented his ignorance of the

Russian language—and not one of Koupriane’s men knew French. He
might draw something out of Ermolai.
Ermolai said he had seen Natacha just outside the gate for a moment,
looking up and down the road. Then he had been called to the general, and
so knew nothing further.
That was all the reporter could gather from the gestures rather than the
words of the old servant.
An additional difficulty now was that twilight drew on, and it was
impossible for the reporter to discern Natacha’s foot-prints. Was it true that
the young girl had fled at such a moment, immediately after the poisoning,
before she knew whether her father and mother were entirely out of danger?
If Natacha were innocent, as Rouletabille still wished to believe, such an
attitude was simply incomprehensible. And the girl could not but be aware
she would increase Koupriane’s suspicions. The reporter had a vital reason
for seeing her immediately, a vital reason for all concerned, above all in this
moment when the Nihilists were culminating their plans, a vital reason for
her and for him, equally menaced with death, to talk with her and to renew
the propositions he had made a few minutes before the poisoning and which
she had not wished to hear him talk about, in fearful pity for him or in
defiance of him. Where was Natacha? He thought maybe she was trying to
rejoin Annouchka, and there were reasons for that, both if she were
innocent and if she were guilty. But where was Annouchka? Who could
say! Gounsovski perhaps. Rouletabille jumped into an isvo, returning from
the Point empty, and gave Gounsovski’s address. He deigned then to recall
that he had been invited that same day to dine with the Gounsovskis. They
would no longer be expecting him. He blamed himself.
They received him, but they had long since finished dinner.
Monsieur and Madame Gounsovski were playing a game of draughts
under the lamp. Rouletabille as he entered the drawing-room recognized the
shining, fattish bald head of the terrible man. Gounsovski came to him,
bowing, obsequious, his fat hands held out. He was presented to Madame
Gounsovski, who was besprinkled with jewels over her black silk gown.
She had a muddy skin and magnificent eyes. She also was tentatively
effusive. “We waited for you, monsieur,” she said, smirking timidly, with
the careful charm of a woman a little along in years who relies still on
infantine graces. As the recreant young man offered his apologies, “Oh, we

know you are much occupied, Monsieur Rouletabille. My husband said that
to me only a moment ago. But he knew you would come finally. In the end
one always accepts my husband’s invitation.” She said this with a fat smile
of importance.
Rouletabille turned cold at this last phrase. He felt actual fear in the
presence of these two figures, so atrociously commonplace, in their
horrible, decent little drawing-room.
Madame continued:
“But you have had rather a bad dinner already, through that dreadful
affair at General Trebassof’s. Come into the dining-room.” “Ah, so
someone has told you?” said Rouletabille. “No, no, thanks; I don’t need
anything more. You know what has happened?”
“If you had come to dinner, perhaps nothing would have happened at all,
you know,” said Gounsovski tranquilly, seating himself again on the
cushions and considering his game of draughts through his glasses.
“Anyway, congratulations to Koupriane for being away from there through
his fear.”
For Gounsovski there was only Koupriane! The life or death of Trebassof
did not occupy his mind. Only the acts and movements of the Prefect of
Police had power to move him. He ordered a waiting-maid who glided into
the apartment without making more noise than a shadow to bring a small
stand loaded with zakouskis and bottles of champagne close to the game-
table, and he moved one of his pawns, saying, “You will permit me? This
move is mine. I don’t wish to lose it.”
Rouletabille ventured to lay his hand on the oily, hairy fist which
extended from a dubious cuff.
“What is this you tell me? How could you have foreseen it?”
“It was easy to foresee everything,” replied Gounsovski, offering cigars,
“to foresee everything from the moment Matiew’s place was filled by
Priemkof.”
“Well?” questioned Rouletabille, recalling with some inquietude the sight
of the whipping in the guards’ chapel.
“Well, this Priemkof, between ourselves,” (and he bent close to the
reporter’s ear) “is no better, as a police-guard for Koupriane than Matiew
himself. Very dangerous. So when I learned that he took Matiew’s place at

the datcha des Iles, I thought there was sure to be some unfortunate
happening. But it was no affair of mine, was it? Koupriane would have been
able to say to me, ‘Mind your own business.’ I had gone far enough in
warning him of the ‘living bombs.’ They had been denounced to us by the
same agency that enabled us to seize the two living bombs (women, if you
please!) who were going to the military tribunal at Cronstadt after the
rebellion in the fleet. Let him recall that. That ought to make him reflect. I
am a brave man. I know he speaks ill of me; but I don’t wish him any harm.
The interests of the Empire before all else between us! I wouldn’t talk to
you as I do if I didn’t know the Tsar honors you with his favor. Then I
invited you to dinner. As one dines one talks. But you did not come. And,
while you were dining down there and while Priemkof was on guard at the
datcha, that annoying affair Madame Gounsovski has spoken about
happened.”
Rouletabille had not sat down, in spite of Madame Gounsovski’s
insistences. He took the box of cigars brusquely out of the hand of the Chief
of the Secret Service, who had continued tendering them, for this detail of
hospitality only annoyed his mood, which had been dark enough for hours
and was now deepened by what the other had just said. He comprehended
only one thing, that a man named Priemkof, whom he had never heard
spoken of, as determined as Matiew to destroy the general, had been
entrusted by Koupriane with the guard of the datcha des Iles. It was
necessary to warn Koupriane instantly.
“How is it that you have not done so already, yourself, Monsieur
Gounsovski? Why wait to speak about it to me? It is unimaginable.”
“Pardon, pardon,” said Gounsovski, smiling softly behind his goggles; “it
is not the same thing.”
“No, no, it is not the same thing,” seconded the lady with the black silk,
brilliant jewels and flabby chin. “We speak here to a friend in the course of
dinner-talk, to a friend who is not of the police. We never denounce
anybody.”
“We must tell you. But sit down now,” Gounsovski still insisted, lighting
his cigar. “Be reasonable. They have just tried to poison him, so they will
take time to breathe before they try something else. Then, too, this poison
makes me think they may have given up the idea of living bombs. Then,
after all, what is to be will be.”

“Yes, yes,” approved the ample dame. “The police never have been able
to prevent what was bound to happen. But, speaking of this Priemkof, it
remains between us, eh? Between just us?”
“Yes, we must tell you now,” Gounsovski slipped in softly, “that it will
be much better not to let Koupriane know that you got the information from
me. Because then, you understand, he would not believe you; or, rather, he
would not believe me. That is why we take these precautions of dining and
smoking a cigar. We speak of one thing and another and you do as you
please with what we say. But, to make them useful, it is absolutely
necessary, I repeat, to be silent about their source.” (As he said that,
Gounsovski gave Rouletabille a piercing glance through his goggles, the
first time Rouletabille had seen such a look in his eyes. He never would
have suspected him capable of such fire.) “Priemkof,” continued
Gounsovski in a low voice, using his handkerchief vigorously, “was
employed here in my home and we separated on bad terms, through his
fault, it is necessary to say. Then he got into Koupriane’s confidence by
saying the worst he could of us, my dear little monsieur.”
“But what could he say?—servants’ stories! my dear little monsieur,”
repeated the fat dame, and rolled her great magnificent black eyes furiously.
“Stories that have been treated as they deserved at Court, certainly. Madame
Daquin, the wife of His Majesty’s head-cook, whom you certainly know,
and the nephew of the second Maid of Honor to the Empress, who stands
very well with his aunt, have told us so; servants’ stories that might have
ruined us but have not produced any effect on His Majesty, for whom we
would give our lives, Christ knows. Well, you understand now that if you
were to say to Koupriane, ‘Gaspadine Gounsovski has spoken ill to me of
Priemkof,’ he would not care to hear a word further. Still, Priemkof is in the
scheme for the living bombs, that is all I can tell you; at least, he was before
the affair of the poisoning. That poisoning is certainly very astonishing,
between us. It does not appear to have come from without, whereas the
living bombs will have to come from without. And Priemkof is mixed up in
it.”
“Yes, yes,” approved Madame Gounsovski again, “he is committed to it.
There have been stories about him, too. Other people as well as he can tell
tales; it isn’t hard to do. He has got to make some showing now if he is to
keep in with Annouchka’s clique.”

“Koupriane, our dear Koupriane,” interrupted Gounsovski, slightly
troubled at hearing his wife pronounce Annouchka’s name, “Koupriane
ought to be able to understand that this time Priemkof must bring things off,
or he is definitely ruined.”
“Priemkof knows it well enough,” replied Madame as she re-filled the
glasses, “but Koupriane doesn’t know it; that is all we can tell you. Is it
enough? All the rest is mere gossip.”
It certainly was enough for Rouletabille; he had had enough of it! This
idle gossip and these living bombs! These pinchbecks, these whispering
tale-tellers in their bourgeois, countrified setting; these politico-police
combinations whose grotesque side was always uppermost; while the
terrible side, the Siberian aspect, prisons, black holes, hangings,
disappearances, exiles and deaths and martyrdoms remained so jealously
hidden that no one ever spoke of them! All that weight of horror, between a
good cigar and “a little glass of anisette, monsieur, if you won’t take
champagne.” Still, he had to drink before he left, touch glasses in a health,
promise to come again, whenever he wished—the house was open to him.
Rouletabille knew it was open to anybody—anybody who had a tale to tell,
something that would send some other person to prison or to death and
oblivion. No guard at the entrance to check a visitor—men entered
Gounsovski’s house as the house of a friend, and he was always ready to do
you a service, certainly!
He accompanied the reporter to the stairs. Rouletabille was just about to
risk speaking of Annouchka to him, in order to approach the subject of
Natacha, when Gounsovski said suddenly, with a singular smile:
“By the way, do you still believe in Natacha Trebassof?”
“I shall believe in her until my death,” Rouletabille thrust back; “but I
admit to you that at this moment I don’t know where she has gone.”
“Watch the Bay of Lachtka, and come to tell me to-morrow if you will
believe in her always,” replied Gounsovski, confidentially, with a horrid
sort of laugh that made the reporter hurry down the stairs.
And now here was Priemkof to look after! Priemkof after Matiew! It
seemed to the young man that he had to contend against all the
revolutionaries not only, but all the Russian police as well—and
Gounsovski himself, and Koupriane! Everybody, everybody! But most
urgent was Priemkof and his living bombs. What a strange and almost

incomprehensible and harassing adventure this was between Nihilism and
the Russian police. Koupriane and Gounsovski both employed a man they
knew to be a revolutionary and the friend of revolutionaries. Nihilism, on
its side, considered this man of the police force as one of its own agents. In
his turn, this man, in order to maintain his perilous equilibrium, had to do
work for both the police and the revolutionaries, and accept whatever either
gave him to do as it came, because it was necessary he should give them
assurances of his fidelity. Only imbeciles, like Gapone, let themselves be
hanged or ended by being executed, like Azef, because of their awkward
slips. But a Priemkof, playing both branches of the police, had a good
chance of living a long time, and a Gounsovski would die tranquilly in his
bed with all the solaces of religion.
However, the young hearts hot with sincerity, sheathed with dynamite,
are mysteriously moved in the atrocious darkness of Holy Russia, and they
do not know where they will be sent, and it is all one to them, because all
they ask is to die in a mad spiritual delirium of hate and love—living
bombs!*

* In the trial after the revolt at Cronstadt two young women
were charged with wearing bombs as false bosoms.

At the corner of Aptiekarski-Pereoulok Rouletabille came in the way of
Koupriane, who was leaving for Pere Alexis’s place and, seeing the
reporter, stopped his carriage and called that he was going immediately to
the datcha.
“You have seen Pere Alexis?”
“Yes,” said Koupriane. “And this time I have it on you. What I told you,
what I foresaw, has happened. But have you any news of the sufferers?
Apropos, rather a curious thing has happened. I met Kister on the Nevsky
just now.”
“The physician?”
“Yes, one of Trebassof’s physicians whom I had sent an inspector to his
house to fetch to the datcha, as well as his usual associate, Doctor Litchkof.
Well, neither Litchkof nor he had been summoned. They didn’t know
anything had happened at the datcha. They had not seen my inspector. I
hope he has met some other doctor on the way and, in view of the urgency,
has taken him to the datcha.”

“That is what has happened,” replied Rouletabille, who had turned very
pale. “Still, it is strange these gentlemen had not been notified, because at
the datcha the Trebassofs were told that the general’s usual doctors were not
at home and so the police had summoned two others who would arrive at
once.”
Koupriane jumped up in the carriage.
“But Kister and Litchkof had not left their houses. Kister, who had just
met Litchkof, said so. What does this mean?”
“Can you tell me,” asked Rouletabille, ready now for the thunder-clap
that his question invited, “the name of the inspector you ordered to bring
them?”
“Priemkof, a man with my entire confidence.”
Koupriane’s carriage rushed toward the Isles. Late evening had come.
Alone on the deserted route the horses seemed headed for the stars; the
carriage behind seemed no drag upon them. The coachman bent above
them, arms out, as though he would spring into the ether. Ah, the beautiful
night, the lovely, peaceful night beside the Neva, marred by the wild gallop
of these maddened horses!
“Priemkof! Priemkof! One of Gounsovski’s men! I should have
suspected him,” railed Koupriane after Rouletabille’s explanations. “But
now, shall we arrive in time?”
They stood up in the carriage, urging the coachman, exciting the horses:
“Scan! Scan! Faster, douriak!” Could they arrive before the “living
bombs”? Could they hear them before they arrived? Ah, there was
Eliaguine!
They rushed from the one bank to the other as though there were no
bridges in their insensate course. And their ears were strained for the
explosion, for the abomination now to come, preparing slyly in the night so
hypocritically soft under the cold glance of the stars. Suddenly, “Stop,
stop!” Rouletabille cried to the coachman.
“Are you mad!” shouted Koupriane.
“We are mad if we arrive like madmen. That would make the catastrophe
sure. There is still a chance. If we wish not to lose it, then we must arrive
easily and calmly, like friends who know the general is out of danger.”

“Our only chance is to arrive before the bogus doctors. Either they aren’t
there, or it already is all over. Priemkof must have been surprised at the
affair of the poisoning, but he has seized the opportunity; fortunately he
couldn’t find his accomplices immediately.”
“Here is the datcha, anyway. In the name of heaven, tell your driver to
stop the horses here. If the ‘doctors’ are already there it is we who shall
have killed the general.”
“You are right.”
Koupriane moderated his excitement and that of his driver and horses,
and the carriage stopped noiselessly, not far from the datcha. Ermolai came
toward them.
“Priemkof?” faltered Koupriane.
“He has gone again, Excellency.”
“How—gone again?”
“Yes, but he has brought the doctors.”
Koupriane crushed Rouletabille’s wrist. The doctors were there!
“Madame Trebassof is better,” continued Ermolai, who understood
nothing of their emotion. “The general is going to meet them and take them
to his wife himself.”
“Where are they?”
“They are waiting in the drawing-room.”
“Oh, Excellency, keep cool, keep cool, and all is not lost,” implored the
reporter.
Rouletabille and Koupriane slipped carefully into the garden. Ermolai
followed them.
“There?” inquired Koupriane.
“There,” Ermolai replied.
From the corner where they were, and looking through the veranda, they
could see the “doctors” as they waited.
They were seated in chairs side by side, in a corner of the drawing-room
from where they could see every-thing in the room and a part of the garden,
which they faced, and could hear everything. A window of the first-floor
was open above their heads, so that they could hear any noise from there.

They could not be surprised from any side, and they held every door in
view. They were talking softly and tranquilly, looking straight before them.
They appeared young. One had a pleasant face, pale but smiling, with rather
long, curly hair; the other was more angular, with haughty bearing and
grave face, an eagle nose and glasses. Both wore long black coats buttoned
over their calm chests.
Koupriane and the reporter, followed by Ermolai, advanced with the
greatest precaution across the lawn. Screened by the wooden steps leading
to the veranda and by the vine-clad balustrade, they got near enough to hear
them. Koupriane gave eager ear to the words of these two young men, who
might have been so rich in the many years of life that naturally belonged to
them, and who were about to die so horrible a death in destroying all about
them. They spoke of what time it was, of the softness of the night and the
beauty of the sky; they spoke of the shadows under the birch-trees, of the
gulf shining in the late evening’s fading golden light, of the river’s
freshness and the sweetness of springtime in the North. That is what they
talked about. Koupriane murmured, “The assassins!”
Now it was necessary to decide on action, and that necessity was
horrible. A false movement, an awkwardness, and the “doctors” would be
warned, and everything lost. They must have the bombs under their coats;
there were certainly at least two “living bombs.” Their chests, as they
breathed, must heave to and fro and their hearts beat against an impending
explosion.
Above on the bedroom floor, they heard the rapid arranging of the room,
steps on the floor and a confusion of voices; shadows passed across the
window-space. Koupriane rapidly interrogated Ermolai and learned that all
the general’s friends were there. The two doctors had arrived only a couple
of minutes before the Prefect of Police and the reporter. The little doctor of
Vassili-Ostrow had already gone, saying there was nothing more for him to
do when two such celebrated specialists had arrived. However, in spite of
their celebrity, no one had ever heard the names they gave. Koupriane
believed the little doctor was an accomplice. The most necessary thing was
to warn those in the room above. There was immediate danger that someone
would come downstairs to find the doctors and take them to the general, or
that the general would come down himself to meet them. Evidently that was
what they were waiting for. They wished to die in his arms, to make sure

that this time he did not escape them! Koupriane directed Ermolai to go into
the veranda and speak in a commonplace way to them at the threshold of
the drawing-room door, saying that he would go upstairs and see if he might
now escort them to Madame Trebassof’s room. Once in the room above, he
could warn the others not to do anything but wait for Koupriane; then
Ermolai was to come down and say to the men, “In just a moment, if you
please.”
Ermolai crept back as far as the lodge, and then came quite normally up
the path, letting the gravel crunch under his countrified footsteps. He was
an intelligent man, and grasped with extraordinary coolness the importance
of the plan of campaign. Easily and naturally he mounted the veranda steps,
paused at the threshold of the drawing-room, made the remark he had been
told to make, and went upstairs. Koupriane and Rouletabille now watched
the bedroom windows. The flitting shadows there suddenly became
motionless. All moving about ceased; no more steps were heard, nothing.
And that sudden silence made the two “doctors” raise their faces toward the
ceiling. Then they exchanged an aroused glance. This change in the manner
of things above was dangerous. Koupriane muttered, “The idiots!” It was
such a blow for those upstairs to learn they walked over a mine ready to
explode that it evidently had paralyzed their limbs. Happily Ermolai came
down almost immediately and said to the “doctors” in his very best
domestic manner:
“Just a second, messieurs, if you please.”
He did it still with utter naturalness. And he returned to the ledge before
he rejoined Koupriane and Rouletabille by way of the lawn. Rouletabille,
entirely cool, quite master of himself, as calm now as Koupriane was
nervous, said to the Prefect of Police:
“We must act now, and quickly. They are commencing to be suspicious.
Have you a plan?”
“Here is all I can see,” said Koupriane. “Have the general come down by
the narrow servants’ stairway, and slip out of the house from the window of
Natacha’s sitting-room, with the aid of a twisted sheet. Matrena Petrovna
will come to speak to them during this time; that will keep them patient
until the general is out of danger. As soon as Matrena has withdrawn into
the garden, I will call my men, who will shoot them from a distance.”
“And the house itself? And the general’s friends?”

“Let them try to get away, too, by the servants’ stairway and jump from
the window after the general. We must try something. Say that I have them
at the muzzle of my revolver.”
“Your plan won’t work,” said Rouletabille, “unless the door of Natacha’s
sitting-room that opens on the drawing-room is closed.”
“It is. I can see from here.”
“And unless the door of the little passage-way before that staircase that
opens into the drawing-room is closed also, and you cannot see it from
here.”
“That door is open,” said Ermolai.
Koupriane swore. But he recovered himself promptly.
“Madame Trebassof will close the door when she speaks to them.”
“It’s impracticable,” said the reporter. “That will arouse their suspicions
more than ever. Leave it to me; I have a plan.”
“What?”
“I have time to execute it, but not to tell you about it. They have already
waited too long. I shall have to go upstairs, though. Ermolai will need to go
with me, as with a friend of the family.”
“I’ll go too.”
“That would give the whole show away, if they saw you, the Prefect of
Police.”
“Why, no. If they see me—and they know I ought to be there—as soon as
I show myself to them they will conclude I don’t know anything about it.”
“You are wrong.”
“It is my duty. I should be near the general to defend him until the last.”
Rouletabille shrugged his shoulders before this dangerous heroism, but
he did not stop to argue. He knew that his plan must succeed at once, or in
five minutes at the latest there would be only ruins, the dead and the dying
in the datcha des Iles.
Still he remained astonishingly calm. In principle he had admitted that he
was going to die. The only hope of being saved which remained to them
rested entirely upon their keeping perfectly cool and upon the patience of
the living bombs. Would they still have three minutes’ patience?

Ermolai went ahead of Koupriane and Rouletabille. At the moment they
reached the foot of the veranda steps the servant said loudly, repeating his
lesson:
“Oh, the general is waiting for you, Excellency. He told me to have you
come to him at once. He is entirely well and Madame Trebassof also.”
When they were in the veranda, he added:
“She is to see also, at once, these gentlemen, who will be able to tell her
there is no more danger.”
And all three passed while Koupriane and Rouletabille vaguely saluted
the two conspirators in the drawing-room. It was a decisive moment.
Recognizing Koupriane, the two Nihilists might well believe themselves
discovered, as the reporter had said, and precipitate the catastrophe.
However, Ermolai, Koupriane and Rouletabille climbed the stairs to the
bedroom like automatons, not daring to look behind them, and expecting
the end each instant. But neither stirred. Ermolai went down again, by
Rouletabille’s order, normally, naturally, tranquilly. They went into Matrena
Petrovna’s chamber. Everybody was there. It was a gathering of ghosts.
Here was what had happened above. That the “doctors” still remained
below, that they had not been received instantly, in brief, that the
catastrophe had been delayed up to now was due to Matrena Petrovna,
whose watchful love, like a watch-dog, was always ready to scent danger.
These two “doctors” whose names she did not know, who arrived so late,
and the precipitate departure of the little doctor of Vassili-Ostrow aroused
her watchfulness. Before allowing them to come upstairs to the general she
resolved to have a look at them herself downstairs. She arose from her bed
for that; and now her presentiment was justified. When she saw Ermolai,
sober and mysterious, enter with Koupriane’s message, she knew
instinctively, before he spoke, that there were bombs in the house. When
Ermolai did speak it was a blow for everybody. At first she, Matrena
Perovna, had been a frightened, foolish figure in the big flowered dressing-
gown belonging to Feodor that she had wrapped about her in her haste.
When Ermolai left, the general, who knew she only trembled for him, tried
to reassure her, and, in the midst of the frightened silence of all of them,
said a few words recalling the failure of all the previous attempts. But she
shook her head and trembled, shaking with fear for him, in agony at the
thought that she could do nothing there above those living bombs but wait

for them to burst. As to the friends, already their limbs were ruined,
absolutely ruined, in very truth. For a moment they were quite incapable of
moving. The jolly Councilor of Empire, Ivan Petrovitch, had no longer a
lively tale to tell, and the abominable prospect of “this horrible mix-up”
right at hand rendered him much less gay than in his best hours at Cubat’s
place. And poor Thaddeus Tchitchnikoff was whiter than the snow that
covers old Lithuania’s fields when the winter’s chase is on. Athanase
Georgevitch himself was not brilliant, and his sanguine face had quite
changed, as though he had difficulty in digesting his last masterpiece with
knife and fork. But, in justice to them, that was the first instantaneous
effect. No one could learn like that, all of a sudden, that they were about to
die in an indiscriminate slaughter without the heart being stopped for a
little. Ermolai’s words had turned these amiable loafers into waxen statues,
but, little by little, their hearts commenced to beat again and each suggested
some way of preventing the disaster—all of them sufficiently incoherent—
while Matrena Petrovna invoked the Virgin and at the same time helped
Feodor Feodorovitch adjust his sword and buckle his belt; for the general
wished to die in uniform.
Athanase Georgevitch, his eyes sticking out of his head and his body bent
as though he feared the Nihlists just below him might perceive his tall form
—through the floor, no doubt—proposed that they should throw themselves
out of the window, even at the cost of broken legs. The saddened Councilor
of Empire declared that project simply idiotic, for as they fell they would be
absolutely at the disposal of the Nihilists, who would be attracted by the
noise and would make a handful of dust of them with a single gesture
through the window. Thaddeus Tchitchnikoff, who couldn’t think of
anything at all, blamed Koupriane and the rest of the police for not having
devised something. Why hadn’t they already got rid of these Nihilists? After
the frightened silence they had kept at first, now they all spoke at once, in
low voices, hoarse and rapid, with shortened breath, making wild
movements of the arms and head, and walked here and there in the chamber
quite without motive, but very softly on tiptoe, going to the windows,
returning, listening at the doors, peering through the key-holes, exchanging
absurd suggestions, full of the wildest imaginings. “If we should... if...
if,”—everybody speaking and everybody making signs for the others to be
quiet. “Lower! If they hear us, we are lost.” And Koupriane, who did not
come, and his police, who themselves had brought two assassins into the

house, and were not able now to make them leave without having
everybody jump! They were certainly lost. There was nothing left but to say
their prayers. They turned to the general and Matrena Petrovna, who were
wrapped in a close embrace. Feodor had taken the poor disheveled head of
the good Matrena between his hands and pressed it upon his shoulders as he
embraced her. He said, “Rest quietly against my heart, Matrena Petrovna.
Nothing can happen to us except what God wills.”
At that sight and that remark the others grew ashamed of their confusion.
The harmony of that couple embracing in the presence of death restored
them to themselves, to their courage, and their “Nitchevo.” Athanase
Georgevitch, Ivan Petrovitch and Thaddeus Tchitchnikoff repeated after
Matrena Petrovna, “As God wills.” And then they said “Nitchevo!
Nitchevo!* We will all die with you, Feodor Feodorovitch.” And they all
kissed one another and clasped one another in their arms, their eyes dim
with love one for another, as at the end of a great banquet when they had
eaten and drunk heavily in honor of one another.

* “What does it matter!”

“Listen. Someone is coming up the stairs,” whispered Matrena, with her
keen ear, and she slipped from the restraint of her husband.
Breathless, they all hurried to the door opening on the landing, but with
steps as light “as though they walked on eggs.” All four of them were
leaning over there close by the door, hardly daring to breathe. They heard
two men on the stairs. Were they Koupriane and Rouletabille, or were they
the others? They had revolvers in their hands and drew back a little when
the footsteps sounded near the door. Behind them Trebassof was quietly
seated in his chair. The door was opened and Koupriane and Rouletabille
perceived these death-like figures, motionless and mute. No one dared to
speak or make a movement until the door had been closed. But then:
“Well? Well? Save us! Where are they? Ah, my dear little domovoi-
doukh, save the general, for the love of the Virgin!”
“Tsst! tsst! Silence.”
Rouletabille, very pale, but calm, spoke:
“The plan is simple. They are between the two staircases, watching the
one and the other. I will go and find them and make them mount the one

while you descend by the other.”
“Caracho! That is simple enough. Why didn’t we think of it sooner?
Because everybody lost his head except the dear little domovoi-doukh!”
But here something happened Rouletabille had not counted on. The
general rose and said, “You have forgotten one thing, my young friend; that
is that General Trebassof will not descend by the servants’ stairway.”
His friends looked at him in stupefaction, and asked if he had gone mad.
“What is this you say, Feodor?” implored Matrena.
“I say,” insisted the general, “that I have had enough of this comedy, and
that since Monsieur Koupriane has not been able to arrest these men, and
since, on their side, they don’t seem to decide to do their duty, I shall go
myself and put them out of my house.”
He started a few steps, but had not his cane and suddenly he tottered.
Matrena Petrovna jumped to him and lifted him in her arms as though he
were a feather.
“Not by the servants’ stairway, not by the servants’ stairway,” growled
the obstinate general.
“You will go,” Matrena replied to him, “by the way I take you.”
And she carried him back into the apartment while she said quickly to
Rouletabille:
“Go, little domovoi! And God protect us!”
Rouletabille disappeared at once through the door to the main staircase,
and the group attended by Koupriane, passed through the dressing-room
and the general’s chamber, Matrena Petrovna in the lead with her precious
burden. Ivan Petrovitch had his hand already on the famous bolt which
locked the door to the servants’ staircase when they all turned at the sound
of a quick step behind them. Rouletabille had returned.
“They are no longer in the drawing-room.”
“Not in the drawing-room! Where are they, then?”
Rouletabille pointed to the door they were about to open.
“Perhaps behind that door. Take care!”
All drew back.

“But Ermolai ought to know where they are,” exclaimed Koupriane.
“Perhaps they have gone, finding out they were discovered.”
“They have assassinated Ermolai.”
“Assassinated Ermolai!”
“I have seen his body lying in the middle of the drawing-room as I leaned
over the top of the banister. But they were not in the room, and I was afraid
you would run into them, for they may well be hidden in the servants’
stairway.”
“Then open the window, Koupriane, and call your men to deliver us.”
“I am quite willing,” replied Koupriane coldly, “but it is the signal for our
deaths.”
“Well, why do they wait so to make us die?” muttered Feodor
Feodorovitch. “I find them very tedious about it, for myself. What are you
doing, Ivan Petrovitch?”
The spectral figure of Ivan Petrovitch, bent beside the door of the
stairway, seemed to be hearing things the others could not catch, but which
frightened them so that they fled from the general’s chamber in disorder.
Ivan Petrovitch was close on them, his eyes almost sticking from his head,
his mouth babbling:
“They are there! They are there!”
Athanase Georgevitch open a window wildly and said:
“I am going to jump.”
But Thaddeus Tchitchnikofl’ stopped him with a word. “For me, I shall
not leave Feodor Feodorovitch.”
Athanase and Ivan both felt ashamed, and trembling, but brave, they
gathered round the general and said, “We will die together, we will die
together. We have lived with Feodor Feodorovitch, and we will die with
him.”
“What are they waiting for? What are they waiting for?” grumbled the
general.
Matrena Petrovna’s teeth chattered. “They are waiting for us to go
down,” said Koupraine.
“Very well, let us do it. This thing must end,” said Feodor.

“Yes, yes,” they all said, for the situation was becoming intolerable;
“enough of this. Go on down. Go on down. God, the Virgin and Saints Peter
and Paul protect us. Let us go.”
The whole group, therefore, went to the main staircase, with the
movements of drunken men, fantastic waving of the arms, mouths speaking
all together, saying things no one but themselves understood. Rouletabille
had already hurriedly preceded them, was down the staircase, had time to
throw a glance into the drawing-room, stepped over Ermolai’s huge corpse,
entered Natacha’s sitting-room and her chamber, found all these places
deserted and bounded back into the veranda at the moment the others
commenced to descend the steps around Feodor Feodorovitch. The
reporter’s eyes searched all the dark corners and had perceived nothing
suspicious when, in the veranda, he moved a chair. A shadow detached itself
from it and glided under the staircase. Rouletabille cried to the group on the
stairs.
“They are under the staircase!”
Then Rouletabille confronted a sight that he could never forget all his
life.
At this cry, they all stopped, after an instinctive move to go back. Feodor
Feodorovitch, who was still in Matrena Petrovna’s arms, cried:
“Vive le Tsar!”
And then, those whom the reporter half expected to see flee, distracted,
one way and another, or to throw themselves madly from the height of the
steps, abandoning Feodor and Matrena, gathered themselves instead by a
spontaneous movement around the general, like a guard of honor, in battle,
around the flag. Koupriane marched ahead. And they insisted also upon
descending the terrible steps slowly, and sang the Bodje tsara Krani, the
national anthem!
With an overwhelming roar, which shocked earth and sky and the ears of
Rouletabille, the entire house seemed lifted in the air; the staircase rose
amid flame and smoke, and the group which sang the Bodje tsara Krani
disappeared in a horrible apotheosis.

XIV. THE MARSHES
They ascertained the next day that there had been two explosions, almost
simultaneous, one under each staircase. The two Nihilists, when they felt
themselves discovered, and watched by Ermolai, had thrown themselves
silently on him as he turned his back in passing them, and strangled him
with a piece of twine. Then they separated each to watch one of the
staircases, reasoning that Koupriane and General Trebassof would have to
decide to descend.
The datcha des Iles was nothing now but a smoking ruin. But from the
fact that the living bombs had exploded separately the destructive effect
was diffused, and although there were numerous wounded, as in the case of
the attack on the Stolypine datcha, at least no one was killed outright; that
is, excepting the two Nihilists, of whom no trace could be found save a few
rags.
Rouletabille had been hurled into the garden and he was glad enough to
escape so, a little shaken, but without a scratch. The group composed of
Feodor and his friends were strangely protected by the lightness of the
datcha’s construction. The iron staircase, which, so to speak, almost hung to
the two floors, being barely attached at top and bottom, raised under them
and then threw them off as it broke into a thousand pieces, but only after, by
its very yielding, it had protected them from the first force of the bomb.
They had risen from the ruins without mortal wounds. Koupriane had a
hand badly burned, Athanase Georgevitch had his nose and cheeks seriously
hurt, Ivan Petrovitch lost an ear; the most seriously injured was Thaddeus
Tchitchnikoff, both of whose legs were broken. Extraordinarily enough, the
first person who appeared, rising from the midst of the wreckage, was
Matrena Petrovna, still holding Feodor in her arms. She had escaped with a
few burns and the general, saved again by the luck of the soldier whom
Death does not want, was absolutely uninjured. Feodor gave shouts of joy.
They strove to quiet him, because, after all, around him some poor wretches
had been badly hurt, as well as poor Ermolai, who lay there dead. The
domestics in the basement had been more seriously wounded and burned

because the main force of the explosion had gone downwards; which had
probably saved the personages above.
Rouletabille had been taken with the other victims to a neighboring
datcha; but as soon as he had shaken himself free of that terrible nightmare
he escaped from the place. He really regretted that he was not dead. These
successive waves of events had swamped him; and he accused himself
alone of all this disaster. With acutest anxiety he had inquired about the
condition of each of “his victims.” Feodor had not been wounded, but now
he was almost delirious, asking every other minute as the hours crept on for
Natacha, who had not reappeared. That unhappy girl Rouletabille had
steadily believed innocent. Was she a culprit? “Ah, if she had only chosen
to! If she had had confidence,” he cried, raising anguished hands towards
heaven, “none of all this need have happened. No one would have attacked
and no one would ever again attack the life of Trebassof. For I was not
wrong in claiming before Koupriane that the general’s life was in my hand,
and I had the right to say to him, ‘Life for life! Give me Matiew’s and I will
give you the general’s.’ And now there has been one more fruitless attempt
to kill Feodor Feodorovitch and it is Natacha’s fault—that I swear, because
she would not listen to me. And is Natacha implicated in it? O my God”
Rouletabille asked this vain question of the Divinity, for he expected no
more help in answering it on earth.
Natacha! Innocent or guilty, where was she? What was she doing? to
know that! To know if one were right or wrong—and if one were wrong, to
disappear, to die!
Thus the unhappy Rouletabille muttered as he walked along the bank of
the Neva, not far from the ruins of the poor datcha, where the joyous friends
of Feodor Feodorovitch would have no more good dinners, never; so he
soliloquized, his head on fire.
And, all at once, he recovered trace of the young girl, that trace lost
earlier, a trace left at her moment of flight, after the poisoning and before
the explosion. And had he not in that a terrible coincidence? Because the
poison might well have been only in preparation for the final attack, the
pretext for the tragic arrival of the two false doctors. Natacha, Natacha, the
living mystery surrounded already by so many dead!
Not far from the ruins of the datcha Rouletabille soon made sure that a
group of people had been there the night before, coming from the woods

near-by, and returning to them. He was able to be sure of this because the
boundaries of the datcha had been guarded by troops and police as soon as
the explosion took place, under orders to keep back the crowd that hurried
to Eliaguine. He looked attentively at the grass, the ferns, the broken and
trampled twigs. Certainly a struggle had occurred there. He could
distinguish clearly in the soft earth of a narrow glade the prints of Natacha’s
two little boots among all the large footprints.
He continued his search with his heart heavier and heavier, he had a
presentiment that he was on the point of discovering a new misfortune. The
footprints passed steadily under the branches along the side of the Neva.
From a bush he picked a shred of white cloth, and it seemed to him a
veritable battle had taken place there. Torn branches strewed the grass. He
went on. Very close to the bank he saw by examination of the soil, where
there was no more trace of tiny heels and little soles, that the woman who
had been found there was carried, and carried, into a boat, of which the
place of fastening to the bank was still visible.
“They have carried off Natacha,” he cried in a surge of anguish. “bungler
that I am, that is my fault too—all my fault—all my fault! They wished to
avenge Michael Nikolaievitch’s death, for which they hold Natacha
responsible, and they have kidnapped her.”
His eyes searched the great arm of the river for a boat. The river was
deserted. Not a sail, nothing visible on the dead waters! “What shall I do?
What shall I do? I must save her.”
He resumed his course along the river. Who could give him any useful
information? He drew near a little shelter occupied by a guard. The guard
was speaking to an officer. Perhaps he had noticed something during his
watch that evening along the river. That branch of the river was almost
always deserted after the day was over. A boat plying between these shores
in the twilight would certainly attract attention. Rouletabille showed the
guard the paper Koupriane had given him in the beginning, and with the
officer (who turned out to be a police officer) as interpreter, he asked his
questions. As a matter of fact the guard had been sufficiently puzzled by the
doings and comings of a light boat which, after disappearing for an instant,
around the bend of the river, had suddenly rowed swiftly out again and
accosted a sailing-yacht which appeared at the opening of the gulf. It was

one of those small but rapid and elegant sailing craft such as are seen in the
Lachtka regattas.
Lachtka! “The Bay of Lachtka!”
The word was a ray of light for the reporter, who recalled now the
counsel Gounsovski had given him. “Watch the Bay of Lachtka, and tell me
then if you still believe Natacha is innocent!” Gounsovski must have known
when he said this that Natacha had embarked in company with the Nihilists,
but evidently he was ignorant that she had gone with them under
compulsion, as their prisoner.
Was it too late to save Natacha? In any case, before he died, he would try
in every way possible, so as at least to have kept her as much as he could
from the disaster for which he held himself responsible. He ran to the
Barque, near the Point.
His voice was firm as he hailed the canoe of the floating restaurant
where, thanks to him, Koupriane had been thwarted in impotent anger. He
had himself taken to just below Staria-Derevnia and jumped out at the spot
where he saw little Katharina disappear a few days before. He landed in the
mud and climbed on hands and knees up the slope of a roadway which
followed the bank. This bank led to the Bay of Lachtka, not far from the
frontier of Finland.
On Rouletabille’s left lay the sea, the immense gulf with slight waves; to
his right was the decaying stretch of the marsh. Stagnant water stretching to
the horizon, coarse grass and reeds, an extraordinary tangle of water-plants,
small ponds whose greenish scum did not stir under the stiff breeze, water
that was heavy and dirty. Along this narrow strip of land thrust thus
between the marsh, the sky and the sea, he hurried, with many stumblings,
his eyes fixed on the deserted gulf. Suddenly he turned his head at a
singular noise. At first he didn’t see anything, but heard in the distance a
vague clamoring while a sort of vapor commenced to rise from the marsh.
And then he noticed, nearer him, the high marsh grasses undulating. Finally
he saw a countless flock rising from the bed of the marshes. Beasts, groups
of beasts, whose horns one saw like bayonets, jostled each other trying to
keep to the firm land. Many of them swam and on the backs of some were
naked men, stark naked, with hair falling to their shoulders and streaming
behind them like manes. They shouted war-cries and waved their clubs.
Rouletabille stopped short before this prehistoric invasion. He would never

have imagined that a few miles from the Nevsky Prospect he could have
found himself in the midst of such a spectacle. These savages had not even
a loin-cloth. Where did they come from with their herd? From what remote
place in the world or in old and gone history had they emerged? What was
this new invasion? What prodigious slaughter-house awaited these unruly
herds? They made a noise like thunder in the marsh. Here were a thousand
unkempt haunches undulating in the marsh like the ocean as a storm
approaches. The stark-naked men jumped along the route, waving their
clubs, crying gutturally in a way the beasts seemed to understand. They
worked their way out from the marsh and turned toward the city, leaving
behind, to swathe the view of them a while and then fade away, a
pestilential haze that hung like an aura about the naked, long-haired men. It
was terrible and magnificent. In order not to be shoved into the water,
Rouletabille had climbed a small rock that stood beside the route, and had
waited there as though petrified himself. When the barbarians had finally
passed by he climbed down again, but the route had become a bog of
trampled filth.
Happily, he heard the noise of a primitive conveyance behind him. It was
a telega. Curiously primitive, the telega is four-wheeled, with two planks
thrown crudely across the axle-trees. Rouletabille gave the man who was
seated in it three roubles, and jumped into the planks beside him, and the
two little Finnish horses, whose manes hung clear to the mud, went like the
wind. Such crude conveyances are necessary on such crude roads, but it
requires a strong constitution to make a journey on them. Still, the reporter
felt none of the jolting, he was so intent on the sea and the coast of Lachtka
Bay. The vehicle finally reached a wooden bridge, across a murky creek. As
the day commenced to fade colorlessly, Rouletabille jumped off onto the
shore and his rustic equipage crossed to the Sestroriesk side. It was a corner
of land black and somber as his thoughts that he surveyed now. “Watch the
Bay of Lachtka!” The reporter knew that this desolate plain, this
impenetrable marsh, this sea which offered the fugitive refuge in
innumerable fords, had always been a useful retreat for Nihilistic
adventurers. A hundred legends circulated in St. Petersburg about the
mysteries of Lachtka marshes. And that gave him his last hope. Maybe he
would be able to run across some revolutionaries to whom he could explain
about Natacha, as prudently as possible; he might even see Natacha herself.
Gounsovski could not have spoken vain words to him.

Between the Lachtkrinsky marsh and the strand he perceived on the edge
of the forests which run as far as Sestroriesk a little wooden house whose
walls were painted a reddish-brown, and its roof green. It was not the
Russian isba, but the Finnish touba. However, a Russian sign announced it
to be a restaurant. The young man had to take only a few steps to enter it.
He was the only customer there. An old man, with glasses and a long gray
beard, evidently the proprietor of the establishment, stood behind the
counter, presiding over the zakouskis. Rouletabille chose some little
sandwiches which he placed on a plate. He took a bottle of pivo and made
the man understand that later, if it were possible, he would like a good hot
supper. The other made a sign that he understood and showed him into an
adjoining room which was used for diners. Rouletabille was quite ready
enough to die in the face of his failures, but he did not wish to perish from
hunger.
A table was placed beside a window looking out over the sea and over
the entrance to the bay. It could not have been better and, with his eye now
on the horizon, now on the estuary near-by, he commenced to eat with
gloomy avidity. He was inclined to feel sorry for himself, to indulge in self-
pity. “Just the same, two and two always make four,” he said to himself;
“but in my calculations perhaps I have forgotten the surd. Ah, there was a
time when I would not have overlooked anything. And even now I haven’t
overlooked anything, if Natacha is innocent!” Having literally scoured the
plate, he struck the table a great blow with his fist and said: “She is!”
Just then the door opened. Rouletabille supposed the proprietor of the
place was entering.
It was Koupriane.
He rose, startled. He could not imagine by what mystery the Prefect of
Police had made his way there, but he rejoiced from the bottom of his heart,
for if he was trying to rescue Natacha from the hands of the revolutionaries
Koupriane would be a valuable ally. He clapped the Prefect on the shoulder.
“Well, well!” he said, almost joyfully. “I certainly did not expect you
here. How is your wound?”
“Nitchevo! Not worth speaking about; it’s nothing.”
“And the general and—! Ah, that frightful night! And those two
unfortunates who—?”

“Nitchevo! Nitchevo!”
“And poor Ermolai!”
“Nitchevo! Nitchevo! It is nothing.”
Rouletabille looked him over. The Prefect of Police had an arm in a sling,
but he was bright and shining as a new ten-rouble piece, while he, poor
Rouletabille, was so abominably soiled and depressed. Where did he come
from? Koupriane understood his look and smiled.
“Well, I have just come from the Finland train; it is the best way.”
“But what can you have come here to do, Excellency?”
“The same thing as you.”
“Bah!” exclaimed Rouletabille, “do you mean to say that you have come
here to save Natacha?”
“How—to save her! I come to capture her.”
“To capture her?”
“Monsieur Rouletabille, I have a very fine little dungeon in Saints Peter
and Paul fortress that is all ready for her.”
“You are going to throw Natacha into a dungeon!”
“The Emperor’s order, Monsieur Rouletabille. And if you see me here in
person it is simply because His Majesty requires that the thing be done as
respectfully and discreetly as possible.”
“Natacha in prison!” cried the reporter, who saw in horror all obstacles
rising before him at one and the same time. “For what reasons, pray?”
“The reason is simple enough. Natacha Feodorovna is the last word in
wickedness and doesn’t deserve anybody’s pity. She is the accomplice of
the revolutionaries and the instigator of all the crimes against her father.”
“I am sure that you are mistaken, Excellency. But how have you been
guided to her?”
“Simply by you.”
“By me?”
“Yes, we lost all trace of Natacha. But, as you had disappeared also, I
made up my mind that you could only be occupied in searching for her, and
that by finding you I might have the chance to lay my hands on her.”
“But I haven’t seen any of your men?”

“Why, one of them brought you here.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you. Didn’t you climb onto a telega?”
“Ah, the driver.”
“Exactly. I had arranged to have him meet me at the Sestroriesk station.
He pointed out the place where you dropped off, and here I am.”
The reporter bent his head, red with chagrin. Decidedly the sinister idea
that he was responsible for the death of an innocent man and all the ills
which had followed out of it had paralyzed his detective talents. He
recognized it now. What was the use of struggling! If anyone had told him
that he would be played with that way sometime, he, Rouletabille! he would
have laughed heartily enough—then. But now, well, he wasn’t capable of
anything further. He was his own most cruel enemy. Not only was Natacha
in the hands of the revolutionaries through his fault, by his abominable
error, but worse yet, in the very moment when he wished to save her, he
foolishly, naively, had conducted the police to the very spot where they
should have been kept away. It was the depth of his humiliation; Koupriane
really pitied the reporter.
“Come, don’t blame yourself too much,” said he. “We would have found
Natacha without you; Gounsovski notified us that she was going to embark
in the Bay of Lachtka this evening with Priemkof.”
“Natacha with Priemkof!” exclaimed Rouletabille. “Natacha with the
man who introduced the two living bombs into her father’s house! If she is
with him, Excellency, it is because she is his prisoner, and that alone will be
sufficient to prove her innocence. I thank the Heaven that has sent you
here.”
Koupriane swallowed a glass of vodka, poured another after it, and
finally deigned to translate his thought:
“Natacha is the friend of these precious men and we will see them
disembark hand in hand.”
“Your men, then, haven’t studied the traces of the struggle that ‘these
precious men’ have had on the banks of the Neva before they carried away
Natacha?”
“Oh, they haven’t been hoodwinked. As a matter of fact, the struggle was
quite too visible not to have been done for appearances’ sake. What a child

you are! Can’t you see that Natacha’s presence in the datcha had become
quite too dangerous for that charming young girl after the poisoning of her
father and step-mother failed and at the moment when her comrades were
preparing to send General Trebassof a pleasant little gift of dynamite? She
arranged to get away and yet to appear kidnapped. It is too simple.”
Rouletabille raised his head.
“There is something simpler still to imagine than the culpability of
Natacha. It is that Priemkof schemed to pour the poison into the flask of
vodka, saying to himself that if the poison didn’t succeed at least it would
make the occasion for introducing his dynamite into the house in the
pockets of the ‘doctors’ that they would go to find.”
Koupriane seized Rouletabille’s wrist and threw some terrible words at
him, looking into the depths of his eyes:
“It was not Priemkof who poured the poison, because there was no
poison in the flask.”
Rouletabille, as he heard this extraordinary declaration, rose, more
startled than he had ever been in the course of this startling campaign.
If there was no poison in the flask, the poison must have been poured
directly into the glasses by a person who was in the kiosk! Now, there were
only four persons in the kiosk: the two who were poisoned and Natacha and
himself, Rouletabille. And that kiosk was so perfectly isolated that it was
impossible for any other persons than the four who were there to pour
poison upon the table.
“But it is not possible!” he cried.
“It is so possible that it is so. Pere Alexis declared that there is no poison
in the flask, and I ought to tell you that an analysis I had made after his
bears him out. There was no poison, either, in the small bottle you took to
Pere Alexis and into which you yourself had poured the contents of
Natacha’s glass and yours; no trace of poison excepting in two of the four
glasses, arsenate of soda was found only on the soiled napkins of Trebassof
and his wife and in the two glasses they drank from.”
“Oh, that is horrible,” muttered the stupefied reporter; “that is horrible,
for then the poisoner must be either Natacha or me.”
“I have every confidence in you,” declared Koupriane with a great laugh
of satisfaction, striking him on the shoulder. “And I arrest Natacha, and you

who love logic ought to be satisfied now.”
Rouletabille hadn’t a word more to say. He sat down again and let his
head fall into his hands, like one sleep has seized.
“Ah, our young girls; you don’t know them. They are terrible, terrible!”
said Koupriane, lighting a big cigar. “Much more terrible than the boys. In
good families the boys still enjoy themselves; but the girls—they read! It
goes to their heads. They are ready for anything; they know neither father
nor mother. Ah, you are a child, you cannot comprehend. Two lovely eyes, a
melancholy air, a soft, low voice, and you are captured—you believe you
have before you simply an inoffensive, good little girl. Well, Rouletabille,
here is what I will tell you for your instruction. There was the time of the
Tchipoff attack; the revolutionaries who were assigned to kill Tchipoff were
disguised as coachmen and footmen. Everything had been carefully
prepared and it would seem that no one could have discovered the bombs in
the place they had been stored. Well, do you know the place where those
bombs were found? In the rooms of the governor, of Wladmir’s daughter!
Exactly, my little friend, just there! The rooms of the governor’s daughter,
Mademoiselle Alexeieiv. Ah, these young girls! Besides, it was this same
Mademoiselle Alexeieiv who, so prettily, pierced the brain of an honest
Swiss merchant who had the misfortune to resemble one of our ministers. If
we had hanged that charming young girl earlier, my dear Monsieur
Rouletabille, that last catastrophe might have been avoided. A good rope
around the neck of all these little females—it is the only way, the only
way!”
A man entered. Rouletabille recognized the driver of the telega. There
were some rapid words between the Chief and the agent. The man closed
the shutters of the room, but through the interstices they would be able to
see what went on outside. Then the agent left; Koupriane, as he pushed
aside the table that was near the window, said to the reporter:
“You had better come to the window; my man has just told me the boat is
drawing near. You can watch an interesting sight. We are sure that Natacha
is still aboard. The yacht, after the explosion at the datcha, took up two men
who put off to it in a canoe, and since then it has simply sailed back and
forth in the gulf. We have taken our precautions in Finland the same as here
and it is here they are going to try to disembark. Keep an eye on them.”

Koupriane was at his post of observation. Evening slowly fell. The sky
was growing grayish-black, a tint that blended with the slate-colored sea. To
those on the bank, the sound of the men about to die came softly across the
water. There was a sail far out. Between the strand and the touba where
Koupriane watched, was a ridge, a window, which, however, did not hide
the shore or the bay from the prefect of police, because at the height where
he was his glance passed at an angle above it. But from the sea this ridge
entirely hid anyone who lay in ambush behind it. The reporter watched fifty
moujiks flat on their stomachs crawling up the ridge, behind two of their
number whose heads alone topped the ridge. In the line of gaze taken by
those two heads was the white sail, looming much larger now. The yacht
was heeled in the water and glided with real elegance, heading straight on.
Suddenly, just when they supposed she was coming straight to shore, the
sails fell and a canoe was dropped over the side. Four men got into it; then a
woman jumped lightly down a little gangway into the canoe. It was
Natacha. Koupriane had no difficulty in recognizing her through the
gathering darkness.
“Ah, my dear Monsieur Rouletabille,” said he, “see your prisoner of the
Nihilists. Notice how she is bound. Her thongs certainly are causing her
great pain. These revolutionaries surely are brutes!”
The truth was that Natacha had gone quite readily to the rudder and while
the others rowed she steered the light boat to the place on the beach that had
been pointed out to her. Soon the prow of the canoe touched the sands.
There did not seem to be a soul about, and that was the conclusion the men
in the canoe who stood up looking around, seemed to reach. They jumped
out, and then it was Natacha’s turn. She accepted the hand held out to her,
talking pleasantly with the men all the time. She even turned to press the
hand of one of them. The group came up across the beach. All this time the
watchers in the little eating-house could see the false moujiks, who had
wriggled on their stomachs to the very edge of the ridge, holding
themselves ready to spring.
Behind his shutter, Koupriane could not restrain an exclamation of
triumph; he gradually identified some of the figures in the group, and
muttered:
“Eh! eh! There is Priemkof himself and the others. Gounsovski is right
and he certainly is well-informed; his system is decidedly a good one. What

a net-full!”
He hardly breathed as he watched the outcome. He could discern
elsewhere, beside the bay, flat on the ground, concealed by the slightest
elevation of the soil, other false moujiks. The wood of Sestroriesk was
watched in the same way. The group of revolutionaries who strolled behind
Natacha stopped to confer. In three—maybe two—minutes, they would be
surrounded—cut off, taken in the trap. Suddenly a gunshot sounded in the
night, and the group, with startled speed, turned in their tracks and made
silently for the sea, while from all directions poured the concealed agents
and threw themselves into the pursuit, jostling each other and crying after
the fugitives. But the cries became cries of rage, for the group of
revolutionaries gained the beach. They saw Natacha, who was held up by
Priemkof himself, reject the aid of the Nihilist, who did not wish to abandon
her, in order that he might save himself. She made him go and seeing that
she was going to be taken, stopped short and waited for the enemy stoically,
with folded arms. Meanwhile, her three companions succeeded in throwing
themselves into the canoe and plied the oars hard while Koupriane’s men, in
the water up to their chests, discharged their revolvers at the fugitives. The
men in the canoe, fearing to wound Natacha, made no reply to the firing.
The yacht had sails up by the time they drew alongside, and made off like a
bird toward the mysterious fords of Finland, audaciously hoisting the black
flag of the Revolution.
Meantime, Koupriane’s agents, trembling before his anger, gathered at
the eating-house. The Prefect of Police let his fury loose on them and
treated them like the most infamous of animals. The capture of Natacha was
little comfort. He had planned for the whole bag, and his men’s stupidity
took away all his self-control. If he had had a whip at hand he would have
found prompt solace for his mined hopes. Natacha, standing in a corner,
with her face singularly calm, watched this extraordinary scene that was
like a menagerie in which the tamer himself had become a wild beast. From
another corner, Rouletabille kept his eyes fixed on Natacha who ignored
him. Ah, that girl, sphinx to them all! Even to him who thought a while ago
that he could read things invisible to other vulgar men in her features, in her
eyes! The impassive face of that girl whose father they had tried to
assassinate only a few hours before and who had just pressed the hand of
Priemkof, the assassin! Once she turned her head slightly toward
Rouletabille. The reporter then looked towards her with increased

eagerness, his eyes burning, as though he would say: “Surely, Natacha, you
are not the accomplice of your father’s assassins; surely it was not you who
poured the poison!”
But Natacha’s glance passed the reporter coldly over. Ah, that
mysterious, cold mask, the mouth with its bitter, impudent smile, an
atrocious smile which seemed to say to the reporter: “If it is not I who
poured the poison, then it is you!”
It was the visage common enough to the daughters whom Koupriane had
spoken of a little while before, “the young girls who read” and, their
reading done, set themselves to accomplish some terrible thing, some thing
because of which, from time to time, they place stiff ropes around the necks
of these young females.
Finally, Koupriane’s frenzy wore itself out and he made a sign. The men
filed out in dismal silence. Two of them remained to guard Natacha. From
outside came the sounds of a carriage from Sestroriesk ready to convey the
girl to the Dungeons of Sts. Peter and Paul. A final gesture from the Prefect
of Police and the rough bands of the two guards seized the prisoner’s frail
wrists. They hustled her along, thrust her outside, jamming her against the
doorway, venting thus their anger at the reproaches of their chief. A few
seconds later the carriage departed, not to stop until the fortress was reached
with the trickling tombs under the bed of the river where young girls about
to die are confined—who have read too much, without entirely
understanding, as Monsieur Kropotkine says.
Koupriane prepared to leave in turn. Rouletabille stopped him.
“Excellency, I wish you to tell me why you have shown such anger to
your men just now.”
“They are brute beasts,” cried the Chief of Police, quite beside himself
again. “They have made me miss the biggest catch of my life. They threw
themselves on the group two minutes too early. Some of them fired a gun
that they took for the signal and that served to warn the Nihilists. But I will
let them all rot in prison until I learn which one fired that shot.”
“You needn’t look far for that,” said Rouletabille. “I did it.”
“You! Then you must have gone outside the touba?”
“Yes, in order to warn them. But still I was a little late, since you did take
Natacha.”

Koupriane’s eyes blazed.
“You are their accomplice in all this,” he hurled at the reporter, “and I am
going to the Tsar for permission to arrest you.”
“Hurry, then, Excellency,” replied the reporter coldly, “because the
Nihilists, who also think they have a little account to settle with me, may
reach me before you.”
And he saluted.

XV. “I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR YOU”
At the hotel a note from Gounsovski: “Don’t forget this time to come to-
morrow to have luncheon with me. Warmest regards from Madame
Gounsovski.” Then a horrible, sleepless night, shaken with echoes of
explosions and the clamor of the wounded; and the solemn shade of Pere
Alexis, stretching out toward Rouletabille a phial of poison and saying,
“Either Natacha or you!” Then, rising among the shades the bloody form of
Michael Nikolaievitch the Innocent!
In the morning a note from the Marshal of the Court.
Monsieur le Marechal had no particular good news, evidently, for in
terms quite without enthusiasm he invited the young man to luncheon for
that same day, rather early, at midday, as he wished to see him once more
before he left for France. “I see,” said Rouletabille to himself; “Monsieur le
Marechal pronounces my expulsion from the country”—and he forgot once
more the Gounsovski luncheon. The meeting-place named was the great
restaurant called the Bear. Rouletabille entered it promptly at noon. He
asked the schwitzar if the Grand Marshal of the Court had arrived, and was
told no one had seen him yet. They conducted him to the huge main hall,
where, however, there was only one person. This man, standing before the
table spread with zakouskis, was stuffing himself. At the sound of
Rouletabille’s step on the floor this sole famished patron turned and lifted
his hands to heaven as he recognized the reporter. The latter would have
given all the roubles in his pocket to have avoided the recognition. But he
was already face to face with the advocate so celebrated for his table-feats,
the amiable Athanase Georgevitch, his head swathed in bandages and
dressings from the midst of which one could perceive distinctly only the
eyes and, above all, the mouth.
“How goes it, little friend?”
“How are you?”
“Oh, I! There is nothing the matter. In a week we shall have forgotten it.”
“What a terrible affair,” said the reporter, “I certainly believed we were
all dead men.”

“No, no. It was nothing. Nitchevo!”
“And poor Thaddeus Tchitchnikoff with his two poor legs broken!”
“Eh! Nitchevo! He has plenty of good solid splints that will make him
two good legs again. Nitchevo! Don’t you think anything more about that!
It is nothing. You have come here to dine? A very celebrated house this.
Caracho!” He busied himself to do the honors. One would have said the
restaurant belonged to him. He boasted of its architecture and the cuisine “a
la Francaise.”
“Do you know,” he inquired confidently, “a finer restaurant room
anywhere in the world?”
In fact, it seemed to Rouletabille as he looked up into the high glass arch
that he was in a railway station decorated for some illustrious traveler, for
there were flowers and plants everywhere. But the visitor whom the ball
awaited was the Russian eater, the ogre who never failed to come to eat at
The Bear. Pointing out the lines of tables shining with their white cloths and
bright silver, Athanase Georgevitch, with his mouth full, said:
“Ah, my dear little French monsieur, you should see it at supper-time,
with the women, and the jewels, and the music. There is nothing in France
that can give you any idea of it, nothing! The gayety—the champagne—and
the jewels, monsieur, worth millions and millions of roubles! Our women
wear them all—everything they have. They are decked like sacred shrines!
All the family jewels—from the very bottom of the caskets! it is
magnificent, thoroughly Russian—Muscovite! What am I saying? It is
Asiatic. Monsieur, in the evening, at a fete, we are Asiatic. Let me tell you
something on the quiet. You notice that this enormous dining hall is
surrounded by those windowed balconies. Each of those windows belongs
to a separate private room. Well, you see that window there?—yes, there—
that is the room of a grand duke—yes, he’s the one I mean—a very gay
grand duke. Do you know, one evening when there was a great crowd here
—families, monsieur, family parties, high-born families—the window of
that particular balcony was thrown open, and a woman stark naked, as
naked as my hand, monsieur, was dropped into the dining-hall and ran
across it full-speed. It was a wager, monsieur, a wager of the jolly grand
duke’s, and the demoiselle won it. But what a scandal! Ah, don’t speak of it;
that would be very bad form. But—sufficiently Asiatic, eh? Truly Asiatic.
And—something much more unfortunate—you see that table? It happened

the Russian New Year Eve, at supper. All the beauty, the whole capital, was
here. Just at midnight the orchestra struck up the Bodje tsara krani* to
inaugurate the joyful Russian New Year, and everybody stood up, according
to custom, and listened in silence, as loyal subjects should. Well, at that
table, accompanying his family, there was a young student, a fine fellow,
very correct, and in uniform. This unhappy young student, who had risen
like everybody else, to listen to the Bodje tsara krani, inadvertently placed
his knee on a chair. Truly that is not a correct attitude, monsieur, but really
it was no reason for killing him, was it now? Certainly not. Well, a brute in
uniform, an officer quite immaculately gotten-up, drew a revolver from his
pocket and discharged it at the student point-blank. You can imagine the
scandal, for the student was dead! There were Paris journalists there,
besides, who had never been there before, you see! Monsieur Gaston
Leroux was at that very table. What a scandal! They had a regular battle.
They broke carafes over the head of the assassin—for he was neither more
nor less than an assassin, a drinker of blood—an Asiatic. They picked up
the assassin, who was bleeding all over, and carried him off to look after
him. As to the dead man, he lay stretched out there under a table-cloth,
waiting for the police—and those at the tables went on with their drinking.
Isn’t that Asiatic enough for you? Here, a naked woman; there, a corpse!
And the jewels—and the champagne! What do you say to that?”

* The Russian national anthem.

“His Excellency the Grand Marshal of the Court is waiting for you,
Monsieur.”
Rouletabille shook hands with Athanase Georgevitch, who returned to his
zakouskis, and followed the interpreter to the door of one of the private
rooms. The high dignitary was there. With a charm in his politeness of
which the high-born Russian possesses the secret over almost everybody
else in the world, the Marshal intimated to Rouletabille that he had incurred
imperial displeasure.
“You have been denounced by Koupriane, who holds you responsible for
the checks he has suffered in this affair.”
“Monsieur Koupriane is right,” replied Rouletabille, “and His Majesty
should believe him, since it is the truth. But don’t fear anything from me,

Monsieur le Grand Marechal, for I shall not inconvenience Monsieur
Koupriane any further, nor anybody else. I shall disappear.”
“I believe Koupriane is already directed to vise your passport.”
“He is very good, and he does himself much harm.”
“All that is a little your fault, Monsieur Rouletabille. We believed we
could consider you as a friend, and you have never failed, it appears, on
each occasion to give your help to our enemies.
“Who says that?”
“Koupriane. Oh, it is necessary to be one with us. And you are not one
with us. And if you are not for us you are against us. You understand that, I
think. That is the way it has to be. The Terrorists have returned to the
methods of the Nihilists, who succeeded altogether too well against
Alexander II. When I tell you that they succeeded in placing their messages
even in the imperial palace...”
“Yes, yes,” said Rouletabille, vaguely, as though he were already far
removed from the contingencies of this world. “I know that Czar Alexander
II sometimes found under his napkin a letter announcing his condemnation
to death.”
“Monsieur, at the Chateau yesterday morning something happened that is
perhaps more alarming than the letter found by Alexander II under his
napkin.”
“What can it be? Have bombs been discovered?”
“No. It is a bizarre occurrence and almost unbelievable. The eider downs,
all the eider down coverings belonging to the imperial family disappeared
yesterday morning.” *

* Historically authentic.

“Surely not!”
“It is just as I say. And it was impossible to learn what had become of
them—until yesterday evening, when they were found again in their proper
places in the chambers. That is the new mystery!”
“Certainly. But how were they taken out?”
“Shall we ever know? All we found was two feathers, this morning, in
the boudoir of the Empress, which leads us to think that the eider downs

were taken out that way. I am taking the two feathers to Koupriane.”
“Let me see them,” asked the reporter.
Rouletabille looked them over and handed them back.
“And what do you think the whole affair means?”
“We are inclined to regard it as a threat by the revolutionaries. If they can
carry away the eider downs, it would be quite as easy for them to carry
away...”
“The Imperial family? No, I don’t think it is that.”
“What do you mean, then?”
“I? Nothing any more. Not only do I not think any more, but I don’t wish
to. Tell me, Monsieur le Grand Marechal, it is useless, I suppose, to try to
see His Majesty before I go?”
“What good would it do, monsieur? We know everything now. This
Natacha that you defended against Koupriane is proved the culprit. The last
affair does not leave that in any reasonable doubt. And she is taken care of
from this time on. His Majesty wishes never to hear Natacha spoken of
again under any pretext.”
“And what are you going to do with that young girl?”
“The Tsar has decided that there shall not be any trial and that the
daughter of General Trebassof shall be sent, by administrative order, to
Siberia. The Tsar, monsieur, is very good, for he might have had her
hanged. She deserved it.”
“Yes, yes, the Tsar is very good.”
“You are very absorbed, Monsieur Rouletabille, and you are not eating.”
“I have no appetite, Monsieur le Marechal. Tell me,—the Emperor must
be rather bored at Tsarskoie-Coelo?”
“Oh, he has plenty of work. He rises at seven o’clock and has a light
English luncheon—tea and toast. At eight o’clock he starts and works till
ten. From ten to eleven he promenades.”
“In the jail-yard?” asked Rouletabille innocently.
“What’s that you say? Ah, you are an enfant terrible! Certainly we do
well to send you away. Until eleven he promenades in a pathway of the
park. From eleven to one he holds audience; luncheon at one; then he
spends the time until half-past two with his family.”

“What does he eat?”
“Soup. His Majesty is wonderfully fond of soup. He takes it at every
meal. After luncheon he smokes, but never a cigar—always cigarettes, gifts
of the Sultan; and he only drinks one liqueur, Maraschino. At half-past two
he goes out again for a little air—always in his park; then he sets himself to
work until eight o’clock. It is simply frightful work, with heaps of useless
papers and numberless signatures. No secretary can spare him that
ungrateful bureaucratic duty. He must sign, sign, sign, and read, read, read
the reports. And it is work without any beginning or end; as soon as some
reports go, others arrive. At eight o’clock, dinner, and then more signatures,
working right up to eleven o’clock. At eleven o’clock he goes to bed.”
“And he sleeps to the rhythmical tramp of the guards on patrol,” added
Rouletabille, bluntly.
“O young man, young man!”
“Pardon me, Monsieur le Grand Marechal,” said the reporter, rising; “I
am, indeed, a disturbing spirit and I know that I have nothing more to do in
this country. You will not see me any more, Monsieur le Grand Marechal;
but before leaving I ought to tell you how much I have been touched by the
hospitality of your great nation. That hospitality is sometimes a little
dangerous, but it is always magnificent. No other nation in the world knows
like the Russians how to receive a man, Your Excellency. I speak as I feel;
and that isn’t affected by my manner of quitting you, for you know also
how to put a man to the door. Adieu, then; without any rancor. My most
respectful homage to His Majesty. Ah, just one word more! You will recall
that Natacha Feodorovna was engaged to poor Boris Mourazoff, still
another young man who has disappeared and who, before disappearing,
charged me to deliver to General Trebassof’s daughter this last token—
these two little ikons. I entrust you with this mission, Monsieur le Grand
Marechal. Your servant, Excellency.”
Rouletabille re-descended the great Kaniouche. “Now,” said he to
himself, “it is my turn to buy farewell presents.” And he made his way
slowly across la Place des Grandes-Ecuries and the bridge of the Katharine
canal. He entered Aptiekarski-Pereoulok and pushed open Pere Alexis’s
door, under the arch, at the back of the obscure court.
“Health and prosperity, Alexis Hutch!”

“Ah, you again, little man! Well? Koupriane has let you know the result
of my analyses?”
“Yes, yes. Tell me, Alexis Hutch, you are sure you are not mistaken? You
don’t think you might be mistaken? Think carefully before you answer. It is
a question of life or death.”
“For whom?”
“For me.”
“For you, good little friend! You want to make your old Pere Alexis laugh
—or weep!”
“Answer me.”
“No, I couldn’t be mistaken. The thing is as certain as that we two are
here—arsenate of soda in the stains on the two napkins and traces of
arsenate of soda in two of the four glasses; none in the carafe, none in the
little bottle, none in the two glasses. I say it before you and before God.”
“So it is really true. Thank you, Alexis Hutch. Koupriane has not tried to
deceive me. There has been nothing of that sort. Well, do you know, Alexis
Hutch, who has poured the poison? It is she or I. And as it is not I, it is she.
And since it is she, well, I am going to die!”
“You love her, then?” inquired Pere Alexis.
“No,” replied Rouletabille, with a self-mocking smile. “No, I don’t love
her. But if it is she who poured the poison, then it was not Michael
Nikolaievitch, and it is I who had Michael Nikolaievitch killed. You can see
now that therefore I must die. Show me your finest images.
“Ah, my little one, if you will permit your old Alexis to make you a gift, I
would offer you these two poor ikons that are certainly from the convent of
Troitza at its best period. See how beautiful they are, and old. Have you
ever seen so beautiful a Mother of God? And this St. Luke, would you
believe that the hand had been mended, eh? Two little masterpieces, little
friend! If the old masters of Salonika returned to the world they would be
satisfied with their pupils at Troitza. But you mustn’t kill yourself at your
age!”
“Come, bat ouclzka (little father), I accept your gift, and, if I meet the old
Salonican masters on the road I am going to travel, I shan’t fail to tell them
there is no person here below who appreciates them like a certain pere of
Aptiekarski-Pereoulok, Alexis Hutch.”