The Secret of the Night
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