The Secret of the Night
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