“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.