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.