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?”