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.”