The country, somber in the somber night.  The vast open country.  What monotonous desolation!  Rapidly, through the vast silent spaces, the little car glided over the lonely route into the black arms of the pines.

Rouletabille, holding on to his seat, looked about him.

“God! this is as sad as a funeral display.”

Little frozen huts, no larger than tombs, occasionally indicated the road, but there was no mark of life in that country except the noise of the journey and the two beasts with steaming coats.

Crack!  One of the shafts broken.  “What a country!” To hear Rouletabille one would suppose that only in Russia could the shaft of a carriage break.

The repair was difficult and crude, with bits of rope.  And from then on the journey was slow and cautious after the frenzied speed.  In vain Rouletabille reasoned with himself.  “You will arrive anyway before morning.  You cannot wake the Emperor in the dead of night.”  His impatience knew no reason.  “What a country!  What a country!”

After some other petty adventures (they ran into a ravine and had tremendous difficulty rescuing the trunk) they arrived at Tsarskoie-Coelo at a quarter of seven.

Even here the country was not pleasant.  Rouletabille recalled the bright awakening of French country.  Here it seemed there was something more dead than death:  it was this little city with its streets where no one passed, not a soul, not a phantom, with its houses so impenetrable, the windows even of glazed glass and further blinded by the morning hoar-frost shutting out light more thoroughly than closed eyelids.  Behind them he pictured to himself a world unknown, a world which neither spoke nor wept, nor laughed, a world in which no living chord resounded.  “What a country!  ’Where is the chateau?  I do not know; I have been here only once, in the marshal’s carriage.  I do not know the way.  Not the great palace!  The idiot of a driver has brought me to this great palace in order to see it, I haven’t a doubt.  Does Rouletabille look like a tourist?  Dourak!  The home of the Tsar, I tell you.  The Tsar’s residence.  The place where the Little Father lives.  Chez Batouchka!”

The driver lashed his ponies.  He drove past all the streets.  “Stoi! (Stop!)” cried Rouletabille.  A gate, a soldier, musket at shoulder, bayonet in play; another gate, another soldier, another bayonet; a park with walls around it, and around the walls more soldiers.

“No mistake; here is the place,” thought Rouletabille.  There was only one prisoner for whom such pains would be taken.  He advanced towards the gate.  Ah!  They crossed bayonets under his nose.  Halt!  No fooling, Joseph Rouletabille, of “L’Epoque.  “A subaltern came from a guard-house and advanced toward him.  Explanation evidently was going to be difficult.  The young man saw that if he demanded to see the Tsar, they would think him crazed and that would further complicate matters.  He asked for the Grand-Marshal of the Court.  They replied that he could get the Marshal’s address in Tsarskoie.  But the subaltern turned his head.  He saw someone advancing.  It was the Grand-Marshal himself.  Some exceptional service called him, without doubt, very early to the Court.