But Athanase Georgevitch had told a “good story” which raised so much hubbub that nothing else could be heard.  Feodor Feodorovitch was so amused that he had tears in his eyes.  Rouletabille said to himself as Matrena talked, “I never have seen men so gay, and yet they know perfectly they are apt to be blown up all together any moment.”

General Trebassof, who had steadily watched Rouletabille, who, for that matter, had been kept in eye by everyone there, said: 

“Eh, eh, monsieur le journaliste, you find us very gay?”

“I find you very brave,” said Rouletabille quietly.

“How is that?” said Feodor Feodorovitch, smiling.

“You must pardon me for thinking of the things that you seem to have forgotten entirely.”

He indicated the general’s wounded leg.

“The chances of war! the chances of war!” said the general.  “A leg here, an arm there.  But, as you see, I am still here.  They will end by growing tired and leaving me in peace.  Your health, my friend!”

“Your health, general!”

“You understand,” continued Feodor Feodorovitch, “there is no occasion to excite ourselves.  It is our business to defend the empire at the peril of our lives.  We find that quite natural, and there is no occasion to think of it.  I have had terrors enough in other directions, not to speak of the terrors of love, that are more ferocious than you can yet imagine.  Look at what they did to my poor friend the Chief of the Surete, Boichlikoff.  He was commendable certainly.  There was a brave man.  Of an evening, when his work was over, he always left the bureau of the prefecture and went to join his wife and children in their apartment in the ruelle des Loups.  Not a soldier!  No guard!  The others had every chance.  One evening a score of revolutionaries, after having driven away the terrorized servants, mounted to his apartments.  He was dining with his family.  They knocked and he opened the door.  He saw who they were, and tried to speak.  They gave him no time.  Before his wife and children, mad with terror and on their knees before the revolutionaries, they read him his death-sentence.  A fine end that to a dinner!”

As he listened Rouletabille paled and he kept his eyes on the door as if he expected to see it open of itself, giving access to ferocious Nihilists of whom one, with a paper in his hand, would read the sentence of death to Feodor Feodorovitch.  Rouletabille’s stomach was not yet seasoned to such stories.  He almost regretted, momentarily, having taken the terrible responsibility of dismissing the police.  After what Koupriane had confided to him of things that had happened in this house, he had not hesitated to risk everything on that audacious decision, but all the same, all the same — these stories of Nihilists who appear at the end of a meal, death-sentence in hand, they haunted him, they upset him.  Certainly it had been a piece of foolhardiness to dismiss the police!