“I have met some of these men,” continued Athanase in exalted vein.  “I have found in all their homes the same — imprudence, as our young French friend calls it.  A few days after the assassination of the Chief of Police in Moscow I was received by his successor in the same place where the assassination had occurred.  He did not take the slightest precaution with me, whom he did not know at all, nor with men of the middle class who came to present their petitions, in spite of the fact that it was under precisely identical conditions that his predecessor had been slain.  Before I left I looked over to where on the floor there had so recently occurred such agony.  They had placed a rug there and on the rug a table, and on that table there was a book.  Guess what book.  ’Women’s Stockings,’ by Willy!  And — and then — Your health, Matrena Petrovna.  What’s the odds!”

“You yourselves, my friends,” declared the general, prove your great courage by coming to share the hours that remain of my life with me.”

“Not at all, not at all!  It is war.”

“Yes, it is war.”

“Oh, there’s no occasion to pat us on the shoulder, Athanase,” insisted Thaddeus modestly.  “What risk do we run?  We are well guarded.”

“We are protected by the finger of God,” declared Athanase, “because the police — well, I haven’t any confidence in the police.”

Michael Korsakoff, who had been for a turn in the garden, entered during the remark.

“Be happy, then, Athanase Georgevitch,” said he, “for there are now no police around the villa.”

“Where are they?” inquired the timber-merchant uneasily.

“An order came from Koupriane to remove them,” explained Matrena Petrovna, who exerted herself to appear calm.

“And are they not replaced?” asked Michael.

“No.  It is incomprehensible.  There must have been some confusion in the orders given.”  And Matrena reddened, for she loathed a lie and it was in tribulation of spirit that she used this fable under Rouletabille’s directions.

“Oh, well, all the better,” said the general.  “It will give me pleasure to see my home ridded for a while of such people.”

Athanase was naturally of the same mind as the general, and when Thaddeus and Ivan Petrovitch and the orderlies offered to pass the night at the villa and take the place of the absent police, Feodor Feodorovitch caught a gesture from Rouletabille which disapproved the idea of this new guard.

“No, no,” cried the general emphatically.  “You leave at the usual time.  I want now to get back into the ordinary run of things, my word!  To live as everyone else does.  We shall be all right.  Koupriane and I have arranged the matter.  Koupriane is less sure of his men, after all, than I am of my servants.  You understand me.  I do not need to explain further.  You will go home to bed - and we will all sleep.  Those are the orders.  Besides, you must remember that the guard-post is only a step from here, at the corner of the road, and we have only to give a signal to bring them all here.  But — more secret agents or special police — no, no!  Good-night.  All of us to bed now!”