“Ah, this time someone is talking — is crying,” said the young man.

“Sh-h-h!” And Rouletabille felt the rigid hand of Matrena Petrovna on his arm.  “It is the general.  The general is dreaming!”

She drew him into the dining-room, into a corner where they could no longer hear the moanings.  But all the doors that communicated with the dining-room, the drawing-room and the sitting-room remained open behind him, by the secret precaution of Rouletabille.

He waited while Matrena, whose breath he heard come hard, was a little behind.  In a moment, quite talkative, and as though she wished to distract Rouletabille’s attention from the sounds above, the broken words and sighs, she continued: 

“See, you speak of clocks.  My husband has a watch which strikes.  Well, I have stopped his watch because more than once I have been startled by hearing the tick-tack of his watch in his waistcoat-pocket.  Koupriane gave me that advice one day when he was here and had pricked his ears at the noise of the pendulums, to stop all my watches and clocks so that there would be no chance of confusing them with the tick-tack that might come from an infernal machine planted in some corner.  He spoke from experience, my dear little monsieur, and it was by his order that all the clocks at the Ministry, on the Naberjnaia, were stopped, my dear little friend.  The Nihilists, he told me, often use clockworks to set off their machines at the time they decide on.  No one can guess all the inventions that they have, those brigands.  In the same way, Koupriane advised me to take away all the draught-boards from the fireplaces.  By that precaution they were enabled to avoid a terrible disaster at the Ministry near the Pont-des-chantres, you know, petit demovoi?  They saw a bomb just as it was being lowered into the fire-place of the minister’s cabinet.* The Nihilists held it by a cord and were up on the roof letting it down the chimney.  One of them was caught, taken to Schlusselbourg and hanged.  Here you can see that all the draught-boards of the fireplaces are cleared away.” _________________
___________________________________________________

Actual attack on Witte.
____________________________________________________________

________

“Madame,” interrupted Rouletabille (Matrena Petrovna did not know that no one ever succeeded in distracting Rouletabille’s attention), “madame, someone moans still, upstairs.”

“Oh, that is nothing, my little friend.  It is the general, who has bad nights.  He cannot sleep without a narcotic, and that gives him a fever.  I am going to tell you now how the third attack came about.  And then you will understand, by the Virgin Mary, how it is I have yet, always have, the tick-tack in my ears.