“One evening when the general had got to sleep and I was in my own room, I heard distinctly the tick-tack of clockwork operating.  All the clocks had been stopped, as Koupriane advised, and I had made an excuse to send Feodor’s great watch to the repairer.  You can understand how I felt when I heard that tick-tack.  I was frenzied.  I turned my head in all directions, and decided that the sound came from my husband’s chamber.  I ran there.  He still slept, man that he is!  The tick-tack was there.  But where?  I turned here and there like a fool.  The chamber was in darkness and it seemed absolutely impossible for me to light a lamp because I thought I could not take the time for fear the infernal machine would go off in those few seconds.  I threw myself on the floor and listened under the bed.  The noise came from above.  But where?  I sprang to the fireplace, hoping that, against my orders, someone had started the mantel-clock.  No, it was not that!  It seemed to me now that the tick-tack came from the hed itself, that the machine was in the bed.  The general awaked just then and cried to me, ’What is it, Matrena?  What are you doing?’ And he raised himself in bed, while I cried, ’Listen!  Hear the tick-tack.  Don’t you hear the tick-tack?’ I threw myself upon him and gathered him up in my arms to carry him, but I trembled too much, was too weak from fear, and fell back with him onto the bed, crying, ‘Help!’ He thrust me away and said roughly, ‘Listen.’  The frightful tick-tack was behind us now, on the table.  But there was nothing on the table, only the night-light, the glass with the potion in it, and a gold vase where I had placed with my own hands that morning a cluster of grasses and wild flowers that Ermolai had brought that morning on his return from the Orel country.  With one bound I was on the table and at the flowers.  I struck my fingers among the grasses and the flowers, and felt a resistance.  The tick-tack was in the bouquet!  I took the bouquet in both hands, opened the window and threw it as far as I could into the garden.  At the same moment the bomb burst with a terrible noise, giving me quite a deep wound in the hand.  Truly, my dear little domovoi, that day we had been very near death, but God and the Little Father watched over us.”

And Matrena Petrovna made the sign of the cross.

“All the windows of the house were broken.  In all, we escaped with the fright and a visit from the glazier, my little friend, but I certainly believed that all was over.”

“And Mademoiselle Natacha?” inquired Rouletabille.  “She must also have been terribly frightened, because the whole house must have rocked.”