“Pardon, madame,” interrupted Rouletabille, “but the agents, during the examination of everything, never went to the bedroom floor?”

“No, my child, there is only myself and Natacha, I repeat, who, since the bouquet, go there.”

“Well, madame, it is necessary to take me there at once.”

“At once!”

“Yes, into the general’s chamber.”

“But he is sleeping, my child.  Let me tell you exactly how the affair of the floor happened, and you will know as much of it as I and as Koupriane.”

“To the general’s chamber at once.”

She took both his hands and pressed them nervously.  “Little friend!  Little friend!  One hears there sometimes things which are the secret of the night!  You understand me?”

“To the general’s chamber, at once, madame.”

Abruptly she decided to take him there, agitated, upset as she was by ideas and sentiments which held her without respite between the wildest inquietude and the most imprudent audacity.

IV

“The youth of Moscow is dead”

Rouletabille let himself be led by Matrena through the night, but he stumbled and his awkward hands struck against various things.  The ascent to the first floor was accomplished in profound silence.  Nothing broke it except that restless moaning which had so affected the young man just before.

The tepid warmth, the perfume of a woman’s boudoir, then, beyond, through two doors opening upon the dressing-room which lay between Matrena’s chamber and Feodor’s, the dim luster of a night-lamp showed the bed where was stretched the sleeping tyrant of Moscow.  Ah, he was frightening to see, with the play of faint yellow light and diffused shadows upon him.  Such heavy-arched eyebrows, such an aspect of pain and menace, the massive jaw of a savage come from the plains of Tartary to be the Scourge of God, the stiff, thick, spreading beard.  This was a form akin to the gallery of old nobles at Kasan, and young Rouletabille imagined him as none other than Ivan the Terrible himself.  Thus appeared as he slept the excellent Feodor Feodorovitch, the easy, spoiled father of the family table, the friend of the advocate celebrated for his feats with knife and fork and of the bantering timber-merchant and amiable bear-hunter, the joyous Thaddeus and Athanase; Feodor, the faithful spouse of Matrena Petrovna and the adored papa of Natacha, a brave man who was so unfortunate as to have nights of cruel sleeplessness or dreams more frightful still.