The dinner, where Matrena, Natacha and Rouletabille were together again, was lively.  The young man having declared that he was more and more convinced that the mystery of the bomb in the bouquet was simply a play of the police, Natacha reinforced his opinion, and following that they found themselves in agreement on about everything else.  For himself, the reporter during that conversation hid a real horror which had seized him at the cynical and inappropriate tranquillity with which the young lady received all suggestions that accused the police or that assumed the general no longer ran any immediate danger.  In short, he worked, or at least believed he worked, to clear Natacha as he had cleared Matrena, so that there would develop the absolute necessity of assuming a third person’s intervention in the facts disclosed so clearly by Koupriane where Matrena or Natacha seemed alone to be possible agents.  As he listened to Natacha Rouletabille commenced to doubt and quake just as he had seen Matrena do.  The more he looked into the nature of Natacha the dizzier he grew.  What abysmal obscurities were there in her nature!

Nothing interesting happened during dinner.  Several times, in spite of Rouletabille’s obvious impatience with her for doing it, Matrena went up to the general.  She returned saying, “He is quiet.  He doesn’t sleep.  He doesn’t wish anything.  He has asked me to prepare his narcotic.  It is too bad.  He has tried in vain, he cannot get along without it.”

“You, too, mamma, ought to take something to make you sleep.  They say morphine is very good.”

“As for me,” said Rouletabille, whose head for some few minutes had been dropping now toward one shoulder and now toward another, “I have no need of any narcotic to make me sleep.  If you will permit me, I will get to bed at once.”

“Eh, my little domovoi doukh, I am going to carry you there in my arms.”

Matrena extended her large round arms ready to take Rouletabille as though he had been a baby.

“No, no.  I will get up there all right alone,” said Rouletabille, rising stupidly and appearing ashamed of his excessive sleepiness.

“Oh, well, let us both accompany him to his chamber,” said Natacha, “and I will wish papa good-night.  I’m eager for bed myself.  We will all make a good night of it.  Ermolai and Gniagnia will watch with the schwitzar in the lodge.  Things are reasonably arranged now.”

They all ascended the stairs.  Rouletabille did not even go to see the general, but threw himself on his bed.  Natacha got onto the bed beside her father, embraced him a dozen times, and went downstairs again.  Matrena followed behind her, closed doors and windows, went upstairs again to close the door of the landing-place and found Rouletabille seated on his bed, his arms crossed, not appearing to have any desire for sleep at all.  His face was so strangely pensive also that the anxiety of Matrena, who had been able to make nothing out of his acts and looks all day, came back upon her instantly in greater force than ever.  She touched his arm in order to be sure that he knew she was there.