“I also,” said Rouletabille, who put a rouble into the honorable functionary’s hand.

“Permit me to precede you.”

Bows and salutes.  For two roubles he would have walked obsequiously before him to the end of the world.

“These functionaries are admirable,” thought Rouletabille as he was led to the barracks.  He felt he had not paid too much for the services of a personage whose uniform was completely covered with lace.  They tramped, they climbed, they descended.  Stairways, corridors.  Ah, the barracks at last.  He seemed to have entered a convent.  Beds very white, very narrow, and images of the Virgin and saints everywhere, monastic neatness and the most absolute silence.  Suddenly an order sounded in the corridor outside, and the police-guard, who sprang from no one could tell where, stood to attention at the head of their beds.  Koupriane and his aide appeared.  Koupriane looked at everything closely, spoke to each man in turn, called them by their names, inquired about their needs, and the men stammered replies, not knowing what to answer, reddening like children.  Koupriane observed Rouletabille.  He dismissed his aide with a gesture.  The inspection was over.  He drew the young man into a little room just off the dormitory.  Rouletabille, frightened, looked about him.  He found himself in a chapel.  This little chapel completed the effect of the guards’ dormitory.  It was all gilded, decorated in marvelous colors, thronged with little ikons that bring happiness, and, naturally, with the portrait of the Tsar, the dear Little Father.

“You see,” said Koupriane, smiling at Rouletabille’s amazement, “we deny them nothing.  We give them their saints right here in their quarters.”  Closing the door, he drew a chair toward Rouletabille and motioned him to sit down.  They sat before the little altar loaded with flowers, with colored paper and winged saints.

“We can talk here without being disturbed,” he said.  “Yonder there is such a crowd of people waiting for me.  I’m ready to listen.”

“Monsieur,” said Rouletabille, “I have come to give you the report of my mission here, and to terminate my connection with it.  All that is left for clearing this obscure affair is to arrest the guilty person, with which I have nothing to do.  That concerns you.  I simply inform you that someone tried to poison the general last night by pouring arsenate of soda into his sleeping-potion, which I bring you in this phial, arsenate which was secured most probably by washing it from grapes brought to General Trebassof by the marshal of the court, and which disappeared without anyone being able to say how.”

“Ah, ah, a family affair, a plot within the family.  I told you so,” murmured Koupriane.

“The affair at least has happened within the family, as you think, although the assassin came from outside.  Contrary to what you may be able to believe, he does not live in the house.”