“Oh, he doesn’t trouble himself.  Do you know who he is to have supper with?  With Annouchka, my dears, and we are invited.”

“How’s that?” inquired the jovial councilor.

“It seems Gounsovski influenced the minister to permit Annouchka’s performance by declaring he would be responsible for it all.  He required from Annouchka solely that she have supper with him on the evening of her debut.”

“And Annouchka consented?”

“That was the condition, it seems.  For that matter, they say that Annouchka and Gounsovski don’t get along so badly together.  Gounsovski has done Annouchka many a good turn.  They say he is in love with her.”

“He has the air of an umbrella merchant,” snorted Athanase Georgevitch.

“Have you seen him at close range?” inquired Ivan.

“I have dined at his house, though it is nothing to boast of, on my word.”

“That is what he said,” replied Thaddeus.  “When he knew we were here together, he said to me:  ’Bring him, he is a charming fellow who plies a great fork; and bring that dear man Ivan Petrovitch, and all your friends.’”

“Oh, I only dined at his house,” grumbled Athanase, “because there was a favor he was going to do me.”

“He does services for everybody, that man,” observed Ivan Petrovitch.

“Of course, of course; he ought to,” retorted Athanase.  “What is a chief of Secret Service for if not to do things for everybody?  For everybody, my dear friends, and a little for himself besides.  A chief of Secret Service has to be in with everybody, with everybody and his father, as La Fontaine says (if you know that author), if he wants to hold his place.  You know what I mean.”

Athanase laughed loudly, glad of the chance to show how French he could be in his allusions, and looked at Rouletabille to see if he had been able to catch the tone of the conversation; but Rouletabille was too much occupied in watching a profile wrapped in a mantilla of black lace, in the Spanish fashion, to repay Athanase’s performance with a knowing smile.

“You certainly have naive notions.  You think a chief of Secret Police should be an ogre,” replied the advocate as he nodded here and there to his friends.

“Why, certainly not.  He needs to be a sheep in a place like that, a thorough sheep.  Gounsovski is soft as a sheep.  The time I dined with him he had mutton streaked with fat.  He is just like that.  I am sure he is mainly layers of fat.  When you shake hands you feel as though you had grabbed a piece of fat.  My word!  And when he eats he wags his jaw fattishly.  His head is like that, too; bald, you know, with a cranium like fresh lard.  He speaks softly and looks at you like a kid looking to its mother for a juicy meal.”

“But — why — it is Natacha!” murmured the lips of the young man.

“Certainly it is Natacha, Natacha herself,” exclaimed Ivan Petrovitch, who had used his glasses the better to see whom the young French journalist was looking at.  “Ah, the dear child! she has wanted to see Annouchka for a long time.”