“Be quiet, Thaddeus,” interrupted Athanase Georgevitch, roughly.  “It is easy to see that you are lately from the provinces to speak so recklessly, but if you go on this way I shall leave.”

“Athanase Georgevitch is right; hang onto your mouth, Thaddeus,” counseled Ivan Petrovitch.

The talkers all grew silent, for the curtain was rising.  In the audience there were mysterious allusions being made to this second number of Annouchka, but no one seemed able to say what it was to be, and it was, as a matter of fact, very simple.  After the whirl-wind of dances and choruses and all the splendor with which she had been accompanied the first time, Annouchka appeared as a poor Russian peasant in a scene representing the barren steppes, and very simply she sank to her knees and recited her evening prayers.  Annouchka was singularly beautiful.  Her aquiline nose with sensitive nostrils, the clean-cut outline of her eyebrows, her look that now was almost tender, now menacing, always unusual, her pale rounded cheeks and the entire expression of her face showed clearly the strength of new ideas, spontaneity, deep resolution and, above all, passion.  The prayer was passionate.  She had an admirable contralto voice which affected the audience strangely from its very first notes.  She asked God for daily bread for everyone in the immense Russian land, daily bread for the flesh and for the spirit, and she stirred the tears of everyone there, to which-ever party they belonged.  And when, as her last note sped across the desolate steppe and she rose and walked toward the miserable hut, frantic bravos from a delirious audience told her the prodigious emotions she had aroused.  Little Rouletabille, who, not understanding the words, nevertheless caught the spirit of that prayer, wept.  Everybody wept.  Ivan Petrovitch, Athanase Georgevitch, Thaddeus Tchitchnikoff were standing up, stamping their feet and clapping their hands like enthusiastic boys.  The students, who could be easily distinguished by the uniform green edging they wore on their coats, uttered insensate cries.  And suddenly there rose the first strains of the national hymn.  There was hesitation at first, a wavering.  But not for long.  Those who had been dreading some counter-demonstration realized that no objection could possibly be raised to a prayer for the Tsar.  All heads uncovered and the Bodje Taara Krari mounted, unanimously, toward the stars.

Through his tears the young reporter never gave up his close watch on Natacha.  She had half risen, and, sinking back, leaned on the edge of the box.  She called, time and time again, a name that Rouletabille could not hear in the uproar, but that he felt sure was “Annouchka!  Annouchka!” “The reckless girl,” murmured Rouletabille, and, profiting by the general excitement, he left the box without being noticed.  He made his way through the crowd toward Natacha, whom he had sought futilely since morning.  The audience, after clamoring