He received them like a servant, with his head down, an obsequious smile, and his back bent, bowing several times as each of the guests were presented to him.  Athanase had described him accurately enough, a mannikin in fat.  Under the vast bent brow one could hardly see his eyes, behind the blue glasses that seemed always ready to fall as he inclined too far his fat head with its timid and yet all-powerful glance.  When he spoke in his falsetto voice, his chin dropped in a fold over his collar, and he had a steady gesture with the thumb and index finger of his right hand to retain the glasses from sliding down his short, thick nose.

Behind him there was the fine, haughty silhouette of Prince Galitch.  He had been invited by Annouchka, for she had consented to risk this supper only in company with three or four of her friends, officers who could not be further compromised by this affair, as they were already under the eye of the Okrana (Secret Police) despite their high birth.  Gounsovski had seen them come with a sinister chuckle and had lavished upon them his marks of devotion.

He loved Annouchka.  It would have sufficed to have surprised just once the jealous glance he sent from beneath his great blue glasses when he gazed at the singer to have understood the sentiments that actuated him in the presence of the beautiful daughter of the Black Land.

Annouchka was seated, or, rather, she lounged, Oriental fashion, on the sofa which ran along the wall behind the table.  She paid attention to no one.  Her attitude was forbidding, even hostile.  She indifferently allowed her marvelous black hair that fell in two tresses over her shoulder to be caressed by the perfumed hands of the beautiful Onoto, who had heard her this evening for the first time and had thrown herself with enthusiasm into her arms after the last number.  Onoto was an artist too, and the pique she felt at first over Annouchka’s success could not last after the emotion aroused by the evening prayer before the hut.  “Come to supper,” Annouchka had said to her.

“With whom?” inquired the Spanish artist.

“With Gounsovski.”

“Never.”

“Do come.  You will help me pay my debt and perhaps he will be useful to you as well.  He is useful to everybody.”

Decidedly Onoto did not understand this country, where the worst enemies supped together.

Rouletabille had been monopolized at once by Prince Galitch, who took him into a corner and said: 

“What are you doing here?”

“Do I inconvenience you?” asked the boy.

The other assumed the amused smile of the great lord.

“While there is still time,” he said, “believe me, you ought to start, to quit this country.  Haven’t you had sufficient notice?”

“Yes,” replied the reporter.  “And you can dispense with any further notice from this time on.”

He turned his back.