landing leading to the upper floor, where they had no business, and
after that I sent at once for our old domestics in Orel to come and
serve us. It was discovered that these detected servants were in
touch with the revolutionaries, so they were hanged. The Emperor
appointed a provisional governor, and now that the general was
better we decided on a convalescence for him in the midi of France.
We took train for St. Petersburg, but the journey started high fever
in my husband and reopened the wound in his calf. The doctors
ordered absolute rest and so we settled here in the datcha des Iles.
Since then, not a day has passed without the general receiving an
anonymous letter telling him that nothing can save him from the
revenge of the revolutionaries. He is brave and only smiles over
them, but for me, I know well that so long as we are in Russia we
have not a moment's security. So I watch him every minute and let
no one approach him except his intimate friends and us of the family.
I have brought an old gniagnia who watched me grow up, Ermolai, and
the Orel servants. In the meantime, two months later, the third
attempt suddenly occurred. It is certainly of them all the most
frightening, because it is so mysterious, a mystery that has not
yet, alas, been solved."

But Athanase Georgevitch had told a "good story" which raised so
much hubbub that nothing else could be heard. Feodor Feodorovitch
was so amused that he had tears in his eyes. Rouletabille said to
himself as Matrena talked, "I never have seen men so gay, and yet
they know perfectly they are apt to be blown up all together any
moment."

General Trebassof, who had steadily watched Rouletabille, who, for
that matter, had been kept in eye by everyone there, said: