"Why is Ermolai in the veranda? Send him back to the kitchens and
tell the schwitzar to go to bed. The servants are enough for an
ordinary guard outside. Then you go in at once, shut the door,
and don't concern yourself about me, dear madame. Good-night."

Rouletabille had resumed, in the shadows, among the other porcelain
figures, his pose of a porcelain man.

Matrena Petrovna did as she was told, returned to the house, spoke
to the schwitzar, who removed to the lodge with Ermolai, and their
mistress closed the outside door. She had closed long before the
door of the kitchen stair which allowed the domestics to enter the
villa from below. Down there each night the devoted gniagnia and
the faithful Ermolai watched in turn.

Within the villa, now closed, there were on the ground-floor only
Matrena herself and her step-daughter Natacha, who slept in the
chamber off the sitting-room, and, above on the first floor, the
general asleep, or who ought to be asleep if he had taken his
potion. Matrena remained in the darkness of the drawing-room,
her dark-lantern in her hand. All her nights passed thus, gliding
from door to door, from chamber to chamber, watching over the watch
of the police, not daring to stop her stealthy promenade even to
throw herself on the mattress that she had placed across the
doorway of her husband's chamber. Did she ever sleep? She herself
could hardly say. Who else could, then? A tag of sleep here and
there, over the arm of a chair, or leaning against the wall, waked
always by some noise that she heard or dreamed, some warning,
perhaps, that she alone had heard. And to-night, to-night there is
Rouletabille's alert guard to help her, and she feels a little less