“Pardon, madame,” interrupted Rouletabille,
“but the agents, during the examination of everything,
never went to the bedroom floor?”
“No, my child, there is only myself and Natacha,
I repeat, who, since the bouquet, go there.”
“Well, madame, it is necessary to take me there
at once.”
“At once!”
“Yes, into the general’s chamber.”
“But he is sleeping, my child. Let me
tell you exactly how the affair of the floor happened,
and you will know as much of it as I and as Koupriane.”
“To the general’s chamber at once.”
She took both his hands and pressed them nervously.
“Little friend! Little friend! One
hears there sometimes things which are the secret
of the night! You understand me?”
“To the general’s chamber, at once, madame.”
Abruptly she decided to take him there, agitated,
upset as she was by ideas and sentiments which held
her without respite between the wildest inquietude
and the most imprudent audacity.
“The youth of Moscow is
dead”
Rouletabille let himself be led by Matrena through
the night, but he stumbled and his awkward hands struck
against various things. The ascent to the first
floor was accomplished in profound silence. Nothing
broke it except that restless moaning which had so
affected the young man just before.
The tepid warmth, the perfume of a woman’s boudoir,
then, beyond, through two doors opening upon the dressing-room
which lay between Matrena’s chamber and Feodor’s,
the dim luster of a night-lamp showed the bed where
was stretched the sleeping tyrant of Moscow.
Ah, he was frightening to see, with the play of faint
yellow light and diffused shadows upon him.
Such heavy-arched eyebrows, such an aspect of pain
and menace, the massive jaw of a savage come from
the plains of Tartary to be the Scourge of God, the
stiff, thick, spreading beard. This was a form
akin to the gallery of old nobles at Kasan, and young
Rouletabille imagined him as none other than Ivan
the Terrible himself. Thus appeared as he slept
the excellent Feodor Feodorovitch, the easy, spoiled
father of the family table, the friend of the advocate
celebrated for his feats with knife and fork and of
the bantering timber-merchant and amiable bear-hunter,
the joyous Thaddeus and Athanase; Feodor, the faithful
spouse of Matrena Petrovna and the adored papa of
Natacha, a brave man who was so unfortunate as to
have nights of cruel sleeplessness or dreams more
frightful still.
