n two words. He said it wasn't
necessary for him to interfere in the affair, that I had only to talk
to the officer. 'Give him a good present, a hundred roubles, and he will
leave your house. I went back to the officer and took him aside; he said
he wanted to do anything that he could for me, but that the order was
positive to bombard the house. I reported his answer to Gounsovski, who
told me: 'Tell him then to turn the muzzle of the cannon the other way
and bombard the building of the chemist across the way, then he can
always say that he mistook which house was intended.' I did that, and he
had them turn the cannon. They bombarded the chemist's place, and I got
out of the whole thing for the hundred roubles. Gounsovski, the good
fellow, may be a great lump of fat and be like an umbrella merchant, but
I have always been grateful to him from the bottom of my heart, you can
understand, Athanase Georgevitch."

"What reputation has Prince Galitch at the court?" inquired Rouletabille
all at once.

"Oh, oh!" laughed the others. "Since he went so openly to visit Tolstoi
he doesn't go to the court any more."

"And--his opinions? What are his opinions?"

"Oh, the opinions of everybody are so mixed nowadays, nobody knows."

Ivan Petrovitch said, "He passes among some people as very advanced and
very much compromised."

"Yet they don't bother him?" inquired Rouletabille.

"Pooh, pooh," replied the gay Councilor of Empire, "it is rather he who
tries to mix with them."

Thaddeus stooped down and said, "They say that he can't be reached
because of the hold he has over a certain great personage in the court,
and it would be a scandal--a great scandal."

"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 re