good luck, but I
don't expect it. Remember that if you need any help I will give it you
willingly. I love to be of service. And I don't wish any harm to befall
you."

"You are very kind, monsieur," was all Rouletabille replied, and he
called again for champagne.

Several times Gounsovski addressed remarks to Annouchka, who concerned
herself with her meal and had little answer for him.

"Do you know who applauded you the most this evening?"

"No," said Annouchka indifferently.

"The daughter of General Trebassof."

"Yes, that is true, on my word," cried Ivan Petrovitch.

"Yes, yes, Natacha was there," joined in the other friends from the
datcha des Iles.

"For me, I saw her weep," said Rouletabille, looking at Annouchka
fixedly.

But Annouchka replied in an icy tone:

"I do not know her."

"She is unlucky in having a father..." Prince Galitch commenced.

"Prince, no politics, or let me take my leave," clucked Gounsovski.
"Your health, dear Annouchka."

"Your health, Gounsovski. But you have no worry about that."

"Why?" demanded Thaddeus Tchitchnikoff in equivocal fashion.

"Because he is too useful to the government," cried Ivan Petrovitch.

"No," replied Annouchka; "to the revolutionaries."

All broke out laughing. Gounsovski recovered his slipping glasses by
his usual quick movement and sniggered softly, insinuatingly, like fat
boiling in the pot:

"So they say. And it is my strength."

"His system is excellent," said the prince. "As he is in with everybody,
everybody is in with the police, without knowing it."

"They say... ah, ah... they say..." (Athanase was choking over a little
piece of toast that he had soaked in his soup) "they say that he has
driven away all the hooligans and even all the beggars of the church of
Kasan."

Thereupon they commenced to tell stories of the hooligans,
street-thieves who since the recent political troubles had infested St.
Petersburg and whom nobody, could get rid of without paying for it.

Athanase Georgevitch said:

"There are hooligans that ought to have existed even if they never have.
One of them stopped a young girl before Varsovie station. The girl,
frightened, immediately held out her purse to him, with two roubles and
fifty kopecks in it. The hooligan took it all. 'Goodness,' cried she,
'I have nothing now to take my train with.' 'How much is it?' asked the
hooligan. 'Sixty kopecks.' 'Sixty kopecks! Why didn't you say so?' And
the bandit, hang