grapes were left by the
Marshal, who warned Michael Nikolaievitch and Boris Alexandrovitch to
wash them. The grapes disappeared. If Michael is innocent, do you accuse
Boris?"

Natacha, who seemed to have suddenly lost all power for defending
herself, moaned, begged, railed, seemed dying.

"No, no. Don't accuse Boris. He has nothing to do with it. Don't accuse
Michael. Don't accuse anyone so long as you don't know. But these two
are innocent. Believe me. Believe me. Ah, how shall I say it, how shall
I persuade you! I am not able to say anything to you. And you have
killed Michael. Ah, what have you done, what have you done!"

"We have suppressed a man," said the icy voice of Koupriane, "who was
merely the agent for the base deeds of Nihilism."

She succeeded in recovering a new energy that in her depths of despair
they would have supposed impossible. She shook her fists at Koupriane:

"It is not true, it is not true. These are slanders, infamies! The
inventions of the police! Papers devised to incriminate him. There
is nothing at all of what you said you found at his house. It is not
possible. It is not true."

"Where are those papers?" demanded the curt voice of Feodor. "Bring them
here at once, Koupriane; I wish to see them."

Koupriane was slightly troubled, and this did not escape Natacha, who
cried:

"Yes, yes, let him give us them, let him bring them if he has them. But
he hasn't," she clamored with a savage joy. "He has nothing. You can
see, papa, that he has nothing. He would already have brought them out.
He has nothing. I tell you he has nothing. Ah, he has nothing! He has
nothing!"

And she threw herself on the floor, weeping, sobbing, "He has nothing,
he has nothing!" She seemed to weep for joy.

"Is that true?" demanded Feodor Feodorovitch, with his most somber
manner. "Is it true, Koupriane, that you have nothing?"

"It is true, General, that we have found nothing. Everything had already
been carried away."

But Natacha uttered a veritable torrent of glee:

"He has found nothing! Yet he accuses him of being allied with
the revolutionaries. Why? Why? Because I let him in? But I, am I a
revolutionary? Tell me. Have I sworn to kill papa? I? I? Ah, he doesn't
know what to say. You see for yourself, papa, he is silent. He has lied.
He has lied."

"Why have you made this false statement, Koupriane?"

"Oh, we have suspected Michael for some time, and truly, after what has
just happened, we can