d for the Orel yet?"

"Monsieur, I am going, but I will be very grateful if you will take
these things yourself to--to Natacha." He showed him, still with
despairing mien, the two ikons from Mount Athos, and Rouletabille took
them from him, thrust them in his pocket, and hurried on, crying, "I
understand."

Outside, Rouletabille tried to get hold of himself, to recover his
coolness a little. Was it possible that he had made a mortal error?
Alas, alas, how could he doubt it now! The arsenate of soda continued.
He made, a superhuman effort to ward off the horror of that, even
momentarily--the death of innocent Michael Nikolaievitch--and to think
of nothing except the immediate consequences, which must be carefully
considered if he wished to avoid some new catastrophe. Ah, the assassin
was not discouraged. And that time, what a piece of work he had tried!
What a hecatomb if he had succeeded! The general, Matrena Petrovna,
Natacha and Rouletabille himself (who almost regretted, so far as he
was concerned, that it had not succeeded)--and Koupriane! Koupriane, who
should have been there for luncheon. What a bag for the Nihilists!
That was it, that was it. Rouletabille understood now why they had not
hesitated to poison everybody at once: Koupriane was among them.

Michael Nikolaievitch would have been avenged!

The attempt had failed this time, but what might they not expect now!
From the moment he believed Michael Nikolaievitch no longer guilty, as
he had imagined, Rouletabille fell into a bottomless abyss.

Where should he go? After a few moments he made the circuit of the
Rotunda, which serves as the market for this quarter and is the finest
ornament of Aptiekarski-Pereoulok. He made the circuit without knowing
it, without stopping for anything, without seeing or understanding
anything. As a broken-winded horse makes its way in the treadmill, so he
walked around with the thought that he also was lost in a treadmill that
led him nowhere. Rouletabille was no longer Rouletabille.

XIII. THE LIVING BOMBS

At random--because now he could only act at random--he returned to the
datcha. Great disorder reigned there. The guard had been doubled. The
general's friends, summoned by Trebassof, surrounded the two poisoned
sufferers and filled the house with their bustling devotion and their
protestations of affection. However, an insignificant doctor from the
common quarter of the Vasili-Ostrow, brought by the police, rea