ppeared. That unhappy
girl Rouletabille had steadily believed innocent. Was she a culprit?
"Ah, if she had only chosen to! If she had had confidence," he cried,
raising anguished hands towards heaven, "none of all this need have
happened. No one would have attacked and no one would ever again attack
the life of Trebassof. For I was not wrong in claiming before Koupriane
that the general's life was in my hand, and I had the right to say
to him, 'Life for life! Give me Matiew's and I will give you the
general's.' And now there has been one more fruitless attempt to kill
Feodor Feodorovitch and it is Natacha's fault--that I swear, because
she would not listen to me. And is Natacha implicated in it? O my God"
Rouletabille asked this vain question of the Divinity, for he expected
no more help in answering it on earth.

Natacha! Innocent or guilty, where was she? What was she doing? to know
that! To know if one were right or wrong--and if one were wrong, to
disappear, to die!

Thus the unhappy Rouletabille muttered as he walked along the bank of
the Neva, not far from the ruins of the poor datcha, where the joyous
friends of Feodor Feodorovitch would have no more good dinners, never;
so he soliloquized, his head on fire.

And, all at once, he recovered trace of the young girl, that trace lost
earlier, a trace left at her moment of flight, after the poisoning and
before the explosion. And had he not in that a terrible coincidence?
Because the poison might well have been only in preparation for the
final attack, the pretext for the tragic arrival of the two false
doctors. Natacha, Natacha, the living mystery surrounded already by so
many dead!

Not far from the ruins of the datcha Rouletabille soon made sure that a
group of people had been there the night before, coming from the woods
near-by, and returning to them. He was able to be sure of this because
the boundaries of the datcha had been guarded by troops and police as
soon as the explosion took place, under orders to keep back the crowd
that hurried to Eliaguine. He looked attentively at the grass, the
ferns, the broken and trampled twigs. Certainly a struggle had occurred
there. He could distinguish clearly in the soft earth of a narrow glade
the prints of Natacha's two little boots among all the large footprints.

He continued his search with his heart heavier and heavier, he had a
presentiment that he was on the point of discovering a new misfortune.
The footprint