ued Athanase in exalted vein. "I
have found in all their homes the same--imprudence, as our young French
friend calls it. A few days after the assassination of the Chief of
Police in Moscow I was received by his successor in the same place where
the assassination had occurred. He did not take the slightest precaution
with me, whom he did not know at all, nor with men of the middle class
who came to present their petitions, in spite of the fact that it was
under precisely identical conditions that his predecessor had been
slain. Before I left I looked over to where on the floor there had so
recently occurred such agony. They had placed a rug there and on the rug
a table, and on that table there was a book. Guess what book. 'Women's
Stockings,' by Willy! And--and then--Your health, Matrena Petrovna.
What's the odds!"

"You yourselves, my friends," declared the general, "prove your great
courage by coming to share the hours that remain of my life with me."

"Not at all, not at all! It is war."

"Yes, it is war."

"Oh, there's no occasion to pat us on the shoulder, Athanase," insisted
Thaddeus modestly. "What risk do we run? We are well guarded."

"We are protected by the finger of God," declared Athanase, "because the
police--well, I haven't any confidence in the police."

Michael Korsakoff, who had been for a turn in the garden, entered during
the remark.

"Be happy, then, Athanase Georgevitch," said he, "for there are now no
police around the villa."

"Where are they?" inquired the timber-merchant uneasily.

"An order came from Koupriane to remove them," explained Matrena
Petrovna, who exerted herself to appear calm.

"And are they not replaced?" asked Michael.

"No. It is incomprehensible. There must have been some confusion in the
orders given." And Matrena reddened, for she loathed a lie and it was
in tribulation of spirit that she used this fable under Rouletabille's
directions.

"Oh, well, all the better," said the general. "It will give me pleasure
to see my home ridded for a while of such people."

Athanase was naturally of the same mind as the general, and when
Thaddeus and Ivan Petrovitch and the orderlies offered to pass the
night at the villa and take the place of the absent police, Feodor
Feodorovitch caught a gesture from Rouletabille which disapproved the
idea of this new guard.

"No, no," cried the general emphatically. "You leave at the usual time.
I want now to get back into the ordinar