ssary to tell me."

"She pretends that she loves Boris, and I believe she does, and yet she
is very friendly with Michael and often she goes into nooks and corners
to chat with him, which makes Boris mad with jealousy. She has forbidden
Boris to speak to her father about their marriage, on the pretext that
she does not wish to leave her father now, while each day, each minute
the general's life is in danger."

"And you, madame--do you love your step-daughter?" brutally inquired the
reporter.

"Yes--sincerely," replied Matrena Petrovna, withdrawing her hand from
those of Rouletabille.

"And she--does she love you?"

"I believe so, monsieur, I believe so sincerely. Yes, she loves me,
and there is not any reason why she should not love me. I
believe--understand me thoroughly, because it comes from my heart--that
we all here in this house love one another. Our friends are old proved
friends. Boris has been orderly to my husband for a very long time.
We do not share any of his too-modern ideas, and there were many
discussions on the duty of soldiers at the time of the massacres. I
reproached him with being as womanish as we were in going down on his
knees to the general behind Natacha and me, when it became necessary to
kill all those poor moujiks of Presnia. It was not his role. A soldier
is a soldier. My husband raised him roughly and ordered him, for his
pains, to march at the head of the troops. It was right. What else could
he do? The general already had enough to fight against, with the whole
revolution, with his conscience, with the natural pity in his heart of
a brave man, and with the tears and insupportable moanings, at such a
moment, of his daughter and his wife. Boris understood and obeyed him,
but, after the death of the poor students, he behaved again like a woman
in composing those verses on the heroes of the barricades; don't you
think so? Verses that Natacha and he learned by heart, working together,
when they were surprised at it by the general. There was a terrible
scene. It was before the next-to-the-last attack. The general then had
the use of both legs. He stamped his feet and fairly shook the house."

"Madame," said Rouletabille, "a propos of the attacks, you must tell me
about the third."

As he said this, leaning toward her, Matrena Petrovna ejaculated a
"Listen!" that made him rigid in the night with ear alert. What had she
heard? For him, he had heard nothing.

"You hear nothing?" she whi