eryone in the world, the youths of Moscow, and every night I
know now a chamber where in the glow of the night-lamp they rise--they
rise--they rise!" and the young man frankly, naively regretted to have
intruded where he was; to have penetrated, however unintentionally, into
an affair which, after all, concerned only the many dead and the one
living. Why had he come to put himself between the dead and the living?
It might be said to him: "The living has done his whole heroic duty,"
but the dead, what else was it that they had done?

Ah, Rouletabille cursed his curiosity, for--he saw it now--it was the
desire to approach the mystery revealed by Koupriane and to penetrate
once more, through all the besetting dangers, an astounding and perhaps
monstrous enigma, that had brought him to the threshold of the datcha
des Iles, which had placed him in the trembling hands of Matrena
Petrovna in promising her his help. He had shown pity, certainly, pity
for the delirious distress of that heroic woman. But there had been more
curiosity than pity in his motives. And now he must pay, because it was
too late now to withdraw, to say casually, "I wash my hands of it." He
had sent away the police and he alone remained between the general
and the vengeance of the dead! He might desert, perhaps! That one idea
brought him to himself, roused all his spirit. Circumstances had brought
him into a camp that he must defend at any cost, unless he was afraid!

The general slept now, or, at least, with eyelids closed simulated
sleep, doubtless in order to reassure poor Matrena who, on her knees
beside his pillow, had retained the hand of her terrible husband in her
own. Shortly she rose and rejoined Rouletabille in her chamber. She
took him then to a little guest-chamber where she urged him to get some
sleep. He replied that it was she who needed rest. But, agitated still
by what had just happened, she babbled:

"No, no! after such a scene I would have nightmares myself as well. Ah,
it is dreadful! Appalling! Appalling! Dear little monsieur, it is the
secret of the night. The poor man! Poor unhappy man! He cannot tear his
thoughts away from it. It is his worst and unmerited punishment, this
translation that Natacha has made of Boris's abominable verses. He knows
them by heart, they are in his brain and on his tongue all night long,
in spite of narcotics, and he says over and over again all the time, 'It
is my daughter who has written that!--my daug