Chapter 4

IV

"THE YOUTH OF MOSCOW IS DEAD"

Rouletabille let himself be led by Matrena through the night, but
he stumbled and his awkward hands struck against various things.
The ascent to the first floor was accomplished in profound silence.
Nothing broke it except that restless moaning which had so affected
the young man just before.

The tepid warmth, the perfume of a woman's boudoir, then, beyond,
through two doors opening upon the dressing-room which lay between
Matrena's chamber and Feodor's, the dim luster of a night-lamp
showed the bed where was stretched the sleeping tyrant of Moscow.
Ah, he was frightening to see, with the play of faint yellow light
and diffused shadows upon him. Such heavy-arched eyebrows, such
an aspect of pain and menace, the massive jaw of a savage come from
the plains of Tartary to be the Scourge of God, the stiff, thick,
spreading beard. This was a form akin to the gallery of old nobles
at Kasan, and young Rouletabille imagined him as none other than
Ivan the Terrible himself. Thus appeared as he slept the excellent
Feodor Feodorovitch, the easy, spoiled father of the family table,
the friend of the advocate celebrated for his feats with knife and
fork and of the bantering timber-merchant and amiable bear-hunter,
the joyous Thaddeus and Athanase; Feodor, the faithful spouse of
Matrena Petrovna and the adored papa of Natacha, a brave man who
was so unfortunate as to have nights of cruel sleeplessness or
dreams more frightful still.

At that moment a hoarse sigh heaved his huge chest in an uneven
rhythm, and Rouletabille, leaning in the doorway of the
dressing-room, watched - but it was no longer the general that he
watched, it was something else, lower down, beside the wall, near
the door, and it was that which set him tiptoeing so lightly across
the floor that it gave no sound. There was no slightest sound in
the chamber, except the heavy breathing lifting the rough chest.
Behind Rouletabille Matrena raised her arms, as though she wished
to hold him back, because she did not know where he was going.
What was he doing? Why did he stoop thus beside the door and why
did he press his thumb all along the floor at the doorway? He rose
again and returned. He passed again before the bed, where rumbled
now, like the bellows of a forge, the respiration of the sleeper.
Matrena grasped Rouletabille by the hand. And she had already
hurried him into the dressing-room when a moan stopped them.

"The youth of Moscow is dead!"

It was the sleeper speaking. The mouth which had given the
stringent orders moaned. And the lamentation was still a menace.
In the haunted sleep thrust upon that man by the inadequate narcotic
the words Feodor Feodorovitch spoke