Chapter 4 - Page 2

were words of mourning and pity.
This perfect fiend of a soldier, whom neither bullets nor bombs
could intimidate, had a way of saying words which transformed their
meaning as they came from his terrible mouth. The listeners could
not but feel absorbed in the tones of the brutal victor.

Matrena Petrovna and Rouletabille had leant their two shadows,
blended one into the other, against the open doorway just beyond
the gleam of the night-lamp, and they heard with horror:

"The youth of Moscow is dead! They have cleared
away the corpses. There is nothing but ruin left. The Kremlin
itself has shut its gates - that it may not see. The youth of
Moscow is dead!"

Feodor Feodorovitch's fist shook above his bed; it seemed that he
was about to strike, to kill again, and Rouletabille felt Matrena
trembling against him, while he trembled as well before the
fearful vision of the killer in the Red Week!

Feodor heaved an immense sigh and his breast descended under the
bed-clothes, the fist relaxed and fell, the great head lay over on
its ear. There was silence. Had he repose at last? No, no. He
sighed, he choked anew, he tossed on his couch like the damned in
torment, and the words written by his daughter - by his daughter
- blazed in his eyes, which now were wide open - words written on
the wall, that he read on the wall, written in blood.

"The youth of Moscow is dead! They had gone so young into the
fields and into the mines,
And they had not found a single corner of the Russian land where
there were not moanings.
Now the youth of Moscow is dead and no more moanings are heard,
Because those for whom all youth died do not dare even to moan
any more.

But - what? The voice of Feodor lost its threatening tone. His
breath came as from a weeping child. And it was with sobs in his
throat that he said the last verse, the verse written by his
daughter in the album, in red letters:

"The last barricade had standing there the girl of eighteen
winters, the virgin of Moscow, flower of the snow.
Who gave her kisses to the workmen struck by the bullets
from the soldiers of the Czar;
"She aroused the admiration of the very soldiers who, weeping,
killed her:
"What killing! All the houses shuttered, the windows with heavy
eyelids of plank in order not to see! -
"And the Kremlin itself has closed its gates - that it may
not see.
"The youth of Moscow is dead!"

"Feodor! Feodor!"

She had caught him in her arms, holding him fast, comforting him
while still he raved, "The youth of Moscow is dead," and appeared
to thrust away with insensate gestures a crowd of phantoms. She
crushed him to her breast, she put her hands over his mouth to make
him stop,