Chapter 5 - Page 2

in his
own home each time we heard any shooting in the street. Natacha
attended the lectures of the Faculty, you know. And she knew many
of them, and even some of those who were being killed on the
barricades. Ah, life was not easy for him in his own home, the
poor general! Besides, there was also Boris, whom I love as well,
for that matter, as my own child, because I shall be very happy to
see him married to Natacha - there was poor Boris who always came
home from the attacks paler than a corpse and who could not keep
from moaning with us."

"And Michael?" questioned Rouletabille.

"Oh, Michael only came towards the last. He is a new orderly to
the general. The government at St. Petersburg sent him, because
of course they couldn't help learning that Boris rather lacked zeal
in repressing the students and did not encourage the general in
being as severe as was necessary for the safety of the Empire. But
Michael, he has a heart of stone; he knows nothing but the
countersign and massacres fathers and mothers, crying, 'Vive le
Tsar!' Truly, it seems his heart can only be touched by the sight
of Natacha. And that again has caused a good deal of anxiety to
Feodor and me. It has caught us in a useless complication that we
would have liked to end by the prompt marriage of Natacha and Boris.
But Natacha, to our great surprise, has not wished it to be so. No,
she has not wished it, saying that there is always time to think of
her wedding and that she is in no hurry to leave us. Meantime she
entertains herself with this Michael as if she did not fear his
passion, and neither has Michael the desperate air of a man who
knows the definite engagement of Natacha and Boris. And my
step-daughter is not a coquette. No, no. No one can say she is a
coquette. At least, no one had been able to say it up to the time
that Michael arrived. Can it be that she is a coquette? They are
mysterious, these young girls, very mysterious, above all when they
have that calm and tranquil look that Natacha always has; a face,
monsieur, as you have noticed perhaps, whose beauty is rather
passive whatever one says and does, excepting when the volleys in
the streets kill her young comrades of the schools. Then I have
seen her almost faint, which proves she has a great heart under
her tranquil beauty. Poor Natacha! I have seen her excited as I
over the life of her father. My little friend, I have seen her
searching in the middle of the night, with me, for infernal
machines under the furniture, and then she has expressed the
opinion that it is nervous, childish, unworthy of us to act like
that, like timid beasts under the sofas, and she has left me to
search by myself. True, she never quits the general. She is more