t the halls of the University and the factories had
opened their doors since in vain. The dead would have had to arise for
those places to be peopled! Days of terrible battle where in one quarter
or another of the city there was naught but massacre or burnings, until
Matrena Petrovna and her step-daughter, Natacha (all the papers told of
it), had fallen on their knees before the general and begged terms for
the last of the revolutionaries, at bay in the Presnia quarter, and had
been refused by him. "War is war," had been his answer, with irrefutable
logic. "How can you ask mercy for these men who never give it?" Be it
said for the young men of the barricades that they never surrendered,
and equally be it said for Trebassof that he necessarily shot them.
"If I had only myself to consider," the general had said to a Paris
journalist, "I could have been gentle as a lamb with these unfortunates,
and so I should not now myself be condemned to death. After all, I fail
to see what they reproach me with. I have served my master as a brave
and loyal subject, no more, and, after the fighting, I have let others
ferret out the children that had hidden under their mothers' skirts.
Everybody talks of the repression of Moscow, but let us speak, my
friend, of the Commune. There was a piece of work I would not have
done, to massacre within a court an unresisting crowd of men, women and
children. I am a rough and faithful soldier of His Majesty, but I am
not a monster, and I have the feelings of a husband and father, my dear
monsieur. Tell your readers that, if you care to, and do not surmise
further about whether I appear to regret being condemned to death."

Certainly what stupefied Rouletabille now was this staunch figure of
the condemned man who appeared so tranquilly to enjoy his life. When the
general was not furthering the gayety of his friends he was talking with
his wife and daughter, who adored him and continually fondled him, and
he seemed perfectly happy. With his enormous grizzly mustache, his ruddy
color, his keen, piercing eyes, he looked the typical spoiled father.

The reporter studied all these widely-different types and made his
observations while pretending to a ravenous appetite, which served,
moreover, to fix him in the good graces of his hosts of the datcha des
Iles. But, in reality, he passed the food to an enormous bull-dog
under the table, in whose good graces he was also thus firmly planting
himself. As Trebass