ear, and fell back with him onto the bed, crying,
'Help!' He thrust me away and said roughly, 'Listen.' The frightful
tick-tack was behind us now, on the table. But there was nothing on the
table, only the night-light, the glass with the potion in it, and a
gold vase where I had placed with my own hands that morning a cluster
of grasses and wild flowers that Ermolai had brought that morning on his
return from the Orel country. With one bound I was on the table and at
the flowers. I struck my fingers among the grasses and the flowers, and
felt a resistance. The tick-tack was in the bouquet! I took the bouquet
in both hands, opened the window and threw it as far as I could into the
garden. At the same moment the bomb burst with a terrible noise, giving
me quite a deep wound in the hand. Truly, my dear little domovoi, that
day we had been very near death, but God and the Little Father watched
over us."

And Matrena Petrovna made the sign of the cross.

"All the windows of the house were broken. In all, we escaped with the
fright and a visit from the glazier, my little friend, but I certainly
believed that all was over."

"And Mademoiselle Natacha?" inquired Rouletabille. "She must also have
been terribly frightened, because the whole house must have rocked."

"Surely. But Natacha was not here that night. It was a Saturday. She
had been invited to the soiree du 'Michel' by the parents of Boris
Nikolaievitch, and she slept at their house, after supper at the Ours,
as had been planned. The next day, when she learned the danger the
general had escaped, she trembled in every limb. She threw herself in
her father's arms, weeping, which was natural enough, and declared that
she never would go away from him again. The general told her how I had
managed. Then she pressed me to her heart, saying that she never would
forget such an action, and that she loved me more than if I were truly
her mother. It was all in vain that during the days following we sought
to understand how the infernal machine had been placed in the bouquet
of wild flowers. Only the general's friends that you saw this evening,
Natacha and I had entered the general's chamber during the day or in
the evening. No servant, no chamber-maid, had been on that floor. In
the day-time as well as all night long that entire floor is closed and I
have the keys. The door of the servants' staircase which opens onto that
floor, directly into the general's chamber, is always loc