Your health, my
friend!"
"Your health, general!"
"You understand," continued Feodor Feodorovitch, "there is no
occasion to excite ourselves. It is our business to defend the
empire at the peril of our lives. We find that quite natural, and
there is no occasion to think of it. I have had terrors enough in
other directions, not to speak of the terrors of love, that are
more ferocious than you can yet imagine. Look at what they did to
my poor friend the Chief of the Surete, Boichlikoff. He was
commendable certainly. There was a brave man. Of an evening, when
his work was over, he always left the bureau of the prefecture and
went to join his wife and children in their apartment in the ruelle
des Loups. Not a soldier! No guard! The others had every chance.
One evening a score of revolutionaries, after having driven away
the terrorized servants, mounted to his apartments. He was dining
with his family. They knocked and he opened the door. He saw who
they were, and tried to speak. They gave him no time. Before his
wife and children, mad with terror and on their knees before the
revolutionaries, they read him his death-sentence. A fine end that
to a dinner!"
As he listened Rouletabille paled and he kept his eyes on the door
as if he expected to see it open of itself, giving access to
ferocious Nihilists of whom one, with a paper in his hand, would
read the sentence of death to Feodor Feodorovitch.
Pages:
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53