“Why, why,” she said, with her voice entirely changed and quite indifferent, as if she wished to be merely ‘the daughter of the house’ in conversation with the young man, “the vodka is not in the wine chest, after all. What has Ermolai done with it, then?”
She ran over to the buffet and found the flask.
“Oh, here it is. Papa shan’t be without it, after all.”
Rouletabille was already into the garden again.
“If that is the only doubt she has,” he said to himself, “I can reassure her. No one could come, excepting by the window. And only one came that way.”
The young girl had rejoined him, bringing the flask. They crossed the garden together to the general, who was whiling away the time as he waited for his vodka explaining to Matrena Petrovna the nature of “the constitution.” He had spilt a box of matches on the table and arranged them carefully.
“Here,” he cried to Natacha and Rouletabille. “Come here and I will explain to you as well what this Constitution amounts to.”
The young people leaned over his demonstration curiously and all eyes in the kiosk were intent on the matches.
“You see that match,” said Feodor Feodorovitch. “It is the Emperor. And this other match is the Empress; this one is the Tsarevitch; and that one is the Grand-duke Alexander; and these are the other granddukes. Now, here are the ministers and there the principal governors, and then the generals; these here are the bishops.”
The whole box of matches was used up, and each match was in its place, as is the way in an empire where proper etiquette prevails in government and the social order.