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_ XXII
THE minister was receiving petitioners at the usual hour appointed
for the reception. He had talked successively to three of them,
and now a pretty young woman with black eyes, who was holding
a petition in her left hand, approached. The minister's
eyes gleamed when he saw how attractive the petitioner was,
but recollecting his high position he put on a serious face.
"What do you want?" he asked, coming down to where she stood.
Without answering his question the young woman quickly drew a revolver
from under her cloak and aiming it at the minister's chest fired--
but missed him.
The minister rushed at her, trying to seize her hand,
but she escaped, and taking a step back, fired a second time.
The minister ran out of the room. The woman was immediately seized.
She was trembling violently, and could not utter a single word;
after a while she suddenly burst into a hysterical laugh.
The minister was not even wounded.
That woman was Katia Turchaninova. She was put into the prison
of preliminary detention. The minister received congratulations
and marks of sympathy from the highest quarters, and even from
the emperor himself, who appointed a commission to investigate
the plot that had led to the attempted assassination.
As a matter of fact there was no plot whatever, but the police
officials and the detectives set to work with the utmost zeal
to discover all the threads of the non-existing conspiracy.
They did everything to deserve the fees they were paid;
they got up in the small hours of the morning, searched one house
after another, took copies of papers and of books they found,
read diaries, personal letters, made extracts from them
on the very best notepaper and in beautiful handwriting,
interrogated Katia Turchaninova ever so many times, and confronted
her with all those whom they suspected of conspiracy,
in order to extort from her the names of her accomplices.
The minister, a good-natured man at heart, was sincerely sorry
for the pretty girl. But he said to himself that he was bound
to consider his high state duties imposed upon him, even though they
did not imply much work and trouble. So, when his former colleague,
a chamberlain and a friend of the Turins, met him at a court ball
and tried to rouse his pity for Turin and the girl Turchaninova,
he shrugged his shoulders, stretching the red ribbon on his
white waistcoat, and said: "Je ne demanderais pas mieux que de
relacher cette pauvre fillette, mais vous savez le devoir."
And in the meantime Katia Turchaninova was kept in prison.
She was at times in a quiet mood, communicated with her fellow-prisoners
by knocking on the walls, and read the books that were sent to her.
But then came days when she had fits of desperate fury, knocking with
her fists against the wall, screaming and laughing like a mad-woman. _
Read next: PART FIRST: Chapter XXIII
Read previous: PART FIRST: Chapter XXI
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