Then he announced: "Number one, by the name of Pamela, is adjudged
to the Commander."
Having then kissed Blondine, the second as a mark of his claim to
ownership, he offered the fat Amanda to Lieutenant Otto; Eva la
Tomate to Second-Lieutenant Fritz, and the smallest of all, Rachel,
a very young brunette, with black eyes like ink spots, a Jewess
whose pug nose confirmed the rule that ascribes hooked noses to
all her race, to the youngest officer, the frail Markgraf Wilhelm
von Eyrik.
As a matter of fact they were all pretty and plump, without
any distinctive character on their faces, shaped almost alike in
appearance and style and complexion by the daily practice of their
illicit trade and the life in common in disreputable houses.
The three young men wanted immediately to take their partners out
of the room under pretext of offering them brushes and soap for
washing and freshening up; but the Captain was wise enough not
to allow it, claiming that they were clean enough to sit down to
dinner, and for fear that those who went up might want to change
their girls when they came down, and thus disturb the other couples.
His experience prevailed. There were only plenty of kisses, kisses
of expectancy.
Suddenly Rachel suffocated, coughing to tears and rejecting smoke
through her nose. The Markgraf, feigning to kiss her, had blown
a whiff of tobacco into her mouth. She did not get angry, did not
utter a single word, but glared at her possessor with anger aroused
way down at the bottom of her black eyes.
They sat down to dinner. The Commander himself seemed to be
delighted; he took Pamela on his right and Blondine on his left,
and while unfolding his napkin, he declared:--"This was a charming
idea of yours, Captain!"
Lieutenants Otto and Fritz, polite and obsequious as if they were
sitting near Society ladies, did slightly intimidate their neighbors;
but Baron von Kelweingstein, let loose in his vice, was beaming;
he cracked unsavory jokes, and with his crown of red hair, seemed
to be on fire. He paid gallant compliments in his defective
French of the Rhine, and his lewd nonsense, smacking of taverns,
expectorated through the hole between his two broken teeth, reached
the girls in the middle of a rapid fire of saliva.
The girls did not understand his witticisms, and their intelligence
did not seem to be awakened until he sputtered obscene words, rough
expressions, crippled by his accent. Then all in a chorus began
to laugh as if they were demented, falling on the laps of their
neighbors, repeating the words which the Baron disfigured purposely
in order to make them say filthy things. They vomited at will
plenty of them, intoxicated after drinking from the first bottles
of wine; and relapsing into their real selves, opening the gates
to their habits, they kissed mustaches on their right and those on
their left, pinched arms, uttered furious screams, drank out of
all the glasses, sang French couplets and bits of German songs they
had learned in their daily intercourse with the enemy.
Soon the men themselves flushed and excited by the female flesh
spread under their nose and within reach of their hands, lost all
restraint, roaring, breaking the plates, while behind them impassive
soldiers were waiting.
The Commander only kept some restraint.
Mademoiselle Fifi had taken Rachel on his knees and deliberately
working himself up to a pitch of frenzy, kissed madly the ebony
curls on her neck, inhaling through the thin interstice between
the gown and her skin, the sweet warmth of her body and the full
fragrance of her person; through the silk, he pinched her furiously
making her scream, seized with a rabid ferocity and distracted by
his craving for destruction. Often also holding her in his arms,
squeezing her as if he wanted to mix her with himself, he pressed
long kisses on the fresh lips of the Jewess and embraced her until
he lost breath; but suddenly he bit her so deep that a dash of
blood flowed down the chin of the young girl and ran into her waist.
Once more she looked at him, straight in the face, and washing the
wound, she muttered: "You will have to pay for it!" He began to
laugh, with a harsh laugh: "All right, I shall pay!" said he.
At dessert, champagne was served. The Commander rose and with the
same tone as he would have taken to drink the health of the Empress
Augusta, he said:
"To our ladies!" And a series of toasts were then drunk, toasts
with the gallantry and manner of drunkards and troopers, mixed
with obscene jokes, rendered still more brutal by their ignorance
of the language.
They were rising one after the other, trying to be witty, making
efforts to be funny; and the women, so intoxicated that they were
hardly able to sit up, with their vacant look, their heavy, clammy
tongues, applauded vociferously each time.
The Captain, no doubt intending to lend the orgy an atmosphere
of gallantry, raised once more his glass and pronounced: "To our
victories over the hearts!"
Then Lieutenant Otto, a kind of bear from the Black Forest, jumped
up, inflamed, saturated with drinks, and suddenly, carried away by
alcoholic patriotism, he cried: "To our victories over France!"
Intoxicated as they were, the women kept silent and Rachel,
shuddering with rage, retorted: "Well! I know some Frenchmen in
whose presence you would not dare say such things."
But the little Markgraf, still holding her on his knees, began to
laugh, having become exceedingly exhilarated by the wine: "Ah!
Ah! Ah! I never met any myself. As soon as they see us, they run
away."
The girl exasperated, shouted in his face: "You lie, you dirty
pig!"
For a second he fixed on her his clear eyes, as he used to fix
them on the paintings the canvas of which he riddled with revolver
shots; then he laughed: "Oh yes! let us speak of it, you beauty!
Would we be here if they were brave?"--and he became more and more
excited: "We are their masters; France belongs to us!"
She sprang off his knees and fell back on her chair. He rose, held
out his glass over the table and repeated: "France, the French,
their fields, their woods and their houses belong to us!"
The others, who were thoroughly intoxicated, suddenly shaken by
military enthusiasm, the enthusiasm of brutes, seized their glasses
and shouted vociferously: "Long live Prussia!" and emptied them
at a draught.
The girls did not protest, reduced to silence and frightened. Even
Rachel kept silent, unable to reply.
Then the little Markgraf placed on the head of the Jewess his glass
of Champaign, refilled, and said--"The women of France belong to
us!"
She jumped up so quickly that the glass was upset and spilled the
yellow wine in her black hair, as for a baptism; it fell broken to
pieces on the floor. Her lips quivering, she looked defiantly at
the officer; the latter kept laughing; she stammered in a voice
choked with rage: "That, that is not true! you shall never have
the women of France!"
He sat down to laugh at his ease and tried to imitate the Parisian
accent: "That is a good one! that is a good one! And what are
you doing here, you little one?"
Confused, at first, she did not answer, as she did not, in her
excitement, understand fully what he said; then, as soon as the
meaning of it dawned on her mind, she shouted at him indignantly
and vehemently: "I, I, I am not a woman! I am a prostitute! and
that is all a Prussian deserves!"
Hardly had she finished, that he slapped her face violently; but,
as he was raising his hand again, maddened with rage she caught on
the table a small silver-bladed dessert knife, and so quickly that
nobody noticed it, she stabbed him right in the neck, just at the
hollow where the breast begins.
A word, that he was about to mutter, was cut short in his throat,
and he remained stiff, with his mouth open and a frightful look.
All shouted and got up tumultuously; but having thrown her chair
in the legs of Lieutenant Otto, who collapsed and fell down at full
length, she ran to the window, opened it before they could catch
her, and jumped out in the night, under the rain that was still
falling.
In two minutes Mademoiselle Fifi was dead. Then Fritz and Otto drew
their swords and wanted to massacre the women, who threw themselves
to their knees; the Major, not without difficulty, prevented the
butchery and had the four bewildered girls locked up in a room
and guarded by two soldiers; and then, as if he were disposing his
men for battle, he organized the search for the fugitive[*], quite
certain that he would catch her.
[*][Note from Brett: The original uses "fugutive," but, again, I
think this is a typographical error as there is no such word.]
Fifty men, whipped by threats, were launched on her trail in the
park; two hundred others searched the woods and all the houses of
the Valley.
The table, cleared in an instant, was turned into a mortuary bed,
and the four officers, straight, rigid and sobered up, with the
harsh faces of warriors on duty stood near the windows, searching
and scanning the night.
The torrential rain was continuing. An incessant rippling filled
the darkness, a floating murmur of water that falls and water that
runs, water that drops and water that gushes forth.
Suddenly a rifle shot was heard; then another far away; and thus
for four hours one heard from time to time, near or distant reports
of firing and rallying cries, strange words shouted like a call by
guttural voices.
At daybreak everybody returned. Two soldiers had been killed and
three others wounded by their comrades in the eagerness of the
chase and the confusion of the nocturnal pursuit.
They had not been able to find Rachel.
Then the inhabitants were terrorized, the houses searched most
carefully, the whole region combed, beaten, scoured. The Jewess
did not seem to have left any trace of her passage.
The General, who had been notified, ordered to hush the matter up
so as not to give a bad example in the Army, and he disciplined
the Commander who, in turn, punished his subordinates. The General
had said: "We do not go to war to indulge in orgies and caress
prostitutes." And exasperated Graf Farlsberg resolved to take
revenge on the country.
As he needed a pretext to take drastic measures without constraint,
he summoned the Priest and ordered him to ring the Church bell at
the burial of Markgraf von Eyrik.
Contrary to general expectation, the priest showed himself docile,
humble, full of attention. And when the body of Mademoiselle Fifi,
carried by soldiers, preceded, surrounded and followed by soldiers,
who marched with loaded rifles, left the Chateau d'Urville, on the
way to the cemetery, for the first time the bell sounded the knell
in a gay tone, as if a friendly hand had been fondling it.
It rang also in the evening, and the next day and every day;
it chimed as much as they wanted. Sometimes also, in the dead of
night, it would ring all alone and throw two or three notes in the
darkness, seized by a singular mirth, awakened one knew not why.
All the peasants in the neighborhood then thought that the bell had
been bewitched; and no one except the Priest and the Sexton came
near the bell-tower.
A poor girl was living up there, in fear and solitude, secretly
fed by those two men.
She remained there until the German troops departed. Then, one
evening, the Priest having borrowed the baker's cart, drove himself
and the prisoner as far as the Gate of Rouen. When they reached
the Gate, the Priest kissed her; she got off the cart and quickly
went back to the disreputable house, the keeper of which had thought
that she was dead.
She was taken out of the house of prostitution shortly afterwards
by a patriot without prejudice, who loved her for her brave act,
and then, having loved her for herself, married her and made of
her a lady as good as many others.