Major Graf Von Farlsberg, the Prussian commandant, was reading his
newspaper as he lay back in a great easy-chair, with his booted feet
on the beautiful marble mantelpiece where his spurs had made two holes,
which had grown deeper every day during the three months that he had
been in the chateau of Uville.
A cup of coffee was smoking on a small inlaid table, which was
stained with liqueur, burned by cigars, notched by the penknife of
the victorious officer, who occasionally would stop while sharpening a
pencil, to jot down figures, or to make a drawing on it, just as it took
his fancy.
When he had read his letters and the German newspapers, which his
orderly had brought him, he got up, and after throwing three or four
enormous pieces of green wood on the fire, for these gentlemen were
gradually cutting down the park in order to keep themselves warm, he
went to the window. The rain was descending in torrents, a regular
Normandy rain, which looked as if it were being poured out by some
furious person, a slanting rain, opaque as a curtain, which formed a
kind of wall with diagonal stripes, and which deluged everything, a rain
such as one frequently experiences in the neighborhood of Rouen, which
is the watering-pot of France.
For a long time the officer looked at the sodden turf and at the swollen
Andelle beyond it, which was overflowing its banks; he was drumming a
waltz with his fingers on the window-panes, when a noise made him turn
round. It was his second in command, Captain Baron van Kelweinstein.
The major was a giant, with broad shoulders and a long, fan-like beard,
which hung down like a curtain to his chest. His whole solemn person
suggested the idea of a military peacock, a peacock who was carrying his
tail spread out on his breast. He had cold, gentle blue eyes, and a scar
from a swordcut, which he had received in the war with Austria; he was
said to be an honorable man, as well as a brave officer.
The captain, a short, red-faced man, was tightly belted in at the waist,
his red hair was cropped quite close to his head, and in certain lights
he almost looked as if he had been rubbed over with phosphorus. He had
lost two front teeth one night, though he could not quite remember how,
and this sometimes made him speak unintelligibly, and he had a bald
patch on top of his head surrounded by a fringe of curly, bright golden
hair, which made him look like a monk.
The commandant shook hands with him and drank his cup of coffee (the
sixth that morning), while he listened to his subordinate's report of
what had occurred; and then they both went to the window and declared
that it was a very unpleasant outlook. The major, who was a quiet man,
with a wife at home, could accommodate himself to everything; but the
captain, who led a fast life, who was in the habit of frequenting low
resorts, and enjoying women's society, was angry at having to be shut up
for three months in that wretched hole.
There was a knock at the door, and when the commandant said, “Come in,”
one of the orderlies appeared, and by his mere presence announced that
breakfast was ready. In the dining-room they met three other officers of
lower rank--a lieutenant, Otto von Grossling, and two sub-lieutenants,
Fritz Scheuneberg and Baron von Eyrick, a very short, fair-haired man,
who was proud and brutal toward men, harsh toward prisoners and as
explosive as gunpowder.
Since he had been in France his comrades had called him nothing but
Mademoiselle Fifi. They had given him that nickname on account of his
dandified style and small waist, which looked as if he wore corsets;
of his pale face, on which his budding mustache scarcely showed, and on
account of the habit he had acquired of employing the French expression,
'Fi, fi donc', which he pronounced with a slight whistle when he wished
to express his sovereign contempt for persons or things.
The dining-room of the chateau was a magnificent long room, whose fine
old mirrors, that were cracked by pistol bullets, and whose Flemish
tapestry, which was cut to ribbons, and hanging in rags in places from
sword-cuts, told too well what Mademoiselle Fifi's occupation was during
his spare time.
There were three family portraits on the walls a steel-clad knight, a
cardinal and a judge, who were all smoking long porcelain pipes, which
had been inserted into holes in the canvas, while a lady in a long,
pointed waist proudly exhibited a pair of enormous mustaches, drawn with
charcoal. The officers ate their breakfast almost in silence in that
mutilated room, which looked dull in the rain and melancholy in its
dilapidated condition, although its old oak floor had become as solid as
the stone floor of an inn.
When they had finished eating and were smoking and drinking, they began,
as usual, to berate the dull life they were leading. The bottles of
brandy and of liqueur passed from hand to hand, and all sat back
in their chairs and took repeated sips from their glasses, scarcely
removing from their mouths the long, curved stems, which terminated in
china bowls, painted in a manner to delight a Hottentot.
As soon as their glasses were empty they filled them again, with a
gesture of resigned weariness, but Mademoiselle Fifi emptied his every
minute, and a soldier immediately gave him another. They were enveloped
in a cloud of strong tobacco smoke, and seemed to be sunk in a state of
drowsy, stupid intoxication, that condition of stupid intoxication of
men who have nothing to do, when suddenly the baron sat up and said:
“Heavens! This cannot go on; we must think of something to do.” And on
hearing this, Lieutenant Otto and Sub-lieutenant Fritz, who preeminently
possessed the serious, heavy German countenance, said: “What, captain?”
He thought for a few moments and then replied: “What? Why, we must get
up some entertainment, if the commandant will allow us.” “What sort of
an entertainment, captain?” the major asked, taking his pipe out of his
mouth. “I will arrange all that, commandant,” the baron said. “I will
send Le Devoir to Rouen, and he will bring back some ladies. I know
where they can be found, We will have supper here, as all the materials
are at hand and; at least, we shall have a jolly evening.”
Graf von Farlsberg shrugged his shoulders with a smile: “You must surely
be mad, my friend.”
But all the other officers had risen and surrounded their chief, saying:
“Let the captain have his way, commandant; it is terribly dull here.”
And the major ended by yielding. “Very well,” he replied, and the baron
immediately sent for Le Devoir. He was an old non-commissioned officer,
who had never been seen to smile, but who carried out all the orders
of his superiors to the letter, no matter what they might be. He
stood there, with an impassive face, while he received the baron's
instructions, and then went out, and five minutes later a large military
wagon, covered with tarpaulin, galloped off as fast as four horses could
draw it in the pouring rain. The officers all seemed to awaken from
their lethargy, their looks brightened, and they began to talk.
Although it was raining as hard as ever, the major declared that it was
not so dark, and Lieutenant von Grossling said with conviction that the
sky was clearing up, while Mademoiselle Fifi did not seem to be able to
keep still. He got up and sat down again, and his bright eyes seemed to
be looking for something to destroy. Suddenly, looking at the lady with
the mustaches, the young fellow pulled out his revolver and said: “You
shall not see it.” And without leaving his seat he aimed, and with two
successive bullets cut out both the eyes of the portrait.
“Let us make a mine!” he then exclaimed, and the conversation was
suddenly interrupted, as if they had found some fresh and powerful
subject of interest. The mine was his invention, his method of
destruction, and his favorite amusement.
When he left the chateau, the lawful owner, Comte Fernand d'Amoys
d'Uville, had not had time to carry away or to hide anything except the
plate, which had been stowed away in a hole made in one of the walls.
As he was very rich and had good taste, the large drawing-room, which
opened into the dining-room, looked like a gallery in a museum, before
his precipitate flight.
Expensive oil paintings, water colors and drawings hung against the
walls, while on the tables, on the hanging shelves and in elegant glass
cupboards there were a thousand ornaments: small vases, statuettes,
groups of Dresden china and grotesque Chinese figures, old ivory and
Venetian glass, which filled the large room with their costly and
fantastic array.
Scarcely anything was left now; not that the things had been stolen, for
the major would not have allowed that, but Mademoiselle Fifi would
every now and then have a mine, and on those occasions all the officers
thoroughly enjoyed themselves for five minutes. The little marquis
went into the drawing-room to get what he wanted, and he brought back
a small, delicate china teapot, which he filled with gunpowder, and
carefully introduced a piece of punk through the spout. This he lighted
and took his infernal machine into the next room, but he came back
immediately and shut the door. The Germans all stood expectant, their
faces full of childish, smiling curiosity, and as soon as the explosion
had shaken the chateau, they all rushed in at once.
Mademoiselle Fifi, who got in first, clapped his hands in delight at the
sight of a terra-cotta Venus, whose head had been blown off, and each
picked up pieces of porcelain and wondered at the strange shape of the
fragments, while the major was looking with a paternal eye at the large
drawing-room, which had been wrecked after the fashion of a Nero, and
was strewn with the fragments of works of art. He went out first and
said with a smile: “That was a great success this time.”
But there was such a cloud of smoke in the dining-room, mingled with the
tobacco smoke, that they could not breathe, so the commandant opened
the window, and all the officers, who had returned for a last glass of
cognac, went up to it.
The moist air blew into the room, bringing with it a sort of powdery
spray, which sprinkled their beards. They looked at the tall trees which
were dripping with rain, at the broad valley which was covered with
mist, and at the church spire in the distance, which rose up like a gray
point in the beating rain.
The bells had not rung since their arrival. That was the only resistance
which the invaders had met with in the neighborhood. The parish priest
had not refused to take in and to feed the Prussian soldiers; he had
several times even drunk a bottle of beer or claret with the hostile
commandant, who often employed him as a benevolent intermediary; but it
was no use to ask him for a single stroke of the bells; he would sooner
have allowed himself to be shot. That was his way of protesting against
the invasion, a peaceful and silent protest, the only one, he said,
which was suitable to a priest, who was a man of mildness, and not
of blood; and every one, for twenty-five miles round, praised Abbe
Chantavoine's firmness and heroism in venturing to proclaim the public
mourning by the obstinate silence of his church bells.
The whole village, enthusiastic at his resistance, was ready to back
up their pastor and to risk anything, for they looked upon that silent
protest as the safeguard of the national honor. It seemed to the
peasants that thus they deserved better of their country than Belfort
and Strassburg, that they had set an equally valuable example, and that
the name of their little village would become immortalized by that; but,
with that exception, they refused their Prussian conquerors nothing.
The commandant and his officers laughed among themselves at this
inoffensive courage, and as the people in the whole country round showed
themselves obliging and compliant toward them, they willingly tolerated
their silent patriotism. Little Baron Wilhelm alone would have liked to
have forced them to ring the bells. He was very angry at his superior's
politic compliance with the priest's scruples, and every day begged the
commandant to allow him to sound “ding-dong, ding-dong,” just once, only
just once, just by way of a joke. And he asked it in the coaxing, tender
voice of some loved woman who is bent on obtaining her wish, but the
commandant would not yield, and to console himself, Mademoiselle Fifi
made a mine in the Chateau d'Uville.
The five men stood there together for five minutes, breathing in the
moist air, and at last Lieutenant Fritz said with a laugh: “The ladies
will certainly not have fine weather for their drive.” Then they
separated, each to his duty, while the captain had plenty to do in
arranging for the dinner.
When they met again toward evening they began to laugh at seeing each
other as spick and span and smart as on the day of a grand review. The
commandant's hair did not look so gray as it was in the morning, and the
captain had shaved, leaving only his mustache, which made him look as if
he had a streak of fire under his nose.
In spite of the rain, they left the window open, and one of them went
to listen from time to time; and at a quarter past six the baron said
he heard a rumbling in the distance. They all rushed down, and presently
the wagon drove up at a gallop with its four horses steaming and
blowing, and splashed with mud to their girths. Five women dismounted,
five handsome girls whom a comrade of the captain, to whom Le Devoir had
presented his card, had selected with care.
They had not required much pressing, as they had got to know the
Prussians in the three months during which they had had to do with them,
and so they resigned themselves to the men as they did to the state of
affairs.
They went at once into the dining-room, which looked still more dismal
in its dilapidated condition when it was lighted up; while the table
covered with choice dishes, the beautiful china and glass, and the
plate, which had been found in the hole in the wall where its owner had
hidden it, gave it the appearance of a bandits' inn, where they were
supping after committing a robbery in the place. The captain was
radiant, and put his arm round the women as if he were familiar with
them; and when the three young men wanted to appropriate one each,
he opposed them authoritatively, reserving to himself the right to
apportion them justly, according to their several ranks, so as not to
offend the higher powers. Therefore, to avoid all discussion, jarring,
and suspicion of partiality, he placed them all in a row according to
height, and addressing the tallest, he said in a voice of command:
“What is your name?” “Pamela,” she replied, raising her voice. And then
he said: “Number One, called Pamela, is adjudged to the commandant.”
Then, having kissed Blondina, the second, as a sign of proprietorship,
he proffered stout Amanda to Lieutenant Otto; Eva, “the Tomato,” to
Sub-lieutenant Fritz, and Rachel, the shortest of them all, a very
young, dark girl, with eyes as black as ink, a Jewess, whose snub
nose proved the rule which allots hooked noses to all her race, to the
youngest officer, frail Count Wilhelm d'Eyrick.
They were all pretty and plump, without any distinctive features, and
all had a similarity of complexion and figure.
The three young men wished to carry off their prizes immediately, under
the pretext that they might wish to freshen their toilets; but the
captain wisely opposed this, for he said they were quite fit to sit down
to dinner, and his experience in such matters carried the day. There
were only many kisses, expectant kisses.
Suddenly Rachel choked, and began to cough until the tears came into her
eyes, while smoke came through her nostrils. Under pretence of kissing
her, the count had blown a whiff of tobacco into her mouth. She did not
fly into a rage and did not say a word, but she looked at her tormentor
with latent hatred in her dark eyes.
They sat down to dinner. The commandant seemed delighted; he made Pamela
sit on his right, and Blondina on his left, and said, as he unfolded his
table napkin: “That was a delightful idea of yours, captain.”
Lieutenants Otto and Fritz, who were as polite as if they had been
with fashionable ladies, rather intimidated their guests, but Baron von
Kelweinstein beamed, made obscene remarks and seemed on fire with his
crown of red hair. He paid the women compliments in French of the Rhine,
and sputtered out gallant remarks, only fit for a low pothouse, from
between his two broken teeth.
They did not understand him, however, and their intelligence did not
seem to be awakened until he uttered foul words and broad expressions,
which were mangled by his accent. Then they all began to laugh at once
like crazy women and fell against each other, repeating the words, which
the baron then began to say all wrong, in order that he might have the
pleasure of hearing them say dirty things. They gave him as much of that
stuff as he wanted, for they were drunk after the first bottle of wine,
and resuming their usual habits and manners, they kissed the officers
to right and left of them, pinched their arms, uttered wild cries, drank
out of every glass and sang French couplets and bits of German songs
which they had picked up in their daily intercourse with the enemy.
Soon the men themselves became very unrestrained, shouted and broke
the plates and dishes, while the soldiers behind them waited on them
stolidly. The commandant was the only one who kept any restraint upon
himself.
Mademoiselle Fifi had taken Rachel on his knee, and, getting excited, at
one moment he kissed the little black curls on her neck and at another
he pinched her furiously and made her scream, for he was seized by a
species of ferocity, and tormented by his desire to hurt her. He often
held her close to him and pressed a long kiss on the Jewess' rosy mouth
until she lost her breath, and at last he bit her until a stream of
blood ran down her chin and on to her bodice.
For the second time she looked him full in the face, and as she bathed
the wound, she said: “You will have to pay for, that!” But he merely
laughed a hard laugh and said: “I will pay.”
At dessert champagne was served, and the commandant rose, and in the
same voice in which he would have drunk to the health of the Empress
Augusta, he drank: “To our ladies!” And a series of toasts began, toasts
worthy of the lowest soldiers and of drunkards, mingled with obscene
jokes, which were made still more brutal by their ignorance of the
language. They got up, one after the other, trying to say something
witty, forcing themselves to be funny, and the women, who were so drunk
that they almost fell off their chairs, with vacant looks and clammy
tongues applauded madly each time.
The captain, who no doubt wished to impart an appearance of gallantry
to the orgy, raised his glass again and said: “To our victories over
hearts.” and, thereupon Lieutenant Otto, who was a species of bear from
the Black Forest, jumped up, inflamed and saturated with drink, and
suddenly seized by an access of alcoholic patriotism, he cried: “To our
victories over France!”
Drunk as they were, the women were silent, but Rachel turned round,
trembling, and said: “See here, I know some Frenchmen in whose presence
you would not dare say that.” But the little count, still holding her
on his knee, began to laugh, for the wine had made him very merry, and
said: “Ha! ha! ha! I have never met any of them myself. As soon as we
show ourselves, they run away!” The girl, who was in a terrible rage,
shouted into his face: “You are lying, you dirty scoundrel!”
For a moment he looked at her steadily with his bright eyes upon her, as
he had looked at the portrait before he destroyed it with bullets from
his revolver, and then he began to laugh: “Ah! yes, talk about them, my
dear! Should we be here now if they were brave?” And, getting excited,
he exclaimed: “We are the masters! France belongs to us!” She made one
spring from his knee and threw herself into her chair, while he arose,
held out his glass over the table and repeated: “France and the French,
the woods, the fields and the houses of France belong to us!”
The others, who were quite drunk, and who were suddenly seized by
military enthusiasm, the enthusiasm of brutes, seized their glasses, and
shouting, “Long live Prussia!” they emptied them at a draught.
The girls did not protest, for they were reduced to silence and were
afraid. Even Rachel did not say a word, as she had no reply to make.
Then the little marquis put his champagne glass, which had just been
refilled, on the head of the Jewess and exclaimed: “All the women in
France belong to us also!”
At that she got up so quickly that the glass upset, spilling the
amber-colored wine on her black hair as if to baptize her, and broke
into a hundred fragments, as it fell to the floor. Her lips trembling,
she defied the looks of the officer, who was still laughing, and
stammered out in a voice choked with rage:
“That--that--that--is not true--for you shall not have the women of
France!”
He sat down again so as to laugh at his ease; and, trying to speak with
the Parisian accent, he said: “She is good, very good! Then why did
you come here, my dear?” She was thunderstruck and made no reply for a
moment, for in her agitation she did not understand him at first, but
as soon as she grasped his meaning she said to him indignantly and
vehemently: “I! I! I am not a woman, I am only a strumpet, and that is
all that Prussians want.”
Almost before she had finished he slapped her full in the face; but as
he was raising his hand again, as if to strike her, she seized a small
dessert knife with a silver blade from the table and, almost mad with
rage, stabbed him right in the hollow of his neck. Something that he
was going to say was cut short in his throat, and he sat there with his
mouth half open and a terrible look in his eyes.
All the officers shouted in horror and leaped up tumultuously; but,
throwing her chair between the legs of Lieutenant Otto, who fell down
at full length, she ran to the window, opened it before they could seize
her and jumped out into the night and the pouring rain.
In two minutes Mademoiselle Fifi was dead, and Fritz and Otto drew their
swords and wanted to kill the women, who threw themselves at their feet
and clung to their knees. With some difficulty the major stopped the
slaughter and had the four terrified girls locked up in a room under the
care of two soldiers, and then he organized the pursuit of the fugitive
as carefully as if he were about to engage in a skirmish, feeling quite
sure that she would be caught.
The table, which had been cleared immediately, now served as a bed on
which to lay out the lieutenant, and the four officers stood at the
windows, rigid and sobered with the stern faces of soldiers on duty,
and tried to pierce through the darkness of the night amid the steady
torrent of rain. Suddenly a shot was heard and then another, a long way
off; and for four hours they heard from time to time near or distant
reports and rallying cries, strange words of challenge, uttered in
guttural voices.
In the morning they all returned. Two soldiers had been killed and three
others wounded by their comrades in the ardor of that chase and in the
confusion of that nocturnal pursuit, but they had not caught Rachel.
Then the inhabitants of the district were terrorized, the houses were
turned topsy-turvy, the country was scoured and beaten up, over and over
again, but the Jewess did not seem to have left a single trace of her
passage behind her.
When the general was told of it he gave orders to hush up the affair,
so as not to set a bad example to the army, but he severely censured the
commandant, who in turn punished his inferiors. The general had said:
“One does not go to war in order to amuse one's self and to caress
prostitutes.” Graf von Farlsberg, in his exasperation, made up his mind
to have his revenge on the district, but as he required a pretext for
showing severity, he sent for the priest and ordered him to have the
bell tolled at the funeral of Baron von Eyrick.
Contrary to all expectation, the priest showed himself humble and most
respectful, and when Mademoiselle Fifi's body left the Chateau d'Uville
on its way to the cemetery, carried by soldiers, preceded, surrounded
and followed by soldiers who marched with loaded rifles, for the first
time the bell sounded its funeral knell in a lively manner, as if a
friendly hand were caressing it. At night it rang again, and the next
day, and every day; it rang as much as any one could desire. Sometimes
even it would start at night and sound gently through the darkness,
seized with a strange joy, awakened one could not tell why. All the
peasants in the neighborhood declared that it was bewitched, and nobody
except the priest and the sacristan would now go near the church tower.
And they went because a poor girl was living there in grief and solitude
and provided for secretly by those two men.
She remained there until the German troops departed, and then one
evening the priest borrowed the baker's cart and himself drove his
prisoner to Rouen. When they got there he embraced her, and she quickly
went back on foot to the establishment from which she had come, where
the proprietress, who thought that she was dead, was very glad to see
her.
A short time afterward a patriot who had no prejudices, and who liked
her because of her bold deed, and who afterward loved her for herself,
married her and made her a lady quite as good as many others.