Mademoiselle Fifi
The Major, Graf von Farlsberg, the Prussian
commandant, was reading his newspaper, lying back in a great armchair, with his
booted feet on the beautiful marble fire-place, where his spurs had made two
holes, which grew deeper every day, during the three months that he had been in
the château of Urville.
A cup of coffee was smoking
on a small, inlaid table, which was stained with liquors, burnt by cigars,
notched by the pen-knife 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 baggage-master had brought him, he
got up, and after throwing three or four enormous pieces of green wood on to
the fire, for those 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 hand, a slanting rain, which was as thick as a curtain, and
which formed a kind of wall with oblique stripes, and which deluged everything,
a regular 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; and he was drumming a waltz from the Rhine on the
window-panes, with his fingers, when a noise made him turn round; it was his
second in command, Captain Baron von Kelweinstein.
The major was a giant, with
broad shoulders, and a long, fair-like beard, which hung like a cloth on his
chest. His whole, solemn person suggested the idea of a military peacock, a
peacock who was carrying his tail spread out on to his breast. He had cold,
gentle, blue eyes, and the scar from a sword-cut, 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, who was tightly girthed in at the waist, had his red hair
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 made him speak so that he
could not always be understood, and he had a bald patch on the top of his head,
which made him look rather like a monk, with a fringe of curly, bright, golden
hair round the circle of bare skin.
The commandant shook hands
with him, and drank his cup of coffee (the sixth that morning), at a draught,
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 was rather fast, who was in the
habit of frequenting low resorts, and who was much given to women, was mad at
having been shut up for three months in the compulsory chastity of that
wretched hole.
There was a knock at the
door, and when the commandant said: “Come in,” one of their automatic
soldiers 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 Scheunebarg, and Baron von
Eyrick, a very short, fair-haired man, who was proud and brutal towards men,
harsh towards prisoners, and as violent as a rifle.
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 stays, of his pale face, on which his budding
moustache 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
château 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 an enormous
moustache, drawn with a piece of charcoal. The officers ate their breakfast
almost in silence in that mutilated room, which looked dull in the rain, and
melancholy under its vanquished appearance, although its old, oak floor had
become as solid as the stone floor of a public house.
When they had finished
eating, and were smoking and drinking they began, as usual, to talk about the
dull life they were leading. The bottles of brandy and of liquors passed from
hand to hand, and all sat back in their chairs and took repeated sips from
their glasses, scarcely removing the long, bent stems, which terminated in
china bowls, that were painted in a manner to delight a Hottentot, from their
mouths.
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 thick cloud of strong tobacco smoke, and they
seemed to be sunk in a state of drowsy, stupid intoxication, in that dull state
of drunkenness of men who have nothing to do, when suddenly, the baron sat up,
and said: “By 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 grave, heavy German countenance, said: “What, captain?”
He thought for a few
moments, and then replied: “What? Well, 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,
who will bring us 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
got up, ran round their chief, and said: “Let the captain have his own 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 wagon belonging
to the military train, covered with a miller’s till, galloped off as fast as
four horses could take it, under the pouring rain, and 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 dull, and Lieutenant von
Grossling said with conviction, that the sky was clearing up, while
Mademoiselle Fifi did not seem to be able to keep in his place. 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 moustache, 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 château,
the lawful owner, Count 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, so that, as he was very rich and had good taste,
the large drawing-room, which opened into the dining-room, had looked like the
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
knick-knacks; small vases, statuettes, groups in Dresden china, and grotesque
Chinese figures, old ivory, and Venetian glass, which filled the large room
with their precious and fantastical 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 have a mine, and on that occasion
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 German tinder into it, through the spout. Then he lighted
it, and took this infernal machine into the next room; but he came back
immediately, and shut the door. The Germans all stood expectantly, their faces
full of childish, smiling curiosity, and as soon as the explosion had shaken
the château, 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 in such a
Neronic fashion, and which was strewn with the fragments of works of art. He
went out first, and said, with a smile: “He managed that very well!”
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
gone into the room for a glass of cognac, went up to it.
The moist air blew into the
room, and brought a sort of moist dust with it, which powdered their beards.
They looked at the tall trees, which were dripping with the 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
everyone, for twenty-five miles around, praised Abbé Chantavoine’s firmness and
heroism, in venturing to proclaim the public morning by the obstinate silence
of his church bells.
The whole village grew
enthusiastic over his resistance, and was ready to back up their pastor and to
risk anything, as they looked upon that silent protest as the safeguard of the
national honor. It seemed to the peasants that thus they had 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 that inoffensive courage, and as the
people in the whole country round showed themselves obliging and compliant
towards them, they willingly tolerated their silent patriotism. Only little
Baron Wilhelm 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 he 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
like a wheedling woman, in the tender voice of some mistress who wishes to
obtain something, but the commandant would not yield, and to console herself,
Mademoiselle Fifi made a mine in the château.
The five men stood there
together for some minutes, drawing 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 own duties, while the captain
had plenty to do in seeing about the dinner.
When they met again, as it
was growing dark, they began to laugh at seeing each other as dandified 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, and had only kept
his moustache on, 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 soon the wagon drove up at a gallop with its four horses,
which were splashed up to their backs, steaming and panting, and five women got
out at the bottom of the steps, five handsome girls whom a comrade of the
captain, to whom Le Devoir had taken his card, had selected
with care.
They had not required much
pressing, as they were sure of being well paid, for 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 the state of affairs. “It is a
part of our business, so it must be done,” they said as they drove along; no
doubt to allay some slight, secret scruples of conscience.
They went into the
dining-room immediately, which looked still more dismal in its dilapidated
state, 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 the look of a bandit’s inn, where
they were supping after committing a robbery, to the place. The captain was
radiant, and took hold of the women as if he were familiar with them; appraising
them, kissing them, sniffing them, valuing them for what they were worth as ladies
of pleasure; 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 wound the
hierarchy. Therefore, so as to avoid all discussion, jarring, and suspicion of
partiality, he placed them all in a line 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 confirmed 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 were very much alike in look
and person, from their daily practice of love, and their life in common in
houses of public accommodation.
The three younger men wished
to carry off their women immediately, under the pretext of finding them brushes
and soap; but the captain wisely opposed this, for he said they were quite fit
to sit down to dinner, and that those who went up would wish for a change when
they came down, and so would disturb the other couples, 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 pretense 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 possessor 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 neighbors, but Baron von Kelweinstein gave the reins to all
his vicious propensities, beamed, made obscene remarks, and seemed on fire with
his crown of red hair. He paid them compliments in French from the other side
of the Rhine, and sputtered out gallant remarks, only fit for a low pot-house,
from between his two broken teeth.
They did not understand
him, however, and their intelligence did not seem to be awakened until he
uttered nasty words and broad expressions, which were mangled by his accent.
Then all began to laugh at once, like mad 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, becoming themselves once more, and opening the door to their usual
habits, they kissed the moustaches on the right and left of them, pinched their
arms, uttered furious 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,
intoxicated by that female flesh which was displayed to their sight and touch,
grew very amorous, shouted and broke the plates and dishes, while the soldiers
behind them waited on them stolidly. The commandant was the only one who put
any restraint upon himself.
Mademoiselle Fifi had taken
Rachel onto his knees, and, getting excited, at one moment kissed the little
black curls on her neck, inhaling the pleasant warmth of her body, and all the
savor of her person, through the slight space there was between her dress and
her skin, and at another he pinched her furiously through the material, 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, as if to make her part
of himself, and put his lips in a long kiss on the Jewess’s rosy mouth, until
she lost her breath; and at last he bit her until a stream of blood ran down
her chin and onto 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 another, 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 excess of alcoholic patriotism,
he cried: “To our victories over France!”
Drunk as they were, the women
were silent, and Rachel turned round with a shudder, and said: “Look here, I
know some Frenchmen, in whose presence you would not dare to 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, like he had looked at the portrait
before he destroyed it with revolver bullets, 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
jumped off his knees with a bound, and threw herself into her chair, while he
rose, 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, and then, the little marquis put his
champagne glass, which had just been refilled, onto 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 and poured the amber-colored wine onto her black
hair as if to baptize her, and broke into a hundred fragments, as it fell onto
the floor. With trembling lips, she defied the looks of the officer who was
still laughing, and she stammered out, in a voice choked with rage: “That
. . . that . . . that . . . is not true for you
shall certainly not have any French women.”
He sat down again, so as to
laugh at his ease, and trying ineffectually to speak in the Parisian accent, he
said: “That is good, very good! Then, what did you come here for, 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 he would strike her, she, almost mad with passion, took up a small
dessert knife with a silver blade from the table, and stabbed him in the neck,
just above the breast bone. 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 Lieutenant
Otto’s legs, 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 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 they 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 him out, 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 uttered as a call, 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 such a 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 turned punished his
inferiors. The general had said: “One does not go to war in order to amuse
oneself, and to caress prostitutes.” And 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 Château d’Ville 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 funereal
knell in a lively manner, as if a friendly hand were caressing it. At night it
sounded 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 by 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 secretly
nourished 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 afterwards, a
patriot who had no prejudices, and who liked her because of her bold deed, and
who afterwards loved her for herself, married her, and made a lady of her, who
was quite as good as many others.
1882.
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