Mademoiselle Fifi
Major, Count von Farlsberg, the Prussian commandant, had nearly finished reading his letters, lying back in a huge, tapestry-covered armchair, with his booted feet on the beautiful marble fireplace, where his spurs had made two holes, which grew deeper every day, during the three months that he had been in the château of Uville.
A cup of coffee was smoking on a small, inlaid table, which was stained with liqueurs, burnt by cigars, notched by the penknife of the victorious officer, who occasionally would stop while sharpening a pencil, to cut figures, make a drawing on the charming piece of furniture, just as it took his fancy.
When he had read his letters and run through the German newspapers, which his orderly had brought him, he got up, and after throwing three or four enormous pieces of green wood on to the fire, for these gentlemen were gradually cutting down the park for firewood—he went to the window. The rain was descending in torrents, that Normandy rain, which looked as if it were being poured out by some furious hand, a slanting rain, thick as a curtain, which formed a sort of wall with diagonal stripes, and deluged everything, a regular rain, such as one frequently experiences in the neighbourhood of Rouen, which is the watering-pot of France.
For a long time the officer looked at the sodden lawns and at the swollen Andelle beyond, overflowing its banks; and he was drumming a Rhineland waltz on the windowpanes, with his fingers, when a noise made him turn round; it was his second in command, Baron von Kelweinstein, now holding the rank of captain.
The major was a giant, with broad shoulders, and a long, fair-like beard, that spread fan-shaped on his chest. His whole, tall person suggested the idea of a military peacock, a peacock who was carrying his tail spread out from his chin. He had cold, gentle, blue eyes, and one cheek had been slashed by a sabre in the war with Austria; he was said to be a good sort and a brave officer.
The captain, a short, red-faced man, with a big tight-belted stomach, had his fair 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 festive night, though he could not quite remember how, and this made his speech so thick that he could not always be understood, and he had a bald patch on the top of his head, tonsured like a monk, with a fringe of curly, bright, golden hair round the circle of bare skin.
The commandant shook hands with him, and gulped down 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 things were not very lively. The major, who was a quiet man, with a wife at home, put up with everything; but the captain, a regular rake, a frequenter of low resorts, and very partial 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 automatons appeared, and his mere presence announced that lunch was ready. In the dining room, they met three junior officers: a lieutenant, Otto von Grossling, and two second lieutenants, Fritz Scheuneburg, and Marquis von Eyrick, a very short, fair-haired man, who was proud and brutal towards his men, harsh towards the conquered, and as explosive as a rifle.
Since their arrival 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 d’Uville 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 in her ancient, faded-gold frame, a noble dame, very tightly laced, proudly exhibited an enormous moustache, drawn with a piece of charcoal. The officers ate their lunch 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 tavern.
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 liqueurs passed from hand to hand, and all sat back
