He sat down again, so as to laugh at his ease, and trying ineffectually to speak with a 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 noisily; 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 organised 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. Fifty men, spurred on by threats, were sent to search the park. Two hundred more scoured the woods, and all the houses in the valley.
The table, which had been cleared immediately, now served as a deathbed, 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 ardour of that chase, and in the confusion of that night pursuit, but they had not caught Rachel.
Then the inhabitants of the district were terrorised, 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 oneself, and to caress prostitutes.” And Count 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 the Marquis von Eyrick.
Contrary to all expectation, the priest showed himself humble and most respectful, and when Mademoiselle Fifi’s body left the Château 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 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 anyone 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 neighbourhood 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.
My dear Colette—I do not know whether you remember a verse of M. Sainte-Beuve which we have read together, and which has remained fixed in my memory; for me this verse speaks eloquently; and it has very often reassured my poor heart, especially for some time past. Here it is:
“To be born, to live, and die in the same house.”
I am now all alone in this house where I was born, where I
