eld 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 soldi