ers, 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 wa