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 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. This defect 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, being in
the habit of frequenting low resorts, and 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 Count von Eyrick a very short,
fair-haired man, who was proud and brutal toward men, harsh toward
prisoners, and very violent.

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, from
his pale face, on which his budding mustache 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 chateau was a magnificent long room, whose fine
old mirrors, now cracked by pistol bullets, and Flemish tapestry, now
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 we