e, and were
afraid. Even Rachel did not say a word, as she had no reply to make,
and then the little count put his champagne glass, which had just been
refilled, on to 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 to her black hair as if to baptize her, and broke into
a hundred fragments as it fell on to the floor. With trembling lips,
she defied the looks of the officer, who was still laughing, and she
stammered out, in a voice choked with rage: "That--that--that--is not
true,--for you shall certainly not have any French women."

He sat down again, so as to laugh at his ease, and trying ineffectually
to speak in the 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 her 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 from the table, and
stabbed him right in the neck, just above the breastbone. 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 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. 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. 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 Fifi out, and the four officers made for the window, rigid
and sobered, with the stern faces of soldiers on duty,