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 ardor of that chase, and
in the confusion of such a 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 oneself, and to caress
prostitutes." And 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 Count von Eyrick.

Contrary to all expectation, the priest showed himself humble and most
respectful, and when Mademoiselle Fifi's body left the Chateau
d'Urville 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 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 was living
there in grief and solitude, 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,
wh