and on to her bodice.
For the second time she looked him full in the face, and as she bathed
the wound, she said: "You will have to pay for, that!" But he merely
laughed a hard laugh and said: "I will pay."
At dessert champagne was served, and the commandant rose, and in the
same voice in which he would have drunk to the health of the Empress
Augusta, he drank: "To our ladies!" And a series of toasts began, toasts
worthy of the lowest soldiers and of drunkards, mingled with obscene
jokes, which were made still more brutal by their ignorance of the
language. They got up, one after the other, trying to say something
witty, forcing themselves to be funny, and the women, who were so drunk
that they almost fell off their chairs, with vacant looks and clammy
tongues applauded madly each time.
The captain, who no doubt wished to impart an appearance of gallantry
to the orgy, raised his glass again and said: "To our victories over
hearts." and, thereupon Lieutenant Otto, who was a species of bear from
the Black Forest, jumped up, inflamed and saturated with drink, and
suddenly seized by an access of alcoholic patriotism, he cried: "To our
victories over France!"
Drunk as they were, the women were silent, but Rachel turned round,
trembling, and said: "See here, I know some Frenchmen in whose presence
you would not dare say that." But the little count, still holding her
on his knee, began to laugh, for the wine had made him very merry, and
said: "Ha! ha! ha! I have never met any of them myself. As soon as we
show ourselves, they run away!" The girl, who was in a terrible rage,
shouted into his face: "You are lying, you dirty scoundrel!"
For a moment he looked at her steadily with his bright eyes upon her, as
he had looked at the portrait before he destroyed it with bullets from
his revolver, and then he began to laugh: "Ah! yes, talk about them, my
dear! Should we be here now if they were brave?" And, getting excited,
he exclaimed: "We are the masters! France belongs to us!" She made one
spring from his knee and threw herself into her chair, while he arose,
held 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, f
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