Mademoiselle Fifi
Major, Count von Farlsberg, the Prussian commandant, had nearly finished reading his letters, lying back in a huge, tapestry-covered armchair, with his booted feet on the beautiful marble fireplace, where his spurs had made two holes, which grew deeper every day, during the three months that he had been in the château of Uville.
A cup of coffee was smoking on a small, inlaid table, which was stained with liqueurs, burnt by cigars, notched by the penknife of the victorious officer, who occasionally would stop while sharpening a pencil, to cut figures, make a drawing on the charming piece of furniture, just as it took his fancy.
When he had read his letters and run through the German newspapers, which his orderly had brought him, he got up, and after throwing three or four enormous pieces of green wood on to the fire, for these gentlemen were gradually cutting down the park for firewood—he went to the window. The rain was descending in torrents, that Normandy rain, which looked as if it were being poured out by some furious hand, a slanting rain, thick as a curtain, which formed a sort of wall with diagonal stripes, and deluged everything, a regular rain, such as one frequently experiences in the neighbourhood of Rouen, which is the watering-pot of France.
For a long time the officer looked at the sodden lawns and at the swollen Andelle beyond, overflowing its banks; and he was drumming a Rhineland waltz on the windowpanes, with his fingers, when a noise made him turn round; it was his second in command, Baron von Kelweinstein, now holding the rank of captain.
The major was a giant, with broad shoulders, and a long, fair-like beard, that spread fan-shaped on his chest. His whole, tall person suggested the idea of a military peacock, a peacock who was carrying his tail spread out from his chin. He had cold, gentle, blue eyes, and one cheek had been slashed by a sabre in the war with Austria; he was said to be a good sort and a brave officer.
The captain, a short, red-faced man, with a big tight-belted stomach, had his fair hair cropped quite close to his head, and in certain lights he almost looked as if he had been rubbed over with phosphorus. He had lost two front teeth one festive night, though he could not quite remember how, and this made his speech so thick that he could not always be understood, and he had a bald patch on the top of his head, tonsured like a monk, with a fringe of curly, bright, golden hair round the circle of bare skin.
The commandant shook hands with him, and gulped down his cup of coffee (the sixth that morning), while he listened to his subordinate’s report of what had occurred; and then they both went to the window, and declared that things were not very lively. The major, who was a quiet man, with a wife at home, put up with everything; but the captain, a regular rake, a frequenter of low resorts, and very partial 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 automatons appeared, and his mere presence announced that lunch was ready. In the dining room, they met three junior officers: a lieutenant, Otto von Grossling, and two second lieutenants, Fritz Scheuneburg, and Marquis von Eyrick, a very short, fair-haired man, who was proud and brutal towards his men, harsh towards the conquered, and as explosive as a rifle.
Since their arrival 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, of his pale face, on which his budding moustache 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 château d’Uville was a magnificent long room, whose fine old mirrors, that were cracked by pistol bullets, and whose Flemish tapestry, which was 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 were all smoking long porcelain pipes, which had been inserted into holes in the canvas, while in her ancient, faded-gold frame, a noble dame, very tightly laced, proudly exhibited an enormous moustache, drawn with a piece of charcoal. The officers ate their lunch almost in silence in that mutilated room, which looked dull in the rain, and melancholy under its vanquished appearance, although its old, oak floor had become as solid as the stone floor of a tavern.
When they had finished eating, and were smoking and drinking they began, as usual, to talk about the dull life they were leading. The bottles of brandy and liqueurs passed from hand to hand, and all sat back in their chairs and took repeated sips from their glasses, scarcely removing from their mouths the long, bent stems with egg-shaped china bowls, that were painted in a manner to delight a Hottentot.
As soon as their glasses were empty, they filled them again, with a gesture of resigned weariness, but Mademoiselle Fifi broke his each time, and a soldier immediately gave him another. They were enveloped in a thick cloud of strong tobacco smoke, and they seemed to be sunk in a state of drowsy, stupid intoxication, in that dreary drunkenness of men who have nothing to do. Suddenly, the baron, stirred to revolt, sat up, and said: “By heavens! This cannot go on; we must think of something to do.” And on hearing this, lieutenant Otto and second lieutenant Fritz, who preeminently possessed the grave, heavy German countenance, said: “What, captain?”
He thought for a few moments, and then replied: “What? Well, we must get up a spree, if the commandant will allow us.” “What sort of a spree, captain?” the major asked, taking his pipe out of his mouth. “I will arrange all that, commandant,” the baron said. “I will send old ‘Duty’ to Rouen, to bring out some girls here. I know where they can be found. We will have supper here, as all the materials are at hand, and, at least, we shall have a jolly evening.”
Count von Farlsberg shrugged his shoulders with a smile: “You’re mad, my dear fellow.”
But all the other officers got up, and came crowding round their chief, with entreaties: “Do let him, sir! it is terribly dull here.” Finally the major yielded. “Very well,” he replied, and the baron immediately sent for “Duty.” He was an old noncommissioned officer, who had never been seen to smile, but who carried out all the orders of his superiors to the letter, no matter what they might be. He stood there, with an impassive face, while he received the baron’s instructions, and then went out. Five minutes later a large military wagon, with a hooped tarpaulin cover, galloped off as fast as four horses could take it, under the pouring rain. At once a revivifying thrill seemed to run through their minds; they stopped lounging, their faces brightened, and they began to talk.
Although it was raining as hard as ever, the major declared that it was not so dull, and Lieutenant von Grossling said with conviction, that the sky was clearing up, while Mademoiselle Fifi did not seem to be able to keep still. He got up, and sat down again, and his bright eyes seemed to be looking for something to destroy. Suddenly, looking at the lady with the moustache, the young fellow pulled out his revolver, and said: “You shall not see it.” And without leaving his seat he aimed, and with two successive bullets cut out both the eyes of the portrait.
“Let us make a mine!” he then exclaimed, and the conversation was suddenly interrupted, as if they had found some fresh and powerful subject of interest. The mine was his invention, his method of destruction, and his favorite amusement.
When he left the château, the lawful owner, Count Fernand d’Amoys d’Uville, had not had time to carry away or to hide anything, except the plate, which had been stowed away in a hole made in one of the walls, so that, as he was very rich and had good taste, the large drawing room, which opened into the dining room, had looked like the gallery in a museum, before his precipitate flight.
Expensive oil-paintings, water colours, and drawings hung against the walls, while on the tables, on the hanging shelves, and in elegant cabinets, there were a thousand knickknacks; small vases, statuettes, groups in Dresden china, and grotesque Chinese figures, old ivory, and Venetian glass, which filled the large room with their precious and fantastical array.
Scarcely anything was left now; not that the things had been stolen, for the major would not have allowed that, but Mademoiselle Fifi from time to time “made a mine,” and on those occasions all the officers thoroughly enjoyed themselves for five minutes. The little marquis went into the drawing room to get what he wanted, and he brought back a small, delicate and very valuable Chinese teapot, which he filled with gunpowder, and carefully introduced a piece of tinder into the spout. Then he lighted it, and took this infernal machine into the next room; but he came back immediately, and shut the door. The Germans all stood expectantly, their faces full of childish, smiling curiosity, and as soon as the explosion had shaken the château, they all rushed in at once.
Mademoiselle Fifi, who got in first, clapped his hands in delight at the sight of a terra-cotta Venus, whose head had been blown off at last, and each picked up pieces of porcelain, and wondered at the strange shape of the fragments, examining the latest damage, and disputing as to whether some of the havoc was not due to a previous explosion; while the major was looking with a paternal eye at the large drawing room, which had been wrecked in this Neronic fashion, and was strewn with the fragments of works of art. He went out first, and said, with a smile: “This time it was a great success!”
But there was such a cloud of smoke in the dining room, mingled with the tobacco smoke, that they could not breathe, so the commandant opened the window, and all the officers, who had gone into the room for a glass of cognac, went up to it.
The moist air blew into the room, with a scent of flooded country, and a powdering of rain that sprinkled their beards. They looked at the tall trees, which were dripping with the rain, at the broad valley, which was covered with a mist of dark, low-hanging clouds, and at the church spire in the distance, which rose up like a grey point in the beating rain.
The bells had not rung since their arrival. That was the only resistance which the invaders had met with in the neighbourhood. The parish priest had not refused to take in and to feed the Prussian soldiers; he had several times even drunk a bottle of beer or claret with the hostile commandant, who often employed him as a friendly intermediary; but it was no use to ask him for a single stroke of the bells; he would sooner have allowed himself to be shot. That was his way of protesting against the invasion, a peaceful and silent protest, the only one, he said, which was suitable to a priest, who was a man of peace, not war; and everyone, for ten miles around, praised the Abbé Chantavoine’s firmness and heroism, in venturing to proclaim the public mourning by the obstinate silence of his church bells.
The whole village grew enthusiastic over his resistance, and was ready to back up their pastor and to risk anything, as they looked upon that silent protest as the safeguard of the national honour. It seemed to the peasants that thus they had deserved better of their country than Belfort and Strasbourg, that they had set an equally valuable example, and that the name of their little village would become immortalized by that; but with that exception, they refused their Prussian conquerors nothing.
The commandant and his officers laughed among themselves at that inoffensive courage, and as the people in the whole country round showed themselves obliging and compliant towards them, they willingly tolerated their silent patriotism. Only the little Marquis Wilhelm would have liked to make the bell ring. He was very angry at his superior’s politic compliance with the priest’s scruples, and every day he begged the commandant to allow him to sound “ding-dong, ding-dong,” just once, only just once, just by way of a joke. And he asked it like a wheedling woman, in the tender voice of some mistress who wishes to obtain something, but the commandant would not yield, and to console himself Mademoiselle Fifi used to make a “mine” in the château d’Uville.
The five men stood there together for some minutes, inhaling the moist air, and at last, Lieutenant Fritz said, with a thick laugh: “The ladies will certainly not have fine weather for their drive.” Then they separated, each to his own duties, while the captain had plenty to do in seeing about the dinner.
When they met again, as it was growing dark, they began to laugh at seeing each other as dandified and smart as on the day of a grand review. The commandant’s hair did not look so grey as it was in the morning, and the captain had shaved, and had only kept his moustache on, which made him look as if he had a streak of fire under his nose.
In spite of the rain, they left the window open, and one of them went to listen from time to time, and at a quarter past six the baron said he heard a rumbling in the distance. They all rushed down, and soon the wagon drove up at a gallop with its four horses, which were splashed up to their backs, steaming and panting, and five women got out at the bottom of the steps, five handsome girls whom a comrade of the captain, to whom old “Duty” had taken his card, had selected with care.
They had not required much pressing, as they were sure of being well paid, for they had got to know the Prussians in the three months during which they had had to do with them, and so they resigned themselves to the men as they did the state of affairs. “It is all in the day’s work,” they said as they drove along; no doubt to allay some secret scruples of conscience which remained.
They went into the dining room immediately, which looked still more dismal in its dilapidated state, when it was lighted up; while the table, covered with choice dishes, the beautiful china and glass, and the plate, which had been found in the hole in the wall where its owner had hidden it, gave the look of a bandit’s inn, where they were supping after committing a robbery, to the place. The captain was radiant, and took hold of the women as if he were familiar with them; appraising them, kissing them, sniffing them, appraising their value as ladies of pleasure; and when the three young men wanted to appropriate one each, he opposed them authoritatively, reserving to himself the right to apportion them justly, according to their several ranks, so as not to violate the laws of precedence. Therefore, so as to avoid all discussion, jarring, and suspicion of partiality, he placed them all in a line according to height, and addressing the tallest, he said in a voice of command:
“What is your name?” “Pamela,” she replied, raising her voice. And then he said: “Number one, called Pamela, is adjudged to the commandant.” Then, having kissed Blondine, the second, as a sign of proprietorship, he proffered stout Amanda to Lieutenant Otto, Eva La Tomate, to Second Lieutenant Fritz, and Rachel the shortest of them all, a very young, dark girl, with eyes as black as ink, a Jewess, whose snub nose confirmed the rule which allots hooked noses to all her race, to the youngest officer, frail Count Wilhelm von Eyrick.
They were all pretty and plump, without any distinctive features, and all were very much alike in look and person, from their daily practice of love, and their life in common in brothels.
The three younger men wished to carry off their women immediately, under the pretext of finding them brushes and soap; but the captain wisely opposed this, for he said they were quite fit to sit down to dinner, and that those who went up would wish for a change when they came down, and so would disturb the other couples, and his experience in such matters carried the day. They contented themselves with many kisses, kisses of anticipation.
Suddenly Rachel choked, and began to cough until the tears came into her eyes, while smoke came through her nostrils. Under pretence of kissing her, the count had blown a whiff of tobacco into her mouth. She did not fly into a rage, and did not say a word, but she looked at her possessor with latent hatred in her dark eyes.
They sat down to dinner. The commandant seemed delighted; he made Pamela sit on his right, and Blondine on his left, and said, as he unfolded his table napkin: “That was a delightful idea of yours, Captain.”
Lieutenants Otto and Fritz, who were as polite as if they had been with fashionable ladies, rather intimidated their neighbours, but Baron von Kelweingstein gave rein to all his vicious propensities, beamed, made obscene remarks, and seemed on fire with his crown of red hair. He made gallant phrases in French from the other side of the Rhine, and his pothouse compliments sputtered out through the gap made by his broken teeth, reached the girls amid a volley of saliva.
They did not understand him, however, and their intelligence did not seem to be awakened until he uttered nasty words and broad expressions, which were mangled by his accent. Then they all began to shriek with laughter, falling into the laps of their neighbours and repeating the words, which the baron then began to say all wrong, in order that he might have the pleasure of hearing them say dirty things. They gave him as much of that stuff as he wanted, for they were drunk after the first bottle of wine, and, becoming themselves once more, and opening the door to their usual habits, they kissed the moustaches on the right and left of them, pinched the men’s arms, uttered furious cries, drank out of every glass, and sang French couplets, and bits of German songs, which they had picked up in their daily intercourse with the enemy.
Soon the men themselves, intoxicated by that female flesh which was displayed to their sight and touch, grew very amorous, shouted and broke the plates and dishes, while the soldiers behind them waited on them stolidly. The commandant was the only one who put any restraint upon himself.
Mademoiselle Fifi had taken Rachel on to his knees, and, getting deliberately excited, at one moment kissed the little black curls on her neck, inhaling the pleasant warmth of her body, and all the savour of her person, through the slight space there was between her dress and her skin, and at another he pinched her furiously through her dress, and made her scream, for he was seized by a species of ferocity, and tormented by his desire to hurt. He often held her close to him, as if to make her part of himself, and pressed his lips in a long kiss on the Jewess’s rosy mouth, until she lost her breath; but suddenly he bit her until a stream of blood ran down her chin 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 another, 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 as a species of bear from the Black Forest, jumped up, inflamed and saturated with drink, and suddenly seized by an excess of alcoholic patriotism, he cried: “To our victories over France!”
Drunk as they were, the women were silent, and Rachel turned round with a shudder, and said: “Look here, I know some Frenchmen, in whose presence you would not dare to 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 revolver bullets, 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 jumped off his knees with a bound, and threw herself into her chair, while he rose, 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, for they were reduced to silence, and were afraid. Even Rachel did not say a word, as she had no reply to make, and then, the little marquis 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 and poured the amber-coloured wine on to her black hair as if to baptise 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 with a 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 the 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 with a silver blade from the table, and stabbed him in the neck, just above the breast bone. 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 noisily; 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, and 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, and then he organised the pursuit of the fugitive, as carefully as if they were about to engage in a skirmish, feeling quite sure that she would be caught. Fifty men, spurred on by threats, were sent to search the park. Two hundred more scoured the woods, and all the houses in the valley.
The table, which had been cleared immediately, now served as a deathbed, 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 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 ardour of that chase, and in the confusion of that night pursuit, but they had not caught Rachel.
Then the inhabitants of the district were terrorised, 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 Count 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 the Marquis von Eyrick.
Contrary to all expectation, the priest showed himself humble and most respectful, and when Mademoiselle Fifi’s body left the Château 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 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 neighbourhood 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, and 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, where the proprietress, who thought that she was dead, was very glad to see her.
A short time afterwards, a patriot who had no prejudices, and who liked her because of her bold deed, and who afterwards loved her for herself, married her, and made a lady of her, who was quite as good as many others.