She sprang off his knees and fell back on her chair.  He rose, held out his glass over the table and repeated:  “France, the French, their fields, their woods and their houses belong to us!”

The others, who were thoroughly intoxicated, suddenly shaken by military enthusiasm, the enthusiasm of brutes, seized their glasses and shouted vociferously:  “Long live Prussia!” and emptied them at a draught.

The girls did not protest, reduced to silence and frightened.  Even Rachel kept silent, unable to reply.

Then the little Markgraf placed on the head of the Jewess his glass of Champaign, refilled, and said—­“The women of France belong to us!”

She jumped up so quickly that the glass was upset and spilled the yellow wine in her black hair, as for a baptism; it fell broken to pieces on the floor.  Her lips quivering, she looked defiantly at the officer; the latter kept laughing; she stammered in a voice choked with rage:  “That, that is not true! you shall never have the women of France!”

He sat down to laugh at his ease and tried to imitate the Parisian accent:  “That is a good one! that is a good one!  And what are you doing here, you little one?”

Confused, at first, she did not answer, as she did not, in her excitement, understand fully what he said; then, as soon as the meaning of it dawned on her mind, she shouted at him indignantly and vehemently:  “I, I, I am not a woman!  I am a prostitute! and that is all a Prussian deserves!”

Hardly had she finished, that he slapped her face violently; but, as he was raising his hand again, maddened with rage she caught on the table a small silver-bladed dessert knife, and so quickly that nobody noticed it, she stabbed him right in the neck, just at the hollow where the breast begins.

A word, that he was about to mutter, was cut short in his throat, and he remained stiff, with his mouth open and a frightful look.

All shouted and got up tumultuously; but having thrown her chair in the legs of Lieutenant Otto, who collapsed and fell down at full length, she ran to the window, opened it before they could catch her, and jumped out in the night, under the rain that was still falling.

In two minutes Mademoiselle Fifi was dead.  Then Fritz and Otto drew their swords and wanted to massacre the women, who threw themselves to their knees; the Major, not without difficulty, prevented the butchery and had the four bewildered girls locked up in a room and guarded by two soldiers; and then, as if he were disposing his men for battle, he organized the search for the fugitive[*], quite certain that he would catch her.

[*][Note from Brett:  The original uses “fugutive,” but, again, I think this is a typographical error as there is no such word.]

Fifty men, whipped by threats, were launched on her trail in the park; two hundred others searched the woods and all the houses of the Valley.