Mademoiselle Fifi
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Guy de Maupassant >> Mademoiselle Fifi
Mademoiselle Fifi had taken Rachel on his knees and deliberately
working himself up to a pitch of frenzy, kissed madly the ebony
curls on her neck, inhaling through the thin interstice between
the gown and her skin, the sweet warmth of her body and the full
fragrance of her person; through the silk, he pinched her furiously
making her scream, seized with a rabid ferocity and distracted by
his craving for destruction. Often also holding her in his arms,
squeezing her as if he wanted to mix her with himself, he pressed
long kisses on the fresh lips of the Jewess and embraced her until
he lost breath; but suddenly he bit her so deep that a dash of
blood flowed down the chin of the young girl and ran into her waist.
Once more she looked at him, straight in the face, and washing the
wound, she muttered: "You will have to pay for it!" He began to
laugh, with a harsh laugh: "All right, I shall pay!" said he.
At dessert, champagne was served. The Commander rose and with the
same tone as he would have taken to drink the health of the Empress
Augusta, he said:
"To our ladies!" And a series of toasts were then drunk, toasts
with the gallantry and manner of drunkards and troopers, mixed
with obscene jokes, rendered still more brutal by their ignorance
of the language.
They were rising one after the other, trying to be witty, making
efforts to be funny; and the women, so intoxicated that they were
hardly able to sit up, with their vacant look, their heavy, clammy
tongues, applauded vociferously each time.
The Captain, no doubt intending to lend the orgy an atmosphere
of gallantry, raised once more his glass and pronounced: "To our
victories over the hearts!"
Then Lieutenant Otto, a kind of bear from the Black Forest, jumped
up, inflamed, saturated with drinks, and suddenly, carried away by
alcoholic patriotism, he cried: "To our victories over France!"
Intoxicated as they were, the women kept silent and Rachel,
shuddering with rage, retorted: "Well! I know some Frenchmen in
whose presence you would not dare say such things."
But the little Markgraf, still holding her on his knees, began to
laugh, having become exceedingly exhilarated by the wine: "Ah!
Ah! Ah! I never met any myself. As soon as they see us, they run
away."
The girl exasperated, shouted in his face: "You lie, you dirty
pig!"
For a second he fixed on her his clear eyes, as he used to fix
them on the paintings the canvas of which he riddled with revolver
shots; then he laughed: "Oh yes! let us speak of it, you beauty!
Would we be here if they were brave?"--and he became more and more
excited: "We are their masters; France belongs to us!"
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.
The table, cleared in an instant, was turned into a mortuary bed,
and the four officers, straight, rigid and sobered up, with the
harsh faces of warriors on duty stood near the windows, searching
and scanning the night.
The torrential rain was continuing. An incessant rippling filled
the darkness, a floating murmur of water that falls and water that
runs, water that drops and water that gushes forth.
Suddenly a rifle shot was heard; then another far away; and thus
for four hours one heard from time to time, near or distant reports
of firing and rallying cries, strange words shouted like a call by
guttural voices.
At daybreak everybody returned. Two soldiers had been killed and
three others wounded by their comrades in the eagerness of the
chase and the confusion of the nocturnal pursuit.
They had not been able to find Rachel.
Then the inhabitants were terrorized, the houses searched most
carefully, the whole region combed, beaten, scoured. The Jewess
did not seem to have left any trace of her passage.
The General, who had been notified, ordered to hush the matter up
so as not to give a bad example in the Army, and he disciplined
the Commander who, in turn, punished his subordinates. The General
had said: "We do not go to war to indulge in orgies and caress
prostitutes." And exasperated Graf Farlsberg resolved to take
revenge on the country.
As he needed a pretext to take drastic measures without constraint,
he summoned the Priest and ordered him to ring the Church bell at
the burial of Markgraf von Eyrik.
Contrary to general expectation, the priest showed himself docile,
humble, full of attention. And when the body of Mademoiselle Fifi,
carried by soldiers, preceded, surrounded and followed by soldiers,
who marched with loaded rifles, left the Chateau d'Urville, on the
way to the cemetery, for the first time the bell sounded the knell
in a gay tone, as if a friendly hand had been fondling it.
It rang also in the evening, and the next day and every day;
it chimed as much as they wanted. Sometimes also, in the dead of
night, it would ring all alone and throw two or three notes in the
darkness, seized by a singular mirth, awakened one knew not why.
All the peasants in the neighborhood then thought that the bell had
been bewitched; and no one except the Priest and the Sexton came
near the bell-tower.
A poor girl was living up there, in fear and solitude, secretly
fed by those two men.
She remained there until the German troops departed. Then, one
evening, the Priest having borrowed the baker's cart, drove himself
and the prisoner as far as the Gate of Rouen. When they reached
the Gate, the Priest kissed her; she got off the cart and quickly
went back to the disreputable house, the keeper of which had thought
that she was dead.
She was taken out of the house of prostitution shortly afterwards
by a patriot without prejudice, who loved her for her brave act,
and then, having loved her for herself, married her and made of
her a lady as good as many others.
Boule de Suif
For several days in succession the remnants of a routed army had been
passing through the City. They were not troops, but disorganized
hordes. The men had long, dirty beards and tattered uniforms; they
walked with a listless gait, without flag nor formation. All seemed
exhausted, worn out, incapable of thought or resolve, marching
only by force of habit and dropping with fatigue as soon as they
stopped. One saw for the most part hastily mobilized men, peaceful
business men and rentiers, bending under the weight of their rifles;
young snappy volunteers, easily scared, but full of enthusiasm,
ready to attack as well as to retreat; then, among them, a few
red trousers, fragments of a division decimated in a great battle;
despondent artillery men aligned with these non-descript infantrymen;
and there and there the shining helmet of a heavy footed dragon
who had difficulty in keeping step with the quicker pace of the
soldiers of the line.
Legions of francs-tireurs with heroic names: "Avengers of
Defeat"--"Citizens of the Tombs"--"Brothers in Death"--passed in
their turn looking like bandits.
Their leaders, former drapers or grain merchants, tallow or soap
dealers, warriors for the circumstance, who had been commissioned
officers on account of their money or the length of their mustaches;
covered with arms, flannel and stripes, they were talking in
a high-sounding voice, discussing plans of campaign, and claiming
that they alone supported on their shoulders agonizing France; as
a matter of fact, these braggarts were afraid of their own men,
scoundrels often brave to excess, but always ready for pillage and
debauch.
It was rumored that the Prussians were going to enter Rouen.
The National Guard who, for the past two months, had been very
carefully reconnoitering in the neighboring woods, at times shooting
their own sentries and getting ready to fight when a little rabbit
rustled in the bushes, had been mustered out and returned to their
homes. Their arms, uniforms, all their deadly apparel, with which
they had recently frightened the milestones along the national
highways for three leagues around, had suddenly disappeared.
The last of the French soldiers had just crossed the Seine to go
to Pont-Andemer by Saint Sever and Bourg-Achard; and following them
all, their general, desperate, unable to attempt anything with such
non-descript wrecks, himself dismayed in the crushing debacle of a
people accustomed to conquer and now disastrously defeated despite
their legendary bravery, was walking between two orderlies.
Then a profound calm, a trembling and silent expectancy hovered over
the City. Many corpulent well to do citizens, emasculated by the
business life they had led, were anxiously waiting for the victors,
fearing lest they might consider as weapons their roasting spits
or their large kitchen knives.
Life seemed to be at a standstill; the shops were closed and the
streets silent and deserted. Sometimes a citizen, intimidated by
this silence, ran rapidly along the walls.
The anguish of suspense made the citizens desire the arrival of
the enemy.
In the afternoon of the day that followed the departure of the
French troops, a few Uhlans, coming from no one knew where, crossed
the City in a hurry. Then, a little later, a black mass came down
the Ste. Catherine Hill, while two other invading waves appeared
on the Darnetal and Boisguillame roads. The vanguards of the three
corps made their junction at precisely the same time in the Hotel
de Ville Square; and, by all the neighboring roads, the German Army
was arriving, rolling its battalions that made the pavements ring
under their heavy and well measured steps.
Orders shouted in an unknown and guttural voice, rose along the
houses which seemed dead and deserted, while behind the closed
shutters, eyes watched these victorious men, masters of the City,
of property and life by the right of war. The inhabitants, in
their darkened rooms, felt the bewilderment caused by cataclysms,
the great bloody upheavals of the earth against which all human
wisdom and force are of no avail. For the same feeling reappears
whenever the established order of things is upset, when security
ceases to exist, when all that is protected by the laws of men
or those of protected nature, is at the mercy of unreasoning and
ferocious brutality. The earthquake crushing a whole nation under
crumbling houses; the overflowing river swirling the bodies of
drowned peasants along with the dead oxen and the beams torn away
from the roofs, or the glorious army massacring those who defend
themselves, taking away the others as prisoners, pillaging in the
name of the sword and offering thanks to God to the thunder of the
guns, are as many appalling scourges which disconcert any belief
in eternal justice, all the trust we were taught to place in the
protection of heaven and the reason of man.
Small detachments knocked at each door and then disappeared in the
houses. It was occupation after invasion. Now the vanquished had
to show themselves nice to their conquerors.
After a while, once the first terror had abated, a new tranquility
settled down. In many houses the Prussian Officer took his meals
with the family. Some were well bred, and out of politeness, showed
sympathy for France and spoke of their reluctance to participate
in the war. People were grateful for such sentiments; furthermore,
they might have needed their protection any day. By being nice to
them they would possibly have fewer men billeted to their houses.
And why hurt the feelings of a man who had full power over them? To
act in that way would be less bravery than temerity--and temerity
is no longer a failing of the citizens of Rouen, as in the days of
heroic defense when their City became famous. Last of all--supreme
argument derived from French urbanity--they said that they could
allow themselves to be polite in their own houses, provided they
did not exhibit in public too much familiarity with the foreign
soldier. On the streets they passed each other as strangers, but
at home they willingly chatted, and every night the German stayed
up later and later, warming himself at the family fire-place.
Even the City was gradually resuming some of its ordinary aspect.
The French were seldom seen promenading in the Streets, but Prussian
soldiers swarmed. Besides, the officers of the Blue Hussars, who
arrogantly rattled their big instruments of death on the pavements,
did not seem to have for the plain citizens enormously more contempt
than the officers of the French Chasseurs who, the year before,
had been drinking in the same Cafes.
There was, however, something in the air, something subtle
and unknown, an intolerable foreign atmosphere like an offensive
odor--the smell of invasion. It pervaded the houses and the public
places, changed the taste of food and made you feel as if you
were traveling in far distant lands, amid barbarians and dangerous
tribes.
The conquerors exacted money, a great deal of money. The citizens
kept on paying; they could afford to pay, they were rich. But the
more a Norman businessman becomes opulent, the more he suffers when
he has to make any sacrifice, or sees any parcel of his property
pass into the hands of others.
And yet, within a distance of two or three leagues from the City,
down the river, in the direction of Croisset, Dieppendalle or
Biessart, boatmen and fishermen often hauled from the bottom of
the water the body of some German swollen in his uniform, killed
with a knife or by a blow of savate, his head crushed by a stone,
or pushed from a bridge into the water. The mud of the river-bed
buried such obscure, savage and yet legitimate vengeances, unknown
acts of heroism, silent attacks more perilous than battles in the
open, and yet without any of the halo and glamour of glory.
For hatred of the foreigner always arms some intrepid persons ready
to die for an idea.
As the invaders, although subjecting the City to their inflexible
discipline, had committed none of the horrors which rumor credited
them with having perpetrated all along their triumphal march, people
became bolder, and desire to do business belabored again the hearts
of the local merchants. Some of them had large interest in Havre,
which was occupied by the French Army, and they tried to reach that
sea port in going by land to Dieppe and proceeding from there by
boat.
They used the influence of the German Officers, with whom they
had become acquainted, and a special permit was secured from the
General in Chief. Now then, a large four-horse coach having been
engaged for this trip, and ten persons having had their names booked
with the driver, it was decided to leave on a Tuesday morning,
before daybreak, to avoid attracting any crowd.
For some time past the frost had hardened the ground, and on that
particular Monday, at about three o'clock, big black clouds coming
from the North brought the snow which fell without interruption
all that evening and during the whole night.
At half past four in the morning, the travelers met in the courtyard
of the Hotel de Normandie, where they were to take the coach.
They were still half asleep, and shivered with cold under their
wraps. They could not see each other well in the darkness, and
bundled in their heavy winter clothing, their bodies looked like
fat priests in their long cassocks. Two men recognized each other;
a third joined them; they talked:--"I am taking my wife with me--"
said one;--"So am I"--"And I too"--The first speaker continued, "We
shall not come back to Rouen, and if the Prussians should threaten
Havre, we shall cross over to England"--They all had the same plans,
being of similar disposition.
However, the horses were not yet harnessed. A small lantern,
carried by a stable boy, came now and then out of a dark doorway,
and immediately disappeared in another. Horses were stamping the
ground, but their hooves being covered with dung and straw, the
noise of the stamping was deadened; a man's voice talking to the
animals and swearing at them was heard from the rear of the building.
A faint tickle grew soon into a clear and continuous jingling,
rhythmical with the movements of the horses, now stopping, now
resuming in a sudden peal accompanied by the deadened noise of an
iron-shod hoof, pawing the ground.
The door closed suddenly. All the noise ceased. The frozen
passengers stopped talking: they stood motionless and stiff.
An uninterrupted curtain of white, glistening flakes ceaselessly
fell on the ground; it obliterated the forms of things and powdered
them with an icy foam; and in the great silence of the quiet City,
buried under the winter, one could hear nothing save that vague,
nameless rustle of the falling snow--a sensation rather than
a sound--an intermingling of light atoms which seemed to fill the
space and cover the whole world.
The man reappeared with his lantern, leading by a rope a sad-looking
horse who followed him reluctantly. He placed him against the
shaft, fastened the straps, turned around for a long time to make
sure that the harness was properly fixed, for he could use only
one hand, the other holding the lantern. As he was going to bring
the second animal, he noticed that all the travelers were standing
still, already white with snow, and he told them:--"Why don't you
get in the coach? there you would be under shelter at least."
No doubt this had not occurred to them; at once there was a rush
to get in. The three men installed their wives in the rear of the
coach and then got in themselves; one after the other, the remaining
indistinct and snow covered forms took the last seats without
exchanging a single word.
The floor was covered with straw into which the feet sank. The ladies
in the rear, having brought with them small copper foot-warmers,
heated by means of a chemical coal, lighted these apparatuses, and
for some time, in a low voice, they enumerated their advantages,
repeating to each other things which they had not known for a long
time.
At last six horses instead of four having been harnessed to the coach,
on account of the difficult roads and heavier draft, a voice from
the outside asked: "Is everybody in?"--To which a voice replied
from the inside:--"Yes"--And the coach started.
The coach proceeded slowly, slowly, at a snail's pace. The wheels
sank into the snow; the entire body of the carriage groaned with
creaks; the animals were slipping, puffing, steaming, and the
driver's gigantic whip was cracking continuously, flying in every
direction, coiling up and unrolling itself like a thin snake, and
suddenly lashing some rounded back, which then stretched out under
a more violent effort.
Imperceptibly the day was breaking. Those light flakes that a
traveler, a pure blood native of Rouen, had compared to a rain of
cotton, had stopped falling. A murky light filtered through the big,
dark and heavy clouds, which rendered more dazzling the whiteness
of the country where one could see now a line of tall trees spangled
with hoar frost, now a cottage with a snow hood.
Inside the coach, the travelers eyed each other inquisitively in
the melancholy light of the dawn.
Way in the rear, on the best seats, facing each other, Mr. and
Mrs. Loiseau, wholesale wine dealers of the Rue Grand-Pont, were
slumbering.
Former clerk to a merchant who had been ruined in business, Loiseau
had bought his employer's stock and made a fortune. He was selling
very cheap very bad wine to small liquor dealers in the country, and
was considered by his friends and acquaintances as a sharp crook,
a real Norman full of wiles and joviality. His reputation as a
crook was so well established that one evening at the Prefecture,
Mr. Tournel, a writer of fables and songs, a biting and fine wit,
a local literary glory, having proposed to the ladies' whom he
saw rather drowsy, to play a game of "L'oiseau vole," (the bird
steals--flies) the joke flew through the salons of the Prefect and
from there, reaching those of the town, made all the jaws of the
Province laugh for a whole month.
In addition to this unsavory reputation, Loiseau was famous for his
various practical jokes, his good or bad tricks; and nobody could
mention his name without adding immediately:--"Loiseau is merciless;
he spares nobody!"--
Undersized, he had a balloon shaped stomach surmounted by a florid
face between a pair of grayish whiskers.
His wife, tall, stout determined, with a loud voice, a woman of
quick decision, represented order and arithmetic in the business
house which her husband enlivened by his mirthful activity.
Beside them sat, more dignified and belonging to a superior class,
Mr. Carre-Lamadon, a man of considerable standing, a leader in the
cotton business, proprietor of three spinning mills, officer of
the Legion of Honor and member of the General Council. During the
Empire he had been the leader of the friendly opposition, solely
for the purpose of commanding a higher price for his support when
he rallied to the cause which he was fighting daily with courteous
weapons, according to his own expression. Mrs. Carre-Lamadon,
considerably younger than her husband, remained the consolation of
Officers belonging to good families who had been quartered in Rouen.
She was sitting opposite her husband, pretty, slender, graceful,
curled in her furs, and gazed mournfully at the lamentable interior
of the coach.
Her neighbors, Count and Countess Hubert de Breville, bore one of
the most ancient and noble names of Normandy. the Count, an old
nobleman of aristocratic bearing, endeavored to accentuate by the
artifices of his toilette his natural resemblance to King Henry
IV, who, according to a legend, in which the family gloried, had
caused the maternity of a de Breville lady whose husband, on account
of his royal connection, had been made a Count and Governor of a
Province.
A Colleague of Carre-Lamadon in the General Council, Count Hubert
represented the Orleanist party in his Department. The story of
his marriage with the daughter of a small ship-owner of Nantes had
always remained mysterious. But as the Countess had a grand air,
entertained better than any other hostess, and was credited with
having been the Dulcinea of one of Louis Philippe's sons, the
whole nobility showed her the greatest consideration, and her salon
remained the most exclusive in the locality, the only one where
old gallantry was conserved and admission to which was not easy.