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Mademoiselle Fifi
Guy de Maupassant
Major Graf Von Farlsberg, the Prussian commandant, was reading his newspaper as he lay
back in a great easy-chair, with his booted feet on the beautiful marble mantelpiece where
his spurs had made two holes, which had grown deeper every day during the three months
that he had been in the chateau of Uville.
A cup of coffee was smoking on a small inlaid table, which was stained with liqueur,
burned by cigars, notched by the penknife of the victorious officer, who occasionally would
stop while sharpening a pencil, to jot down figures, or to make a drawing on it, just as it
took his fancy.
When he had read his letters and the German newspapers, which his orderly had brought
him, he got up, and after throwing three or four enormous pieces of green wood on the fire,
for these gentlemen were gradually cutting down the park in order to keep themselves
warm, he went to the window. The rain was descending in torrents, a regular Normandy
rain, which looked as if it were being poured out by some furious person, a slanting rain,
opaque as a curtain, which formed a kind of wall with diagonal stripes, and which deluged
everything, a rain such as one frequently experiences in the neighborhood of Rouen, which
is the watering-pot of France.
For a long time the officer looked at the sodden turf and at the swollen Andelle beyond it,
which was overflowing its banks; he was drumming a waltz with his fingers on the
window-panes, when a noise made him turn round. It was his second in command, Captain
Baron van Kelweinstein.
The major was a giant, with broad shoulders and a long, fan-like beard, which hung down
like a curtain to his chest. His whole solemn person suggested the idea of a military
peacock, a peacock who was carrying his tail spread out on his breast. He had cold, gentle
blue eyes, and a scar from a swordcut, which he had received in the war with Austria; he
was said to be an honorable man, as well as a brave officer.
The captain, a short, red-faced man, was tightly belted in at the waist, his red hair was
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 night, though he could not
quite remember how, and this sometimes made him speak unintelligibly, and he had a bald
patch on top of his head surrounded by a fringe of curly, bright golden hair, which made
him look like a monk.
The commandant shook hands with him and drank 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 it was a very unpleasant outlook. The major,
who was a quiet man, with a wife at home, could accommodate himself to everything; but
the captain, who led a fast life, who was in the habit of frequenting low resorts, and
enjoying women's society, was angry at having to be shut up for three months in that
wretched hole.
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There was a knock at the door, and when the commandant said, "Come in," one of the
orderlies appeared, and by his mere presence announced that breakfast was ready. In the
dining-room they met three other officers of lower rank--a lieutenant, Otto von Grossling,
and two sub-lieutenants, Fritz Scheuneberg and Baron von Eyrick, a very short, fair-haired
man, who was proud and brutal toward men, harsh toward prisoners and as explosive as
gunpowder.
Since he had been 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 corsets; of his pale face, on which his budding mustache 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 chateau 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 a lady in a long, pointed waist proudly exhibited a pair of enormous
mustaches, drawn with charcoal. The officers ate their breakfast almost in silence in that
mutilated room, which looked dull in the rain and melancholy in its dilapidated condition,
although its old oak floor had become as solid as the stone floor of an inn.
When they had finished eating and were smoking and drinking, they began, as usual, to
berate the dull life they were leading. The bottles of brandy and of liqueur 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, curved stems, which terminated in china bowls,
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 emptied his every minute, and a soldier immediately gave
him another. They were enveloped in a cloud of strong tobacco smoke, and seemed to be
sunk in a state of drowsy, stupid intoxication, that condition of stupid intoxication of men
who have nothing to do, when suddenly the baron sat up and said: "Heavens! This cannot
go on; we must think of something to do." And on hearing this, Lieutenant Otto and Sub-
lieutenant Fritz, who preeminently possessed the serious, heavy German countenance, said:
"What, captain?"
He thought for a few moments and then replied: "What? Why, we must get up some
entertainment, if the commandant will allow us." "What sort of an entertainment, captain?"
the major asked, taking his pipe out of his mouth. "I will arrange all that, commandant," the
baron said. "I will send Le Devoir to Rouen, and he will bring back some ladies. 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."
Graf von Farlsberg shrugged his shoulders with a smile: "You must surely be mad, my
ads:
friend."
But all the other officers had risen and surrounded their chief, saying: "Let the captain have
his way, commandant; it is terribly dull here." And the major ended by yielding. "Very
well," he replied, and the baron immediately sent for Le Devoir. He was an old non-
commissioned 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, and five
minutes later a large military wagon, covered with tarpaulin, galloped off as fast as four
horses could draw it in the pouring rain. The officers all seemed to awaken from their
lethargy, their looks brightened,, and they began to talk.
Although it was raining as hard as ever, the major declared that it was not so dark, 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 mustaches, 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 chateau, the lawful owner, Comte 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. As he was very rich and had good taste, the large drawing-
room, which opened into the dining-room, looked like a gallery in a museum, before his
precipitate flight.
Expensive oil paintings, water colors and drawings hung against the walls, while on the
tables, on the hanging shelves and in elegant glass cupboards there were a thousand
ornaments: small vases, statuettes, groups of Dresden china and grotesque Chinese figures,
old ivory and Venetian glass, which filled the large room with their costly and fantastic
array.
Scarcely anything was left now; not that the things had been stolen, for the major would not
have allowed that, but Mademoiselle Fifi would every now and then have 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 china teapot, which he filled with gunpowder, and carefully introduced a piece of
punk through the spout. This he lighted and took his infernal machine into the next room,
but he came back immediately and shut the door. The Germans all stood expectant, their
faces full of childish, smiling curiosity, and as soon as the explosion had shaken the
chateau, 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, and each picked up pieces of porcelain and
wondered at the strange shape of the fragments, while the major was looking with a
paternal eye at the large drawing-room, which had been wrecked after the fashion of a Nero,
and was strewn with the fragments of works of art. He went out first and said with a smile:
"That was a great success this time."
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 returned for a last glass of cognac, went up to it.
The moist air blew into the room, bringing with it a sort of powdery spray, which sprinkled
their beards. They looked at the tall trees which were dripping with rain, at the broad valley
which was covered with mist, and at the church spire in the distance, which rose up like a
gray 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 neighborhood. 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 benevolent 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 mildness, and not of
blood; and every one, for twenty-five miles round, praised Abbe Chantavoine's firmness
and heroism in venturing to proclaim the public mourning by the obstinate silence of his
church bells.
The whole village, enthusiastic at his resistance, was ready to back up their pastor and to
risk anything, for they looked upon that silent protest as the safeguard of the national honor.
It seemed to the peasants that thus they deserved better of their country than Belfort and
Strassburg, 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 this inoffensive courage,
and as the people in the whole country round showed themselves obliging and compliant
toward them, they willingly tolerated their silent patriotism. Little Baron Wilhelm alone
would have liked to have forced them to ring the bells. He was very angry at his superior's
politic compliance with the priest's scruples, and every day 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 in the coaxing, tender voice of some loved woman who is bent on obtaining
her wish, but the commandant would not yield, and to console himself, Mademoiselle Fifi
made a mine in the Chateau d'Uville.
The five men stood there together for five minutes, breathing in the moist air, and at last
Lieutenant Fritz said with a laugh: "The ladies will certainly not have fine weather for their
drive. Then they separated, each to his duty, while the captain had plenty to do in arranging
for the dinner.
When they met again toward evening they began to laugh at seeing each other as spick and
span and smart as on the day of a grand review. The commandant's hair did not look so gray
as it was in the morning, and the captain had shaved, leaving only his mustache, 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 presently the wagon drove up at a gallop with its four horses steaming
and blowing, and splashed with mud to their girths. Five women dismounted, five
handsome girls whom a comrade of the captain, to whom Le Devoir had presented his card,
had selected with care.
They had not required much pressing, as 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 to the state of affairs.
They went at once into the dining-room, which looked still more dismal in its dilapidated
condition 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 it the appearance of a bandits' inn, where they were supping after
committing a robbery in the place. The captain was radiant, and put his arm round the
women as if he were familiar with them; 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 offend the higher
powers. Therefore, to avoid all discussion, jarring, and suspicion of partiality, he placed
them all in a row 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 Blondina, the
second, as a sign of proprietorship, he proffered stout Amanda to Lieutenant Otto; Eva, "the
Tomato," to Sub- 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 proved the rule which allots
hooked noses to all her race, to the youngest officer, frail Count Wilhelm d'Eyrick.
They were all pretty and plump, without any distinctive features, and all had a similarity of
complexion and figure.
The three young men wished to carry off their prizes immediately, under the pretext that
they might wish to freshen their toilets; but the captain wisely opposed this, for he said they
were quite fit to sit down to dinner, and his experience in such matters carried the day.
There were only many kisses, expectant kisses.
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 tormentor with latent hatred in her dark eyes.
They sat down to dinner. The commandant seemed delighted; he made Pamela sit on his
right, and Blondina 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 guests, but Baron von Kelweinstein beamed, made obscene remarks
and seemed on fire with his crown of red hair. He paid the women compliments in French
of the Rhine, and sputtered out gallant remarks, only fit for a low pothouse, from between
his two broken teeth.
They did not understand him, however, and their intelligence did not seem to be awakened
until he uttered foul words and broad expressions, which were mangled by his accent. Then
they all began to laugh at once like crazy women and fell against each other, 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 resuming their usual habits and
manners, they kissed the officers to right and left of them, pinched their arms, uttered wild
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 became very unrestrained, shouted and broke the plates and
dishes, while the soldiers behind them waited on them stolidly. The commandant was the
only one who kept any restraint upon himself.
Mademoiselle Fifi had taken Rachel on his knee, and, getting excited, at one moment he
kissed the little black curls on her neck and at another he pinched her furiously and made
her scream, for he was seized by a species of ferocity, and tormented by his desire to hurt
her. He often held her close to him and pressed a long kiss on the Jewess' rosy mouth until
she lost her breath, and at last 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 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, for they were reduced to silence and were afraid. Even Rachel did
not say a word, as she had no reply to make. Then the little marquis put his champagne
glass, which had just been refilled, on 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, spilling the amber- colored wine on her
black hair as if to baptize her, and broke into a hundred fragments, as it fell to the floor. Her
lips trembling, she defied the looks of the officer, who was still laughing, and stammered
out in a voice choked with rage:
"That--that--that--is not true--for you shall not have the women of France!"
He sat down again so as to laugh at his ease; and, trying to speak with the Parisian accent,
he said: "She is good, very good! Then why did you come here, 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 to strike her, she seized a small dessert knife with a silver blade from the
table and, almost mad with rage, stabbed him right in the hollow of his neck. 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 tumultuously; but, throwing her chair
between the legs of Lieutenant Otto, 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 the 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 organized the pursuit of the fugitive as
carefully as if he were about to engage in a skirmish, feeling quite sure that she would be
caught.
The table, which had been cleared immediately, now served as a bed on which to lay out the
lieutenant, 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
of challenge, uttered 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 that 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 one's self and to
caress prostitutes." 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 Baron von Eyrick.
Contrary to all expectation, the priest showed himself humble and most respectful, and
when Mademoiselle Fifi's body left the Chateau 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 funeral knell in a lively manner, as if a friendly hand
were caressing it. At night it rang again, and the next day, and every day; it rang as much as
any one could desire. Sometimes even it would start at night and sound gently through the
darkness, seized with a 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 and provided for secretly 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 afterward a patriot who had no prejudices, and who liked her because of her
bold deed, and who afterward loved her for herself, married her and made her a lady quite
as good as many others.
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