Suddenly Rachel suffocated, coughing to tears and rejecting smoke
through her nose. The Markgraf, feigning to kiss her, had blown
a whiff of tobacco into her mouth. She did not get angry, did not
utter a single word, but glared at her possessor with anger aroused
way down at the bottom of her black eyes.

They sat down to dinner. The Commander himself seemed to be
delighted; he took Pamela on his right and Blondine on his left,
and while unfolding his napkin, he declared:--"This was a charming
idea of yours, Captain!"

Lieutenants Otto and Fritz, polite and obsequious as if they were
sitting near Society ladies, did slightly intimidate their neighbors;
but Baron von Kelweingstein, let loose in his vice, was beaming;
he cracked unsavory jokes, and with his crown of red hair, seemed
to be on fire. He paid gallant compliments in his defective
French of the Rhine, and his lewd nonsense, smacking of taverns,
expectorated through the hole between his two broken teeth, reached
the girls in the middle of a rapid fire of saliva.

The girls did not understand his witticisms, and their intelligence
did not seem to be awakened until he sputtered obscene words, rough
expressions, crippled by his accent. Then all in a chorus began
to laugh as if they were demented, falling on the laps of their
neighbors, repeating the words which the Baron disfigured purposely
in order to make them say filthy things. They vomited at will
plenty of them, intoxicated after drinking from the first bottles
of wine; and relapsing into their real selves, opening the gates
to their habits, they kissed mustaches on their right and those on
their left, pinched arms, uttered furious screams, drank out of