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