were afraid. Even Rachel did not say a word, as she had no reply
to make, and then the little count put his champagne glass, which
had just been refilled, on to 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 to her black hair as if to baptize her, and
broke into a hundred fragments as it fell on to the floor. With
trembling lips, she defied the looks of the officer, who was
still laughing, and she stammered out, in a voice choked with
rage: "That--that--that--is not true,--for you shall certainly
not have any French women."

He sat down again, so as to laugh at his ease, and trying
ineffectually to speak in the Parisian accent, he said: "That is
good, very good! Then what did you come here for, 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 her face;
but as he was raising his hand again as if he would strike her,
she, almost mad with passion, took up a small dessert knife from
the table, and stabbed him right in the neck, just above the
breastbone. 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.