All the officers shouted in horror, and leaped up tumultuously;
but throwing her chair between Lieutenant Otto's legs, 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 pouring rain.

In two minutes, Mademoiselle Fifi was dead. 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. 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 Fifi out, and the four officers made for the
window, 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 uttered as a call, 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 such a nocturnal pursuit, but they
had not caught Rachel.

Then the inhabitants of the district were terrorized, the houses