Mademoiselle Fifi | Page 6

complexion by the daily practice of their illicit trade and
the life in common in disreputable houses.
The three young men wanted immediately to take their partners out of
the room under pretext of offering them brushes and soap for washing
and freshening up; but the Captain was wise enough not to allow it,
claiming that they were clean enough to sit down to dinner, and for fear

that those who went up might want to change their girls when they
came down, and thus disturb the other couples. His experience
prevailed. There were only plenty of kisses, kisses of expectancy.
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 all the glasses, sang French couplets and
bits of German songs they had learned in their daily intercourse with
the enemy.
Soon the men themselves flushed and excited by the female flesh

spread under their nose and within reach of their hands, lost all restraint,
roaring, breaking the plates, while behind them impassive soldiers were
waiting.
The Commander only kept some restraint.
Mademoiselle Fifi had taken Rachel on his knees and deliberately
working himself up to a pitch of frenzy, kissed madly the ebony curls
on her neck, inhaling through the thin interstice between the gown and
her skin, the sweet warmth of her body and the full fragrance of her
person; through the silk, he pinched her furiously making her scream,
seized with a rabid ferocity and distracted by his craving for destruction.
Often also holding her in his arms, squeezing her as if he wanted to mix
her with himself, he pressed long kisses on the fresh lips of the Jewess
and embraced her until he lost breath; but suddenly he bit her so deep
that a dash of blood flowed down the chin of the young girl and ran
into her waist.
Once more she looked at him, straight in the face, and washing the
wound, she muttered: "You will have to pay for it!" He began to laugh,
with a harsh laugh: "All right, I shall pay!" said he.
At dessert, champagne was served. The Commander rose and with the
same tone as he would have taken to drink the health of the Empress
Augusta, he said:
"To our ladies!" And a series of toasts were then drunk, toasts with the
gallantry and manner of drunkards and troopers, mixed with obscene
jokes, rendered still more brutal by their ignorance of the language.
They were rising one after the other, trying to be witty, making efforts
to be funny; and the women, so intoxicated that they were hardly able
to sit up, with their vacant look, their heavy, clammy tongues,
applauded vociferously each time.
The Captain, no doubt intending to lend the orgy an atmosphere of
gallantry, raised once more his glass and pronounced: "To our victories
over the hearts!"

Then Lieutenant Otto, a kind of bear from the Black Forest, jumped up,
inflamed, saturated with drinks, and suddenly, carried away by
alcoholic patriotism, he cried: "To our victories over France!"
Intoxicated as they were, the women kept silent and Rachel, shuddering
with rage, retorted: "Well! I know some Frenchmen in