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 of challenge, uttered 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 that nocturnal pursuit, but they had not caught Rachel.

Then the inhabitants of the district were terrorized, the houses were
turned topsy-turvy, the country was scoured and beaten up, over and over
again, but the Jewess did not seem to have left a single trace of her
passage behind her.

When the general was told of it he gave orders to hush up the affair,
so as not to set a bad example to the army, but he severely censured the
commandant, who in turn punished his inferiors. The general had said:
"One does not go to war in order to amuse one's self and to caress
prostitutes." Graf von Farlsberg, in his exasperation, made up his mind
to have his revenge on the district, but as he required a pretext for
showing severity, he sent for the priest and ordered him to have the
bell tolled at the funeral of Baron von Eyrick.

Contrary to all expectation, the priest showed himself humble and most
respectful, and when Mademoiselle Fifi's body left the Chateau d'Uville
on its way to the cemetery, carried by soldiers, preceded, surrounded
and followed by soldiers who marched with loaded rifles, for the first
time the bell sounded its funeral knell in a lively manner, as if a
friendly hand were caressing it. At night it rang again, and the next
day, and every day; it rang as much as any one could desire. Sometimes
even it would start at night and sound gently through the darkness,
seized with a strange joy, awakened one could not tell why. All the
peasants in the neighborhood declared that it was bewitched, and nobody
except the priest and the sacristan would now go near the church tower.
And they went because a poor girl was living there in grief and solitude
and provided for secretly by those two men.

She remained there until the German troops departed, and then one
evening the priest borrowed the baker's cart and himself drove his
prisoner to Rouen. When they got there he embraced her, and she quickly
went back on foot to the establishment from which she had come, where
the pro