"No, Herr Sergeant. It is either a nun or a woman!"
The Sergeant thundered:
"You silly sheepshead! Aren't nuns women? But you verdammte Catholics think such wenches are angels out of the sky. Turn her out of that—nun or woman!"
With a savage rush of scalding blood to his sun-bronzed cheeks and temples, P. C. Breagh realized that they meant Juliette. He thrust his head forward, peering down from his eyrie. The crouching little shape in black looked no bigger than a big dog. Near her stood a soldier in the white-faced dark blue uniform of the Guard Infantry. It was the spectacled ex-chemist Kunz, who had nodded him civil farewell. Staring up from below was the copper-colored countenance of the too-zealous Sergeant Schmidt, not rendered more amiable by mud-splashes and powder grime, in combination with a stitched-up scar across the bridge of the nose, and a flamboyant overgrowth of beard. He bellowed to the ex-chemist:
"Speak to her! Ask what is her business."
The spectacled Kunz stooped over the little bowed head, and seemed to put a question. She lifted her drained white face, shuddered, then resumed her previous attitude. Interrogated from below, Private Kunz responded:
"She is deaf, or mad. She only shakes and stares at one!"
The Sergeant bellowed:
"Shout in her ear, fool! You are not courting your sweetheart! Tell her to get up and move out of this!"
Thus urged, the ex-chemist approached his lips to the little ear shaded by the black silken tresses, and bawled the order of his superior. She gave no sign of having heard. Copper-red with indignation, the Sergeant commanded: