The girl was flushed and dishevelled. Her hair was down, and she was panting, having, truth to tell, just escaped the embraces of a too amorous German in his cups.
The cultured Baron Wernher von Meyeren heard the maid’s complaint to her mistress, and laughed heartily.
“Our men are evidently enjoying themselves,” he remarked in German to his two brother-officers. “This Baron de Neuville is the richest man in Belgium. It is fun to be in his house—is it not? And his daughter is pretty too. What do you think—eh?”
Aimée overheard the words of the “blonde beast.”
She stood boldly before him, and turned upon him like a tiger.
“You Uhlan?” cried her mother. “Your very regiment is synonymous of all that is treacherous and ill-begotten. If you do not respect women, then I believe all that is told of you. Let your God-cursed Emperor let loose his hordes upon us, but the day will come, and is not far distant, when the finger of God will be placed upon you, and you, a nobleman of Saxony, will be withered and die as a stickleback will die beneath the sun.”
“Oh, mother! Do be careful what you say. Pray be careful!” urged Aimée, clinging to her beseechingly.
The gallant Baron, with crimson face, rose unsteadily, gripping the edge of the table to prevent himself from falling, and in fierce anger cried:
“For those words to us, woman, your house shall suffer,” and drawing his sword, he swept from the table the beautiful épergnes of flowers and china baskets of fruit, and, staggering to the wall, he slashed viciously the fine old tapestries, in his frantic drunken rage.
“Ernst,” he hiccoughed to one of the officers, “tell the men below that this Belgian woman has insulted us while we are her guests, and let them make an example of this fine Baron’s castle.”