"Bah! we might have spared ourselves the trouble--it is brass--the whole thing is not worth fifty centimes!" exclaimed one man, looking angrily at the old priest, sitting dazed and bruised in the mud, mumbling and holding his head.
"How dare you carry a brass ikon, deluding honest persons into the belief that it is a thing of value?" asked another soldier; he kicked the old man viciously; the priest gave a howl of pain. This was more than Vera could stand.
"_Miserables!_" she exclaimed, "are you not ashamed of attacking an old man, and a priest? A curse will fall upon such as you."
"Let it fall, _ma mie_; see, _mes enfants_," the fellow continued, "what I have found--a French woman and a pretty one--are you one of the French actresses, _chérie_?" The soldier leered and tried to put his arm about her waist. Vera angrily pushed him away.
"Come, come, come!" said the fellow, who was half drunk, "you must not look crossly upon your compatriots--you and I are both good French people, let us be happy together."
"Thank God I am a Russian," said Vera. "If you touch me again you shall find that I can sting!"
"A Russian? Oho! Listen, _mes enfants_, she is a Russian! Then, _chérie_, you shall give us each six roubles and six kisses--see, I have spoken, it is an edict! Is it not so, my friends?"
The men crowded round Vera, whose heart sank a little. She placed her back against the wall of the house, however, close to which she stood, and felt within the folds of her mantle for the pistol, without which and a sharp dagger she never left the house at this time.
"See," she cried, "I said that I could sting--who will offer to touch me now. I swear that I will shoot if----"
One of the men by a sudden movement knocked the pistol from her hand; a second later he had his arms about her neck and was in the act of drawing the girl close to him. Suddenly he recoiled with an oath, pale, scowling, grabbing at the upper part of his left arm. Vera laughed.
"The little devil has stabbed me!" exclaimed the man, whose sleeve was covered with blood where it had touched his shoulder. "You little serpent, for this----" The laughter of his comrades drowned the rest of his threat.
Two French sub-officers now suddenly appeared upon the scene, one of them knocked the threatener aside.