"So much the worse for them! So much the worse for them! It will be you who have condemned them! So you insist upon it? We are quite agreed? . . . And then I suppose you think you've got me! Come, come now! Even if you show yourselves pig-headed, the Comtesse Hermine has not said her last word! You don't know the Comtesse Hermine! The Comtesse Hermine never surrenders! . . ."
She was possessed by a sort of frenzy and was horrible to look at. Twisting and writhing with rage, hideous of face, aged by fully twenty years, she suggested the picture of a devil burning in the flames of hell. She cursed. She blasphemed. She gave vent to a string of oaths. She even laughed, at the thought of the catastrophe which her next movement would produce. And she spluttered:
"All right! It's you, it's you who are the executioners! . . . Oh, what folly! . . . So you will have it so? But they must be mad! Look at them, calmly sacrificing their generals, their commander-in-chief, in their stupid obstinacy. Well, so much the worse for them! You have insisted on it. I hold you responsible. A word from you, a single word. . . ."
She had a last moment of hesitation. With a fierce and unyielding face she stared at those stubborn men who seemed to be obeying an implacable command. Not one of them budged.
Then it seemed as if, at the moment of taking the fatal decision, she was overcome with such an outburst of voluptuous wickedness that it made her forget the horror of her own position. She simply said:
"May God's will be done and my Emperor gain the victory!"
Stiffening her body, her eyes staring before her, she touched the switch with her finger.
The effect was almost immediate. Through the outer air, through the vaulted roof, the sound of the explosion reached the cellar. The ground seemed to shake, as though the vibration had spread through the bowels of the earth.
Then came silence. The Comtesse Hermine listened for a few seconds longer. Her face was radiant with joy. She repeated:
"So that my Emperor may gain the victory!"
And suddenly, bringing her arm down to her side, she thrust herself backwards, among the skirts and blouses against which she was leaning, and seemed actually to sink into the wall and disappear from sight.