Berthine is the protagonist of the story.
She is hostile toward the Prussians even though they haven’t harmed her or her mother.
She uses their trust in her to trick them and trap them in the cellar.
Berthine is fearless, unlike her mother.
She has a close relationship with her father.
“Blind anger rose in her heart against the prisoners; she would have been only too glad to kill them all, and so silence them.”
“But as soon as the spike of the last helmet was out of sight Berthine lowered the heavy oaken lid—thick as a wall, hard as steel, furnished with the hinges and bolts of a prison cell—shot the two heavy bolts, and began to laugh long and silently, possessed with a mad longing to dance above the heads of her prisoners.”
“The younger feared nothing, but her mother was always apprehensive, and repeated continually: ‘We’ll come to grief one of these days. You see if we don’t!’”
“‘Prussians in the cellar?’” he asked anxiously. ‘What are they doing?’ The young woman laughed. ‘They are the same as were here yesterday. They lost their way, and I’ve given them free lodgings in the cellar.’ She told the story of how she had alarmed them by firing the revolver, and had shut them up in the cellar.”
