thoroughly enjoyed
themselves for five minutes. The little marquis went into the
drawing-room to get what he wanted, and he brought back a small,
delicate china teapot, which he filled with gunpowder, and carefully
introduced a piece of German tinder into it, through the spout. Then he
lighted it, and took this infernal machine into the next room; but he
came back immediately, and shut the door. The Germans all stood
expectantly, their faces full of childish, smiling curiosity, and as
soon as the explosion had shaken the chateau, they all rushed in at
once.

Mademoiselle Fifi, who got in first, clapped his hands in delight at the
sight of a terra-cotta Venus, whose head had been blown off, and each
picked up pieces of porcelain, and wondered at the strange shape of the
fragments, while the major was looking with a paternal eye at the large
drawing-room, which had been wrecked in such a Neronic fashion, and
which was strewn with the fragments of works of art. He went out first,
and said, with a smile: "He managed that very well!"

But there was such a cloud of smoke in the dining-room, mingled with the
tobacco smoke, that they could not breathe, so the commandant opened the
window, and all the officers, who had gone into the room for a glass of
cognac, went up to it.

The moist air blew into the room, and brought a sort of moist dust with
it, which powdered their beards. They looked at the tall trees, which
were dripping with the rain, at the broad valley, which was covered with
mist, and at the church spire in the distance, which rose up like a gray
point in the beating rain.

The bells had not rung since their arrival. That was the only resistance
which the invaders had met with in the neighborhood. The parish priest
had not refused to take in and to feed the Prussian soldiers; he had
several times even drunk a bottle of beer or claret with the hostile
commandant, who often employed him as a benevolent intermediary; but it
was no use to ask him for a single stroke of the bells; he would sooner
have allowed himself to be shot. That was his way of protesting against
the invasion, a peaceful and silent protest, the only one, he said,
which was suitable to a priest, who was a man of mildness and not of
blood; and everyone, for twenty-five miles around, praised Abbe
Chantavoine's firmness and heroism, in venturing to proclaim the public
morning by the obstinate silence of his church bells.

The whole village grew ent