ng-room, looked like a gallery in a museum, before
his precipitate flight.

Expensive oil paintings, water colors and drawings hung against the
walls, while on the tables, on the hanging shelves and in elegant glass
cupboards there were a thousand ornaments: small vases, statuettes,
groups of Dresden china and grotesque Chinese figures, old ivory and
Venetian glass, which filled the large room with their costly and
fantastic array.

Scarcely anything was left now; not that the things had been stolen, for
the major would not have allowed that, but Mademoiselle Fifi would
every now and then have a mine, and on those occasions all the officers
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 punk through the spout. This he lighted
and took his infernal machine into the next room, but he came back
immediately and shut the door. The Germans all stood expectant, 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 after the fashion of a Nero, and
was strewn with the fragments of works of art. He went out first and
said with a smile: "That was a great success this time."

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 returned for a last glass of
cognac, went up to it.

The moist air blew into the room, bringing with it a sort of powdery
spray, which sprinkled their beards. They looked at the tall trees which
were dripping with 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