“Where are the sharpshooters?” he asked.

He was pale with the pallor of wrath, vengeance and fear.  His face was trembling under the influence of his triple emotion.  Don Marcelo explained slowly, contemplating at a short distance from his eyes the black circle of the threatening tube.  He had not seen any sharpshooters.  The only inhabitants of the castle were the Warden with his family and himself, the owner of the castle.

The officer surveyed the edifice and then examined Desnoyers with evident astonishment as though he thought his appearance too unpretentious for a proprietor.  He had taken him for a simple employee, and his respect for social rank made him lower his revolver.

He did not, however, alter his haughty attitude.  He pressed Don Marcelo into the service as a guide, making him search ahead of him while forty soldiers grouped themselves at his back.  They advanced in two files to the shelter of the trees which bordered the central avenue, with their guns ready to shoot, and looking uneasily at the castle windows as though expecting to receive from them hidden shots.  Desnoyers marched tranquilly through the centre, and the official, who had been imitating the precautions of his men, finally joined him when he was crossing the drawbridge.

The armed men scattered through the rooms in search of the enemy.  They ran their bayonets through beds and divans.  Some, with automatic destructiveness, slit the draperies and the rich bed coverings.  The owner protested; what was the sense in such useless destruction? . . .  He was suffering unbearable torture at seeing the enormous boots spotting the rugs with mud, on hearing the clash of guns and knapsacks against the most fragile, choicest pieces of furniture.  Poor historic mansion! . . .

The officer looked amazed that he should protest for such trifling cause, but he gave orders in German and his men ceased their rude explorations.  Then, in justification of this extraordinary respect, he added in French: 

“I believe that you are going to have the honor of entertaining here the general of our division.”

The certainty that the castle did not hold any hidden enemies made him more amiable.  He, nevertheless, persisted in his wrath against the sharpshooters.  A group of the villagers had opened fire upon the Uhlans when they were entering unsuspiciously after the retreat of the French.

Desnoyers felt it necessary to protest.  They were neither inhabitants nor sharpshooters; they were French soldiers.  He took good care to be silent about their presence at the barricade, but he insisted that he had distinguished their uniforms from a tower of the castle.

The official made a threatening face.

“You, too? . . .  You, who appear a reasonable man, can repeat such yarns as these?” And in order to close the conversation, he said, arrogantly:  “They were wearing uniforms, then, if you persist in saying so, but they were sharpshooters just the same.  The French Government has distributed arms and uniforms among the farmers that they may assassinate us. . . .  Belgium did the same thing. . . .  But we know their tricks, and we know how to punish them, too!”