The red-bearded Shylock was among those left behind, and on seeing Don Marcelo afar off, he smiled and immediately vanished.  A few minutes after he returned with full hands.  Never before had he been so generous.  Foreseeing pressing necessity, the hungry man put his hands in his pockets as usual, but was astonished to learn from the orderly’s emphatic gestures that he did not wish any money.

“Nein. . . .  Nein!”

What generosity was this! . . .  The German persisted in his negatives.  His enormous mouth expanded in an ingratiating grin as he laid his heavy paws on Marcelo’s shoulders.  He appeared like a good dog, a meek dog, fawning and licking the hands of the passer-by, coaxing to be taken along with him.  “Franzosen. . . .  Franzosen.”  He did not know how to say any more, but the Frenchman read in his words the desire to make him understand that he had always been in great sympathy with the French.  Something very important was evidently transpiring—­the ill-humored air of those left behind in the castle, and the sudden servility of this plowman in uniform, made it very apparent. . . .

Some distance beyond the castle he saw soldiers, many soldiers.  A battalion of infantry had spread itself along the walls with trucks, draught horses and swift mounts.  With their pikes the soldiers were making small openings in the mud walls, shaping them into a border of little pinnacles.  Others were kneeling or sitting near the apertures, taking off their knapsacks in order that they might be less hampered.  Afar off the cannon were booming, and in the intervals between their detonations could be heard the bursting of shrapnel, the bubbling of frying oil, the grinding of a coffee-mill, and the incessant crackling of rifle-fire.  Fleecy clouds were floating over the fields, giving to near objects the indefinite lines of unreality.  The sun was a faint spot seen between curtains of mist.  The trees were weeping fog moisture from all the cracks in their bark.

A thunderclap rent the air so forcibly that it seemed very near the castle.  Desnoyers trembled, believing that he had received a blow in the chest.  The other men remained impassive with their customary indifference.  A cannon had just been discharged but a few feet away from him, and not till then did he realize that two batteries had been installed in the park.  The pieces of artillery were hidden under mounds of branches, the gunners having felled trees in order to mask their monsters more perfectly.  He saw them arranging the last; with shovels, they were forming a border of earth, a foot in width, around each piece.  This border guarded the feet of the operators whose bodies were protected by steel shields on both sides of them.  Then they raised a breastwork of trunks and boughs, leaving only the mouth of the cylindrical mortar visible.

By degrees Don Marcelo became accustomed to the firing which seemed to be creating a vacuum within his cranium.  He ground his teeth and clenched his fists at every detonation, but stood stock-still with no desire to leave, dominated by the violence of the explosions, admiring the serenity of these men who were giving orders, erect and coolly, or moving like humble menials around their roaring metal beasts.