Then he returned quickly and closed the door behind him.  All the Germans stood up and waited, their faces wreathed in childlike smiles of curiosity, and as soon as the explosion shook the Chateau, they hurried in all at once.

Mademoiselle Fifi, who had been the first one to rush in, was deliriously clapping his hands in front of a terra cotta Venus, whose head at last had been blown off; and each picked up broken pieces of China, wondering at the strange indentation of the fragments, examining the new damage done, claiming that some of the damage had been caused by previous explosions.  And the Major was contemplating, with a paternal look, the large salon upset by this Neronian firework and strewn with the debris of the objects of Art.  He came out first, declaring good- naturedly:  “It was very successful this time!”

But such a spout of smoke had invaded the dining-room, mixing with the smoke of tobacco, that it was impossible to breathe.  The Commander opened the window, and all the officers, who had come back to drink a last glass of cognac, crowded near it.

The damp air blew into the room bringing in a kind of water dust, which sprayed and powdered the beards, and a smell of inundation.  They were looking at the tall trees bending under the shower, the broad valley darkened by this outflow of the black low clouds[*], and in the distance the Church spire rising like a gray point in the pelting rain.

[*][Note from Brett:  The original uses “clowds,” but I think “clouds” was intended.]

Since the arrival of the Germans, the Church bell had not rung.  It was in fact the only resistance with which the invaders met in that neighborhood, the resistance of the bell-tower.  The Curate had not refused to receive and feed Prussian soldiers; he had even, on several occasions, accepted to drink a bottle of beer or claret with the enemy Commander, who often used him as a benevolent intermediary.  But it was useless to ask him for a single ring of his bell; he would rather have faced a firing squad.  That was his way of protesting against invasion, a peaceful protest, the protest of silence, the only one, said he, that became a priest, a man of peace and not of blood.  And everybody for ten miles around praised the firmness, the heroism of Father Chantavoine, who dared to affirm the public mourning and proclaim it by the obstinate mutism of his Church.

The entire village, enthusiastic about this resistance, was ready to support and back up its pastor to the bitter end, to risk anything, considering this tacit protest as a safeguard of the national honor.  It seemed to the peasants that in this way they deserved better of their country than Belfort or Strasbourg, that they had given just as good an example, that the name of their hamlet would remain immortal for it; and with that single exception, they refused nothing to the victorious Prussians.

The Commander and his officers laughed in private at this manifestation of inoffensive courage, and as the entire neighborhood showed themselves obliging to them and docile to their orders, they willingly tolerated the priest’s silent patriotism.