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 round, praised
Abbe Chantavoine's firmness and heroism, in venturing to proclaim
the public mourning by the obstinate silence of his church bells.

The whole village grew enthusiastic over his resistance, and was
ready to back up their pastor and to risk anything, as they
looked upon that silent protest as the safeguard of the national
honor. It seemed to the peasants that thus they had deserved
better of their country than Belfort and Strassburg, that they
had set an equally valuable example, and that the name of their
little village would become immortalized by that; but with that
exception, they refused their Prussian conquerors nothing.

The commandant and his officers laughed among themselves at that
inoffensive courage, and as the people in the whole country round
showed themselves obliging and compliant toward them, they
willingly tolerated their silent patriotism. Only little Count
Wilhelm would have liked to have forced them to ring the bells.
He was very angry at his superior's politic compliance with the
priest's scruples, and every day he begged the commandant to
allow him to sound "ding-dong, ding-dong," just once, only just
once, just by way of a joke. And he asked it like a wheedling
woman, in the tender voice of some mistress who wishes to obtain
something, but the commandant would not yield, and to console
HERSELF, Mademoiselle Fifi made A MINE in the chateau.