Major Graf Von Farlsberg, the Prussian commandant, was reading his newspaper as he
lay back in a great easy-chair, with his booted feet on the beautiful marble mantelpiece
where his spurs had made two holes, which had grown deeper every day during the three
months that he had been in the chateau of Uville.
A cup of coffee was smoking on a small inlaid table, which was stained with liqueur,
burned by cigars, notched by the penknife of the victorious officer, who occasionally
would stop while sharpening a pencil, to jot down figures, or to make a drawing on it, just
as it took his fancy.
When he had read his letters and the German newspapers, which his orderly had brought
him, he got up, and after throwing three or four enormous pieces of green wood on the
fire, for these gentlemen were gradually cutting down the park in order to keep
themselves warm, he went to the window. The rain was descending in torrents, a regular
Normandy rain, which looked as if it were being poured out by some furious person, a
slanting rain, opaque as a curtain, which formed a kind of wall with diagonal stripes, and
which deluged everything, a rain such as one frequently experiences in the neighborhood
of Rouen, which is the watering-pot of France.
For a long time the officer looked at the sodden turf and at the swollen Andelle beyond it,
which was overflowing its banks; he was drumming a waltz with his fingers on the
window-panes, when a noise made him turn round. It was his second in command,
Captain Baron van Kelweinstein.
The major was a giant, with broad shoulders and a long, fan-like beard, which hung down
like a curtain to his chest. His whole solemn person suggested the idea of a military
peacock, a peacock who was carrying his tail spread out on his breast. He had cold,
gentle blue eyes, and a scar from a swordcut, which he had received in the war with
Austria; he was said to be an honorable man, as well as a brave officer.
The captain, a short, red-faced man, was tightly belted in at the waist, his red hair was
cropped quite close to his head, and in certain lights he almost looked as if he had been
rubbed over with phosphorus. He had lost two front teeth one night, though he could not
quite remember how, and this sometimes made him speak unintelligibly, and he had a
bald patch on top of his head surrounded by a fringe of curly, bright golden hair, which
made him look like a monk.
The commandant shook hands with him and drank his cup of coffee (the sixth that
morning), while he listened to his subordinate's report of what had occurred; and then
they both went to the window and declared that it was a very unpleasant outlook. The
major, who was a quiet man, with a wife at home, could accommodate himself to
everything; but the captain, who led a fast life, who was in the habit of frequenting low
