'Le Reve' at any rate was not a
work to be passed over in silence: it was intended to create discussion,
and discussion it certainly created.
In 'L'Attaque du Moulin' (1893), another adaptation of Zola, Bruneau set
himself a very different task. The contrast between the placid Cathedral
close and the bloody terrors of the Franco-Prussian war was of the most
startling description. 'L'Attaque du Moulin' opens with the festivities
attendant upon the betrothal of Francoise, the miller's daughter, to
Dominique, a young Fleming, who has taken up his quarters in the
village. In the midst of the merry-making comes a drummer, who announces
the declaration of war, and summons all the able-bodied men of the
village to the frontier. In the second act, the dogs of war are loose.
The French have been holding the mill against a detachment of Germans
all day, but as night approaches they fall back upon the main body.
Dominique, who is a famous marksman, has been helping to defend his
future father-in-law's property. Scarcely have the French retired when a
division of Germans appears in the courtyard of the mill. The captain
notices that Dominique's hands are black with powder, and finding that,
though a foreigner, he has been fighting for the French in defiance of
the rules of war, orders him to be shot. By the help of Francoise,
Dominique kills the sentinel who has been set to watch him, and escapes
into the forest; but the German captain, suspecting that the miller and
his daughter have had a hand in his escape, orders the old man to be
shot in Dominique's place.
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