In front, the great doors are locked and barred. One tiny door, cut in the wooden gate at the side, is one's sole means of exit and entrance. But it is almost too small for the Liège professor, and he tells me plaintively that he will be glad to move on to Liège. "I get broken to pieces squeezing in and out of that little door," he says. "And I am always afraid I will stick in the middle, and the Germans in the restaurant will see me, and ask who I am, and what I am doing here!" "I can get through the door easily enough," I answer. "But I suffer agonies as I stand there on the street waiting for old Antoine to come and unlock it." "And then there is no food here, no lunch, no dinner, and I do not like to go in the restaurants alone; I am afraid the Germans will notice me. I am so big, you see, everybody notices me. Do you think I will ever get to Liège?" "Of course you will." "But do you think I will ever get back from Liège to Antwerp?" "Of course you will." "J'ai peur!" "Moi aussi!" And indeed, sitting there in the dusk, in the eerie silences of the deserted hotel, with the German guns booming away in the distance towards Malines, there creeps over me a shuddering sensation that is very like fear at the ever-deepening realization of what Belgium has suffered, and may have to suffer yet; and I find it almost intolerable--the thought of this poor brave old trembling Belgian, weighted with years and flesh, struggling so manfully to get back to Liège, and gauge for himself the extent of the damage done to his house and properties, to see his servants and help them make arrangements for the future. Like all the rest of the Belgian fugitives, he knows nothing _definite_ about the destruction of his town. It may be that his home has been razed to the ground. It may be that it has been spared. He is sure of nothing, and that is why he has set out on this long and dangerous journey, which is not by any means over yet. Then the old porter approaches, gentle, sorrowful. "Monsieur, good news! there is a train for Liège to-morrow morning at five o'clock!" "Merci bien," says the old professor. "Mais, j'ai peur!" I rise at four next morning and come down to see him off. We two, who have never seen each other before, seem now like the only relics of some bygone far-off event. To see his fat, old, enormous face gives me a positive thrill of joy. I feel as if I have known him all my life, and when he has gone I feel curiously alone. The melancholy old fat man's presence had lent a semblance of life to the hotel, which how seems given over to ghosts and echoes. Unable to bear it, I moved into the Métropole.