Nothing of a compromising nature being found, Mr. Williams was allowed to go free after twenty-four hours, having first to give his word that in future he would not express himself in public. When I invited him to describe to me what happened in his "detention honorable," he answered with a strained smile, "No more talking for me!" Surely this insult to a free-born American must have been a bitter dose for the American Consulate to swallow. But perhaps they were too busy to notice it! When I called at the Consulate the place was crowded with English nurses begging to be helped away from Brussels. I found that Mr. Richards had already put in a word on my behalf. This is what they gave me at the American Consulate in Brussels as a safeguard against the Germans. I shouldn't have cared to show it to the enemy! It seemed to me to deliver me straight into their hands. I hid it in the lining of my hat with my passport. [Illustration: THE AMERICAN SAFEGUARD.] CHAPTER XXIII CHANSON TRISTE Chilly and wet to-day in Brussels. And oh, so triste, so triste! Never before have I known a sadness like to this. Not in cemetery, not in ruined town, not among wounded, coming broken from the battle, as on that red day at Heyst-op-den-Berg. A brooding soul--mist is in the air of Brussels. It creeps, it creeps. It gets into the bones, into the brain, into the heart. Even when one laughs one feels the ghostly visitant. All the joy has gone from life. The vision is clouded. To look at anything you must see Germans first. Oh, horrible, horrible it is! And hourly it grows more horrible. Its very quietness takes on some clammy quality associated with graves. Movement and life go on all round. People walk, talk, eat, drink, take the trams, shop. But all the while the Germans are there, the Germans are in their hotels, their houses, their palaces, their public buildings, Town Hall, Post Office, Palais de Justice, in their trams, in their cafés, in their restaurants-- At last I find a simile. It is like being at home, in one's beloved home with one's beloved family all around one, and every room full _of cockroaches_! CHAPTER XXIV THE CULT OF THE BRUTE Repellant, unforgettable, was the spectacle of the Germans strutting and posing on the steps of the beautiful Palais de Justice. So ill did they fit the beauty of their background, that all the artist in one writhed with pain. Like some horrible vandal attempt at decoration upon pure and flawless architecture these coarse, brutish figures stood with legs apart, their flat round caps upon their solemn yokel faces giving them the aspect of a body of convicts, while behind them reared those noble pillars, yellow and dreamlike, suffering in horror, but with chaste dignity, the polluting nearness of the Hun.