"Well, I'm going to change that; I'm going to be Belgian. I want you to let me pretend I'm a servant in your hotel. I'll put on a cap and apron, and I'll do anything you like; then I'll be able to see things for myself. It'll only be for a few hours. I'll get away this afternoon in the motor. But I must see the incoming of the Germans first!" The old woman seemed too bewildered to protest, and afterwards I doubted if she had really understood me from the way she acted later on. Just at that moment Henri drove up in the motor, and came to a standstill in front of the hotel. The poor fellow looked more dead than alive. His pie-coloured face was hollow, his lips were dry, his eyes standing out of his head. He was so exhausted that he could scarcely step out of the car. "I am sorry I am late," he groaned, "but it was impossible, impossible." "You needn't worry about me, Henri," I whispered to him reassuringly. "I'm not going to try to get out of Antwerp for several hours. In fact, I am going to wait to see the Germans come in!" Henri showed no surprise. There was no surprise left in him to show. "Bon!" he said. "Because, to tell you the truth, Madame, I wouldn't go out of the city again just now. I couldn't do it. Getting to Holland, indeed," he went on, between gasps as he drank off one cup of coffee after another, "it's like trying to get through hell to get to Paradise ... I've been seven hours driving about four miles there and back. It was horrible, it ... was unbelievable ... the roads are blocked so thick that there are no roads left. A million people are out there, struggling, fighting, and trying to get onwards, lying down on the earth fainting, dying." And he suddenly sat down upon a chair, and fell fast asleep. The sharp crack, crack of rifle fire woke him about five minutes later, and we all rushed to the door to see what was happening. Oh, nerve-racking sight! Across the grey square, through the grey-black morning, dogs were rushing, their tongues out. The gendarmes pursuing them were shooting them down to save them the worse horrors of starvation that might befall them if they were left alive in the deserted city at the mercy of the Germans. Madame X, a sad, distinguished-looking woman, a refugee from Lierre, whose house had been shelled, and who was destined to play a strange part in my story later on, now came over to us, and implored Henri to take her old mother in his car round to the hospital. "She is eighty-four, _ma pauvre mère_! We tried to take her to Holland, but it was impossible. But now that the bombardment has ceased and the worst is over, it seems wiser to remain. In the hospital the mère will be surely safe! As for us, my husband and I, truly, we have lost our all. There is nothing left to fear!" I offered to accompany the old lady to the hospital, and presently we started off. Henri and I, and the old wrinkled Flemish woman, and the buxom young Flemish servant, Jeanette.