“All day long yesterday I watched the German troops march through the town,” he tells me. “It was pitiable to see those columns of splendidly equipped men, simply dropping from fatigue. Some could scarcely put one foot before the other.” “They are our enemies.” “My sister stood in the street for hours, refilling buckets of water from which the exhausted men swilled their necks and arms. She cut them tartine after tartine until all our bread was gone and she could hardly stand herself.” “They are probably going down to shoot the peasants’ fathers, sons and brothers in Liège,” I remark coldly. “From my sister’s point of view, they are suffering and they are men. That is enough....” Compassion is evidently a Belgian vice! Even Madame Job is breaking out in an unexpected quarter. She is satisfied for the moment as to Albert’s safety, so I am surprised to find her this evening occupying her favourite position on the lowest step of the kitchen stairs with her blue check apron over her head. Spasmodic snuffles under the cotton screen warn me what to expect. I gently pull down the covering and stroke her face. “We shall win,” I say consolingly. At this Madame breaks down completely. “Win? The poor, poor Prussians will be killed, all killed. There was one so young to-night, with eyes so sad.” (Snort and snuffle.) “Have they not also wives and mothers who will mourn their loss?” I find no words in which to confute this obvious truth. Madame soon revives. In her careful Walloon brain she has conceived what she calls “_un plan_.” “If I care for the Prussians” (I know she is hoping that heaps and heaps will be brought in from the battlefield to test her word), “perhaps they will care for my Albert should he be wounded in the forts there below....” I do not dare to tell her that the Belgians have themselves blown up the Chaudfontaine forts and that her beloved Albert is doubtless numbered with the dead.... IN DANGER One of the Uhlans is quite communicative to-day. He shows us how the patrols are worked. It is very interesting, but far too red-tapey. “In twenty minutes,” he says, “I can summon a hundred and twenty Uhlans to my aid.” To get them, however, he has to write on his cross-barred paper his name, position, date, hour, regiment and extra details. This human document he places in an envelope which also has to be addressed and endorsed with date, hour, name, etc. Business-like but slightly superfluous when the enemy’s patrols are almost on you. I pity the Uhlan deputed to take the message. The Cuirassier is in a soft mood this morning. He comforts Madame Job with the assurance that no great battle can take place in the Ardennes, where the wooded hills and valleys are ill-suited to such a scheme. He ridicules our idea of hiding in the woods as being a fatal plan for escaping the Germans. “You would be found and dragged out in a moment,” is his reassuring statement. Later he turns to me. “You do not fear the Germans, Fräulein?”