[C] A story published at Berlin gives the account sent in a letter from Lieut. von der Linde, of the Potsdam Guards, of how he carried out the capture of Fort Malonne at Namur. The lieutenant states that he was ordered to advance on the fort with 500 men by a route where mines were suspected. He advanced with four men on the bridge across the moat of the fort, and called upon the commander to surrender immediately, threatening him that otherwise the artillery would at once begin to bombard the fort. The commander, taken by surprise, allowed the lieutenant and his four men to enter and surrendered his sword. Besides the commander, five officers and twenty men were taken prisoners. The remainder of the garrison, consisting of 400 men, had escaped. Four heavy guns and considerable war material were captured. For this exploit Lieut. von der Linde received from the Kaiser the Order of Merit, and it is recorded that he was the youngest officer in the German service to receive that distinction. He was only twenty-two. No reference is made in this account to the mist and rain which alone could have made such an adventure possible, much less successful. The story illustrates the difficulty of defending, under the conditions described, a fortress situated among hills, and also the facilities offered for escape. [D] See, among other evidence, the details collected by and given in the Fifth Report of the Belgian Official Commission of Inquiry. [E] Alleged to be a Major von Manteuffel. In a German Official Inquiry afterwards held at Brussels an officer of that name was reported to have been cashiered for this affair; but it is doubtful if he was more than an official scapegoat. [F] The narrative was given to Reuter’s special correspondent at Rotterdam. [G] Writing in the _Daily Telegraph_ of the destroyed art treasures of Louvain, Sir Claude Phillips says: “The chief treasures of the church of Saint-Pierre de Louvain were two famous paintings by Dierick (or Thierry) Bouts, who is as closely identified with the now destroyed university city of Belgium as are the Van Eycks with Ghent and Bruges, and Roger van der Weyden with Tournay and Brussels. The earlier of these paintings is (or rather was) the remarkable triptych with the Martyrdom of St. Erasmus in the central panel, and the figures of St. Jerome and St. Bernard in the wings. This was seen at the Bruges retrospective exhibition of 1904. But perhaps the masterpiece of Dierick Bouts, and certainly one of the finest examples of Flemish fifteenth-century art, was the polyptych painted by him for the altar of the Holy Sacrament in the collegiate church of Saint-Pierre.