Monsieur J. and several of the representative men of the village, including _Monsieur le Curé_ (a little, fat, rosy-cheeked man, adored by his flock), were taken as hostages for twenty-four hours and had to sleep in the railroad station. It was nervously comical to see Monsieur J. starting off, his valet following with a mattress on his back and a box of sandwiches in his hand against the misery of the night. But it is not so amusing to be the victim of even a threat which at any moment may take the form of a sudden reality for no reason except to terrorize honest people who are defending their homes. The enemy's way of punishing and evading future insurrection among the civilians is to take people as hostages and shoot them if necessary, or burn the houses. This they have already done in several quarters in Liége. A few nights ago several students fired on some German officers in a café and the latters' revenge was instantaneous and terrible; they just stood eighteen men up in front of the University and shot them like dogs--then burned that section for blocks around. Austrian artillery was passing today with their great cannon drawn by automobiles. The wheels of the gun carriages are enormous and the cannon are the biggest things we have yet seen. _August 19th, Wednesday._ Such an odd picking little noise, like a mouse, disturbed us at breakfast this A. M. Madame X. opened the door and was astonished to see a German soldier unscrewing the telephone from the wall. Her obvious surprise moved the man to explain, which was unqualifiedly this--"Madame, permit me, but we need your telephone for field service." I suppose he may as well have it anyway for nothing so modern and useful as telephones has existed for us since August 3rd. A group of very surly officers have "taken over" Madame R.'s château down in the country. The moment they arrived night before last, the Colonel ordered her to bring out all her best wine, throwing her his soiled gloves to wash at the same time. The patients at the Convent are beginning to show a little life now, though their poor, black faces are more grotesque than ever as an eye, here and there, begins to peep out from a crack in the crusted surface. They have begun to talk after a fashion, though their poor, dried lips can hardly accomplish the task. Jean, the big fellow who jumped seven metres into the ditch from Fort Chaudefontaine when it blew up, died this morning, the result of a fractured skull.