Just before lunch this morning, two very ragged-looking individuals (Belgian civilians) came to the château. They were travel-stained indeed, just having made the journey on foot from Brussels and in a calmer era would have had some success in the rôle of common ordinary tramps. As it was, they excited a little curiosity by the suspicious way they had of looking about, and our first thought was spies until one of them, edging toward the outside of the group, made Baronne de H. understand that he had something to communicate to her. Inquiring if it were safe, he suddenly leaned down and drew out from the sole of his shoe, a piece of paper on which was written, "A banker of Brussels sends greetings--all are well." The little woman burst into a flood of tears for she realized that it was a message from her husband, one of the _Garde Civique_ of Brussels. During the three, long, anxious weeks of devotion to others, I had often remarked and wondered at her courage in never mentioning her own longing and apprehension for her husband and three little children. Before we had recovered from the first onslaught of the army, she must have known, after it left here, that it would pass their château three kilometres the other side of Brussels and what would it leave in its wake? Can you imagine her anxiety, when every day we were hearing frightful stories of children having their hands chopped off and people's heads being paraded on bayonets? But I never remember her uttering a single "I wonder," or an "I wish." Does this not bear out what the illustrious Roman said about the "Belgians," which certainly did not exclude the women? It is the grandest thing that ever could be--this response of the women to the Nation's call, for it is not just passive self-sacrifice, but impassioned co-operation. In the afternoon Madame de H. and I went to Liége to arrange her passport for Brussels. Two of the officers who are here offered to go with us in order to facilitate an entrance into the "_Kommandantur_," which is the general headquarters and is in that ancient and beautiful place of the _Princes-Evêques_, onetime feudal lords of the principality of Liége. I wanted to rebel openly when I saw that wonderful court, world-famous for its beauty, which has been turned into a dépôt of supplies and barracks with horses stabled under those delicate, Gothic arches, models of purity and beauty. But to what good? Will anything ever expiate the offense? There are also horses in the theatre and machine guns in all the upper windows.