In the evening the cheerful ones, with the journalist at their head, organised entertainments for the amusement of the company. The journalist himself recited poems of his own composition about the Kaiser. One of the Frenchmen did some amateur conjuring with packs of cards, handkerchiefs, and coins. The opera singer bawled out at the top of his prodigious tenor, “La donna è mobile,” “O sole mio,” and when something more serious was called for, César Franck’s “Dieu s’avance à travers la lande”; which last, however, he sang in so richly operatic a style that my Uncle Spencer, who was very fond of this particular song, could hardly recognise it. But the most popular turn was always that of “the celebrated diva, Emmy Wendle,” as the journalist called her, when he introduced her to the company. The enthusiasm was tremendous when Emmy Wendle appeared--dressed in an Eton jacket, broad starched collar, striped trousers, and a top hat, and carrying in her hand a little cane--did two or three rattling clog dances and sang a song with the chorus: “We are the nuts that get the girls Ev-ery time; We get the ones with the curly curls, We get the peaches, we get the pearls-- Ev-ery time.” And when, at the end of the turn, she took off her top hat, and, standing rigidly at attention, like a soldier, her childish snubby little face very grave, her blue eyes fixed on visions not of this world, sang in her tuneless street-urchin’s voice an astonishingly English version of the “Brabançonne,” then there was something more than enthusiasm. For men would suddenly feel the tears coming into their eyes, and women wept outright; and when it was over, everybody violently stamped and clapped and waved handkerchiefs, and laughed, and shouted imprecations against the Germans, and said, “Vive la Belgique!” and ran to Emmy Wendle, and took her hand, or slapped her on the back as though she had really been a boy, or kissed her--but as though she were not a girl, and dressed in rather tight striped trousers at that--kissed her as though she were a symbol of the country, a visible and charming personification of their own patriotism and misfortunes. When the evening’s entertainment was over, the company began to disperse. Stretched on their hard mattresses along the floor, the prisoners uneasily slept or lay awake through the sultry nights, listening to the steps of the sentries in the court below and hearing every now and then through the unnatural silence of the invaded town, the heavy beat, beat, beat of a regiment marching along the deserted street, the rumble and sharp, hoofy clatter of a battery on the move towards some distant front.