We reached the suburbs of Namur at ten o'clock in the morning. I got down and followed the waggons at a distance; I soon lost sight of them. I was stopped at the entrance to the town. I sat down under the gateway, while my papers were being examined. The soldiers on guard, seeing my uniform, offered me a scrap of ammunition bread, and the corporal handed me some peppered brandy in a blue glass drinking-cup. I made some ceremony about drinking out of the cup of military hospitality: "Catch hold!" he exclaimed angrily, accompanying his injunction with a _Sackerment der Teufel!_ My passage through Namur was a laborious one: I walked leaning against the houses. The first woman who saw me left her shop, gave me her arm with a pitying air, and helped me to drag myself along. I thanked her, and she replied: "No, no, soldier," Soon other women came running up, bringing bread, wine, fruit, milk, soup, old clothes, blankets. "He is wounded," said some, in their Brabançon French dialect. "He has the smallpox," cried others, and kept back their children. "But, young man, you will not be able to walk; you will die if you do; stay in the hospital." [Sidenote: The women of Namur.] They wanted to take me to the hospital, they relieved each other from door to door, and in this way helped me to the gate of the town, outside which I found the wagons again. You have seen a peasant-woman succour me; you shall see another woman show me hospitality in Guernsey. Women who have aided me in my distress, if you be still living, may God help you in your old age and in your sorrows! If you have departed this life, may your children share the happiness which Heaven has long refused me! The women of Namur assisted me to climb into the wagon, recommended me to the driver's care, and compelled me to accept a woollen blanket. I noticed that they treated me with a sort of respect and deference: there is something superior, something delicate, in the nature of Frenchmen which other nations recognise. The Prince de Ligne's men put me down for the second time on the road just outside Brussels, and refused to accept my last crown-piece. In Brussels, not one inn-keeper was willing to take me in. The wandering Jew, the popular Orestes, whom the ballad represents as going to that town: Quand il fut dans la ville De Bruxelle en Brabant[135], met with a better reception than I, for he had always five sous in his pocket. I knocked: they opened; when they saw me they said, "Move on, move on!" and shut the door in my face. I was driven out of a café. My hair hung over my face, hidden behind my beard and mustachios; I had a hay bandage round my thigh; over my tattered uniform I wore the blanket of the Namur women, knotted round my throat by way of a cloak. The beggar in the _Odyssey_ was more insolent, but not so poor as I.