"The Germans advanced more and more, and we retreated, surrounded on all sides, and at four in the morning out of one hundred and sixty in our company only seventeen remained; all are not dead; there are injured and prisoners. We shall return under fire if this keeps up. I will take my part in it; I am ready and prepared, and know that if I die I shall do so with confidence. Do not think that it is with despair that I shall die; it is with the utmost resignation. Do not cry or be sad. I resign myself to my fate, and I ask you to take things in this way also. Adieu, with all my heart. It is perhaps only for a short while, and I shall wait for you above. Much love to the family. I am in good health but very tired. Thousands of affectionate kisses. I have had my photograph taken and they will send you the proof. For my part, I take care to keep your photographs on me, and every day, after looking at them, it gives me fresh courage. Adieu." I give next a letter from the Mother Superior of a convent at Liège, written the night after Liège had been attacked: "In the morning the sound of cannon again shook the chapel. "The sisters were told to go and get their bundles, and in five minutes to be at the gate, where they would each receive five francs and their papers, and then they were told to run to the station. They did, through the rain, and to the accompaniment of the whistle and whine of German bullets. The Germans were on the heights, and were approaching every minute. The younger sisters helped those who were ill or old. Arriving near the station two sick ones were obliged to go to bed in another convent, and the others installed themselves in the cellars and small hallways. An immense explosion occurred--it was only a bridge they were blowing up, but the garden was filled with broken pieces of iron and steel. Eighteen sisters got into a train filled with wounded and arrived at Brussels at midnight, nearly dead from fright. "They went up the Boulevard Botanique, where they found an ambulance wagon, which took them to the Mother's house. The General Superior came to open the door for them, with her white apron and her arm band of the Red Cross. They slept in beds prepared for the wounded, and the next day they were sent to different institutions. "People knew nothing but false news, given out by the Germans. We had no news for three weeks, so I didn't even know a new Pope had been elected."[15]