Can you imagine such a sight? And this never for an instant ceased. Three roads joined each other at the edge of the town, and each brought from a different direction its tales of horror. Along one came the families driven from the colliery shafts, another brought the fishermen from the Scheldt, and the third the bourgeoisie from Mons and Brussels. All marched pell-mell along with the troops, slept at the roadside, and ate when some interruption on the congested route offered the opportunity. All fled straight on, not knowing whither. I found reproduced in this lamentable exodus certain spectacles which I had witnessed years before, but under vastly different circumstances. Yes! I had seen things just like this, but on a far-away continent where the fugitives were not men of my own race. I had seen cities taken by assault and whole populations fleeing in terror. I had seen houses in flames and corpses rotting in the fields. I had seen all the drama and horror of an invasion and had looked on with infinite pity. However, nothing in all that had touched me as did the present. Those flights had not taken place in my own country. They were not my compatriots who had been harried like so many animals, and driven from their homes like frightened beasts, to be tracked in the forests or hunted across the plains. They were, nevertheless, poor, unfortunate humans. Even in their panic and distress they were still a little grotesque, owing to their strange manners and costumes. Their natural abjection had in it nothing of similarity to the fierce grief of these Europeans, surprised in a time of peace and in no way prepared to endure submission.