From every window there hangs a curious sort of transparent stalactite, which at first sight looks like an icicle, and is formed by the window glass melted in the dreadful heat. A three-floor house has collapsed completely except for the wall facing the street, and at one of the second-floor windows a bird-cage, suspended by a chain, is still hanging, and the blizzard rattles it continuously to and fro. For the fire has got a sort of sinister humour of its own. Here it has destroyed completely the powerful masonry of a fifteenth-century house whose walls were four feet thick, and next door it has blackened without burning a fragile-looking cottage, and even left a white and red check curtain hanging from the window. Further down, a butcher's shop has completely disappeared, but a large metallic sign with an enormous bull painted on it is still at its place, sustained, a miracle of balance, by the frame of the burned awning. I walk down the Rue de la Station to the Grand' Place. Here was the fine theatre in Italian renaissance; now only the four pillars of the front mark the place where it was standing. Farther down, near the gigantic ruins of the University and the Library, is the once-famous Cathedral of St. Peter. Up to a few months ago this building was one of the most beautiful examples of the Flemish florid-Gothic. All lovers of old things remember its windows, made more elegant than those of any other Gothic cathedral by a sort of carved balcony, its steep roof, its solid-looking, severe front without the traditional portals. Now all this has disappeared. The roof has collapsed. The wonderfully painted stained windows are no more. The carvings have been reduced to shapeless calcinated stones, and the bricks underneath, re-baked by the flames, show themselves as red as a fresh wound. A notice stuck on what was a beautifully carved oak door tells me that the entrance to the cathedral is strictly "verboten." But a couple of marks make the soldier on guard close both eyes, and he lets me in after having warned me not to say a word or make any noise, as pieces of burned wood and of cornice are dropping down at the slightest movement. Inside one walks on a bed of rubbish four to seven feet deep. The huge pillars stand without supporting any vault, like useless date trees. The famous tabernacle of Mathieu de Layens has been cracked by the heat, and tattered blackened pieces of canvas hang from the walls once covered with paint. As for the twenty-four little statues which used to decorate the choir, they have disappeared. I don't know if they were taken away by the priests before the destruction of the cathedral or stolen by the Germans after it.