I think of the tragedy of the poor old lady who received that unexpected visit in the very room in which she had chosen to end her life. The "béguinages" of Malines are said to be the most strict of the whole of Belgium, and in some of them the old women live for years without seeing an outsider. Where are now the poor old things who thought every day's life full enough of private worries, and have now been reached in their seclusion by this dreadful catastrophe? Curiously enough, Malines, which can be considered as the religious metropolis of Belgium, establishes a real record in the way of sieges, pillages, and plunders. French, English, Dutch have often taken and half destroyed the town, and ultimately Napoleon dismantled it in 1804. Some old twelfth and thirteenth century houses which have resisted all previous trials have been fatally hit now. The Grand' Place, which used to delight the lovers of old Flemish constructions, has greatly suffered, and the shells with subtle perversity have spared some ugly modern buildings and raged on what centuries had respected. Alas! these descriptions of destroyed towns, of murder and pillage; the stories of unbelievable atrocities, even only those which I know are true, the pictures of misery and famine which nobody would have believed possible in our times, could be continued page after page. But what happened in the towns is nothing compared with what happened in the country. There, far from the control of high officers, the blonde beast has given way to all the brutal follies of which the Hun is now known to be capable. I have seen and heard things that disgust keeps me from writing; things compared with which the excesses of the French Revolution, the bloodthirsty pleasures of some barbarian kings, the exploits of some notorious brigands, are but the A B C of an art in which the German army has certainly reached the highest possible standard of perfection. CHAPTER XII BRUSSELS, TOURNAI, AND THE GERMAN FRONT To penetrate into Belgium with a passport which proves, alas! too clearly that the bearer of it has been twice to Berlin, once to Constantinople, and often to Paris since the war broke out, and that he has had his passport _visé_ at the various Consulates in London, is, as a Belgian friend told me, asking for trouble. My troubles really began before leaving Holland. The German Consul in Flushing makes all foreigners who want to go to Belgium (though there are few enough who attempt the adventure) sign a special declaration saying that they take the full responsibility of their own act; no passports are given to leave Belgium, and people going in are likely to be kept there up to the end of the war.