more privately talk to her in Flemish. Since
her husband's execution, the woman said, she had had to become the
mistress of the sergeant-major who resided with her as the only
means, seemingly, of saving her one remaining young son from exile
in Germany and her daughters from unbearably brutal treatment;
though she added, "As to their virtue, _that_ has long since
vanished; all I ask is that they be not half-killed whenever the
soldiers get drunk. Oh Madame! If you could only say a word to that
Colonel with whom you are living?"

Mrs. Warren dared not translate this last sentence to Vivie, for
fear her daughter forced her at all costs to leave the Hotel
Imperial. Where, if she did, were they to go?

The winter of 1914 had witnessed an appalling degree of
frightfulness in eastern Belgium, the Wallon or French-speaking part
of the country more especially. The Germans seemed to bear a special
grudge against this region, regarding it as doggedly opposed to
absorption into a Greater Germany; whereas they hoped the Flemish
half of the country would receive them as fellow Teutons and even as
deliverers from their former French oppressors. Thousands of old men
and youths, of women and children in the provinces south of the
Meuse had been shot in cold blood; village after village had been
burnt. Scenes of nearly equal horror had taken place between
Brussels and Antwerp, especially around Malines. Von Bissing's
arrival as Governor General was soon signalized by those dreaded Red
Placards on the walls of Brussels, announcing the verdicts of
courts-martial, the condemnation to death of men and women who had
contravened some military regulation.

Yet in spite of this, life went on in Brussels once more--by von
Bissing's stern command--as though the country were not under the
heel of the invader. The theatres opened their doors; the cinemas
had continuous performances; there was Grand Opera; there were
exhibitions of toys, or pictures, and charitable bazaars. Ten days
after the fall of Antwerp _char-a-bancs_ packed with Belgians drove
out of Brussels to visit the scenes of the battles and those
shattered forts, so fatuously deemed impregnable, so feeble in their
resistance to German artillery.

Vivie, even had she wished to do so, could not have joined the
sight-seers. As the subjects of an enemy power she and her mother
had had early in January to register themselves at the Kommandantur
and were there warned that without a sp