hat wasn't very much, for German spies were everywhere,
inviting you to follow them to the dreaded Kommandantur in the Rue
de la Loi--a scene of as much in the way of horror and mental
anguish as the Conciergerie of Paris in the days of the Red Terror.
But some cheek-blanching rumour she had heard on a certain Monday in
October caused her to look next day on her way home at a fresh Red
Placard which had been posted up in a public place. The daylight had
almost faded, but there was a gas lamp which made the notice
legible. It ran:

CONDAMNATIONS

Par jugement du 9 Octobre, 1915, le tribunal de campagne a
prononce les condamnations suivantes pour trahison commise
pendant l'etat de guerre (pour avoir fait passer des recrues
a l'ennemi):

1 deg. Philippe BAUCQ, architecte a Bruxelles;

2 deg. Louise THULIEZ, professeur a Lille;

3 deg. Edith CAVELL, directrice d'un institut medical a
Bruxelles;

4 deg. Louis SEVERIN, pharmacien a Bruxelles;

5 deg. Comtesse JEANNE DE BELLEVILLE, a Montignies.

A LA PEINE DE MORT

* * * * *

Vivie then went on to read with eyes that could hardly take in the
words a list of other names of men and women condemned to long terms
of hard labour for the same offence--assisting young Belgians to
leave the Belgium that was under German occupation. And further,
the information that of the five condemned to death, _Philip Bauck_
and _Edith Cavell_ had already been _executed_.

* * * * *

The monsters! Oh that von Bissing. How gladly she would die if she
might first have the pleasure of killing him! That pompous old man
of seventy-one with the blotched face, who had issued orders that
wherever he passed in his magnificent motor he was to be saluted
with Eastern servility, who boasted of his "tender heart," so that
he issued placards about this time punishing severely all who split
the tongues of finches to make them sing better. Edith Cavell--she
did not pause to consider the fate of patriotic Belgian women--but
Edith Cavell, directress of a nursing home in Brussels, known far
and wide for her goodness of heart. She had held aloof from Vivie,
but was that to be wondered at when there was so much to make her
suspect--living, seemingly, under the protection of a German
official? But the very German nurses and doctors at the Red Cros