Madame X. and I felt as if we could not sit still another minute this afternoon and, safe, or no, we decided to take a walk on the mountainside. We could hear regiments approaching first by a faint buzzing in the distance which rounded out into song as it drew near; as an officer told us, the men often sing in four voices which is quite beautiful. Then, we became aware of a different noise, a sort of loose rumble, as if cohesion would presently not exist for the thing, whatever it was, that caused this new note. But it was not a note, it was a disturbance which grew and grew in proportions. Madame X. and I scurried up and down the paths trying to find a vista through the trees that would disclose this monster which was moving so protestingly along the road.
I imagined it would be snorting flame and its eyes smouldering fires, but instead its eyes were neat little windows with tidy curtains, for the monster turned out to be three diminutive houses on wheels drawn by a huge motor. What their end and purpose might be, is imaginable. If it is for the comfort of the High Command _en campagne_, the great clumsy procession rivaling the speed of a snail is a heap of trouble for a little luxury.
Namur is taken by the Germans. Practically nothing remains of the city. A German major who was brought, wounded, to Liége, said the battle was too frightful to narrate. He entered the city with one thousand men and left it with sixty-five. Just outside the forts, where he had been stationed with two hundred horses, three bombs fell upon them at the same moment and only seven of the poor beasts remained. His admiration for the pointing and firing of the Belgian and French cannon was unlimited.
Just before lunch this morning, two very ragged-looking individuals (Belgian civilians) came to the château. They were travel-stained indeed, just having made the journey on foot from Brussels and in a calmer era would have had some success in the rôle of common ordinary tramps. As it was, they excited a little curiosity by the suspicious way they had of looking about, and our first thought was spies until one of them, edging toward the outside of the group, made Baronne de H. understand that he had something to communicate to her. Inquiring if it were safe, he suddenly leaned down and drew out from the sole of his shoe, a piece of paper on which was written, "A banker of Brussels sends greetings--all are well." The little woman burst into a flood of tears for she realized that it was a message from her husband, one of the _Garde Civique_ of Brussels. During the three, long, anxious weeks of devotion to others, I had often remarked and wondered at her courage in never mentioning her own longing and apprehension for her husband and three little children. Before we had recovered from the first onslaught of the army, she must have known, after it left here, that it would pass their château three kilometres the other side of Brussels and what would it leave in its wake? Can you imagine her anxiety, when every day we were hearing frightful stories of children having their hands chopped off and people's heads being paraded on bayonets? But I never remember her uttering a single "I wonder," or an "I wish." Does this not bear out what the illustrious Roman said about the "Belgians," which certainly did not exclude the women? It is the grandest thing that ever could be--this response of the women to the Nation's call, for it is not just passive self-sacrifice, but impassioned co-operation.