The Baas bent his head, uncovered, and crossed himself. With a quick stooping motion he closed the wide-open eyes and straightened the bent limbs. Then he rose to his full height and looked at me sadly. “This man had a mother, monsieur,” he said. “We must forget the rest.”
In the pit where the other German had lain we buried the body of the deserter, and we found and repaired the little lath cross and set it up at the grave’s head. But first I took from about the neck of the corpse the oval medallion which told the man’s name and regimental number. It was a silver medal, finer than those usually worn by privates in the German army. I have it by me as I write, and on it is etched the brave sentence, “God shield you from all dangers of warfare, and render you back to us safe and victorious!”
I was late for breakfast at the Château, but Van Steen kindly made room for me at his right hand. “Aha, monsieur,” he called gaily, “we thought you were helping to find the deserter.”
“Wha-what, monsieur le Baron?” I stuttered in amazement.
“The German deserter. A file of soldiers woke us up at seven o’clock, inquiring for one of their men who ran away from Mons a month ago. They are searching the stables and the forest. They have traced him here to our commune. I hope they catch him!”
My fingers clutched the silver disk in my pocket. “I think they will not catch him, messieurs. He ran away a month ago, you say?”
“A month ago.... But it is nothing to us, eh? Let us eat our breakfasts.” The Baron bowed grandly to me. “Monsieur le Délégué,” he began in his smooth, formal voice, “once again we remind ourselves that it is thanks to you and the generous American people that we have bread. It is thanks to you that our noble Belgium is not starving.... Eh bien! Let us eat our breakfasts.”
A second time we seated ourselves at our little round table in the restaurant on the boulevard Anspach--the director of the art museum and I. A mug of light Belgian beer was before each of us, and a copy of _La Belgique_ telling of the Somme battles. The director’s hands shook as he reached for the newspaper and his half-finished beer. His breath came in short, apoplectic gasps. He was wildly angry. A couple of minutes before a Flemish newsboy had rushed into the restaurant and shouted, “Aeroplane! The Germans are shooting it!” And the restaurant had emptied like a hive, filling the boulevard, where every one gazed at the dull gray dragonfly droning at an immense height over the city, pursued with soft white smoke-flowers which thudded as they bloomed in the upper air. While we watched, an old peasant in wooden shoes and padded black petticoats dropped her market basket on the director’s toes. He forgot aeroplane and anti-aircraft guns, war, the crowds, and me, his guest. He howled, he cursed, he danced; and now that we were safe again at our table in the restaurant, anathema and malediction still tumbled from his full red lips.
