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.
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