In cars magnificently upholstered, padded, and
cushioned were piled trunks, hand-bags, dressing-cases. The women
had dressed at a moment's warning, as though at a cry of fire. Many
had travelled throughout the night, and in their arms the children,
snatched from the pillows, were sleeping.
But more appealing were the peasants. We walked out along the
inner boulevards to meet them, and found the side streets blocked
with their carts. Into these they had thrown mattresses, or bundles of
grain, and heaped upon them were families of three generations. Old
men in blue smocks, white-haired and bent, old women in caps, the
daughters dressed in their one best frock and hat, and clasping in
their hands all that was left to them, all that they could stuff into a
pillow-case or flour-sack. The tears rolled down their brown, tanned
faces. To the people of Brussels who crowded around them they
spoke in hushed, broken phrases. The terror of what they had
escaped or of what they had seen was upon them. They had
harnessed the plough-horse to the dray or market-wagon and to the
invaders had left everything.
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