I lay there until there was light enough to distinguish trees
and telegraph-poles, and then walked on to Ath. After that, when they
stopped me, if they could not read, the red seal satisfied them; if they
were officers and could read, they cursed me with strange, unclean
oaths, and ordered me, in the German equivalent, to beat it. It was a
delightful walk. I had had no sleep the night before and had eaten
nothing, and, though I had cut away most of my shoe, I could hardly
touch my foot to the road. Whenever in the villages I tried to bribe any
one to carry my knapsack or to give me food, the peasants ran from
me. They thought I was a German and talked Flemish, not French. I
was more afraid of them and their shotguns than of the Germans,
and I never entered a village unless German soldiers were entering
or leaving it. And the Germans gave me no reason to feel free from
care. Every time they read my pass they were inclined to try me all
over again, and twice searched my knapsack.
After that happened the second time I guessed my letter to the
President of France might prove a menace, and, tearing it into little
pieces, dropped it over a bridge, and with regret watched that
historical document from the ex-President of one republic to the
President of another float down the Sambre toward the sea.
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