was no peace.  It was a backyard of war, and there was the rumble of guns over the stones, and a litter of war’s munitions under the church wall.  Armoured cars were parked in the centre of the square, a corps of military cyclists had propped their machines against gun wagons and forage carts, out of the black shadows under high walls poked the snouts of guns, wafts of scented hay came from carts with their shafts down in the gutters, sentries with bayonets which caught the light of old lanterns paced up and down below the Town Hall steps, Belgian soldiers caked in the mud of the trenches slouched wearily in the side streets, and staff officers in motor-cars with glaring headlights and shrieking horns threaded their way between the wagons and the guns.  From beyond the town dull shocks of noise grumbled, like distant thunder-claps, and through the tremulous dusk of the sky there came an irregular repetition of faint flashes.

As the twilight deepened and the shadows merged into a general darkness I could see candles being lit through the bull’s-eye windows of small shops, and the rank smell of paraffin lamps came from vaulted cellars, into which one descended by steps from the roadway, where soldiers were drinking cups of coffee or cheap wine in a flickering light which etched Rembrandt pictures upon one’s vision.

A number of staff officers came down the steps of the Town Hall and stood at the foot of the steps as though waiting for some one.  They had not long to wait, for presently a very tall soldier came out to join them.  For a moment he stood under the portico lighting a cigarette, and the flare of his match put a glamour upon his face.  It was the King of the Belgians, distinguished only by his height from the simple soldiers who stood around him, and as he came down the steps he had the dignity of his own manhood but no outward sign of royalty.  I could hardly see his face then, but afterwards in the daylight I saw him pass down the lines of some of his heroic regiments and saw his gravity and the sadness of his eyes, and his extreme simplicity...  The first time I had seen him was in a hall in Brussels, when he opened the Great Exhibition in royal state, in the presence of many princes and ministers and all his Court.  Even then it seemed to me he had a look of sadness—­it may have been no more than shyness—­as though the shadow of some approaching tragedy touched his spirit.  I spoke of it at the time to a friend of mine and he smiled at the foolishness of the remark.

Here in Furnes his personality was touched with a kind of sanctity because his kingship of the last piece of Belgian soil symbolized all the ruin and desolation of his poor country and all the heroism of its resistance against an overpowering enemy and all the sorrows of those scattered people who still gave him loyalty.  Men of Republican instincts paid a homage in their hearts to this young king, sanctified by sorrow and crowned with martyrdom.  Living plainly