One or two of the best things from the museum at Ypres had been secured and brought back here.  On a centre table was a bronze equestrian statue in miniature of a Crusader, a beautiful piece of work.

While we were waiting for coffee the Commandant opened the lower drawer of a secretary and took out a letter.

“This may interest Madame,” he said.  “I have just received it.  It is from General Leman, the hero of Liege.”

He held it close to the lamp and read it.  I have the envelope before me now.  It is addressed in lead pencil and indorsed as coming from General Leman, Prisoner of War at Magdeburg, Germany.

The letter was a soldier’s simple letter, written to a friend.  I wish I had made a copy of it; but I remember in effect what it said.  Clearly the hero of Liege has no idea that he is a hero.  He said he had a good German doctor, but that he had been very ill.  It is known, of course, that his foot was injured during the destruction of one of the fortresses just before he was captured.

“I have a very good German doctor,” he wrote.  “But my foot gives me a great deal of trouble.  Gangrene set in and part of it had to be amputated.  The wound refuses to heal, and in addition my heart is bad.”

He goes on to ask for his family, for news of them, especially of his daughter.  I saw this letter in March.  He had been taken a prisoner the previous August.  He had then been seven or eight months without news of his family.

“I am no longer young,” he wrote in effect, for I am not quoting him exactly, “and I hope my friends will not forget me, in case of an exchange of prisoners.”

He will never be forgotten.  But of course he does not realise that.  He is sixty-four and very ill.  One read through all the restraint of the letter his longing to die among his own people.  He hopes he will not be forgotten in an exchange of prisoners!

The Commandant’s orderly announced that coffee was served, and we followed the lamp across the hall.  An English officer made a fourth at the table.

It was good coffee, served with cream, the first I had seen for weeks.  With it the Commandant served small, very thin cakes, with a layer of honey in the centre.  “A specialty of the country,” he said.

We talked of many things:  of the attitude of America toward the war, her incredulity as to atrocities, the German propaganda, and a rumour that had reached the front of a German-Irish coalition in the House of Representatives at Washington.

From that the talk drifted to uniforms.  The Commandant wished that the new French uniforms, instead of being a slaty blue, had been green, for use in the spring fighting.

I criticised the new Belgian uniform, which seemed to me much thinner than the old.

“That is wrong.  It is of excellent cloth,” said the General, and brought his cape up under the lamp for examination.