Mais ou sqnt les lauriers que reserve l’Histoire
        A celui qui demain forcera la Victoire? 
        Nul ne les cueillira:  les lauriers sont fletris
        Seul un cypres s’eleve aux torubes de nos fils.]

He gave way to much emotion.  Vivie, though still dazed with the reverberating horror of Edith Cavell’s execution, tried to regain her mind balance and thank him for the kindness he had shown them.  But it was now necessary to see her mother who might also be undergoing a shock.  As she walked up to their bedroom she reflected that the departure of von Giesselin would have to be followed by their own exile to some other lodging.  They would share in his disgrace.

The next morning in fact the Belgian manager of the hotel with many regrets gave them a month’s warning.  The hotel would be required for some undefined need of the German Government and he had been told no one could be lodged there who was not furnished with a permit from the Kommandantur.

For three weeks Vivie sought in vain for rooms.  Every suitable place was either full or else for reasons not given they were refused.  She was reduced to eating humble pie, to writing once more to Graefin von Stachelberg and imparting the dilemma in which they were placed.  Did this kind lady know where a lodging could be obtained?  She herself could put up with any discomfort, but her mother was ill.  If she could help them, Vivie would humbly beg her pardon for her angry letter of three weeks ago and resume her hospital work.  Minna von Stachelberg made haste to reply that there were some things better not discussed in writing:  if Vivie could come and see her at six one evening, when she had a slight remission from work—­

Vivie went.  Out of hearing, Graefin von Stachelberg—­who, however, to facilitate intercourse, begged Vivie to call her “Minna,”—­“We may all be dead, my dear, before long of blood-poisoning, bombs from your aeroplanes, a rising against us in the Marolles quarter—­” said very plainly what she thought of Edith Cavell’s execution.  “It makes me think of Talleyrand—­was it not?—­who said ’It is a blunder; worse than a crime’ ... these terrible old generals, they know nothing of the world outside Germany.”  As to her cousin, Gottlieb von Giesselin—­“Really dear, if in this time of horrors one dare laugh at anything, I feel—­oh it is too funny, but also, too ‘schokking,’ as we suppose all English women say.  Yet of course I am sad about him, because he is a good, kind man, and I know his wife will be very very unhappy when she hears—­And it means he will die, for certain.  He must risk his life to—­to—­regain his position, and he will be shot before Verdun in one of those dreadful assaults.”  Then she told Vivie where she might find rooms, where at any rate she could use her name as a reference.  Also:  “Stay away at present and look after your mother.  When she is quite comfortably settled, come back and work with me—­here—­it is at any rate the only way in which you can see and help your countrymen.”