Mrs. Warren's Daughter eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 472 pages of information about Mrs. Warren's Daughter.

Mrs. Warren's Daughter eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 472 pages of information about Mrs. Warren's Daughter.

He was perfunctorily defended by a languid Belgian barrister, tired of the invidious role of mechanical pleading for the lives of prisoners, especially where, as in this case, they were foredoomed, and eloquence was waste of breath, and even got you disliked by the impatient ogres, thirsty for the blood of an English man or woman....  “Du reste,” he said to a colleague, “agissait-il d’un Belge, mon cher, tu sais que l’on se sentirait force a risquer le deplaisir de ces ogres:  tandis que, pour un pauvre bougre d’Anglais...?  Et qu’ont-ils fait pour nous, les Anglais?  Nous avons tache de leur boucher le trou a Liege—­et—­il—­nous—­ont—­abandonne.  Enfin—­allons boire un coup—­”

Verdict:  as translated by the ferocious interpreter:—­

“Ze Court faind you Geeltee.  You are condemned to Dess, and you will be shot on Monday.”

In the prison of Saint-Gilles—­as I believe elsewhere in Belgium—­though there might be a military governor in control who was a German, the general direction remained in the hands of the Belgian staff which was there when the German occupation began.  These Belgian directors and their subordinates were as kind and humane to the prisoners under their charge as the Germans were the reverse.  Everything was done at Saint-Gilles to alleviate the mental agony of the condemned-to-death.  The German courts tried to prolong and enhance the agony as much as possible, by sentencing the prisoners three days, six days, a week before the time of execution (though for fear of a reprieve this sentence was not immediately published) and letting them know that they had just so many days or hours to live:  consequently most of them wasted away in prison with mind-agony, inability to sleep or eat; and even opiates or soporifics administered surreptitiously by the Belgian prison doctors were but slight alleviations.

Bertie when first placed in his cell at Saint-Gilles asked for pen, ink, and paper.  They were supplied to him.  He was allowed to keep on the electric light all night, and he distracted his mind—­with some dreadful intervals of horror at his fate—­by trying to set forth on paper for Vivie to read an explanation and an account of his adventures.  He intended to wind up with an appeal for his wife and children.

Vivie never quite knew how Bertie had managed to cross the War zone from France into Belgium, and reach Brussels without being arrested.  When they met in prison they had so little time to discuss such details, in face of the one awful fact that he was there, and was in all probability going to die in two days.  But from this incomplete, tear-stained scribble that he left behind and from the answers he gave to her few questions, she gathered that the story of his quest was something like this:—­

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Mrs. Warren's Daughter from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.