The
Germans have never got near enough to steal!
"You see," said the smart young captain who had come out to meet us at
the gate and take us to the citadel, "you see, nothing has been touched
in these houses since the owners had to go. When they return from their
places of refuge far away, they will find everything as they left
it--that is, as the Boche guns have left it."
Only too easy was it to see! In some of the streets whole rows of houses
had had their fronts torn off. The rooms within were like stage-settings
for some tragic play. Sheets and blankets trailed from beds where
sleepers had waked in fright. Doors of wardrobes gaped to show dresses
dangling forlornly, like Bluebeard's murdered brides. Dinner-tables were
set out for meals never to be finished, save by rats. Family portraits
of comfortable old faces smiling under broken glass hung awry on pink or
blue papered walls. Half-made shirts and petticoats were still caught by
the needle in broken sewing-machines. Dropped books and baskets of
knitting lay on bright carpets snowed under by fallen plaster. Vases of
dead flowers stood on mantelpieces, ghostly stems and shrivelled brown
leaves reflected in gilt-framed mirrors. I could hardly bear to look! It
was like being shown by a hard-hearted surgeon the beating of a brain
through the sawed hole in a man's skull. If one could have crawled
through the crust of lava at Pompeii, a year after the eruption, one
might have felt somewhat as at Verdun now!
On a broken terrace, once a beloved evening promenade, our two cars
paused.
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