“I was as one dead, monsieur, and fell flat on the stone; but that one said, ‘Up, spy. Ha! Ha! In priest’s costume, art thou, eh? We shall have sport with thee—a spy-priest!’ For he had felt of my cassock in the darkness and he believed, as all the Germans believe, that Belgian officers wore the garb of priests, that they spied disguised as priests, that they even directed rifle-fire and artillery-fire gowned as priests—in a word, they believed every lie which their generals could invent of us. And so my captor dragged me through the doorway and down the black corridor, where all smelled of naphtha as if one were ready to kindle a great fire.
“He stopped; he beat softly on a door; a voice called ‘Herein’: the door opened, and I was flung into the very cell where we sit, monsieur.
“There sat a man at the table where you sit, monsieur le Délégué—the man whose photograph you see—a man young, and hard, and cruel, in the costume of a German officer. He sat alone before his untasted supper dishes. At either end of the table a candle dripped and sputtered. The man’s elbows were propped against the edge of the table, and his head hung forward between the candles, as if he were ill or broken with anxiety.
“He had been reading, monsieur, and he thrust a paper into the breast of his uniform as we entered—the sentry and I. His hand trembled, and his voice trembled, too, but he roared out, ‘Speak, one of you.’
“‘A spy, Herr Leutnant,’ grunted the soldier behind me. ‘He was prowling round the door.’
“‘So?’
“‘He says he is a monk of this monastery.’
“‘So?’
“‘He says he ran away before we burned Louvain.’
“‘So?’