“Almost, monsieur,” he answered; then turning to the innkeeper he bawled, “Get me a pan and matches!” He rested his hands on his hips and stared insolently at the woman and me. “Monsieur has seen the flag on the cathedral?” he asked. He continued in Flemish, “The brave men of Diest ran up a white flag while the Germans were still at Liége! Madame says they did well to surrender.”
“I said that to surrender is nothing, myne heeren,” she interrupted slowly, looking at me but addressing us both. “Every thing surrenders.”
“Ha, madame! Foolishness! Talk like a Belgian patriot if you please. We never surrender, we Belgians: we fight, fight, fight!” Alexis swung his arm and waited confidently for my applause.
“Madame,” I turned to her. “You think these things do not matter?”
“They do not matter, mynheer,” she said, smiling.
“The invasion of Belgium?—that does not matter?”
“It does not matter, mynheer.”
“Murder? arson? rape? pillage? millions dead and maimed? millions enslaved? Madame!” I found myself addressing her as if she were a logician instead of a peasant.
“It is nothing, nothing; I know it is nothing. I feel it here.” Again she laid her hand on her breast with the singular passionate gesture I had marked before. “It does not change anything; it does not change the soil of the earth, it does not change the man, it does not change the woman, it does not change the child. Then it is nothing. We of Belgium are like rain falling on a field: they [the Germans] are like rain falling. We do not choose: they do not choose. It is all—nothing.”