“They have not been here long, madame?” I was looking at the transplanted geraniums, well rooted in the mud, but not yet wholly at home, and the raw, muddy rim about the edges of the three mounds.
“Since April, mynheer. I tend them myself,” she added proudly.
I turned to the Commissaire. “None of those is her grandson’s grave?” I asked in a low voice.
“Oh, no,” he muttered. “Her grandson died in Germany. He was taken prisoner at Liége in August, 1914. Madame,” he said to her, “the gentleman asks if he may look at your graves.”
“Oh, yes, mynheeren.” She fluttered down before us, bent rheumatically at the first mound, and pulled at a weed which the rain had freshened.
“‘Pray for the soul of Franz Mueller,’” I read in breathless amazement. “A Boche?”
“A Boche, of course!” said the Commissaire.
“And the other two—they are Boches also? ‘Pray for the soul of Max Edelsheim’ and ‘Pray for the soul of Erich Schneider,’” I read aloud. The neat wooden crosses bore also the regimental numbers of the men and the date of their death.
“Boches, too. It happens that they were killed in this garden on a reconnaissance.”