Peasants everywhere, in crowds, in groups, in isolated numbers. Bareheaded women, hollow-cheeked men, little girls and boys, and all with bundles, some pathetically small, done up in white or blue cloths, and some huge and grotesque, under which the peasants stagger along through the streets that were fashionable streets only just now, and now have turned into a sort of sad travesty of the streets of some distant village.
A curious rosy hue falls over the faces in the streets, the shop-windows glow like rubies, the gold on the Gothic buildings burns like crimson fire.
Overhead a magnificent sunset is spreading its banners out over the deserted city.
Then night falls; the red fades; Antwerp turns grey and sombre.
But the memory of that rose in the west remains, and in hope we wait, we are still waiting, knowing not what the morrow may bring forth.
CHAPTER XXX
WEDNESDAY
Last night the moon was so bright that my two pets, rescued from the ruins of Lierre, woke up and began to talk.
Or was it the big guns that woke them, the canary, and the grey Congo parrot?