The old stationmaster produced some good Burgundy, sun-kissed, purply red of a most respectable age.
When everything was on the table he brought his chair and joined in with us, asking questions about Antwerp, and Ghent, and Ostend, and giving us in return vivid sketches of what the Germans had been doing in his part of the world. The extraordinary part of all this was that though we were in a region inhabited by the Germans there was no sign of destruction. The absence of ruin and pillage seems to conceal the fact that this was invested country.
After our bon café we all shook hands with the stationmaster, wished him good luck, and hurried back to the village, where we climbed into our vehicle again.
This time I took a place in the inside of the carriage, leaving Jean and another man to hang on to that perilous back seat.
At two o'clock we were off.
The horses, freshened by food and water, galloped along now at a great pace, and the day developed into an afternoon as cloudless and glittering as the morning.
But almost immediately after leaving Enghien an ominous note began to be struck.
Whenever we shouted out our query:
"Il y a des Allemands?" the passers-by coming from the opposite direction shouted back,
"Oui, oui, beaucoup d'Allemands!"