"Monsieur, good news! there is a train for Liège to-morrow morning at five o'clock!"
"Merci bien," says the old professor. "Mais, j'ai peur!"
I rise at four next morning and come down to see him off. We two, who have never seen each other before, seem now like the only relics of some bygone far-off event. To see his fat, old, enormous face gives me a positive thrill of joy. I feel as if I have known him all my life, and when he has gone I feel curiously alone. The melancholy old fat man's presence had lent a semblance of life to the hotel, which how seems given over to ghosts and echoes. Unable to bear it, I moved into the Métropole.
It was very strange to be there, very strange indeed! This was the Métropole and yet not the Métropole! Sometimes I could not believe it was the Métropole at all—the gay, bright, lively, friendly, companionable Métropole—so sad was this big red-carpeted hotel, so full of gloomy echoing silences, and with never a soul to arrive or leave, to ask for a room or a time-table.
There were Italians in charge of the hotel, for which I was profoundly thankful.
How nice they were to me, those kindly sons of the South.
They allowed me to look in their visitors' book, and as I expected, I found that the dry hotel register had suddenly become transformed into a vital human document, of surpassing interest, of intense historic value.
As I glanced through the crowded pages I came at last upon an ominous date in August upon which there were no names entered.
It was the day on which Brussels surrendered to the Germans.
On that day the register was blank, entirely blank.