The bridge was being defended strongly by the French troops, while, very soon, members of the Volunteer Hospital Corps began hurrying along the streets in search of the wounded.
In half an hour the quiet, prosperous little town where, from the bulgy slate-covered steeple of the church the bells had, for centuries, sent their sweet carillon over the river, became swept by lead. Beneath the pitiless shell-fire the houses in the narrow Rue Grande were suffering severely and, at certain spots the street were covered with falling débris, a rubble of stones and mortar mixed with articles of furniture.
Half-way down that long, narrow street, so well known to summer visitors to the Ardennes, there stood, on the left, a quaint old-fashioned little inn called the Hôtel de l’Epée—the Hotel of the Sword—one of the most ancient houses in Dinant, for it dated from the fifteenth century, and had then been part of a Franciscan Monastery. The rooms were small, with their original old oaten panelling; the floors were of great stone slabs hollowed by the feet of many generations, and though the little place was typical of the Ardennes, there was a curious medieval air about it which was genuine.
The Hotel of the Sword was kept by a stout, prosperous, red-faced old Belgian named François Mazy, who usually wore the blue linen blouse of the Ardennois. “Uncle François” was known to all Dinant, on account of his cheery good-nature and charitable disposition. And to his homely inn, each summer, went many well-known people of Brussels, because there they fared exceedingly well—Uncle François doing the cooking himself, and charging his visitors, in each of whom he took a real personal interest, only very modestly as compared with the more modern houses.
To Uncle François’ hundreds of the townspeople, men, women, and terrified children, now fled, because beneath the house, and running far under the cobbled street, were huge vaulted cellars hewn in the limestone rock—the cellars of the ancient monastery, the entrance to which had, only a few years before, been discovered behind a walled-up archway.
There, lit by flickering candles and one or two evil-smelling lamps, the great cavernous vaults of the monks of old, were filled by those poor excited and terrified people, who had taken refuge from the sudden horrors of war.
Many of them were women, anxious for their husbands’ safety, and little children with big wide-open wondering eyes, while Uncle François himself, with Marie, his stout, middle-aged daughter, moved among the crowd in that hot, stifling atmosphere, uttering cheering words in his native Walloon, and trying to comfort them.
“All will be well soon, my friends,” he declared. “It is only a skirmish.”
Meanwhile, the fight was growing hotter every moment. Edmond, with his ever-ready Maxim, had found cover behind a piece of thick, broken wall, one of the ancient earthworks of the citadel, and from there he and his men kept up a terrible rain of lead upon the oncoming Germans, who were now fighting in the Place below.
Of a sudden, a shell struck the spire of the church, blowing off part of the pumpkin-shaped top which fell into the Place with a heavy crash and clouds of dust, the beautiful bells, which had rung out there so musically for ages, coming down also.