A German armoured motor-car had suddenly swept down the Rue St. Jacques—which ran behind the Rue Grande—and was firing with its machine-gun into the windows of houses without warning or provocation.
Behind it, rode a large body of Uhlans, who at once ran through, with their lances, those of the peaceful inhabitants who opened their doors to ascertain the cause of the firing.
Aimée succeeded in gaining the door of the ancient inn only just in time, knocking frantically, and obtaining admittance, while Uncle François, recognising her, was at once eager for information as to what had happened to the Baron. At the moment the girl entered the shelter of the house, bullets were already sweeping up the streets.
Dinant had been attacked suddenly by a force under Lieutenant-Colond Beeger, one of the most arrogant Huns of the Kaiser—a monster, who dealt death upon defenceless women and children, and who had been sent by his superiors to repeat the “frightful examples” of Aerschot and of Visé. The sharp, relentless talons of the Prussian eagle had, alas! been set into the little place, peaceful, quiet, and unoffending as it had always been throughout the ages.
Within five minutes the town arose from its silence to a pandemonium of noise. Edmond, who had climbed up the four hundred steps leading to the citadel to his machine-gun, saw but little of the Dantean scene below. His pom-pom was now spitting death down into the Grand Place, but suddenly he slackened the fire in fear lest he might be sending to the grave any of those brave Dinantais, whom he could not distinguish from the enemy in the darkness.
Meanwhile, Aimée stood in the great cellars of the Hotel of the Sword, huddled with a hundred others of all ages and all classes, and fearing for her lover in that violent storm which had so suddenly burst upon them.
How would it end? What could the end be?