a comfortable breakfast, smoke a cigar for half an hour or so, and talk
things over. Then their military automobiles came trembling and
sputtering to the doorsteps, and in groups of fours and fives they went
out to the firing line. If only two or three of a group returned, you
would naturally have to draw your own conclusions as to the fate of the
rest.

Those English gentlemen went about their jobs of life and death with
the same detached coolness as if their hunters were being saddled,
or they were waiting for the referee's whistle in Rugby football. Their
attitude was infernally exasperating; yet you couldn't help taking off
your hat to their sublime nerve and indifference.

I overheard a typical remark when matters were in this critical state. It
came from a handsome, curly-headed officer, noticeable not only for
his apparent efficiency, but because he didn't let the game of war
interfere with his attentions to the little Princess de Ligne. The latter
was nursing her brother, who had been shot through the back of the
neck during a raid through German lines. She was a princess in rank,
and a queen in looks. Thirty hours before the first shell burst into the
Place Verte--Monday morning, it was--this fellow rapped at my
door. He had wandered into the wrong pew, for his words were
obviously intended to hurry up a brother officer with whom he was to
take the morning ride to the firing line. Sticking his curly, sunburnt
head around the corner he drawled in inimitable British intonation:-

"I say, old chap, do hurry along; this is no ORDINARY occasion, you
know."

In the Royal Belgian Palace there happened a few hours before the