And it must have been effective pleading to stop men in their wild
rush lusting to destroy. But Madame Callebaut was endowed with
powerful emotions. Carried away in her recital of the events, she
fell down on her knees before me, wringing her hands and
pleading so piteously that I felt for a moment as if I were a fiendish
Teuton with a firebrand about to set the old lady's house afire. I
can understand how the wildest men capitulated to such pleadings,
and how they came down the steps to write, in big, clear words,

"NICHT ANBRENNEN"
(Do not set fire)

Only they unwittingly wrote it upon her neighbor's walls, thus
saving both houses.

How much a savior of other homes Madame Callebaut had been
Termonde will never know. Certainly she made the firing squad
first pause in the wild debauch of destruction. For frequently now
an undamaged house stood with the words chalked on its front,
"Only harmless old woman lives here; do not burn down."
Underneath were the numbers and initials of the particular corps of
the Kaiser's Imperial Army. Often the flames had committed Lese
majeste by leaping onto the forbidden house, and there amidst the
charred ruins stood a door or a wall bearing the mocking
inscription, "Nicht Anbrennen."

Another house, belonging to Madame Louise Bal, bore the words,
"Protected; Gute alte Leute hier" (good old people here). A great
shell from a distant battery had totally disregarded this sign and
had torn through the parlor, exploding in the back yard, ripping the