as ruined Pompeii; and how he got a little real money from Brussels
to stop depreciation when the storekeepers came to him and said
that they had stacks of his notes which no mercantile concern would
cash.

M. Nerincx was practising in the life about all that he ever learned and
taught at the university, "which we shall rebuild!" he declared, with
cheery confidence. "You will help us in America," he said. "I'm going
to America to lecture one of these days about Louvain!"

"You have the most famous ruins, unless it is Rheims," I assured him.
"You will get flocks of tourists"--particularly if he fenced in the ruins
of the library and burned leaves of ancient books were on sale.

"Then you will not only have fed, but have helped to rebuild Belgium,"
he added.

A shadow of apprehension overhung his anticipation of the day of
Belgium's delivery. Many a Belgian had arms hidden from the alert
eye of German espionage, and his bitterness was solaced by the
thought; "I'll have a shot at the Germans when they go!" The lot of the
last German soldier to leave a town, unless the garrison slips away
overnight, would hardly make him a good life-insurance risk.

My last look at a Belgian bread-line was at Liege, that town which
had had a blaze of fame in August, 1914, and was now almost
forgotten. An industrial town, its mines and works were idle. The
Germans had removed the machinery for rifle-making, which has
become the most valuable kind of machinery in the world next to that
for making guns and shells. If skilled Belgians here or elsewhere were