She stood boldly before him, and turned upon him like a tiger.
"You Uhlan?" cried her mother. "Your very regiment is synonymous of all
that is treacherous and ill-begotten. If you do not respect women, then
I believe all that is told of you. Let your God-cursed Emperor let
loose his hordes upon us, but the day will come, and is not far distant,
when the finger of God will be placed upon you, and you, a nobleman of
Saxony, will be withered and die as a stickleback will die beneath the
sun."
"Oh, mother! Do be careful what you say. Pray be careful!" urged
Aimee, clinging to her beseechingly.
The gallant Baron, with crimson face, rose unsteadily, gripping the edge
of the table to prevent himself from falling, and in fierce anger cried:
"For those words to us, woman, your house shall suffer," and drawing his
sword, he swept from the table the beautiful epergnes of flowers and
china baskets of fruit, and, staggering to the wall, he slashed
viciously the fine old tapestries, in his frantic drunken rage.
"Ernst," he hiccoughed to one of the officers, "tell the men below that
this Belgian woman has insulted us while we are her guests, and let them
make an example of this fine Baron's castle."
"No, no?" shrieked Aimee. "No, I beg of you, Baron--I beg of you to
spare our home. Remember your word to us!" cried the girl frantically
in German.
But he only laughed triumphantly in her face, and the man he addressed
as Ernst, having left to do his bidding, he with the other officer and
two grey-coated orderlies, gleefully commenced to wreck the splendid
room, while the two terrified women, clinging to each other, stood in a
corner watching how they vented their mad ire upon all on which they
could lay their hands.
In a few moments they were slashing the upholstery with their swords,
tearing down and destroying the ancient Flemish tapestries, while the
Baron himself paid particular attention to the pictures--all valuable
old masters--defacing and destroying them one by one.
"See, woman! what we will now do with this snug home of yours?" he said
in his drunken frenzy as, taking up an iron poker from the big open
grate, he attacked the beautiful old chandelier of Venetian glass
suspended in the centre of the room, smashing it to fragments.
The yells of the men in the adjoining apartments mingled with the
smashing of furniture and loud, drunken laughter, reached them where
they stood. They told their own tale. Everywhere in that splendid old
chateau destruction was being carried on at the express orders of the
cultured Baron von Meyeren, one of Germany's noblemen.
"Wreck the place?" he yelled to half a dozen burly Uhlans who burst in,
two of them holding bottles in their hands. "And we will make a bonfire
afterwards. This woman has cursed us, and we, as German soldiers, will
teach her a lesson she will not easily forget!"
Poor Melanie had disappeared, but above the terrible disorder and wild
shouting were the shrieks of the female servants below, while a smell of
fire suddenly greeted their nostrils.
"Look, mother! there's smoke!" gasped Aimee in terror. "They have set
the chateau on fire?"
As she spoke, two of the Uhlans had torn down a huge picture--part of an
altar-piece from a church at Antwerp--which occupied the whole of the
end wall of the room, and were kicking their big boots through the
priceless canvas. It was a picture attributed to Rubens.
"Come, child, let us go," whispered the Baroness, her eyes dimmed with
tears, and her face pale and set.
They turned to leave, but as they did so, the Baron caught Aimee roughly
by the shoulder, and leering at her, patted her beneath the chin.
In an instant the girl, resenting such familiarity, turned upon him like
a tigress and slapped his flabby face so heavily that he drew back in
surprise, while the others witnessing the rebuff, laughed at his
discomfiture. He raised his sword with an oath, and would have cut her
down had not the man called Ernst rushed forth and stayed his hand.
"Go, ladies," urged the man in French. "Escape, while there is yet
time."
"Hold that girl!" shouted von Meyeren, fiercely struggling to get free
from his brother-officer. But the latter held him, and barred his
passage while the two terrified women dashed down the stairs, up which
the black smoke was already slowly curling.
Darkness had fallen, and only here and there had the lamps been lit.
Therefore the Baroness and her daughter were enabled to obtain hats and
wraps and to creep down a steep, winding back staircase which was seldom
used, and which the Uhlans had, fortunately, not yet discovered.
The scene was a terrible one of wholesale, wanton destruction. Some of
the men were busy getting together the plate and valuables, while, just
as they left, they caught sight of one man who emerged into the
courtyard with the Baroness' jewel-case beneath his arm.
The thieves and murderers of the Kaiser were repeating in the beautiful
Chateau of Severac, the same disgraceful methods which they had pursued
in the villages of the Meuse. They respected neither God nor man,
neither old age nor youth. They made war upon women, and shot down the
unarmed and defenceless. Indeed, this great army of "kultur" was, in
reality, but a disciplined horde of barbarians.
The Baroness and her daughter, with wraps hastily thrown about them,
succeeded in escaping from the house by the postern gate, which gave
entrance to a wood, but ere they left, a red glare from one of the lower
rooms, shining away across the river, told only too plainly that the
dastardly Uhlans had used some of their famous inflammable "confetti,"
and were burning the place.
The fierce, exultant yells of the drunken soldiery fell upon their ears
as they plunged into the dark wood, part of the Baron's wide domain, the
intricate by-paths of which were well known to Aimee.
Breathlessly they hastened on, until in the darkness beneath the trees
they were compelled to slowly grope their way. Their fear was lest the
woods be searched, and they might be captured, for the brutes--inflamed
as they were with wine--were now in the mood for torture and for murder.
Woe-betide them if they fell into their hands.
Mother and daughter pushed eagerly, breathlessly on, terrified at the
fearful orgie of destruction they had just witnessed. For a full
half-hour they walked, Aimee leading the way through the narrow, winding
shooting-paths, until at last they came forth into the open fields.
Then they paused, scarce daring to look behind them. Alas! at the bend
of the valley, high upon its rock, Severac stood out vividly with flames
belching fiercely from the windows of its high, round towers, and
casting a blood-red glare upon the waters and across to the woods on the
opposite bank.
"_Dieu_!" gasped the Baroness--"the fiends!--those hell-fiends of the
Emperor?"
"Mother," exclaimed Aimee, quite calm again now that they had escaped
from the hands of that brigandish band, "remember there is a God of
Justice, with whom vengeance lies for wrong, and most assuredly will He,
if we place our trust in Him, mete out the dread fate of death and
obscurity to the arrogant Kaiser, and to all his dastardly barbarians.
Let us get back to Brussels somehow. There, at least, we shall be
safe."
And as they stood watching the fierce flames leap up around those
ancient towers which had withstood the wars of Charles the Bold, they
knew not the awful scene taking place in the courtyard, where Gustave,
Melanie, and seven other of the servants, male and female, were shot one
after the other in cold blood, as they emerged in terror from the
burning place. Appearance of each was being hailed by the drunken
laughter of the assembled soldiers, and in escaping the fire they fell
victims of the blood-lust of the brutes.
"The Red Cock is crowing all over Belgium!" shouted the Baron von
Meyeren thickly, alluding to the incendiary acts of Germans being
committed everywhere. "We shall make a bonfire of Namur, to-morrow, my
men! Hurrah! for God and the Fatherland."
And as he passed across the courtyard, for the atmosphere had now become
hot and stifling, he savagely kicked aside the body of one of the young
female servants who, poor thing, had been sabred in her attempt to
escape.