Monsieur B., a man of seventy years (Madame X.'s brother-in-law), was taken as hostage yesterday at Spa. Fortunately for him, he was allowed to sleep in the hotel, but can you imagine what the anxiety of those twenty-four hours was? Every voice in the street, every foot-step in the corridor—!

From the top of the mountain all day a continual booming was heard, distantly transmitted through the air. It was so incessant and with such vivacity, one could easily imagine two armies all mixed up into one. The Red Cross trains bear witness to tremendous battles somewhere—but where? We hardly know how to contain ourselves in this absolute ignorance of what is happening in the world. We rush upon and tear to bits, like beasts of prey, the least little piece of news that comes straggling within reach and if, by chance, someone comes into the court, it is enough for all the family, including the servants, to rush to the windows in excitement.

The soldiers who are in the garage had the delicate idea of killing a cow therein, which they did, and dismantled the animal then and there. The next day they dressed themselves in Belgian uniforms, stripped from the dead, and had themselves photographed before the chÂteau. We noticed their laughing and pointing to the attic windows of the house, and we finally discovered that they had festooned strings of sausages, of their own recent make, from the window sills, to ripen.A Baron de S. spent the night here, and told us of the ravages made by the passing troops at his chÂteau down in the country. They had buried a Frenchman in one corner of the garden and two Germans in another and nothing was left but the house. All engravings and paintings were cut with a sword; silver platters were melted in a lump in the court yard; meat was cut up on a beautiful salon table; shoe polish was rubbed on another; pipes in the kitchen and bathroom were cut to flood the rooms; every glass in the house was broken and all the linen carried off except the handkerchiefs.