Louvain the Forsaken It was Sunday when I saw Louvain in the ashes of her desolation.

We were just back then from the German trenches before Antwerp; and the hollow sounds of the big guns which were fired there at spaced intervals came to our ears as we rode over the road leading out from Brussels, like the boomings of great bells.

The last time I had gone that way the country was full of refugees fleeing from burning villages on beyond.
Now it was bare, except for a few baggage trains lumbering along under escort of shaggy gray troopers.

Perhaps I should say they were gray- and-yellow troopers, for the plastered mud and powdered dust of three months of active campaigning had made them of true dirt color.
Oh, yes; I forgot one other thing: We overtook a string of wagons fitted up as carryalls and bearing family parties of the burghers to Louvain to spend a day among the wreckage.

There is no accounting for tastes.