Old Flemish men fished industriously below the wrecked stone bridge, where the debris made new eddies in the swift, narrow stream; and blue pigeons swarmed in the plaza before the Palais de Justice, giving to the scene a suggestion of St.Mark's Square at Venice.
The German Landwehr, who were everywhere about, treated the inhabitants civilly enough, and the inhabitants showed no outward resentment against the Germans.

But beneath the lid a whole potful of potential trouble was brewing, if one might believe what the Germans told us.

We talked with a young lieutenant of infantry who in more peaceful times had been a staff cartoonist for a Berlin comic paper.

He received us beneath the portico of the Theatre Royale, built after the model of the Odeon in Paris.

Two waspish rapid-fire guns stood just within the shelter of the columns, with their black snouts pointing this way and that to command the sweep of the three-cornered Place du Theatre.