ressing their thanks to
him they went into the chateau to find that soldiers were engaged in
packing up their fine collections of enamels and porcelains to ship them
to Germany. Another appeal to the Prince, who was most sympathetic. He
was a practical and resourceful man, and said:

"Of course I'll stop this, but you will understand that our men would
like to keep some little souvenir of the war in Belgium. That would be
hard to prevent. But I would suggest that you pick out all the pieces
that you value most and pack them away in that large wardrobe. Then I'll
do the rest."

Madame de X was, of course, delighted with this, and scurried about
gathering together the finest pieces and packing them carefully into the
big wardrobe. She kept it up as long as there was a nook or cranny
where odd pieces could be put, and then reported progress to the Prince.

"Are you sure that all the best pieces are there?" says he.

"All that could be packed there," answers Madame de X.

"Good," says the Prince, and then turning to his orderly: "Have that
wardrobe sent to Berlin for me."

The way the German army cleaned out the wine of the country was a
revelation to everybody. They would not take what they needed for the
day's drinking but would clear out whole cellars at a time and load what
was not drunk onto carts to be carried away. The result was that people
who had a little warning had recourse to all sorts of ingenious tricks
to save some of their store. There was one bright man in the province of
Namur who removed his stock of wine--all except a few thousand bottles
of new wine--and deposited them in the ornamental pond near his chateau.
The Germans arrived a few hours afterward and raised a great fog because
they were not satisfied with the amount of wine they found. The owner of
the chateau had discreetly slipped away to Brussels and they could not
do anything to him. However, they tapped all the walls for secret hiding
places and went over the park to see if anything had been buried--all in
vain. The next morning, however, the pond was covered with labels which
had soaked off and floated to the surface, and after draining the pond
the whole stock was carted away.

Madame B----, who was there, has an interesting souvenir which she
proposes to keep if possible. During the first days of the war her
chateau was occupied by a lot of officers, who got gloriously drunk and
smashed up pretty well everything in the drawing-room a