Monsieur Segotin's Story
as those of us, the hostages, had been printed. It was impressive, I do assure you. Each man who read such a notice said to himself, 'To-morrow one of the names that people will read up there may be the name of me, A. B., instead of that of this poor C. D., or this E. F.,' or as the case might be. And he turned sick as he read. It was not far from the bitterness of death itself, my friend, not very far.
"Well, well, the reign of terror was established amongst us, as you see, and pretty effectively. Now, having got everything in order and to their liking, our good Germans settled down to the business of making the very most of us. It was a simple business after all. It required no more than the posting from time to time of a new assessment. Belgium had had the effrontery to resist invasion, to reject the divine protection of the Hohenzollerns. By so doing she had constituted herself their prey, had stripped herself of all rights and abandoned every last claim to consideration. She was an orange to be squeezed flat and dry, and those who held her between their hands felt as little pity or remorse as would you or I for a veritable orange that we should have occasion to deprive of its juice for our drinking. Belgium, my friend, is, in this particular, a type of the whole world should those people hold it ever at their mercy between their mailed fists. First they took her food, then her money, then her machinery and her household furniture and everything else that was portable and lootable and then they took her people. But this was not yet. Not then did
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