The pulse of her life seemed hardly to beat at all.

She lay in a coma, flashing up feverishly sometimes at false rumors of German repulses to the southward.
Only the day before we arrived a wild story got abroad among the starvelings in the poorer quarters that the Russians had taken Berlin and had swept across Prussia and were now pushing forward, with an irresistible army, to relieve Brussels.

So thousands of the deluded populace went to a bridge on the eastern outskirts of the town to catch the first glimpse of the victorious oncoming Russians; and there they stayed until nightfall, watching and hoping and--what was more pitiable -- believing.
From what I saw of him I judged that the military governor of Brussels, Major Bayer, was not only a diplomat but a kindly and an engaging gentleman.

Certainly he was wrestling most manfully, and I thought tactfully, with a difficult and a dangerous situation.

For one thing, he was keeping his soldiers out of sight as much as possible without relaxing his grip on the community.