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I was afraid Maubeuge would be taken." Patsy accepted her cousin's rebuke with her accustomed good nature. Indeed, she listened as intently as Beth to the thrilling account of the destruction of Maubeuge, and her blue eyes became quite as serious as the brown ones of her cousin when the tale of dead and wounded was recounted.

Maubeuge was not protected by open-air earthworks, but by a circle of armor-plate concrete forts.

This disastrous news being confirmed the following day by further despatches, Lafayette was forced to fall back to Maubeuge without striking a blow, and thus ended Calvert's hopes of seeing a campaign which had promised most brilliantly.

There, in the iron cot, placed at the foot of the large bed, she died one night of sadness and exhaustion, never having loved anything on earth except her husband and her little drawing-room in the Rue Maubeuge.

Nobody else was asked for his papers on the way to Maubeuge; but I was, and although I clung to my rights, I had to choose at last between accepting the humiliation and being left behind by the train. I was sorry to give way; but I wanted to get to Maubeuge. Maubeuge is a fortified town, with a very good inn, the Grand Cerf.

By nightfall the British contingent, including now the 19th Brigade of infantry, lay in the positions from Maubeuge westward, with the 1st Corps next to Maubeuge, the 2nd Corps beyond Bavai, the 1st being commanded by Sir Douglas Haig, the 2nd by Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien; while the Germans lay more or less as the dotted shaded markings are.

Strategy pointed conclusively to the Belgian route, and its advantages were clinched by the fact that France was relying on the illusory scrap of paper. Her dispositions assumed an attack in Lorraine, and her northern fortifications round Lille, Maubeuge, and Hirson were feeble compared with those of Belfort, Toul, and Verdun.

It went on to add that the exact nature of that business had best not be divulged until the young man should find himself at the American Legation, and ended by urging Mr. Calvert not to delay his departure from Maubeuge by a day, if possible.

To the world Verdun is a great fortress, a second Gibraltar, encircled by great forts, furnished with huge guns, the gateway to Paris and the key to the French eastern frontier. And this is just what Verdun was until the coming of the present war, when the German and Austrian siege guns levelled the forts of Antwerp, of Maubeuge, of Liège.

At the siege of Maubeuge, General Jourdan found this new method of observation so serviceable, that twice a day, accompanied by the General himself, Coutelle ascended into the air; the correspondence between the aeronaut and the aerostiers who held the balloon, was carried on by means of little white, red, and yellow flags.