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When they are not dancing they are throwing oranges at one another. The houses board up their windows. The restaurants take down their mirrors and hide away the glasses. If I went masquerading at Binche I should go as a man in armour, period Henry the Seventh. "Doesn't it hurt," I asked a lady who had been there, "having oranges thrown at you?
Some tense interest was roused among the men as British aeroplanes rose to encounter the German aircraft. It was the first real battle of the sky they had witnessed. General French's cavalry patrols now brought information that the woods were thick with German troops, some of them deploying eastward toward their right at Binche.
In this way gentlemen for the east are dragged out by the legs at junctions, and packed into trains going west; while southern fathers are shot out in the chill dawn at lonely northern stations, to find themselves greeted with enthusiasm by other people's families. At Binche, they say I have not counted them myself that thirty thousand maskers can be seen dancing at the same time.
The line extended along the line of the canal from Condé on the west, through Mons and Binche on the east. "On Sunday, the 23d, reports began to come in to the effect that the enemy was commencing an attack on the Mons line, apparently in some strength, but that the right of the position from Mons was being particularly threatened.
This certainly was a most sensible reply, but it is instructive to witness the cynicism with which the envoy accepts this position for his master, while coldly recording the results of all these sanguinary conversations. Such was the condition of affairs when the Prince of Orange arrived at Peronne, between Binche and the Duke of Alva's entrenchments.
It ran from within touch of Namur up the right bank of the Sambre, through Charleroi to Binche and Mons, thence by way of the coal barge canal just within the French frontier to Condé. For the choice of a great battle ground there was nothing particularly attractive about it in a military sense.
'Only flying from inglorious dullness, my friend. Do not be scandalized, but let me know how soon I can reach the hero of France, and enroll myself as a volunteer. 'The Duke is at Binche. I must return thither tomorrow. You had better eat and sleep here tonight, and then we can decide what is to be done. 'I may do that, the youth said, considering.
With great pride the citizens of Mons showed the British soldiers of occupation an ancient cannon, claimed to have been used by their forefathers as an ally of the English at Crecy. Especially east of Mons, toward Binche, the British line ran through this district. Several of the greatest European battles have been fought in its vicinity Ramilles, Malplaquet, Jemappe, and Ligny.
The drawing-rooms still had their old silk hangings a white ground covered with wreaths of flowers and birds with wonderful bright plumage hand-painted framed in wood of two shades of light green. Binche, name of a village in Belgium where the lace is made. The big drawing-room was entirely panelled in wood of the same light green, most beautifully and delicately carved.
So we set out afoot, following the everlasting sound of the guns. After having many small adventures on the way we came at nightfall to Binche, a town given over to dullness and lacemaking, and once a year to a masked carnival, but which now was jammed with German supply trains, and by token of this latter circumstance filled with apprehensive townspeople.
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