Explore "Paths of Glory" by Irvin S. Cobb on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
It was Sunday when I saw Louvain in the ashes of her desolation. We / were just back then from the German trenches before Antwerp; and the / hollow sounds of the big guns which were fired there at spaced intervals / came to our ears as we rode over the road leading out from Brussels, / like the boomings of great bells. The last time I had gone that way the / country was full of refugees fleeing from burning villages on beyond. / Now it was bare, except for a few baggage trains lumbering along under / escort of shaggy gray troopers. Perhaps I should say they were gray- / and-yellow troopers, for the plastered mud and powdered dust of three / months of active campaigning had made them of true dirt color.
Oh, yes; I forgot one other thing: We overtook a string of wagons fitted / up as carryalls and bearing family parties of the burghers to Louvain to / spend a day among the wreckage. There is no accounting for tastes. If / I had been a Belgian the last thing I should want my wife and my baby to / see would be the ancient university town, the national cradle of the / Church, in its present state. Nevertheless there were many / excursionists in Louvain that day.