Besides these, there haunted the neighbourhood of the armies, like ghouls or vampires, or those vultures which can scent bloodshed from afar, a class of women, most of whom were horribly bedizened and painted hags, who followed, perhaps, one of the most dreadful trades to which women have ever turned their attention. But, though they passed along these roads under false names and sometimes titles, and rode in good hired vehicles and, as often as not, in handsome ones that were their own property, they presented a different appearance when a battle had taken place. For then their silks and satins, their paint and patches, their lace and jewels, and also their pinchbeck titles of marchionesses and countesses and baronesses, were discarded, and they stood forth as they really were--as women still in women's garb, it is true, yet in all else furies. With knives in their girdles; with, in outside pockets or bags, the hilts of pistols and some times--nay, often--rude surgical instruments bulging forth; with, too, more than one gold-laced coat buttoned across them, or with the sleeves knotted and with their other pockets crammed with scraps of lace and costly wigs, and miniatures and gold pieces, they stood forth as those earthly cormorants, _les chercheuses des morts_, and, in most cases, as the murderesses of the living. With their knives or pistols they put an end to the lives of wounded men, whom they afterwards robbed of their money and trinkets, and, also with those knives, they scalped the dying, since hair was valuable. Likewise, with their surgical instruments they wrenched the teeth, also valuable, out of dying or dead men's heads; while, if the wounded were still able to protect themselves, they played another part, that of the Good Samaritan, and offered them a drink of Nantz or usquebaugh, which generally finished the business, since it was usually poisoned.
Along a road between Venloo and Grave, over which a dyke had overflowed from the heavy rains, so that the horses passing over it were fetlock deep in mud, there went now a vehicle, or, rather, rough country cart, springless and having for shelter nothing but a rough covering of coarse tarred canvas supported on bent lathes. Seated on the shaft of this cart was an old man who, out of tenderness for the value of the beast that drew it, if not for the beast itself, never proceeded at any but the slowest pace possible. Inside, under the awning or cover, were Sylvia and Madame de Valorme, who, as is now apparent, had managed to escape out of Liége.