“A month ago.... But it is nothing to us, eh? Let us eat our breakfasts.” The Baron bowed grandly to me. “Monsieur le Délégué,” he began in his smooth, formal voice, “once again we remind ourselves that it is thanks to you and the generous American people that we have bread. It is thanks to you that our noble Belgium is not starving.... Eh bien! Let us eat our breakfasts.”
And so we did.
VIII
THE GLORY OF TINARLOO
A second time we seated ourselves at our little round table in the restaurant on the boulevard Anspach—the director of the art museum and I. A mug of light Belgian beer was before each of us, and a copy of La Belgique telling of the Somme battles. The director’s hands shook as he reached for the newspaper and his half-finished beer. His breath came in short, apoplectic gasps. He was wildly angry. A couple of minutes before a Flemish newsboy had rushed into the restaurant and shouted, “Aeroplane! The Germans are shooting it!” And the restaurant had emptied like a hive, filling the boulevard, where every one gazed at the dull gray dragonfly droning at an immense height over the city, pursued with soft white smoke-flowers which thudded as they bloomed in the upper air. While we watched, an old peasant in wooden shoes and padded black petticoats dropped her market basket on the director’s toes. He forgot aeroplane and anti-aircraft guns, war, the crowds, and me, his guest. He howled, he cursed, he danced; and now that we were safe again at our table in the restaurant, anathema and malediction still tumbled from his full red lips.
“Ces sales paysants, ils sont des brutes! Imbéciles! Idiots! Cochons!” he stuttered, his feet prancing under the table. “They are beasts truly, monsieur: not men, but beasts, these peasants. What a temper I am in. But these beasts of peasants. Ah!...” he smiled suddenly and went on, “I will tell you a story of them.
“You have heard, monsieur, of Van de Werve, the artist? He was of the school of Rubens; he died in Italy, very young. He had only twenty-three years when he died. He was not rich; he was very poor. But he had the spirit, the genius, the flair, and Rubens loved him. The Master said one day, ‘You must go to Italy to study. Here is a purse of gold. Here are letters of introduction to my friends. Here is a horse. Go to Italy.’ And the young man started. Months went by and no word of him came to Rubens or the other friends he had in Antwerp. He did not arrive in Italy. The purse of gold, the letters of introduction, the horse, the pupil of Rubens—all were completely lost to sight. After a year some friends set out to search for him, and behold! in the village of Tinarloo in Brabant they found him, painting an altar piece for the chapel of that place, and kissing and clipping the daughter of the burgomaster, who sat on his knee! He was always gallant, was Van de Werve, and as he rode into Tinarloo on his way to Italy, he had seen and fallen in love with the burgomaster’s daughter and sat at her feet for a year.
“But the altar piece, monsieur! You have never seen it? Ah, that was magnificent—‘The Virgin of the Stair’—gold, green, ravishing! What atmosphere! What feeling! What soul!
“I saw it only once before the war. I tried to buy it for the museum, but those dirty peasants of Tinarloo would not give it up. Ugh—a village of fat farmers smelling of dungheaps and cattle pens and garlic! Their chapel was bastard Gothic—no fit place for such an altar piece. I urged the curé to sell, but he would not. He was ignorant as his peasants, but he was crafty, too. He said the picture was the glory of Tinarloo, the chief joy of the peasants. I offered him twice as much as I first intended, thinking he meant to bargain with me; three times, four times as much. He refused two thousand francs, monsieur!