THE “SALLE DES JEUX” IN THE KURSAAL, OSTENDE
At about this period of the evening the Madame raised a commotion by discovering that her reticule was open and a piece of money had fallen out onto the thick carpet. The Professor and I instantly got down to look for it, and even the croupiers at the adjoining gaming table paused to take in the incident. Two or three attendants and waiters hurried up to help when the Madame spied her lost coin and triumphantly seized it. It was a one centime piece—worth a fifth of a cent! I have never seen a more disgusted-looking group of attendants, and doubt if so small a coin had ever been seen before in this northern Monte Carlo. The Madame, however, was serenely indifferent to their opinion. This was the nearest, I may add, that we came to losing any money there.
At the end of the Esplanade is the Estacade, a pier that extends well out to sea. Pleasure steamers start here for short trips along the coast, and turning to the right at this end of the town one comes to the harbour and the broad basin where hundreds of little brown-sailed shrimp fishing-boats congregate. Several of these came in while we were there and sold their cargoes, almost as soon as they were tied up, to groups of eager market-women with big baskets. Several girls sat along the quay wall mending huge nets also used in the shrimp fishery. The little back streets in this vicinity, and around the quaint fish-market, are the oldest in the town—and the most crooked.
The principal business street of the little city is the rue de Flandre and its continuation, the rue de la Chapelle, which together take one from the Digue de Mer straight to the railway and boat stations. On one side of this street is the Place d’Armes, where a military band played every evening, and facing which is the Hotel de Ville. Our last day was spent poking about this part of the town in a pouring rain, with an occasional peep into huge cafés designed to accommodate a thousand guests, but which were then almost deserted. The rain ceased suddenly toward nightfall and we returned to the Digue for a farewell look at the crowds and the long beach. It was night before we had seen enough, and then, after ordering and enjoying to the utmost our last Flemish dinner, we made our way to the Gare Maritime to take the night boat for Dover. As we steamed out past the long Estacade and looked back upon the gleaming lights along the Digue we saw the moon rising redly above the masts in the little harbour. This was our last view of Flanders, and, as we regretfully saw the lights of the city sink out of sight behind the tossing waves that gleamed brightly under the moonbeams, we knew that our pilgrimage was over.
[CHAPTER XXII]
THE SPELL OF FLANDERS
In this little book the author has endeavoured to portray as clearly as his limited powers of expression permitted, some of the many elements that make the spell that Flanders lays upon the minds and hearts of those who know it and love it well. It is a complex influence, composed of many and widely diverse factors. If in the narrative a thread of history has been permitted to obtrude itself, sometimes perhaps at undue length, it is because before all else Flanders is a land whose interest lies in its long and romantic history, and in the marvellous manner in which its artists and sculptors have portrayed its famous past. As Mr. Griffis in “Belgium, the Land of Art,” has well expressed it, “No other land is richer in history or more affluent in art than is Belgium. In none have devout, industrious, patriotic and gifted sons told their country’s story more attractively. By pen and in print, on canvas, in mural decoration, in sculpture, in monuments of bronze and marble, in fireplaces and in wood-carving, the story may be read as in an illuminated missal. Belfries, town halls, churches, guild houses, have each and all a charm of their own.” If these pages have caught ever so little of that charm they have served their purpose.
To the student of history, of art and architecture, of tapestry and lace-making, of the origin of the great woollen and linen industries, of guilds and the organisation of labour, of the commune or municipal republic in its earliest and finest development, and—before all else—of liberty in its age-long conflict with tyranny and oppression, Flanders is a land of endless interest and inspiration. Nowhere else in the world can there be found within so small a compass so many monuments of the past, so many of the milestones of human progress. That some of these relate to a past so remote as to be all but forgotten, while others are hidden away in spots where few tourists ever penetrate, only enhances the pleasure of those who are so persevering or so fortunate as to find them.