But how, it will be asked, does all this concern the city on the Roya? What has the love story of Bourchard d’ Avesnes to do with the story of Bruges? This much. Bruges, as the chief place of residence of the sovereigns of Flanders, was intimately associated with the Court of Flanders and all that appertained thereto. Moreover, it was during this period that Bruges began to assume its present aspect. If old Provost Bertulph, or Dierick of Alsace, or even his son Philip, could again re-visit the scene of their sorrows and their triumphs, they would hardly recognize in the city of Bruges aught save the chapel of St. Basil; but if Marguerite, or Jeanne, or poor Bourchard, were to come back again, they would find there much that was familiar to them—the great nave and choir and transepts of Notre Dame, in spite of whitewash and Rococo ornament, and the scars of their conflict with time, would be easily recognizable. So too the Cathedral of St. Sauveur, part of it, the nave and choir of the Church of St. Gilles, and the northern aisle and the tower of the Church of St. Jacques.
If the ghost of Jeanne could come forth into the Rue Ste. Cathérine, there too she would recognize in the old brown hospital tottering into the water, in spite of mutilated statues, blind windows, bricked-up doorways and an abundant crop of golden wallflowers which have found a congenial home in the chinks and crevices of its crumbling façade, the stately building which she herself had founded six hundred years ago, the withered fruit of that grand design over which, along with the Master Mason who conceived it, she had no doubt often pored, and which, perhaps even, she had herself modified. Whilst if the Beguinage hard-by with its Renaissance church, its Renaissance porch, and its white-washed cottages of the seventeen hundreds; if the hospital of Our Lady of the Pottery at the other end of the town, with its flamboyant windows, its recently-restored out-buildings, and its modern gateway; if the Romanesque hospital of St. John at Damme, pitilessly scraped as to its stones, and with its time-honoured brickwork degraded by red paint, appeared at first sight unfamiliar to her, an arch here, a gateway there, a piece of rude carving a little further on, would soon convince her that she was in the presence of old friends whom she and her sister Marguerite had known six centuries before. And so too of others of the bricks and stones, and perhaps also even of the trees of Bruges or its neighbourhood, though, alas! it is too seldom the manner of the Fleming to cherish his timber after it has attained marketable value. He is indeed an indefatigable planter, but he plants for profit, and he is a no less indefatigable wielder of the pruning-hook and the axe.
